Martin Dolan, chief commissioner of the Australian Transport Safety Bureau (ATSB), is plagued by conspiracy theorists. According to an article in the Sydney Morning Herald, since the disappearance of MH370, “conspiracy theorists have been busy trying to solve the mystery themselves. Many have contacted Dolan.”
“You’ve got this big mystery and everyone wants to know the answer and everyone wants to help,” the SMH quotes Dolan as saying. “It’s unhelpful, for the sake of the families more than anything else, in the sense that it has the potential to undermine confidence in what we are doing.”
I feel somewhat guilty for being one of those peanut-gallery denizens who have tormented him. Along with my fellow obsessives in the Independent Group, I’ve been straining my brain for the last eight months trying to make sense of the strangest aviation mystery in history. Yes, I’d like to be helpful; yes, I’d like to know the answers. And yes, I may have unwittingly undermined confidence in what the ATSB was doing, for instance by publicly saying that I thought they were looking in the wrong place. (Though, to be fair, they were in fact looking in the wrong place.)
Nevertheless, I must take issue with one aspect of the article’s characterization of my subculture: the use of the term “conspiracy theorist.” Now, look: I get it. My wife says that I remind her of the Kevin Costner character in “JFK.” I ruminate about the intracacies of a famous case and try to piece them together in a new way that makes more sense. I’m obsessed.
There’s a big difference, however, between true grassy-knoll conspiracy theorists (or 9/11Truthers, or the-moon-landing-was-faked believers) and MH370 obsessives like me. It’s this: there is no default, mainstream narrative about the missing Malaysian airliner. There is no story that officials and all reasonable people agree makes sense.
This isn’t the result of laziness or incompetence. It’s just that the data is so strange.
A lot of people don’t get that. Ever since the mystery began, certain voices have been invoking the principle of Occam’s razor, saying that when we try to formulate a most likely scenario for what happened to the plane, we should choose the answer that is simplest. People who are making this argument are usually in favor of the argument that the plane suffered a massive mechanical failure and then flew off into the ocean as a ghost ship, or that the pilot locked his co-pilot out of the cockpit and committed suicide. However, as I’ve argued over the course of several earlier posts, neither theory matches what we know about the flight.
Instead, I’ve argued that an accumulation of evidence suggests that MH370 was commandeered by hijackers who had a very sophisticated understanding of airline procedure, air traffic control, avionics systems, military radar surveillance, and satellite communications. In other words, what happened on the night of March 7/8 of this year was a intentional act. And when it comes to human schemes, Occam’s razor goes out the window. Instead of simplicity, we should expect complexity, not to mention red herrings and any other form of subterfuge.
Whenever I hear Occam’s razor invoked, I inevitably find myself thinking of something that Sarah Bajc said on CNN. Bajc’s partner, Philip Wood, is one of the missing passengers, and she has been very open minded in considering alternative explanations to what happened that night. “There are 40 crazy stories that you could tell about MH370,” she told the anchor. “And one of them is going to turn out to be true.”
I’ve come to think of this as the Bajc Postulate, which I think should replace Occam’s Razor in situations like this. It goes like this: “When trying to unravel human deception, don’t expect simplicity.”
Remember Operation Mincemeat? In 1943, a fisherman found the body of a British officer floating in the sea off the Spanish coast. The authorities turned the corpse over to German intelligence, who discovered that it carried a number of secret documents, including one indicating that the expected Allied assault from North Africa would target Sardinia, not Sicily, as widely expected. The authenticity of the documents was vouched for by every detail of the body, its clothes, and the accompanying possessions, which included several love letters, a photo of a fiancee, a bill from an exclusive tailor, and a theater ticket stub. Either this man and his belongings had all been elaborately and meticulously forged, or he really was who he seemed to be: Occam’s Razor. Hitler himself was utterly convinced. And yet, of course, the whole thing was a ruse, an elaborate deception cooked up with painstaking care by British intelligence. Hitler shifted three divisions to Sardinia, the invasion landed at Sicily, and the war was that much closer to being over.
I think it’s distinctly possible that MH370 represents a deception crafted at the same level of complexity.
In my mind, the crux is what happened at 18:25. Until that moment, the plane had been on radio silence for nearly an hour. After following a zig-zag path along national airspace boundaries, it had reached the limit of military radar coverage and had disappeared. But then, mysteriously, the satcom system reconnected to the Inmarsat satellite overhead. For it to do this, the hijackers would have had to either climbed into the electronics bay or carried out a complex procedure in the cockpit that few people outside of Boeing itself would now how to accomplish. All this, to no evident purpose: no attempt was subsequently used to communicate via the system.
Other things were odd about the 18:25 logon. The frequencies that the system transmitted over the next few minutes were inexplicable to the scientists at Inmarsat. Though the electronics of the system are perfectly understood by the equipment’s manufacturers, they cannot explain how the frequencies were produced. Investigative efforts within the IG suggest that there was another mysterious aspect to the satcom’s behavior post-18:25: when a pair of incoming calls was received at 18:41, the system was unable to pass the calls through. We’re not sure why, but the most likely cause is that errors in the system’s configuration prevented it from aiming the satellite dish correctly.
By 19:41, the satcom system seemed to settle down and transmit at stable frequencies. If taken at face value, these frequencies indicated unambiguously that the plane was flying south. Yet the ATSB has never able to completely make sense of these values. As I wrote last week, it has proven frustratingly difficult to make the two distinct halves of the Inmarsat data—the timing and the frequency data—match up in a way that makes sense.
Regardless of these difficulties, most reasonable people share the conviction that, regardless of what particular track the plane happened to fly, it definitely flew south into the most remote reaches of the southern Indian Ocean. I’ve examined the data myself, and come away convinced that, indeed, the frequency data unequivocally supports this conclusion. But no one knows why anyone would do this. One popular notion is that the hijackers had a destination in mind, but something went wrong, they became incapacitated, and the plane flew on autopilot until it ran out of fuel and crashed. This scenario is certainly possible, but as I recently pointed out, a new speed-analysis technique suggests the plane was under deliberate control until the very end.
So if they weren’t incapacitated, why were these very motivated, very sophisticated hijackers flying a perfectly good jet off into the middle of the ocean? As I see it, there are two possibilities:
- The hijackers were very sophisticated, but for some unknown reason chose to fly the plane off into the middle of the ocean, or
- They were very, very, very sophisticated, and not only survived, but managed to cover their tracks in a way that has fooled absolutely everybody — and turning on the SDU was an essential part of their plan. This explains why there has been no debris found, why there was no radar track over the southern Indian Ocean, and why Inmarsat has been baffled by the BFO values.
This kind of thinking would have been considered outlandish a few months ago, but the more time goes by without any trace of the plane turning up, the more reasonable it is starting to seem. No less an industry eminence than Emirates CEO Tim Clark, whose airline operates the largest 777 fleet in the world, recently told Der Spiegel: “We have not seen a single thing that suggests categorically that this aircraft is where they say it is, apart from this so-called electronic satellite ‘handshake,’ which I question as well.”
To accomplish a disappearing act, the hijackers would have had to have pulled off a plan that the authorities not only couldn’t anticipate beforehand, few could wrap their heads around it afterward. A plan so devious, it would literally be —
What could such a plan have been? Frankly, there’s no way we can be sure. Until the plane is located, and the black boxes are found, all we can do is speculate. But some speculation runs in accordance with the facts, and some runs counter to it. Over the last few months, I’ve pieced together a narrative that I think matches well the facts we do know, explains some otherwise baffling conundrums, and basically ties together a means, a perpetrator, and a destination. (Which, paranthetically, is something that no one else, official or amateur, has yet attempted.)
In the past, I’ve invited others to share their “conspiracy theories,” and I tip my hat to the very, very few (two) who’ve had the courage to take me up on my offer. For the most part, their efforts were met with skepticism, but polite skepticism, and that reaction has emboldened me to press forward with my own big reveal. I hope that some people will find it thought-provoking, perhaps even convincing. I expect that a great many will find it, yes, inconceivable, perhaps even outrageous or even offensive. Remember, it is speculation, not a statement of fact; but if we don’t risk trotting out our speculations eventually then we will never get any closer to figuring out the truth.
If you care to dive down my rabbit hole, click below:
The Spoof, Part 1: Why (A Speculative Scenario)
The Spoof, Part 2: How (A Speculative Scenario)
The Spoof, Part 3: Where (Not a Speculative Scenario)
The Spoof, Part 5: People on the Plane
And that’s all there is for now.
Matty:
“doing drift modeling now won’t really fit March conditions. It suggests that they don’t have a good indication where it will go.”
Right. Or, maybe there’s a battle (within ATSB) that hasn’t been made known yet as concerns this search.
First, ATSB issues a directive (without explanation) for Indonesia to be on the lookout for debris and then yanks it, without explanation.
Now, calls for Martin Dolan to go — “whose testimony before a Senate hearing into the investigator’s botched processes over its Pel-Air findings was rejected by an all party committee.”
The timing of all this is quite interesting.
I’d not seen a report confirming a SECOND search until today.
Richard Cole wrote:
“… If as many parameters are being fit as data points, _any_ data can be fitted and the fit has no weight.”
Sorry to disagree. The fit is perfectly valid. However, there is a huge caveat (as I should have emphasized more loudly in the original post) – the underlying model MUST properly represent the data, and you MUST have a priori knowledge of the errors. With zero residuals, you lose any ability to judge the quality of a fit a-posteriori (no chi-squared test, e.g.).
The real problem comes when you start adding new parameters to a model a posteriori to reduce the residuals. It violates my caveat, and indeed you can get fits that are meaningless.
@Matty: Perhaps you’re assuming AMSA is throwing markers into the water at various points, and watching them drift…? If so, I’m with you: only the ones thrown into the water in mid-March have a prayer of delivering value.
But I believe the subject analysis was all computer-based, data-driven simulation. Accordingly, the dates I’ve quoted, as such, are irrelevant; it is the coordinates that go WITH those dates – the ones that they’d have told their model to START debris drifting FROM on March 8 – that matter.
If they did the analysis now, they’d set their model debris adrift at s38.
If they did the analysis back in August, it’s reasonable to suppose they’d start it at s30.
More likely to drift to Indonesia, but utterly incompatible with the current deep water search.
Brock wrote:”If they did the analysis now, they’d set their model debris adrift at s38.
If they did the analysis back in August, it’s reasonable to suppose they’d start it at s30.”
More likely, they would start the model debris at several or even many locations along the 7th arc. No good reason not to.
For those of you who have not seen Jeff’s new installment, please go here:
http://jeffwise.net/the-spoof-part-5-people-on-the-plane/
It is definitely worth the read. It certainly has given me a lot to think about.
Victor
It is not the theory of electrical failure and cockpit fire which is flawed. It is your understanding or interpretation of it.
There is evidence of avionics overheating prior to take off from ACARS signals prior to take off which extrapolated also suggest that the BTO signal delays are wrongly calculated.
Such overheating would explain loss of ACARS and transponders since they are all on the same power relay bus as the Rockwell Collins CMU-900 comms processor.
If pilots intentionally turned back for Kuala Lumpur with a comms failure and that also developed into a cockpit fire followed by decompression and extinguishment of the fire, Then you have an aircraft flying towards the inner BTO rings.
With an autopilot tracking a magnetic heading then another issue comes into play, the Agonic magnetic variation which would curve the magnetic track east towards Australia over 6 hours of flying by 24 degrees.
You may not be able to grasp the simplicity of that scenario, but that does not invalidate it.
http://i257.photobucket.com/albums/hh212/727Kiwi/RhumbLinetrackarc_zps8092b2c7.jpg
@Dave Reed: Of course, that’s what they SHOULD have done.
And then in October, when their best estimate impact point shifted south to s38, they should have either a) intensified the surface search in SW Australia, where s38-generated debris was far more likely to drift, or b) prudently refrained from (de)emphasizing ANY shoreline.
They’ve done neither. They’re now searching for surface debris at a location UNREACHABLE from s38, according to multiple independent analyses (see Jeff’s “Where is the Debris?” article).
@Simon Gunson: Assuming for the moment that the A/P can track a magnetic heading over many hours of flight, then indeed the track is curved toward the East, and the curvature increases the further south the track extends. Such a track is also affected by the winds encountered, and the strong westerly winds in southern latitudes will push the track further to the East.
It would be interesting to see such a track, and how it fitted the “ping rings” at any plausible speed.
A very simple and plausible scenario just occurred to me.The aircraft was hijacked. The hijackers wanted to fly to Australia, and set forth in a southern direction at around 18:40 utc.
Unfortunately they were insufficiently skilled in the operation of the flight navigation controls, [and they may have omitted to do an accurate calculation of the fuel quantity remaining], and instead of tracking towards Australia they tracked on a rhumbline into the SIO. End of story.
It appears that the simple effort to engage a professional opinion require a billing process during a critical life and death situation. This is not the game your clearly playing here. If it were your family dying every hr that passed while erogant doubters wasted time discounting indisputable photo content, maybe, just maybe you might find a way to get the message across. I never needed confirmation of these findings to verify photographs of the passengers, the signal fire or the plane sinking. I was just glad that the professional that analyzed the original photos was able to digitally prove that they had not been fabricated. Those people in the water being killed were quite real. Time wasting negative
Comments simply display ones lack of skills in this field.
As I said before , my posted images have been tampered with. I suggest you review the originals… At your expense. I need to prove nothing here. It can be done anytime using the originals however. I am more than happy to point them out as they are not to difficult to find. Hopefully the originals have not been destroyed like so much of the data surrounding this horrible event in history. Good luck with your bash festival. When someone gets ready to surface the plane- it will still be there…intact- no-one on board and some interior fixtures torn out. They can be seen in the water all around it quite spread out. They must have been floating for at least several hrs for some to be that far from the plane. All things aside, this reality is just to hard for most people understand. Most find it to easily discounted. I sincerely hope this is the only reason for refusing to save these people and raise this plane. Anything else is would be truly hard to grasp. What should have been a simple anonymous positive ID and a rescue to follow turned into what we have today. Very sad.
@Jeffwise:
Great read! The Spoof Part 5 is an amazing dig.
Re this:
“Noted aviation lawyer Arthur Rosenberg tells me that there is no reason why a Ukrainian family, suing a Malaysian airline over a flight from Kuala Lumpur to China, would need representation from a US attorney”
That’s correct if they’re only planning to sue MAS. But if they’re planning on suing BOEING too (in US a court), then a US-based attorney would make sense.
Here’s something else that you may find interesting: Eurasia Insurance Company is a member of the re-insurance syndicate that insured MH370 AND MH17. Guess where it’s based? Kazakhstan.
https://twitter.com/nihonmama/status/497486216690823168
@airlandseaman,
@VictorI,
The short-term jitter in BFO readings appears to be about 1.5 to 2 Hz RMS. However, the long-term errors are as large as 7 Hz according to Inmarsat. What additional source(s) of BFO error are there?
One error source could be limited accuracy or precision in the input navigation data.
Another possibility is that the geometrical calculations in the BFO equations are carried out with low precision.
Can you comment on these or other potential error sources?
It seems that Inmarsat was unable to reproduce, within a couple of hundred miles, a flight path using only BTO and BFO data, when there was any sort of directional change along the route. I would suppose that holds true for MH370 as well. Precise route predictions are only made possible by additional assumptions regarding LNAV mode and aircraft speed. Evaluating these results is difficult when significant but unknown systematic BFO errors contaminate the few data points we have to work with.
Yo, Jeff, great stuff! Investigative journalist narratives are always a great read, and I hope that you continue to pursue this facet of your calling.
One minor, physical point of coroboration regarding the alleged/hypothesized perps, Chustrak Deineka, is that wer e seated in a rear bulkhead row. I have more than 1m miles on commercial airlines as a passenger, and I can tell you that when the eocnomy bulkhead or emergency exit rows have already been taken, the third best choice is to have a bulkhead at your back; row 27 is just such a row. I often select for this row because I enjoy chatting up the flight attendants as per my general MO. There is an additional reason that I prefer a rear bulkhead: there isn’t anyone annoying you at your back – and it is an excellent place from which to observe the forward cabin.
Apologies are due to the Russian community at large, but Jeff has now stipulated some speculative perps for the diverting of the flight at IGARI. Somebody aboard the aircraft (and, yes, perhaps a stowaway), of course, would have been responsible for the diversion/hijacking, and now Jeff has indicated two that are of higher probabilty in terms of culpability that Mr. Chen and Ms. Hua in row 23.
Matty and Will: OK, I’ll take the bait re the ‘larger picture.’
What Jeff referred to as ‘hybrid warfare I rather prefer to refer to as Integral Warfare (I am a student of Ken Wilber’s; some Kool-Aid stays in your mouth), in that what is being referred to is really more an integration of a mix of sanctions, covert action, cyber warfare, diplomatic pressure, proxy wars, etc. Indeed, a key dynamic in the engagement between the West and Russia for decades has been the simple fact that conventional warfare has long not been an option of enagement between these two loci of power. What remains, then, is strategic/nuclear war or integral warfare. The West has Russia beat in several domains, inclusive of the ability to impose sanctions, ensure diplomatic isolation, etc. Meanwhile, the very NATO troop deployments in the Ukraine, the Baltics, etc. that ensure ‘neutralization’ of any conventional war option backed up by Article 5 of the NATO charter have yet to been deployed. And so do we witness Putin pursuing his comparative advantages (e.g., annexation, proxy warfare, etc.) in the course of doing what he is supposed to do: represent Russian interests with his heart and soul. Say what you want about Putin, but he is winning the tactical battles in the ongoing struggle for power with the West before things at the Federation’s borders have been strategically neutralized.
And MH370? Well, what Victor said: let’s first see how Jeff proposes to speculatively reconcile MH370 and MH17.
Matty and Will: at the very least, we could say that the investigation into the loss (likely a shoot down) of MH17 has been deemed classified by the Dutch, the UK and Ukraine is that were Russia indicated to be directly involved, it could cause a shit storm. Article 5 of the NATO charter was designed and intended as an element of deterrence, in that once the proverbial line in the sand it crossed, all goes on auto-pilot (no pun), while, again, there is no option of conventional war between the NATO and Russia. Our security is thus defined by creating the only remaining alternative: madness.
“…belies what’s going on behind the scenes…” OK, so if there was a larger islamist plot and the West and Russia are cooperating at some level in terms of ferreting out its larger personalities and infrastructure, I suppose that they would want to do it on the QT. But I still believe that this is simply to top-heavy and complex. Rather, I am still more comfortable with the elegant simplicity of two plot lines, namely 1. the aircraft being hijacked; 2. and Malaysia/Hishammuddin deliberately obfuscating what is known about their communcations with the aircraft/the foiling of the hijacking.
Meanwhile, it is interesting that additional people are getting the jitters regarding the Inmarsat analysis. Indeed, the aircraft having in reality gone north would resolve a whole host of contradictions, loose ends and nonsensicals.
Simon: I’d bet a set lunch in a french bistro that you are a pilot. It’s interesting how it would appear that a disproportionate number of pilots seemingly want to uphold the sanctity of the flight deck and the inherently high level of trust that goes with its operators and chalk all up to a mechanical failure. I understand that you want to remain steadfast in this regard, but I’m not sure if it all that appropriate to beat people up over their exploration of alternative perspectives. As it is, your frame is one of the few re a mechanical failure that makes any sense, yet you must admit that is quite challenged by other circumstances. I might also add that there isn’t any confirmation regarding much of anything that happened aboard the aircraft Mar 8/9.
Donald: don’t despair, but please do realize that all sort of ‘finds’ have emerged from the Tomnod effort, with any number of people pleading that they have located the aircraft. Keep at it, if you must, but please do try to realize this and perhaps how your compassion for the victims now has you so closely wedded to their fate that you have now been driven to distraction. Also, while we do have a number of highly qualified data tweaker luminaries appearing in this forum, most of us are merely patrons of ths story bar, while we likewise share your motivation.
Need I mention that we were actually paid a visit by a true conspiracy theorist? Incredible.
Hey, Will, did your thoughts re a -stan and Russia and what not happen to come to you while taking a shower?
@airlandseaman
“The HPBW of the HGA is ~45 degrees (gain = ~13 dB).”
Woah that’s much broader than what I expected…
But that makes sense :
When the plane banks, the link isn’t interrupted.
Inmarsat can let the satellite drift without link degradation.
Then the HGA only needs to be pointed in the general direction of the satellite. Not precisely.
Now, we “know” that the plane went south because the BFO was calculated for a theoretical satellite position (0;64.5E if I recall correctly).
That theoretical position is stored in the SDU somewhere.
What would happen if somebody changed it say to 10N;64.5E.
The real satellite stays in the line of sight, but the algo computing the BFO is fooled, and produces values who seem to indicate a turn south…
To achieve that, you’d probably need to … reboot the SDU (as the coordinates are most likely kept in RAM).
This way no need of special equipment that would look suspicious when boarding.
Can we find hints of that in the data? Particularly in the dBm value reported by Inmarsat?
What are those values exactly? Measured at the base station? Is it proportional to signal strength between plane and sat? Is there any compressor-limiter on satellite?
Cheers!
Sinux
Sinux – Fascinating! Noone wanted to engage on this subject for a long time for a number of reasons and I got swatted by people for suggesting it every time – and I lack the background and knowledge to credibly argue the point. I could not believe the stance that it would be “virtually impossible.” Look fwd to this discussion as that southern leg/reboot always looked like a data issue to me. Who would accept anything like it in their own experiment?
Hey Rand,
While the warer was hot. They disappeared when I subsequently turned the knob to cold.
Lol
Cheers
Will
Sinux:
I’m with Matty. Not a communications engineer, but I’ve never believed that a spoof was impossible. And your proposition is so elegant, I just tweeted it.
More info on the SDU from duncan’s blog :
http://www.duncansteel.com/archives/743/comment-page-4#comment-3404
PS: the link to sdu manual is gone, here is a new one :
http://www.scribd.com/doc/82916594/SDIM-MSC7200-23-20-35-rev-1
Sorry can’t find a downloadable one.
1) Willingness to challenge the authenticity of published signal data: 2 thumbs way up (strongly indicated by logical analysis: where is the debris?). Thank you, Jeff.
2) Assumption that not a single Asian country detected this plane as it overflew their territory: 2 thumbs down (strongly COUNTER-indicated by logical analysis: what if it overflew YOUR nation?).
3) Painting [cold response of passengers’ loved ones to journo from nation widely blamed for their grief] as circumstantial evidence of guilt: 2 thumbs WAY down – particularly in light of 2).
Suggest we ALL address the logical brick walls in our pet theories BEFORE compounding these poor people’s grief.
Bobby:
Re “Another possibility is that the geometrical calculations in the BFO equations are carried out with low precision.”…Indeed, I see some evidence that the AES TX Offset algorithm may use trig lookup tables with limited resolution, or other firmware shortcuts resulting in about +/- 2Hz of the jitter.
@Bobby: We believe the AES compensation algorithm uses position, altitude, track, and speed as inputs and ignores the ROC. Therefore, any motion of the plane not described by the input parameters would create uncompensated Doppler shift. In addition to ascents/descents, it would include motion due to turbulence or maneuvers.
Awesome forensics, Jeff.
I still struggle with the apriori ability to choreograph a spoof like this. Your theory still holds together if the bad guys, or the FO in my Xmas Island scenario, simply cycled the SDU breaker. The retrace of the SDU oscillator could well be enough to “sabotage”/corrupt the BFO values.
JeffWise:
What you’ve dug up is very interesting and should cause people to think more deeply about what is possible from a human factors standpoint.
I’ve been to Russia twice — and to Irkutsk (via the Trans-Siberian railroad). Phony/shell companies with layers of people, families with strained/broken domestic situations, shady people who misrepresent their credentials and various other that many would not believe unless they saw it are a common feature in that part of the world (and elsewhere).
I know that yours is just a scenario and that you’ve said very clearly that you are not making accusations. But you’ve also used your resources to do an extensive dig. So you must believe that there is more to this than meets the eye. Perhaps more than you are able to share.
BUT, if it turns out that these three had nothing to do with what happened to MH370, are you concerned that you may have exposed yourself to potential liability (for defamation) by mentioning them in your scenario? I’m curious: did David Fiol raise that issue with you at all?
The flip side of course is that if your scenario with respect to these three turns out to be true, there is no defamation.
@VictorI,
“@Bobby: We believe the AES compensation algorithm uses position, altitude, track, and speed as inputs and ignores the ROC”
I recall from way back when on DS, that the spec explicitly stated that the AFC does NOT use altitude for frequency compensation.
Will try to dig out a link.
Cheers
Will
No link, but it is in the doc sinux links to:
Page 5: “Inertial altitude is not required for SATCOM”
Table A-10 ARINC 429 Data Requirements: No listing of Altitude.
Cheers
Will
@MuOne: You could be right, but it really shouldn’t matter. The affect of plane altitude on the BFO is small. The rate-of-climb (ROC) is much more important.
@MuOne: The EFFECT of plane altitude on the BFO is small. (I am sorry about the typo.)
@VictorI:
No worries re typo, happens to the best of us ;o).
Agreed on the small effect of altitude on doppler.
Though, the question of whether altitude is available or not is important, since it determines whether or not ROC could be derived, hence included, in the AFC algorithm.
If altitude was available it COULD calculate
ROC = d/dt(Altitude)
If not available, we can be certain that ROC is not used in the AFC as it is not part of the inputs, nor derivable from other inputs.
P.S.: Ron Black kindly dug out and emailed the link to me. Thanks Ron!
http://www.duncansteel.com/archives/826/comment-page-3#comment-7210
Cheers,
Will
MuOne:
Victor was referring to the AES TX Offset algorithm, which does use altitude (but not ROC), not the GES EAFC algorithm, which needs only the Perth Lat/Lon.
@Nihonmama I agree; your Sun Tzu references are great; there was some kind of monster learning to fly, these days;
@airlandseaman,
Sorry, I may have used the wrong terminology. When writing AFC in my previous posts, I too was referring to the AES based frequency correction.
In my view, the document infers, that the availability of Altitude as an input to the algorithm may be questionable.
You express certainty: “algorithm uses altitude (but not ROC)”. Are there documents in the public domain, other than the info in the ATSB reports or the Inmarsat scientific paper, which detail the algorithm?
If you have knowledge of/access to the source code or a more detailed specification of the algorithm, are you able to share that publicly (w/o infringing IP protection, etc.)? I would like to have a look for myself.
Cheers,
Will
Falken:
Thanks. Sun Tzu’s sage wisdom is timeless.
Tacticians win battles, but strategists win wars.
And being underestimated can be a huge competitive advantage. Why? Because when you make your move, they never see it coming.
#speakingfrompersonalexperience
@sinux
The SDU System Table stores the satellite-GES data (it’s a small table now for I3 Classic Aero as now only 2 teleport locations: Burum and Perth, each hosting mulitple GES’).
System Table updates, made infrequently, are normally broadcast from the GES. A check for currency, via a revision code, is made prior to log-on as the broadcast is repeated on the P/smc channel: change or a full update will be executed as needed.
The Owner Reqmnts Table (ORT) can be modified on the aircraft by local data upload.
Your suggestion that the System Table data could be intercepted is interesting, I will look a bit deeper at that.
Inmarsat’s Journal of Navigation paper describing the ‘Search for MH370’ describes the information you’re interested in. I & others reviewed correlations earlier in the week, still insufficient data to draw a conclusion.
:Don
MuOne:
I was confused by your use of the term AFC. “AFC” is an acronym for Automatic Frequency Control. AFC & EAFC (Enhanced AFC) are associated with the GES, not the AES. If by AFC you were referring to the AES TX Frequency Offset algorithm, it is important to distinguish between what IRS data is available on the ARINC 429 bus, and what the Honeywell MSC600 uses out of the data that is available. Altitude is available, but the MCS6000 does not use it. See: MCS4200/6000/7200 manual or clip here: https://www.dropbox.com/s/jllnkmwmu6sq5q3/MSC7200_429_Data_Req.JPG?dl=0
@airlandseaman,
@VictorI,
Thank you both for your comments above on the issues of the calculations in the AES TX Offset algorithm being carried out with low precision and other factors not modeled in our analyses of MH370 BFO data.
If imprecise trig look-up tables are used, I would guess the BFO would not appear to be a continuous function, but would show “steps” when the look-up tables jumped to the next “row”. This implies that, in almost every case, there would be no contribution to short-term (< 1 second) jitter in BFO values. Rather the steps would occur on longer time scales, and that both positive and negative errors are introduced. If Mike's estimate is correct, these steps could be several Hz in amplitude (perhaps even 4 Hz peak to peak). This error source appears to be a significant contributor to residual errors in our BFO models, and it could explain most of the difference between the ~2Hz short-term jitter (most likely dominated by frequency read noise in the GES) and the +/- 7Hz error reported by Inmarsat as determined by comparision of predicted and measured BFO values on other flights.
With regard to Victor's point, I seem to recall that a ROC of 1 ft/sec corresponds to a Doppler shift of roughly 1 Hz. So 5 Hz ROC Doppler corresponds to a vertical speed of about 5 ft/sec or 3 knots. Instantaneous vertical speeds of less than several knots don't seem unreasonable to me in terms of what one would expect for VNAV altitude-hold performance. So again, one can argue that uncompensated ROC could also introduce BFO errors of up to ~5 Hz.
There may be other BFO error sources that are significant and are not yet identified, but there do seem to be at least two sources of error that are potentially capable of explaining the discrepancy between the short-term BFO "jitter" and the larger amplitude, long-term BFO errors. Unfortunately, we have no information on actual ROC, so compensating for this effect does not now seem possible. The limited precision of the TX frequency offset algorithm could in principle be added to our BFO models if we had the exact equations/tables used. I don't know if doing this would be worthwhile, but it might allow a more discriminating use of BFO data in evaluating potential MH370 routes.
Another conclusion I would draw from this is that forming conclusions about the superiority of any particular route based on BFO residuals being smaller than +/- 7 Hz is highly suspect since several significant effects are still missing from all BFO models (perhaps even Inmarsat's model since they make no mention of this?).
Jeff, apparently according to the Inquisitr, your scenario has the plane being flown to Russia. Unreal how awful some of these media sites are. http://www.inquisitr.com/1655442/malaysia-airlines-flight-mh370-russian/
Finally. The truth always comes out.
This is a killer.
New York Times propagandists exposed: Finally, the truth about Ukraine and Putin emerges
Salon 12/03.14
http://t.co/0bO7YG7DV2
“Did Washington in any way authorize Kissinger’s interview, as it may have the Foreign Affairs piece, given the revolving door at East 68th Street? I doubt it. Did it know this was coming. Almost certainly. A nonagenarian, Henry still travels in high policy circles. His critique on Ukraine has been evident here and there for many months.
Interesting, first, that Kissinger gave the interview to a German magazine. Nobody in the American press would have dared touch such remarks as these — they cannot, having lied so long. And Kissinger understands, surely, that the Germans are ambivalent, to put it mildly, when it comes to Washington’s aggressions against Russia.”
Now consider that Malaysia has been added to the MH17 Joint Investigation team (after being inexplicably excluded initially). A good sign that some other shoes are sure to drop.
Jeff, regarding this part of your Part 1: “If the airline subscribes to the cheapest level of Inmarsat subscription, called Classic Aero, it doesn’t provide any clues about where the plane is. But if the airline subscribes to one of the more premium subscription levels, Inmarsat will log the plane’s location every time it calls in.”
“Which one would be better for this operation?” the director asks.
“Classic Aero, definitely. That position data is too hard to fake.”
—————–
My question: is it possible that Inmarsat streamlines its operations so that it routinely logs this location data even for non-subscribers like MAS, but Inmarsat just doesn’t make that known? Or, is it technically impossible for a “Classic Aero” aircraft to transmit the required data?
@airlandseaman, @VictorI
Yep, guilty as charged. I had always assumed that AFC was a generic term for automatic frequency correction/compensation and therefore could be applied to any system that performed such duties. But, yes, I was referring to the AES TX frequency offset algorithm.
Re Altitude being available to the MSC6000 but not being used, that seems to contradict Victor’s statement that “we (sic) believe” the algorithm uses altitude, hence my previous post looking for clarification.
I have two questions.
1. Was Victor’s inclusion of altitude in error in as much that altitude is NOT used, despite being available as an input?
2. If not in error, i.e. altitude IS available AND used, on what basis is the use of the time derivative of the altitude input then not included in the modelling? Are there specifications/source code available, (which I would have missed during my time following the MH370 saga), that demonstrate ROC is not considered in the algorithm?
Given the relative insignificance of altitude effects over ROC effects on BFO, it would, from a systems/applications designer’s point of view, make much more sense for ROC (derivable from altitude inputs) to be included in the algorithm and ignore any minute altitude effects.
@DrBobbyUlich,
Re BFO not being a continuous but rather a step function,
While going back over the document @sinux linked, I noticed, that it states on pages 1-22 and 1-23, that both the SDU and HSU are only able to compensate for doppler in 1 Hz increments.
This seems to be in the same order of magnitude of the errors you are diiscussing. Not sure, whether this is helpful (or new) info to you.
Cheers
Will
PhilD: that’s a great question. Many moons ago I was speculating along the lines that the search had likely been further informed by data/information not in the public domain. My argument was that US post-9/11 fixation on air travel and communications in general would perhaps entail the US via the DoD (Inmarsat’s largest customer) having access to a ‘premium data plan.’
Nihonmama: great Salon piece. It’s weird and rare to find myself nodding heads with Kissinger for once, but that is exactly what I was alluding to in my last long rant, which will hopefully truly be my last, although I know that nobody here believes that for a second.
Thanks for the song, by the way. xoxo
PhilD, Rand:
PhilD: In answer to your question, I posted this little goody some threads ago. You might have missed it:
https://twitter.com/nihonmama/status/464830613493526529
Rand:
I thought you’d appreciate that Salon piece. Kissinger appears to be mellowing with age, doesn’t he? Makes sense though. He’s in his 90’s, is (still) one of the grey eminences of diplomacy and has nothing to lose if he wants to flap his gums a bit. He might even still be dating. Maybe he even clears his conscience (for past chaos-making) by sharing some much needed truths. I hope he’s not done.
And this — “Nobody in the American press would have dared touch such remarks as these — they cannot, having lied so long.” — is everything.
Is that perhaps why, as previously noted, the other ‘head’ who’s been in the news of late — Sir Tim Clark — also chose Spiegel?
One can’t help but think of George Orwell:
“Journalism is printing what someone else does not want printed: everything else is public relations.”
Glad you enjoyed the song. xoxo
@PhilD
I’ll accept Jeff’s journalistic licence in this story but the fact of the matter is that Malaysia Airlines does not subscribe to Inmarsat for any service. The datalink services required for MAS’ use of SITA AIRCOM (aeronautical ACARS messaging) are managed by SITA. SITA provides datalink services through network access sharing arrangements with ARINC, Iridium, Inmarsat and other radio networks in South America, Japan and Canada. Any data relating to the aircraft location is encapsulated in the data relayed back through SITA’s AIRCOM hub to the various providers & consumers: MAS operations, air traffic service providers, etc.
@Rand
I’d be surprised if the US signals intelligence ‘community’ didn’t have exactly the same thought on 8th if March as one of the Inmarsat team described in Horizon & Nova. Those antenna farms such as Pine Gap exist to collect, by recording, communications traversing the airwaves: the Inmarsat traffic is ‘audible’ to anyone with a dish pointing at I3-F1 and a suitable decoder. No subscription needed.
@ GuardedDon:
Does the use of SATCOM for voice telephony also go through SITA?
Best quote from Jeff’s article above:
“You’ve got this big mystery and everyone wants to know the answer and everyone wants to help,” the SMH quotes Dolan as saying. “It’s unhelpful, for the sake of the families more than anything else, in the sense that it has the potential to undermine confidence in what we are doing.”
Well, yeah. Why should it come as any surprise that people lack confidence in what you are doing, Dolan?
(1)
Chasing acoustic pings that virtually anyone with a knowledge of crystal oscillators would dismiss from the get go.
(2)
No debris whatever found to reinforce the preferred search zone.
(3)
No radar sightings to reinforce the route past Sumatra.
(4)
The assertion that the “science team” continues to refine the analytics when it is fairly clear that we are not dealing with a 100km problem.
(5)
No attempt to explain the login request West of the Malay peninsula.
It is truly hard to have any confidence that the search team knows what they are doing. Time to bring in a fresh set of eyes. Nine months and counting without a single element of confirmation would certainly stretch the patience of anyone who had a loved one on that aircraft.
@GuardedDon, Perhaps you could clear up my misunderstanding. I’ve definitely been under the impression that Inmarsat offered different levels of service, the basic levels of which don’t include location monitoring and the premium levels of which do. Early on the Telegraph reported:
Since 2005, Inmarsat has been developing a new generation of aero terminal to replace Classic Aero, called SwiftBroadband. This provides much more bandwidth than Classic Aero, meaning that ACARS data will be much more readily available over the network. It also provides position information as a matter of course, independent of any other on-board system. (http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/news/10712034/How-MH370-vanished-and-how-it-could-have-been-avoided.html)
And more recently, “on Monday, 12 May, Inmarsat has confirmed it has proposed to ICAO a free global airline tracking service over the Inmarsat network.” (http://www.inmarsat.com/press-release/inmarsat-provide-free-global-airline-tracking-service/)
It sounds like both those location-tracking services operate independently of SITA… could you clarify?
And thanks again for being our backstop on such matters, as well as much else!
@Jeff: just read part six: yikes. While I have framed ‘integral war’ as the only available means to an end for Russia, you have highlighted that it could be worse – much worse. Regardless, the underlying dynamic is that each sphere of influence has its comparative advantages, and if sanctions and diplomatic isolation are not yours, well…
And @Dennis W has a point: if we first summarize the miscues (as he has done) and then go to the next level up in terms of the search, is there really anyone seeking out the remains of the aircraft WHERVER it may be? It seems not. I don’t know whether this is the correct perspective, but I rather look upon the ATSB as simply executing on the search parameters that they have been provided.
Meanwhile, I remain haunted by @Matty’s repeated references (and Jeff raising the issue) as to whether we shouldn’t be more concerned re the 18:25 SDU initialization and the fact that the signal data upon which the search is entirely based follows thereafter.
BTW, I have succumbed to peer pressure in this instance and have used @ when referring to other customers. It’s a bit dehumanizing if you ask me; everyone now appears more like digital armless and legless torsos devoid of mouths.
@Nihonmama: the ginkgo trees in Tokyo are now full yellow. We may get our first snow on Monday.
@Rand
Looking upon the ATSB as simply searching where they are told brings flashbacks to the Nuremberg defense – “we are only following orders”. Who is in charge of this investigation? The math geeks or the ATSB?
In my view the official science team and the IG are a part of the problem, not a part of the solution. They both suffer from what the Bard himself identified four centuries ago – “Love is blind and lovers cannot see.” (Merchant of Venice). In this case they (the geeks) are in love with their model and cannot get past it. We see it in the posts above questioning the data. The data is what it is. Only the model can be changed. The stubborn adherence to the AP flight mode because that is how commercial airliners are flown ignores the fact that the overwhelming majority of commercial airliners arrive at their destination. Why adhere to normalcy when this situation anything but normal?
Ah, but I rant. I am a math geek myself, and fully admit to deriving a solution West of Perth on the final pin ring (albeit North of the IG consensus). At least I am truly embarrassed by it.
Jeff:
Could you address to what extent you investigated the feasibility of someone stowing away in the electronics bay before the flight? I guess it would depend, among other things, on how long planes sit unoccupied before flights, local security arrangements, etc. If it is feasible, it seems more likely to me than a passenger trying to effect entry in flight where there is always the risk of being observed by one of the flight crew or even another passenger.
@Arthur, I looked into the feasibility of entering the E/E bay from the cargo compartment, but this seems unlikely as a) the hatch opens from the E/E bay side, and b) the hatch is often blocked by cargo containers. There is a hatch on the underside of the plane through which the E/E bay could be accessed, and this is certainly a possibility, as would accessing it from the cabin during maintenance/cleaning between flights.
@MuOne:
Thanks for the comments. Yes, the BFO data are recorded with 1 Hz quantization increments. The RMS BFO error this causes is only 1/SQRT(12) Hz, so it is actually quite small. You can’t see this effect in the data because the random, single-read jitter is much larger, about 2 Hz RMS.
@VictorI, @airlandseaman:
According to Mike’s previous post, limited precision in the AES TX frequency algorithm may make larger “steps”, perhaps as large as 4 Hz or so. These could occur on varying time scales depending on the rate of change of aircraft location. Since the aircraft Doppler can be as large as ~800 Hz, it only takes a quite small error in the geometrical calculation (say 1/2%) to get 4 Hz steps. For its intended initial purpose (to keep the received signal within a small bandwidth), this accuracy was more than adequate. For our current purpose, these systematic errors appear to be as significant at the single read noise.