Search crews in the remote southern Indian Ocean have completed a task so vast and technically ambitious that it once seemed impossible: to scan a three-mile-deep, 120,000 sq km swathe of seabed using a side-scan sonar “towfish” in hopes of finding the wreckage of missing Malayia Airlines 777 MH370. After considerable delay due to mechanical problems and bad weather, the final square miles were scanned on October 11 by the research vessel Fugro Equator. The $180 million project turned up no trace of the missing plane, though searchers did find several long-sunken sailing ships.
The Fugro Equator will next use an AUV, or autonomous sub, to scan selected areas where the rugged seabed topography was too rough for adequate imaging by the towfish. “The total combined area of the spots that will be surveyed with the AUV is very limited, but still required to ensure that no area has been missed,” says Fugro spokesman Rob Luijneburg.
The Australian National Transport Board (ATSB), which is overseeing the search, expects this fill-in work to be completed by the end of February.
The fact that that the Pennsylvania-sized towfish scan had been completed was first noticed by Richard Cole, a space scientist at University College London who has been meticulously logging the search ships’ movements via online tracking services and then posting charts of their progress on Twitter. “At the completion of Equator’s last swing in mid-October the target of 120,000 square kilometers had been achieved, at least as far as my calculations show,” Cole wrote me last week. Both Fugro and the ATSB subsequently confirmed Cole’s observation.
The 120,000 sq km area has special significance in the effort to find MH370, because ministers from the four countries responsible for the search have made it clear that if nothing turns up within it, the search will be suspended. Unless new evidence emerges, the mystery will be left unsolved.
Plans to search the seabed were first mooted during the summer of 2014, after officials realized that metadata recorded by satellite-communications provider Inmarsat contained clues indicating roughly where the plane had gone. At first, investigators were confident that the wreckage would be found within a 60,000 sq km area stretching along the 7th ping arc from which the plane is known to have sent its final automatic transmission. When nothing was found, ministers from the four governments responsible for the search declared that the search zone would be doubled in size.
In December, 2015, officials declared that the search would be completed by June, 2016. In July of 2016, Malaysia’s transport minister indicated that it would be finished by October; weeks later, a meeting of the four ministers pushed the completion back to December. Last week, the Australian Safety Transport Board announded that “searching the entire 120,000 square kilometre search area will be completed by around January/February 2017.”
In an email to me, ATSB communications officer Dan O’Malley said his organization will issue a report on the seabed search once the full scan is completed. Under ICAO guidelines, Malaysia will only be obligated to release a comprehensive final report on the investigation once it has been formally terminated; so far, Malaysia has only talked of suspending the search, not ending it.
The bulk of the work has been carried out by ships pulling a sidescan sonar device on a long cable. This so-called “towfish” uses reflected sound waves to create an image of the sea floor. By sweeping up and down the search zone in much the same way that a lawnmower goes back and forth across a lawn, searchers have been able to build up a comprehensive image of the search area’s bottom.
But, just as a landscaper might have to use a weedwhacker to clean up areas around rocks or stumps, searchers will have to fill in gaps in the scan where underwater mountains, volanoes and escarpments have prevented the towfish from getting a close enough look.
“A total area for search by the AUV is difficult to give because it concerns a number of relatively small spots that all are relatively difficult to reach and in difficult terrain,” Luijnenburg says.
The fill-in work will be carried out by an Autonomous Underwater Vehicle deployed from the Fugro Equator. The Kongsberg Hugin 100 is capable of diving to depths of up to 15,000 feet and can maintain a speed of 4 knots for up to 24 hours before being retrieved by the mothership. Whereas the side-scan sonar of the towfish has a resolution of 70 cm, the AUV’s sonar has a resolution of 10 cm, and so can image the seabed in much greater detail, as well as taking photographs when necessary.
Meanwhile, as the AUV work progresses, a Chinese vessel will deploy an Remotely Operated Vehicle (ROV) to take photographs of targets previously identified as being of interest. The ATSB has stated that none of these targets are “category one” targets, namely those likely to have come from MH370, however. Says Cole, “In the absence of category one targets there must be a list of targets from the sonar search that look the most interesting, so the question is how far down that list they are going to go.”
While the fill-in work must be carried out in order for the work to be declared 100 percent done, little prospect remains that the missing plane will be found in the southern Indian Ocean.
NOTE: This story was updated 10/26/2016 to include comments from Fugro spokesman Rob Luijnenburg.
@TBill, As it so happens March 8th 2008 was also a moonless night. That aside, IMO March 8 was not any ordinary date. If MY government were blackmailed they would have concealed it. Why say you could have saved 238 souls and decided not to? They knew what the date meant right off the bat. It seems more than just coincidental.
@DennisW @Sinux
If this is what it looks like it would be huge. And kind of disastrous too.. (1300km..).
I’m very anxious about how this turns out and what others have to say about it (IG?).
IMO it’s just amazing how you math-guys keep kicking those data relentlessly and come up with different views.
@Keffertje:
By all appearances it is at its principles a theocratic (political) hierarchical (federal) society, or the remnants or pattern of one. That may come as no surprise, and I am not the one to say it should be different and that different would be better. That is in the end for society itself to say.
@DennisW
That sounds rather like heaven. A bottle of good Californian red (assuming that’s not a contradiction of terms) then once you’ve slept it off, a buzz along the Big Sur in your Corvette, to take in the sunset.
@DennisW :), @Johan, I have my moments!Even before noon and wine. BTO and BFO would drive me to drink for sure.
@Rob, not a corvette 🙂 a real Harley!
I should have reqognised it much earlier..
It’s just a buch of alcoholics here! 😉
I take a beer on that one..
@Ge Rijn, Cheers!! 🙂
@ DennisW, @ sinux:
When an electronic device such as a SDU, but even in simple good quality radio receiver, is said to be normally working between 100 V and 122 V with a minimum of 92 V and a maximum of 134 V, that means that the internal regulating power supply needs to be powered within these voltages to be able to maintain the internal regulated voltage stable. These 100 V to 122V AC are applied to to a transformer (that’s why there is a minimum frequency of 320 Hz) that converts these high AC voltages to a lower voltage that is rectified and filtered, then stabilized into one or several voltages suitable to the internal components such as oscillators or CPU (generally 5 volts). The higher the input voltage, the higher the regulator must work to maintain the desired voltage. The excess voltage is absorbed by a transistor that dissipates it into heat. The minimum input voltage is the voltage below which the regulator can more work to maintain the desired internal voltage, while the maximum input voltage is the voltage above which the transistor of the regulating power supply cannot endure the dissipated heat (a protection circuit can shut down the device to protect it).
That means that as long as the power supply voltage is maintained between these values of 92 and 134 volts, the internal voltage of the SDU will remain stable and accurate. Betwwen 92V and 100 volts it may become unstable in case of voltage drops and below 92V maybe too unstable or not working at all. Between 122V and 134V the SDU will begin to overheat, above that it may died after a few seconds.
“As the nominal power from a IDG is 115V you’ll note it’s more sensitive to higher voltage spikes than to voltage drops.”
As the input voltage must always be ABOVE the desired voltage for the regulation to work, the device is built such a way that there is a greater marge below than above, to absorb voltage drops. Short spikes are easily absorbed, while for voltage drops, lacking power cannot be created.
“But of course that’s the view from outside of the SDU “black box” if you will. We don’t quite know how the voltage is rectified inside.”
The only way to rectify AC into DC is to use a component called a diode. This is a component that allows the current to pass through it only one way. Generally diodes are mounted in groups of 4 called “bridges”. Whatever the direction of the current at the input, the direction of the current at the output is always the same, passing alternatively through 2 of the 4 diodes at a time then through the 2 others. Because of the crests and valleys of the original AC current, the DC current must then be “filtered”. That is done with a capacitor that stock current when available to supply it back again when there are none. As the aircraft frequency is 400 Hz, the capacitor charge and discharge 800 times each second (there are 2 waves in 1 Herz)
correction:
“The minimum input voltage is the voltage below which the regulator can no more work to maintain the desired internal voltage.”
@Keffertje @Jeff Wise
Cheers too! And to all.. 😉
Indeed those similar dates you found are interesting.
Considering your arguments I really think someone should dive in to this ‘Anas Mazlin’ story. That pilot that was rumoured to have been replaced by Zaharie shortly before the flight.
Jeff Wise, have you any means to contact him or otherwise verify or debunk the story?
@Ge Rijn
It (BTO) is OK. When the t_channel bias is added back in the value derived by DSTG and Inmarsat is the same.
To add: a link to the ‘Anas Mazlin’ story:
http://www.therakyatpost.com/news/2014/03/16/mh370-was-there-a-last-minute-pilot-switch/
@Ge Rijn, It smells like a dead end to me but if you want to look into it and report back, I’ll be all ears.
@DennisW
So it’s a little storm in a big glass of water (or brandy;)?
I have the feeling this is not settled yet but I’ll see what comes up.
@ROB
“That sounds rather like heaven. A bottle of good Californian red (assuming that’s not a contradiction of terms) then once you’ve slept it off, a buzz along the Big Sur in your Corvette, to take in the sunset.”
I am not a Corvette kind of guy. All the vehicles I use are filled with empty beer cans and fast food wrappers. I drive ratty old trucks. When I was working the CEO asked me to park around back instead of the executive parking area.
I did discover that McD’s french fries are not biodegradable. They hold their shape and texture for months under a truck seat.
@Jeff Wise
I had in mind you are the journalist with ways and connections. It might be a dead end but just to contact him could give valuable information one way or another.
He’s nowhere on the internet to be found. Still MAS confirmed he was a pilot of their company. His wife’s facebook page was delete shortly after her announcement.
I’ll try to dig deeper into this but I surely don’t expect to have the means available to you.
When I find something new I’ll let you know.
@Ge Rijn,
You’ve almost certainly already seen it, but just in case, here’s a link to a purported screenshot of the status his wife posted. I make no claim as to it’s authenticity, though. I merely found it digging around a little.
http://i.imgur.com/U5KCw7N.png
@sinux
@DenisW
It seems to me, that the answer to the riddle of the BTO’s, lies in the precise determination of the beginning of the “expected” slot / frame boundary. That seems to come down to a question of understanding the intimate intricasies of the P channel protocols themselves.
I refer to section 4.4.2 of the document linked hereunder.
Way too complicated for me (my head is hurting) at 5am !!
I am going to bed now.
Perhaps you two guys can “nut it out”, whilst I sleep, and have an answer when I awake, in 7 to 8 hours hence ? (ETA 0200 UTC)
https://www.google.com.au/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=9&cad=rja&uact=8&ved=0ahUKEwiAjLuQ6v3PAhWKmpQKHQdDAPwQFghKMAg&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.icao.int%2Fsafety%2Facp%2Finactive%2520working%2520groups%2520library%2Facp-wg-m-iridium-8%2Fird-swg08-wp07%2520-%2520old_amss_material_ch.4_plus_attachment.doc&usg=AFQjCNE0ggmMmWXDNjvnwGalAEPAqURW8w&sig2=6DdIbffnsFO_cAJ5f85rsQ&bvm=bv.136811127,d.dGo
@Ge Rijn:
“…He’s nowhere on the internet to be found. Still MAS confirmed he was a pilot of their company…”
Same problem here. Difficult to find background info about everyone except Z. I put it down to the EU privacy policy, which seems to extend far beyond Europe.
@Keffertje:
If this all didn’t occur during a muslim Monday, in a plane built on a Monday, flewn by a moonstruck pilot.
I would like to point out that very few people with decent pay and family would consider suicide only for political reasons. And I still don’t believe in political blackmail or coercion from Z’s side with the pax as hostage. In that case he would have planned to kill himself anyway, whatever the outcome. You don’t stand much chance to be succesful, and even if the would have forced MAY /the Courts of Appeal to publically retract the sentence (which a court won’t do under any circumstances after it is public, since it destructs law and creates mayhem), there would apparently be nothing stopping them from doing it all over again a week, month or year later. We are the law. Such is the law. So then Z would be simply a manslayer after all (which subtracts everything from whatever bright ideals he might have had when planning it). There is no civic/political logic (aiming at survival among humans) in an act like that. It can only be a mute destructive suicidal protest with political repercussions for the afterworld (which could lead to something, by all means, like public assassinations of political leaders, but more often than not to war and mayhem first, and there is a definite risk he would get two or four opponents for every one that could see his “point”. And he risked destroying his children. I don’t think Malaysians in the main perceive their society in quite such a way. So my bet will still be that he would have killed himself in any case but found that all pieces were coming together with this flight.
Or, on the opposite side of the same thing: he simply got so mad by the provocation that he lost it and thought to himself: Hey, here’s what political and judicial unpredictability and miscarriage looks like when transfered to the flight industry.
looking at the dates from as far back of March 8, 2008 etc and the Malaysian gov’t activities on towards the opposition, It seems like the gov’t have been known to do things on this date. I get the feeling they may have even planned this disappearance as a way to blame the opposition for it.
@Ge Rijn/@Keffertje:
The mistery pilot has all the characteristics of a suspect ( 🙂 ):
http://www.myfunnyprofile.com/Anas-Mazlin-Mat-Salleh
Jokes aside, haven’t Malay press looked into this, you think?
@DennisW
“I am not sure what your exact issue is.”
The BTO theory is fine and the world is a happy place 😉
My issue is with the definition of BTO : how is the BTO recorded in the database. What values are measured and what operations are done to arrive to the values we get.
We are told it’s just a case of subtracting a bias value that’s constant for the flight.
Read my previous post and you’ll see it can’t be.
On top of what I wrote previously, the data-logging software would have to emulate an hypothetical AES, talking to an hypothetical satellite just so one can log 12’000 instead of 500’000…
Sorry if I’m missing the point but that doesn’t make sense to me.
Something is wrong with the way we’ve been explained the BTO.
@Ge Rijn
I’m not a math guy. I don’t think the math part is wrong. Nothing revolutionary. I just have a hunch we can squeeze more out of the BTO if it’s explained as what it really is.
@Marc
Thanks! very helpful! And how does it work when the SDU is powered by both AC and DC at the same time?
DC Voltage at SDU terminals 22.0 to 30.3 V dc (nominal operation) 20.5 to 32.2 V dc (maximum)
Does the SDU work with AC absent? DC absent? Is it a safety feature? Or is AC used for some parts and DC for some others?
@ventus45
Thanks for the document, will have a look, don’t hold your breath though 😉
@Sinux
Well, I cannot explain it any better. The simplest way to look at it is as a fudge factor derived on the ground at KL, and subsequently applied to measurements taken over the duration of the flight.
Frankly, I did not read the derivation in the DSTG book until you pointed it out to me. That was cool, and if anything reinforces the value determined by Inmarsat by direct measurement at KL, and reported in their paper.
The fact that the technique works well for the previous 20 flights of 9M-MRO provides more reinforcement. I am personally very comfortable with the BTO harvesting methodology and interpretation.
Engine of a Boeing 767 catches fire at take-off at O’Hare. Eight minor injuries while evac.
http://chicago.cbslocal.com/2016/10/28/breaking-plane-on-fire-at-ohare-hare-airport/
Back in the real world, this is what happens when a plane has comms issues…
“Military jets were scrambled to escort a passenger plane which was forced to make an emergency landing at Prestwick Airport.
The RAF said the Typhoon jets were sent at “supersonic speed” in reaction to an “unresponsive civilian aircraft”.
The alert was raised when the plane lost communications at around 2.40pm on Friday.
The Typhoons escorted the aircraft to the Ayrshire airport, which declared a full emergency response with police closing surrounding roads.
The plane, which is understood to have been en route to Iceland, landed safely and an investigation is being carried out into the loss of communications…”
http://www.nwemail.co.uk/news/national/article/RAF-jets-escort-passenger-plane-into-Prestwick-after-communications-lost-c282df2f-9443-4cba-ba80-973e759acb59-ds
@Will @Boris Tabaksplatt @Johan
Yes, I have seen it. That’s the facebook-page that was removed shortly after 9-3-’14.
Still it’s a bit odd nothing can be found on this pilot (or his wife).
Could it be privacy safety from Europe?
Or all shielded/removed by Malaysian authorities?
@Sinux
Sometimes I’m just impressed by the digging some of you do into those data.
Btw, I don’t think the SDU works on AC but only on DC.
The higher AC gets transformed and rectified to the lower DC.
@Keffertje
Some Z dates from FI and Flight Sim
03-Feb: Last save of SIO simulator data
20-Feb: MS Flt Sim FSX removed from Disk
21-Feb: Z Flight KLIA to Beijing
26-Feb: Z Flight KLIA to Melborne
03-Mar: Z Flight KLIA to Denpasar (with Fariq?)
07-Mar: Z check-in at KLIA for Beijing
Re: O2 system – I also noted the cockpit O2 system was topped off pre-flight from 1120 psig to 1800-psig, whereas 310 psig is the apparent minimum allowed pre-flight.
This is a bigger O2 top off than I have read elsewhere, perhaps the official 2015 FI info supersedes some of the books written in 2014.
@Ge Rijn, @Johan, Anas Mazlin is a curiosity for me. As Jeff says, there may be nothing to it. His wife claimed he was switched at the last moment. MAS denied it and said both ZS and F were scheduled 7 days before. On a Malaysian blog, (in Malay), they discussed her facebook post and concluded that she was the one being defrauded, i.e. they claim she didn’t make it up. I can still read some Malay but it takes a lot of effort and dictionary in hand 🙂 to make sure it doesn’t get lost in translation. So, one of those things we may never know.
Correction to above:
3-Mar Z Flight was apparently not with Fariq
@TBill, Thank you for posting those previous flights and SIM. The O2 has been discussed before, not sure if this was an excessive top off or normal procedure? Something else. On ZS you tube site, he has a video on a window repair. It seems innocent enough, until you get to 5:14 onwards. The newspaper clippings. Halg the time you don’t even see the window, just the clippings. And how straight they are aligned, its amazing. Mine would be like upside down and all over the place. Not here. The last 1, caught my attention as well: Mati Lemas Ketika Berkelah: Killed by suffocating in water moment. Hmmm. Then there is: The end is near for twilight. He shows that one atleast 4 times. A Virgin airline wing picture, a PKR headline on the Johor Tolok project, a crossword with a clear X mark and Bond drops by Afghanistan. It’s just weird.
I reviewed the video again just to try looking for any hidden messages in the newspapers. However nothing really apparent.
@MH, I agree with you, on “nothing apparent”. It’s still very “off” IMO.
The published date of his YouTube Windows Fix video seems to me too far apart from the actual flight. If he was so upset about things in Malaysia he would have taken action sooner to date of video. Also I think his vacation to Australia should have taken the edge away from doing something drastic. My feeling how news is reported can be weird.
@Keff:
Naah… When you took it up I thought he held up or filmed actual clippings and spoke of them but he’s just taped the windows to seal them. I would perhaps have put at least some upside down to take attention from them as it was going to be filmed, but it is a mainstream newspaper and I can’t see any message. Try copying and reading everything from left to right and back or google for “famous hidden messages or so”, but this seems innocent enough. I didn’t see date but that is a factor too.
@Keff, and MH;
That guy seems so innocent that it hurts.
@Johan, At a minimum he’s a control and precision freak. Crosses his t’s and dots the i’s. Not sure so sure about the innocent part. There is much more to him than meets the eye. But same could be true for anyone. Now the 2 Ukranians on MH370, streetfighters. The kind you see outside shady nightclubs as bouncers. Appearances can deceive, but sometimes not :). Let’s hope Oleksandr prooves us all wrong, and comes up with the weirdest, never before happened, to go down in history books, mechanical failure. Otherwise, we are running out of “who did it” options.
@Ge Rijn, Sinux. The AMM says the left main bus sends 115V ac to the beam steering unit, low and high gain amplifiers, SDU and radio frequency unit. No sign that any has its own TRU.
I have looked for what the voltage and frequency limits are for the left IDG, whose Generator Control Unit opens its Generator Control Relay if there is over or under voltage or frequency. That removes power from the voltage regulator. The GCU also controls the Generator Circuit Breaker and Bus Tie Breaker. Both will open if, “a fault occurs” so one would expect they should open when the regulator does.
Unfortunately I can find no mention of the frequency or voltage limits, but mention this because they may be less that the SDUs etc.
Of general interest too, the relay also will open for; open phase, generator diode failure, unbalanced current, amongst others.
@Keffertje, TBill. Oxygen loss and top up was part of the Gilbert paper, latest version: https://www.dropbox.com/s/8d9m4c5mwpdxp3p/MH370%20Research%20V3.4.pdf?dl=0
Keffertji. About your interesting 8th March “coincidences”, it might be a statement of the obvious but the sequence could have been that Shah was booked for that flight under normal timing arrangements and MAS nominated Fariq as his co-pilot so that he could receive requisite training, a Shah capability. If so, whether or not he displaced Mazlin would not seem to matter much.
From TBill’s list, Shah recently had been flying each 5 days. An 8th March flight would again be after a five day gap so no obvious sign there of ‘volunteering’.
TBill. Your flight listing is that of FI but you might have something further. Do you know when last he flew up the Malacca Strait route and how frequently he had?
@David:
Working every fifth day, what kind of job is that? What did he do the rest of the time? Apart from making those videos. That kind of speaks against him having issues with being so bound up by work that it contributed to suicidal tendencies. Or was it due to him still having back problems? And if his wife and kids weren’t squeezing him for all his money in a separation and move-out affair, he ought to have a good salary and savings to stay affluent. (But saving money was a significant theme anyway.)
@Keffertje:
I meant perhaps more in a metaphoric way than in a factual one. You may be right in some. But this was a old video wasn’t it? Compare with the time of his spinal accident, those things can make any man appear a bit strange and go for making videos. If you don’t have a spine you are not of much use to anyone, constant pain makes it still worse — and that is not a nice feeling, and his kids might have been in the wrong age to accept that in the best way, and I know of housewifes (or mothers, wifes etc) who would have little patience with a non-working spine on the/a family provider, whatever the reason for it. It may sound horrible, but there is a logic to that. And if it will become chronic, you may be in for a surprise.
@ Johan, return flights were not included in that list and maybe the rules (union/DCA) about midnight departures have some effect.I do not know the norm for airline pilots but there is also the task of keeping their skills up to scratch, including their putting.
@David:
Yes I know. Actually it is getting from the fareway to the green that is the greatest challenge to many. Either you end up in a bunker or get lost in the lake.
And it is a bit time consuming going 18 holes.
@Keffertje
I have found that first appearances are nearly always right. A London black cab driver agreed. He said that when you have to drive around London late at night, looking for the next fare, your life might depend on being able to make a snap judgement of someone, and being able to decide if you should stop, of drive on.
I have that selfie of “you know who” saved on my phone. Every so often, I look into those eyes and take in that dare I say it, smug smirk, and try to read his innermost thoughts.
@Sinux
I am still pondering your BTO skepticism. BTW, I regard your attitude as quite sincere in this matter. Cut and paste below from the DSTG book page 24.
begin cut-paste//
The channel dependent calibration term Tchannel is assumed to be constant over a single flight but can vary between flights. A fixed value for each flight assessed was empirically derived by comparing the communications logs with known aircraft positions: the calculated value of Tchannel was the mean difference between the measured BTO and the expected BTO calculated using the known aircraft location. For the accident
flight this calibration is only available for the time when the plane was at the tarmac
and for the first half hour of flight.
end cut-paste//
The sentence
“The channel dependent calibration term Tchannel is assumed to be constant over a single flight but can vary between flights.”
troubles me. The implication being that an SDU reboot might well change the channel calibration term which in turn would lead to a new BTO bias value. What is to say that the reboot around 18:25 did not result in a change in BTO bias? It is not entirely certain (to me) that a bias change did not occur at this time.
There was no mention of SDU reboots occurring on the previous flights of 9M-MRO, so there is no basis for a conclusion one way or the other. The radar data is our only independent measure of aircraft position, and there is not a great deal of overlap between that data and the SDU reboot. For example, what if the LIDO Hotel graphic note of 200nm @295 degrees is accurate? The default opinion is that this is a “mislabel”, and people have morphed the radar plot to agree with their preconception of aircraft position based on ISAT data. What if the label is right, and the ISAT BTO bias has changed post SDU reboot?
Usual suspects please regard this post in the “thinking out loud” category. Critical comments (even dripping with sarcasm) telling me why the above is all wrong are very very welcome.
@Rob, Have you seen, ZS sister tribute to ZS? Missing voices, still lives? I watched it today and it is very hard to imagine he would do such a dispacable thing. He seemed like a man who went out of his way to please people, took care of his big family, was dedicated to his job and took responsibility in life. Came from a poor family and worked his way up in life. Everyone who knew him said he was kind, social and always happy and jovial. Yet, looking at the video’s and numerous pictures, he never really smiles, not genuinely. LIke there is a sadness deep inside. But maybe that’s just me imagining things that aren’t there. IF, ZS did do this, then he must have been a top actor and hid his inner emotions from everyone around him. Many people are not talking, but one day we will know more. I am sure of it.
@DennisW
The 18:27 ping arc (using the original bias) is consistent with the radar data at 18:22 and the implied course at 18:22. They could both be wrong (changed bias post-reboot plus bad radar data), but if the radar data is good and unless there was a drastic speed/course change between 18:22 and 18:27, the scope for change in the bias post-reboot is limited.
@Keffertje:
What about the Ukrainians? Was it you who had them as Pro-Russian, ethnically Russian, possibly militia or linked to?
I had that idea about militia going to China to buy guns when the Russians wouldn’t sell to them. Or mainland Ukraine militia/separatists being a bit nervous about whether the Crimean action would or would not involve eastern Ukraine. Or realizing it would not. I bet one could come up with more and likeier alternatives. Maybe they were escaping from something or following someone who was.
@Keffertje
No I haven’t seen the sister tribute. It’s often the most unlikely people who do this kind of thing, out of the blue if you like, and totally unexpected.
If it is proven at some time in the future that Z carried this out as a cold blooded, pre-meditated act, then it would probably be correct to define him as psychopathic. Psychopaths pose a threat to society in general mainly because they cannot be diagnosed in advance. this is the big dilemma for society. Psychopaths are extremely adept at hiding their true nature.
It’s the kind of thing that can keep you awake at night. Is that seemingly friendly guy living next door a regular guy, r is he a potentially dangerous psychopath? Basically, we have to trust people, and maintain our faith in human nature, or day to day living would become impossible. But psychotic people are living in society. You just have to hope you never cross paths with one.
@Richard Cole
Appreciate your command of the data. Now I understand why some critics (those throwing away the MY radar data) say that Malaysia made up fake radar data to match the INMARSAT pings. I am not in that camp myself, unless the IG moves over to that camp.
@David, @Keffertje
Re: Z Flights- I looked in the Factual Info to see if they had more details on Flights. I was especially curious about the Z trip to Australia and back. All they reported was Z’s latest KLIA airport flight dates with video tape records of Z at KLIA check-in.
I do not know when Z might have flown up the Malacca straights, partially because I do not even know what waypoints are used to go to places like Bali (Denpasar) and Australia from KLIA. But it is perhaps interesting to note that Fariq’s last flight was to Europe I believe.
Re: O2 system
I feel it is possibly suspicious that the O2 was filled to 1800 psig prior to flight. I noticed some other infamous flights (I think Helios) had about 800 psig O2, so I was wondering why MH370 was such high pressure. According to the FI, 1800 psig pressure O2 would last a long time for say 1 pilot.
The other things I noticed from FI is that the material of construction for the O2 cylinder is “composite”. Previously I made a comment that I have “man-handled” many gas cylinders in my life and never saw a failure. OK but we used steel or other metal cylinders; composite cylinders (carbon fiber?) I am much less familiar with. But I am not expecting a leak or anything, other than that could be a rare possibility.
The fact the pressure was down to 1120 psig pre-top-off possibly reflects that correct procedure is to use O2 mask when one pilot is alone in cockpit, so from January that could be normal use.
The other thing I noticed was the MH370 emergency O2 includes 15×11-ft3 containers…so that is almost as much O2 as the pilots have if just one person is alive.
@Keffertje
Re: Z there was one more candid family interview early on in the press, that I think got retracted, but where my mind is stuck.
@Richard Cole
Thanks for the response. When I draw a 200nm radial at 295 degrees from Butterworth, I come up very short of the 18:25 ring. I think that was a major motivation for discarding the 200nm and 295R labeling. Check it out please.
A quick look shows that adding 7800us to the BTO bias is still short, but could be about right for the flight time between 18:22 and 18:25. I have not gone through the details yet. I left my Mac at the ranch, and my Chromebook won’t run Google Earth.