A few things have happened recently in MH370 world that are worth taking note of.
No FMT. The seabed search in the southern Indian Ocean is all over but the shouting, and as a result I see that a consensus is forming that there could have been no “final major turn” into the southern Indian Ocean. Rather, if the plane went south, it must have loitered somewhere beyond the Malacca Strait until after 18.40 before finally flying a straight southerly path from 19:40 onward. This loiter, following a high-speed dash across the Malay Peninsula and up the strait, is quite bizarre, given that no attempt was made by anyone on board the plane to contact the ground, either to ask for help or to negotiate a hostage situation. So the presumption of a loiter doesn’t really shed light on motivation, it does effectively put yet another nail in the coffin of accident/malfunction scenarios.
More of the secret Royal Malaysian Police report released. Mick Rooney, aka @airinvestigate, has released a portion labelled “Folder 6: Audio and Other Records.” The new section contains an expert report analyzing the cockpit/ATC audio up to 17:21, which concludes (with less than 100% confidence) that it was probably Zaharie who uttered the final words “Good night, Malaysia 370.” It also includes ACARS data and the Inmarsat logs which had already been released back in 2014. In perusing the document I was not able to identify anything that would alter our collective understanding of the case, but I hope that others will offer their own assessments. And I applaud Mick for being the only one with the moral backbone to release this information. I am sure that more will follow. UPDATE: The next batch is here: “Folder 5: Aircraft Record and DCA Radar Data.”
Debris trail goes cold. I’ve plotted, above, the number of pieces of debris that have been found each month since MH370 disappeared. After the first piece of debris was found in July, 2015, a smattering of further pieces was found until April, May, and June of this year, when the number spiked and then dropped off again before ceasing altogether. This is a puzzling distribution, since drift models show that the gyres of the southern Indian Ocean act as a great randomizer, taking things around and around and spitting them out after widely varying periods of time. Would expect, therefore, to see the number of pieces found to gradually swell and then fall off again.
There is a complicating factor to this assumption, of course. Even if the pieces do arrive in a certain pattern, overlaid on top of this is the effect of an independent variable: the degree to which people are actively searching for them. It must be noted that a considerable amount of the June spike is attributable to Blaine Alan Gibson’s astonishing haul on the beaches of Madagascar that month. Indeed, Gibson by himself remains responsible for more than half of the 22 pieces of debris found thus far.
Earlier this week, several frustrated family members announced that they would be organizing their own beachcombing expedition, to take place next month. If their efforts prove less fruitful than Blaine Alan Gibson’s, it may raise questions as to what exactly was the secret to Gibson’s success.
@VictorI @Gysbreght @all
The FS9 IGARI turn that I have previously documented is using the simplified MicroSoft 777-300 model in FS9 (aka FS2004), and not the more sophisticated PSS model that Z had used.
I have not installed the PSS yet as I am just now re-installing the programs on my main Win10 computer.
@ROB
Then feel lucky you’re not like Isaac Newton.
Your voice is not boasted often perhaps but heared anyway with sometimes interesting views IMO.
@VictorI, Again, I appreciate your patience with questions that are so basic they may seem dumb but, I’m just trying to clarify the procedure by which these points were created. Basically, the idea is that Zaharia paused the game, changed some parameters, saved the game, then ran it? If that’s the case, then I don’t understand how the transient dynamics could have affected the vertical speed, since the game would presumably have to be “unpaused” before that effect could manifest.
On the other hand, if the game was unpaused before the save, then I’d expect the transient vertical speed would have caused the altitude to change.
Also, is there positive evidence that the aircraft was “dragged” to 45S1, or could it have been flown there in real time?
@RetiredF4
What would a pilot know about commercial air traffic, say from Car Nicobar south? Obviously we on the ground can look at FlightRadar24 and see the air traffic and make a guess what flight path they are on.
@RetiredF4
Firstly, with respect to the suicidal pilot issue; as already discussed at some length, this event appears to have been carefully pre-planned. The primary goal appears to have been to dispose of the aircraft in a hidden location. Suicide was an unavoidable consequence. The best way of making sure no one could see/trace where you ended up, is to fly dark to radar, in darkness into a remote ocean region, but with just enough daylight at journeys end to allow you to avoid shipping and/or make some kind of a controlled entry into the water to minimize debris. This appears to me to be entirely logical.
And I am merely pointing out that a straight course in an efficient autopilot mode, such as constant speed M0.81 at fl350, which happens incidentally to be supported by the DSTGs Bayesian analysis, is a course that exhibits to above-described characteristics. It cannot be a coincidence.
As for the location of the Moon. I agree this is entirely irrelevant. I have never suggested otherwise. I have also never said the pilot would have needed to practice this course/lighting set-up.
If he wanted to train for anything, probably it was how to handle an unpowered aircraft.
@jeffwise: You asked, “What are the clues that indicate to you that the variables in this section are not valid?”
Easy. The values of the variables in the [Autopilot.0] section conflict with other variables in the PSS section of the flight file. The variables in the PSS section are correct. I’m not going to have a pointless argument about this.
@TBill: Thank you for clarifying. As I expected, @Gysbreght is incorrectly making claims by using the wrong flight files.
@VictorI, I’m not arguing, I’m just asking! I’m referring to the values in the recovered data, not your flight sim run. Since we don’t have the PSS values from Zaharie’s simulator, how are we able to infer that the [Autopilot.0] values have been overridden by them?
@all
Blaine is now giving some key MH370 debris pieces to MY including the seat video monitor frame. I know MY has been accused of not picking up the debris, but why take so long if self-delivery is the solution?
http://www.cnn.com/2016/12/06/asia/mh370-investigation-debris/
You said, “At points 45S1 and 45S2, the headings are 178.22 and 192.99, respectively; neither of these is consistent with a great-circle flight to McMurdo.”
After fuel exhaustion, the autopilot is disengaged in the PSS model, and cannot be re-engaged. If there is no pilot input, the heading and bank are governed by atmospheric conditions and trim. You can’t use the heading to infer the path that was flown before fuel exhaustion.
You have made statements here and elsewhere claiming the data doesn’t show that a McMurdo waypoint was used. In fact, the probability that 10N and 45S-1 just coincidentally align with the largest station in Antarctica is quite small.
“Dutch roll”. That sounds like pastry.
@Jeff Wise @VictorI
Exactly. Don’t keep everybody guessing if you have data that possibly refute Autopilot.0 and other data questioned here.
It’s not a cat and mouse game.
Than just state you can not comment in detail because of commitments you made.
@Rob
“It was more important to synchronize with required sun angle, and remain as long as possible in darkness”
I explained in my previous post, that I think you over estimate the advantage of darkness and the coordination problem with your notion to hide from other observers and see enough for own ditching. My task was to chase aircraft of all sizes also in darkness and on moonlit and moonless nights. Yes, the controllers sometimes would give us civil air traffic as targets sporting position lights (with a minimum safe distance to keep) Without the help of an air intercept radar and a good ground controller we would have found none. The airspace is just too big and the sensibility of the eysight on longer distances during night to weak.
“The best way of making sure no one could see/trace where you ended up, is to fly dark to radar, in darkness into a remote ocean region, but with just enough daylight at journeys end to allow you to avoid shipping and/or make some kind of a controlled entry into the water to minimize debris. This appears to me to be entirely logical.”
Dark radar and remote ocean accepted, the rest does not hold water, which I tried to explain in my previous post already. I doubt that it would have been logical to Z.
And another point, he would not have had any way of preplanning in advance, as he had no way to influence his shedule for a flight at aspecial occasion. As he had to get rid of the copilot somehow, he could not know the exact time for the turnback either. He could not know the weather in the presumed ditching area and to adjust the flightpath accordingly during the flight would pose conflict with the assumed planed ditching location.
Too many holes for to little reward. If Shah was the guy you assume, he would have just taken whatever he got, knowing that the odds would not change considerably and that his fate was to die anyway.
@RetiredF4
Of course it was pre-planned. The takeover occurred straight after the sign-off,at the point of maximum confusion. If he had waited till Hamid decided to leave the cockpit, he could have been half way to Beijing!
And the event occurred hours after the infamous trial verdict.
Your assertions are the ones full of holes, which is s pity because I’m sure you’re capable of mounting more cogent arguments if you really wanted.
@Ge Rijn: You do not understand. I have no more simulator data than has been publicly released.
What I do have is data that I have generated using a simulator installed on my own machine. Based on test cases I have run, I know that the data in the Autopilot section of the flight file conflicts with the values in the PSS part of the flight file. The values in the Autopilot section do not accurately reflect the state of the aircraft and should not be used, except possibly the values for AutothrottleArm and YawDamper.
I have said this now several times. What more do you want me to say?
@RetiredF4:
Z was skilled enough to be able to make a lot of what was given him (in terms of choice of flight) but would be very practible about the end of the line: Not to be found in a considerable time would be the primary; no “holy cow” or fix idea would make him change that (considerably) is my belief. Play it safe, aim for a big and reachable target, leave no evidence. There are some unknowns of course, but I think he could rely on not running into much traffic or primary radar; on the other hand, being a practible man, he probably realised that he needed to have his hands clean should he land on a
Whale-catcher or below a satellite.
This actually contradicts ditching, come to think of it. What can you do to avoid debris? Crash in the right spot with regard to drifting? Make the plane disappear in a billion pieces? Land in the levelling phase of a phugoid?
For those that insist that section [AutoPilot.0] might have useful information for a PSS model, I include below a section of a flight file for a simulation that was in autopilot when the flight was saved. As I have said previously, the only values that might be valid are YawDamper and AutoThrottleArm. The rest is definitely nonsense.
Notice how similar the values are to what was recovered from captain’s simulator. Even the value of HeadingValue=340 is the same.
[AutoPilot.0]
MasterSwitch=False
WingLeveler=False
Nav1Lock=False
HeadingLock=False
HeadingValue=340
AltitudeLock=False
AltitudeValue=0
AttitudeHold=False
AirspeedHold=False
AirspeedValue=0
MachHold=False
MachValue=0
VerticalSpeedHold=False
VerticalSpeedValue=0
RPMHold=False
RPMValue=0
GlideslopeHold=False
ApproachHold=False
BackCourseHold=False
YawDamper=True
ToGa=False
AutoThrottleArm=True
GPSdrivesNAV1=False
IsUsedForLesson=False
@VictorI, Please do not be short with us, we are just trying to understand as clearly as possible the information you are conveying. Ge Rijn is simply asking that you cut and paste the PSS part of the flight file for one of your simulator runs. It would be easily and quickly illustrative of the point you’re making, that the PSS autopilot values conflict with and override the [Autopilot.0] values.
You said earlier that “Some of the variables in the [Autopilot.0] section might be valid, but I am sure that most are not.”
When I asked why, you clarified that, “The values of the variables in the [Autopilot.0] section conflict with other variables in the PSS section of the flight file. The variables in the PSS section are correct.”
Based on your recent comment, I am interpreting this to mean that in the absence of the PSS autopilot values, we don’t know whether the autopilot was on during any of the recovered points. (Except that due to the state of fuel exhaustion, we know it wasn’t on at 45S1 or 45S2.)
Given all that, I’m still not sure why you feel confident that the values in the recovered [Autopilot.0] sections are not valid.
@jeffwise: Look at my previous post. Does that answer your question? The values in the Autopilot section are meaningless. However, the values for AutoThrottleArm and YawDamper are correct for this case.
@ROB, @RetiredR4:
Of course it was pre-planned. He would have had to think it all through. And look up things. It was premeditated. (And he knew about the date for the sentence/court decision.) Otherwise we would have found the plane, I think. I think we are reaching there. If we have the pings and a sorry handful of debris and two more lousy bleeps and an orange brushstroke on the Malaysian govts. computer screen (painted by themselves), what other conclusion are there? Only Tom Cruise could accomplish something similar, and with months of planning. And his hazard pay for jumping off a Boeing in flight is ridiculous. It is against both Russian and Chinese nature to do anything like that — and succeed with it. They prefer more blunt methods — how should the crook otherwise be able to brag about it?
@VictorI
…for what it’s worth, I recently noticed APASI to POLUM is almost spot-on to your McMurdo path, assuming starting from APASI instead of Car Nicobar. I suppose it could be off just a little, but the great circle line from APASI to NOBEY passes almost direct over POLUM and also over COCOS in SkyVector.
The [PSS] section is long. Here are some relevant values from the same FLT file. (I believe for this case I was in flying in LNAV and VNAV mode at ECON speed.)
AT_engaged=1
AP_engaged=1
FD_engaged=1
AT_arm_switch=1
AP_disengage_bar_down=0
AutoThrustMode=5
RollMode=3
ArmedRollMode=0
PitchMode=5
ArmedPitchMode=0
IAS_window_speed=200
IAS_window_Mach=0.500000
IAS_window_open=0
IAS_window_mode_is_Mach=0
HDG_window_heading=360
HDG_window_mode_is_Track=0
VS_window_vs=0
VS_window_fpa=0.000000
VS_window_mode_is_FPA=0
VS_window_open=0
ALT_window_alt=35000
Bank_angle_selector_pos=0
Altitude_selector_auto=1
@VictorI, thank you, it seems our comments crossed, I didn’t see yours until after I’d posted mine. The question, of course, is whether the condition of the [Autopilot.0] section tells us anything about whether the PSS autopilot settings are on or off; to that end, could you cut and paste just as below, but with the PSS autopilot turned off?
@Johan, You wrote, “It is against both Russian and Chinese nature to do anything like that — and succeed with it. They prefer more blunt methods — how should the crook otherwise be able to brag about it?”
Are you saying that the Russians bragged about taking down MH17? I haven’t seen that reported before, if you have a source perhaps you could provide a link.
After turning off the autopilot:
[AutoPilot.0]
MasterSwitch=False
WingLeveler=False
Nav1Lock=False
HeadingLock=False
HeadingValue=340
AltitudeLock=False
AltitudeValue=0
AttitudeHold=False
AirspeedHold=False
AirspeedValue=0
MachHold=False
MachValue=0
VerticalSpeedHold=False
VerticalSpeedValue=0
RPMHold=False
RPMValue=0
GlideslopeHold=False
ApproachHold=False
BackCourseHold=False
YawDamper=True
ToGa=False
AutoThrottleArm=True
GPSdrivesNAV1=False
IsUsedForLesson=False
@VictorI: Thank you for providing the flight file section that I requested. If it is meaningless, we don’t know whether automatic flight functions were engaged or not. That clarifies this issue.
@VictorI: Are there other parts of the recovered fragments that are meaningless?
There are indications that the autopilot was engaged for data sets 3N, 5N, and 10N. For 3N and 5N, the bank is quite small at 0.034 and 0.014 deg, respectively. For data set 10N, the bank angle is 20.09 deg, which suggests an automated turn at 20 deg, which is a setting on the bank limiter.
For 5N, which was not distorted by MAP value anomaly, the track is 317.1 deg, which aligns with waypoint VAMPI. That suggests that waypoints were at least partially followed.
And as my co-author Yves discovered, the value of stabilizer trim (ElevatorTrim) corresponds to 280 KIAS, which is the same as for an ECON climb with CI=0.
So it can’t be proven, but I highly suspect that the simulated flight was on autopilot for the points before fuel exhaustion.
@VictorI: you write “For 5N, which was not distorted by MAP value anomaly, …”.
The value given in 5N for Dynamic Pressure is 8.4% too high. Is there an explanation for that anomaly?
Look at this figure which shows the recovered coordinates plotted on Skyvector, and you can see what airways might have been flown in the simulation. For data set 5N, which is labeled as P3 in the figure, the plane is on B466, but the heading (actually the track) is pointed towards VAMPI on N571. The turn towards VAMPI occurs before waypoint TASEK, where the plane would have entered Indonesian FIR. This might indicate the turn was to avoid Indonesian-controlled airspace.
https://www.dropbox.com/s/5swggnpfcdrkgdw/Sim%20Waypoints.png?dl=0
Using the native flight planner in FS9, I looked for routes flown by MAS that begin with the waypoints WMKK, AGOSA, GUNIP, TASEK. I discovered that routes to Jeddah and Chennai both start in this way, and the onboard fuel is consistent with a flight to Jeddah. It might be that the captain wished to simulate a diversion from this route.
Just speculation, of course.
I’ve been watching what mike Chillit is posting on Twitter regarding debris. What is the interpretation over here on what he is showing?
@RetF4
–” As he had to get rid of the copilot somehow, he could not know the exact time for the turnback either. He could not know the weather in the presumed ditching area and to adjust the flightpath accordingly during the flight would pose conflict with the assumed planed ditching location.”
I just cannot fathom how a pilot could write such a thing.
Timing the turnback? Did you read my post? Having flown that exact route many times, he would have known within 10nm or so where the handoff happens. Did he hedge his bet that night? He sure did. He made an unsolicited and completely unnecessary altitude report on reaching cruise. Then, six minutes later – as if to ask “did I miss anything in the last little bit” – he made another unnecessary and redundant altitude report. He was way more interested in that handoff than I’ve ever been in a handoff. Did you obsess about handoffs like this? How you can be a career pilot and not relate to the notion of this is just beyond me.
Couldn’t know the weather? In 2014? My 13 yr old daughter can find me the WX in any part of the world in under a minute. You’re telling me a 777 captain who is also an aviation enthusiast couldn’t do the same? Even if he chose not to, he’d could still use radar to pick his way through the nasty bits like you always do.
I’ve written it many times and now it seems at least a few people are figuring out that – absent all the knowledge we have about MH370 today – the flight/route he chose was not only an effective one, it was probably the most likely choice for a guy with his intentions.
@Rob @Johan
You don´t want to listen to my point I´m trying to make. If this was planned by Shah, then there was no need for him to plan for the sun or the moon in order to not being seen by ships or other air traffic, because he loke most other pilots would have known that such a planing would be meaningless to the overall outcome. Rouge aircraft can be discovered by primary radar, not by visual sightings.
I´m not going to discuss wether he or another person planned to die in the SIO for whatever reason, if you want to believe it, go ahead with it. But do not use such arguments like sun and moon position as evidence that Z was the culprit because he was a tideous planner. Any sensible pilot would avoid a visual landing approach into the rising sun, thus a ditching would have happened from the east to west. Your arguments to avois detection as long as possible would impose the opposite. With two dead engines the maneuvering potential is very limited, especially at lower altitude.
@ Rob
“Your assertions are the ones full of holes, which is s pity because I’m sure you’re capable of mounting more cogent arguments if you really wanted.”
Do me a favor and accept my work as that what I´m capable of. When it does not satisfy your benchmark then the reason might be that you miss the necessary understanding.
@VictorI: In your paper you write that at 3N and 5N the airplane was trimmed for 280 kt IAS. Yet the actual speeds were 288 kIAS and 267 kIAS, respectively. Isn’t that counter-indicating automatic flight?
@Jeff:
I meant “between themselves”, one thug to another. I didn’t suggest anyone would publically brag about that, and in case the one who pulled the trigger for one reason or another wasn’t aware of what he was doing, he surely isn’t bragging about it either. But it is still a very blunt event, in comparison.
I admit I am bantering about stereotypes but I don’t see a good enough reason for a person with the wits in the right place to go through so much trouble (MH370) and expose himself to extreme danger and catastrophic failure and who also came away with all boxes checked (as far as we know) without (most likely then) being a seasoned MAS pilot. There would be other ways.
Whether a specific object (the Crimean defense chest?) that would need to be appropriated before reaching China, or one or more specific individuals who wasn’t to be allowed to reach China, most people would figure out other ways to make those things happen than doing it in the air, Killing hundreds and hoping the plane would not be seen or found, and getting away with all limbs intact. Even remote control hijack is more probable then, but if that becomes a thing, flying would very soon fall out of fashion. And thus there would have to be framing. Etc.
@Matt M
Nothing new what you said, and you know that I agree with the neat point of the disappearance. What I´m asking is the combination of getting rid of the copilot and hitting the exact perfect time for handover at IGARI for the turnaround.
Tell me how he did it, how he could have done it with the exact correct timing? Not to speak about what happened to the copilot for the rest of the flight. Was he whining in the toilet for being locked out of the cockpit?
As you yourself stated once that all the people on board would not have noticed the turnaround at all, that would include the locked out co pilot too? He didn`t notice to be locked out, or would assume that the pilot only liked o continue alone to Bejing?
The only other explanation would be that he was part of the deal or Z killed him cold blooded in the cockpit.
As long as you do not come up with a plausible explanation for this vital part it is sensless to dicuss the position of the sun for the ditching part at all.
“My 13 yr old daughter can find me the WX in any part of the world in under a minute. You’re telling me a 777 captain who is also an aviation enthusiast couldn’t do the same? Even if he chose not to, he’d could still use radar to pick his way through the nasty bits like you always do.”
Just play the role of your daughter for a moment and tell me the weather at the assumed ditching location ten hours from now, with cloud cover, surface winds and weaather phenomena, and for the ditching part I would be interested in the sea state wave height and the direction of the wave swells. You got one hour time. And try to do it in a way that it is not traceable, as you guys think that Z was very carefull not to leave any traces except the obvious sim hard disks.
@RetF4
My guess is you are not going to get a response.
A reader who prefers not to comment directly passes along this observation:
The report contains aircraft departure/arrival info from 1st January 2013 to 7th March 2014; this is shown as ATD (Actual Time of Departure) and ATA (Actual Time of Arrival) with a code category for the delayed departure. If you look at page 18 there is a good example;
130103
9MMRO MH772 MHO017 AMS1100KUL2300 + 26 – 6 26/PS
3rd January 2013; MH017 Amsterdam to Kuala Lumpur; scheduled departure time 1100 UTC and arrival 2300 UTC. Aircraft departed 26 minutes late (1126) and arrived 6 minutes early (2254). The 26-minute delay was attributed to code PS = COMMERCIAL PUBLICITY/PASSENGER CONVENIENCE, VIP.
A 0 in either the ATD or ATA place indicates “on time”.
On page 52 you have MHO370 KUL1635 PEK2230 -8.
This means the aircraft pushed back a full 8 minutes prior to scheduled departure which is confirmed in the Factual Info – pushback and start at 1627 UTC. I can’t recall it being highlighted anywhere that it left early; least of all in the FI.
There doesn’t appear to be too many technical delays across the period covered; so, you would suppose it’s a good machine from a departure perspective. Early departures when they occur are normally on the return to KUL although there are some exceptions.
The other interest thing is some maintenance records for 9M-MRO, 9M-MRD and 9M-MRQ relating to oxygen servicing. Considering the additional servicing record mention in the FI for 14th January during a 4A check; 9M-MRO appears to be consuming less oxygen over a given period (so much for leaky oxygen system theories).
@Gysbreght: I have submitted this question to Yves, who did the trim tests. He is better able to respond than me.
I will note that we don’t know the wind and temperature fields. For the 5N point, where the velocities should not be distorted, for the ISA at 32,246 ft, a tailwind of 19 kt would increase the TAS from 434 kt to 453 kt and the IAS from 267 kt to 280 kt.
If it does turn out that the thrust mode was not automated, the observations about the automated roll mode due to the bank angles and alignment with VAMPI still stand.
Interesting article about the search for debris here:
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/dec/05/mh370-search-families-of-passengers-to-comb-madagascar-beaches-for-clues?CMP=share_btn_tw
Particularly this part about Blaine Alan Gibson:
@jeffwise: Where is this report?
@Gysbreght: I meant headwind, not tailwind. For a given groundspeed,a headwind would increase the true airspeed and a tailwind would decrease it.
@VictorI, He’s referring to “Folder 5 Aircraft Records and Radar.pdf.” There’s a link in the main text.
@RetiredF4:
I might have mislead you but the moon has never been my concern. I only suggested to Gysbreght that one (of several) reason for using the sim might have been to familiarize himself with the “look” and character of that piece of the trip, including night sky and sunrise. I believe he wanted to disappear (from inhabited and monitored areas) at night (also because primary radar apparently partially goes to sleep) but believed like you that he cared less about being seen in the sense that he would avoid the moon. In fact, as I have suggested before, I think he wanted to be seen, or recorded, between Igari and say Aceh, but not in such a way (at a time of day, heading towards Twin Towers) that he would invite action or interception. He wanted to be one or several steps ahead, but recorded as passing (in assumed emergency). Otherwise he would have crashed at Igari or flown completely outside/under radar (If possible). I don’t think it would have mattered much if anyone saw him from the ground at 35.000 feet.
Concerning the sun. I have accused several here of claiming Z to be a sun-mystic who wanted to die flying into the rising sun. For what its worth, I can suspect that the thought of a cabin of 238 dead behind you might be easier to carry for some if distracted by an allforgiving rising sun (if not cloudy!). And I supposed from comments here that it would be easier to ditch-land in light of day, and I can expect in a psychological manner that reaching the end of the journey and deciding what to do and managing that would be easier in daylight. If he bothered to stay alive at all. Otherwise the sun is bound to rise sooner or later anyway. But there is a logic to me in disappearing when its dark but to hide away for good or find a place to hide when it is light of day and you have reached a remote a deserted place through disappearing at night. It is you who need to find the place to hide/make sure you are invisible etc. Satellites and JORN and ships might have been an issue there, but as I said, I think he made an effort to “stay clean”, i.e. to disappear in a way that would not indicate with certainly that he must have been the villain — should the plane have been found right away. Which leads me to believe that an obvious ditch is less likely than e.g. a location (relatively) closer to people.
But I do accept the logic that it is (could be) hard to ditch land (or do anything much) with the sun in your eyes, suggesting he was hoping for a cloudy sky or might have wanted to accomodate to that, if he bothered to stay alive.
This is all conditional on that he did it, of course. But in this case we need to find the crime scene first, and this is one way of trying to get there. I don’t neither necessarily want nor need to hang this person, but right should be right and his efforts are, as it seems to me, successful, and suspisciously successful.
@jeffwise: OK. I thought maybe this was something new.
Why are my posts longer than anyone else’s?
@Crobbie
“I’ve been watching what mike Chillit is posting on Twitter regarding debris. What is the interpretation over here on what he is showing?”
I’ve been looking at the Chillit posts as well. While I do not understand how he actually arrived at the Batavia Seamount location, I did find his drift data very interesting. It turns out that the Iannello and Godrey McMurdo waypoint paper, and my Cocos waypoint paper, arrive at essentially the same place.
@RetiredF4: read “will remain invisible (the wreck) for as long as possible.
@VictorI: Perhaps you could submit another question to Yves, that is not clear from his paper.
I believe we can agree that the VelWorld components represent the speed of the airplane relative to earth.
I also believe that the speed components in BodyAxis coördinates represent the speed of the aircraft relative to the air it flies in or, from the perspective of an aerodynamicist, the speed of the air relative to the airplane, i.e. the airspeed in magnitude and direction.
In still air the speed relative to earth is equal to the speed relative to air. However, if the air is moving relative to earth, the speed of the aircraft relative to earth is different from the airspeed in magnitude and direction.
Could you ask Yves to clarify the definition of the VelBodyAxis components with respect to wind relative to earth?
@VictorI, You make a compelling case that all these data points are linked — not necessarily as a single continuous flight, but as part of a sequence of simulated flights that took place one after another, with parameters such as location, fuel load and altitude changed manually between segments, presumably for Zaharie’s entertainment or edification.
A minor point, but looking at 5N, I don’t understand why someone who would want to void Indonesian airspace would choose B466; N571 would make more sense. It would also be more of a “smoking gun” with regards to MH370. Also, by my calculation the heading of B466 is 302 degrees, while the flight sim heading at this point is 314.8. That strikes me as too big a difference for an autopilot.
I still don’t fully grasp how transient climb rates would arise at 45S, given, as I wrote earlier. If the program was modified and saved before being run, I would think that the vertical speed should not have experienced the transient effect; if it was modified and run, then saved while running, the altitude should have lost its nice even value due to the climb rate. Obviously I am very confused.
At any rate, at 45N2 the ground speed is near the lower end of the envelope. Given the high rate of climb, and I struggle to understand what is going on here. The elevator trim was the same as at 45N1, so if the transient climb rate is due to a miscalculation of the lift then you would expect a lower rate of climb to result from the lower airspeed.
It may seem that I am diving into arcana but I feel that rigorously characterizing what the plane was doing at this moment is essential to understanding Zaharie’s intentions.