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.
@Ge Rijn, Nicolas Ferrier claimed he found seat cushions and luggage 3 months before the flaperon was found, already in May 2015. But his job is to burn beach debris and he had not realized the items he found could have belonged to Mh370. I think a lot of debris found by locals along the coast was simply burned and we will never know how many other pieces washed up on beaches and where. It could have been much more, we simply don’t know because many pieces have not been reported. They ended up on fires. The French investigators have not released there reports on anything, which is very odd if you ask me.
@TBill, Impressive simulations :). It is fantastic that you got the software and are trying things out for the benefit of collecting more data.
@Cordtx
I think you’ll find once the truth comes out on 9M-MRO the USA has been very helpful. Thank you.
@All
Fascinating discussion on Captain Z’s flight simulator. As everyone knows MAS management swapped him into MH370 a few weeks before 8th March 2014.
Does anyone know if the previous and rostered Captain for MH370 had a home flight simulator?
Another article in The Australian:
A survey of air crash investigators and commercial pilots canvassing different scenarios that might have brought down Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370 has found the dominant professional view remains that Captain Zaharie Ahmad Shah hijacked his own aircraft and flew it to the end.
The majority opinion runs counter to the working theory of the Australian Transport Safety Bureau that MH370 was a “ghost flight” with unresponsive pilots, and went down quickly after fuel exhaustion.
The ATSB and a group of international experts is reviewing its strategy, going back to first principles as the $200 million underwater search it is directing, based on its “death dive” scenario, nears conclusion with no trace of the aircraft.
The Weekend Australian asked three international air-crash investigators and six senior serving or retired commercial airline captains to assess five scenarios: a hijack gone wrong; an on-board fire; catastrophic rapid decompression; a rogue pilot killing all on board including himself by depressurising the aircraft soon into the flight; or the pilot hijacking the aircraft and flying it to the end.
Seven of the nine experts said by far the most likely theory was the last scenario, in which Zaharie, with the co-pilot locked out of the cockpit, depressurised the plane having donned his oxygen mask, with a supply of some hours, outlasting passengers and crew with their limited oxygen supply.
Zaharie would then have re-pressurised the aircraft after all but he were dead, and flown to the southern Indian Ocean, either ditching MH370 under power or gliding it to the ocean after fuel ran out to try to sink the aircraft in as few pieces as possible.
Search leaves no path for truthOMore: Search leaves no path for truth
An Australian air-crash investigator who now teaches at Central Queensland University, Geoffrey Dell, preferred the hijack-gone-wrong option, while former US airline captain turned air-crash investigator John Cox said the two most possible theories were an on-board fire or a rogue pilot.
If Zaharie was at the controls at the end, he could have flown MH370 outside the current 120,000 sq km target search zone.
Although the ATSB has insisted its pilotless “death dive” scenario is based on impartial analysis of known facts and satellite tracking data, critics have suggested it is trying to avoid having to say Zaharie hijacked his own aircraft as this would embarrass Malaysia.
The Boeing 777 disappeared on March 8, 2014, on a scheduled flight from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing with 239 people on board.
It turned around 40 minutes into the flight with its radar transponder turned off and with no further radio contact, before turning northwest and then south.
It has been revealed the FBI determined Zaharie had planned a similar flight route on his home computer flight simulator.
“In my opinion there is enough circumstantial evidence to say that captain planned, and executed, the destruction of the aircraft,” Mike Keane, a former RAF fighter pilot and retired chief pilot of Britain’s biggest airline, EasyJet, told The Weekend Australian. “If this is the case, it is a crime scene as well as an aircraft accident.”
@ed:
Thanks for posting the article.
@TBill: Thanks for your reply and for your hard work on the flight simulator software.
Would it be possible to produce a picture of the primary flight instrument in a level turn banked at approximately 20 – 25 degrees?
@TBill:
I’m rather puzzled by your remark “you found some “INMARSAT data” on me that I had no idea you could find”. What do you mean? I’m only trying to understand the *.FLT file to clarify how the data found on Z’s HDD’s should be interpreted.
“Jeff was asking me about rapid altitude climbs.” If I may make a suggestion: If I had your facilities, I would take one of your *.FLT files and edit it by replacing some data with data from Z’s files, then use the edited file as input to your application.
@Keffertje
Yes, I know that story of earlier found and burned debris but it’s worthless as proof isn’t it. Blaine Gibson also found ~50 pieces of items in a short time on one beech alone.
The problem is there is so much garbage floating around and coming to shores every day.
I also suggested before possible genuine MH370 might be found and used in shelters/houses, as tools or otherwise.
Fact is nothing like this showed up, although by now there must be more awareness by a lot of people in those coastal areas by now, after all the finds and publicity.
If we stick to the facts, only a small number of quite specific pieces are found till now: 17 wing/control surface pieces, 2 engine-cowling pieces and 3 interior cabin pieces.
Among those 17 wing related pieces there are 2 flap-fairing pieces.
Of the 15 other wing related pieces there are only 2 leading edge pieces. 13 are trailing edge pieces. With 2 relatively undamaged flap-segments.
This is all most telling IMO.
It clearly points to a relatively low speed impact with a nose-up AoA on the water surface. With possibly only one break-up or breaching of the cabin.
Resulting in a small debris field with the specific pieces of debris found to date.
To me it’s clear as a whistle.
I await the moment Boeing and the ATSB are going to confirm this.
@David:
From the ICAO News Release “ICAO Welcomes MH17 Accident Investigation Final Report” MONTRÉAL, 13 OCTOBER 2015:
A handover of investigation authority must be requested and agreed to by both states. ICAO is not equipped to conduct an accident investigation.
@Gysbreght. No did not envisage for a moment that the ICAO would conduct it or that there would be an investigation handover.
Another topic for you and others. Sim Data. TBill’s data are coherent, including the TAS derived from dynamic pressure agreeing generally with that from both body and world axis vectors.
This is not so with like RMP Zaharie simulator data. Whether dynamic pressure is defined as the sum of body vectors or just that measured along the ‘body axis’, pitot tube style, makes no great difference qualitatively in the comparison with what the body axes’ and world axes’ TAS figures lead one to expect.
No scope has been evident for varying atmospheric conditions in these simulators from standard ISA but even were there, I believe this would not account for the differences.
Yet the Zaharie vector sums of speed from body and world axes generally accord with each other – and the world axes’ vector directions likewise are consistent with headings.
However with TAS, the disparity is around 13% for example at coordinate 3, 3% at coordinate 4 (SIO)and 80% at 5 (SIO): more at 5 if the aircraft height were 37654 (the AGL figure) vs the 4000 ft altitude generally quoted (and that difference remains unexplained also to my knowledge).
The differences of dynamic pressure TAS from what could be expected are some plus, some minus.
Is there an explanation for this mismatch or are the Z. sim data corrupt?
@Ge Rijn, IMO, you cannot conclude it was a small debris field because a lot of debris dissappeared, was burned or cannot be identified. So for all we know it was a huge debris field. The size of the debris field cannot be concluded from the pieces that were found, IMO. This was more my point.
@SteveB….”MAS management swapped him a few weeks before”…could you point me to where you got that from? It was my understanding he was rostered for that flight and not swapped 2 weeks before.
@SteveB, http://www.straitstimes.com/asia/se-asia/mh370-pilot-and-co-pilot-were-rostered-according-to-an-internal-system-malaysia
@Ge Rijn, If you google “investigator claims he found debris near mauritius using google earth” there is an interesting article on Mike Chillit using google earth to locate debris about 6 months after MH370 dissappeared. It sure looks like the flaperon.
@Gysbreght
I was making a joke that by seeing the sim flight G-force data, you were able to see my take-off was probably not the best.
@David
Note that Z used a more sophisticated 777 add-in model called PSS 777 Professional. I have downloaded that for $11 but not installed yet. I expect it will be harder to learn because is a “professional” realistic 777 flight deck.
@Tbill – did you try the manoeuvre at/near IGARI to drop it off the radar .. just wondering if the flight sim would allow that ?
@David, re sim data dynamic pressure: Good catch!
@TBill: Pulling 2.2 g at V2 is quite a feat!
I see that you have [Panels]Panel.On=True, so you should be able to see the main instrument panel. Did you do your takeoff without it?
@MH
You can fly manually whatever course you want to, but I do not think radar coverage is simulated.
@Gysbreght
What happens is sometimes the autopilot altitude control goes off (bug?). For instance, when you save a case and restart from the FLT file you have to right away turn the altitude control back on…maybe there are software updates that would fix that.
For the moment, I will assume Z re-installed FS2004 quickly from the box like I did without making any FS2004 software updates.
So conceivably on the take off I was descending and realized I needed to turn the altitude control back on. Yes I use the control panel for autopilot and landing gear…throttle is a different screen.
@TBill: “Yes I use the control panel for autopilot and landing gear…throttle is a different screen.”
Thanks for that information. I meant the Primary Flight Display, this one:
https://www.dropbox.com/s/go2bc7b9amilxfi/PrimaryFlightDisplay.pdf?dl=0
@TBill
Great job! A solid “A” for mission execution and you get a free pass on the rough hand flying. Plenty of time to polish your stick and rudder skills in the coming weeks. Right now, it’s time to congratulate YOU on the following:
1) joining the distinguished group of “authoritative references” who have at one time or another told Gysbreght that in MSFS a positive bank angle is a LEFT turn and that negative pitch is actually UP. Victor did it in July and I did it before Thanksgiving and yet Gys just kept arguing like he actually knows something (which keeps being disproven, over and over) but somehow, you – the one who claims to have barely known how to get the thing off the ground – you ended up being the one he finally listened to. See, he had to listen, because you may not have known you were making a total fool out of him when you put your Dropbox package together, but he sure as hell knew it. And that, TBill….
…that’s a big steaming pile of just plain awesome.
So I salute you and hereby offer you a diamond membership in ISAR (Int’l Society of Authoritative References). We didn’t exist until Gysbreght told us we weren’t authoritative. And then you came along and, sheesh, all of a sudden we got ourselves a society and everything. Only fitting that you become a charter member. Hell, a Co-Founder! Welcome to the club. (The parties are gon be craaaaaay!)
2) showing the world the full guts of an FLT output because in a few days, your work will be an excellent companion piece to Victor’s paper which will prove that Z’s sim was not broken and reveal the mystery of the “xvelbodyaxis=0” anomaly in FS9 FLT saves. Stay tuned everyone! (Except Gys, of course.)
3) reminding us once again of how insane it is that FLT files contain no timestamp. A mountain of comments-thread keystrokes and baloney, all because the files have no timestamps.
and, most importantly…
4) reminding us of how incomplete the recovered fragments of these FLT files actually are. Had they not been partially erased (or mishandled, or whatever-the-hell caused them to be so utterly incomplete), we would have seen every waypoint in the FMC, among many other things, as your flt file shows. We should have text entries in each FLT that absolutely, concretely point to the premeditation by Shah of the entire affair. Alas, the RMP report appears to have everything BUT those entries and, somehow, the holy grail bits are consistently absent in EVERY file. Not one holy grail FMC flight plan anywhere in the bunch. But 5 incriminating fixes? Ya, got those.
For some reason…that really bothers me.
Which means that you, Tbill, are the only person in 2-1/2 years whose work has caused me to begin seriously considering the question of whether or not Z is being framed.
In other words, we just can’t buy a break with MH370.
Even when there’s a slam dunk [and only in “MH370world” – with its Mos Isley cantina of Gysbreghts and Mick Gilberts and Chris Goodfellows – could the recovered sim data be anything but a case-closed-mic-drop-slam-dunk] there is no slam dunk.
It feels today like someone other than Z is f%#king with all of us. And that really bothers me.
Thanks for bothering me, Tbill.
@all
Courtesy Mike Chillit, search vessels in the Indian Ocean picture below, Dong and Furgo, and two India vessels further north. Apparently nobody is yet saying the India vessels are looking for the missing AN-32, but I assume everyone is aware of another lost flight last July, AN-32 a military plane.
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/CyU86k8VQAAPTl1.jpg
@Matt Moriarty
”
It feels today like someone other than Z is f%#king with all of us. And that really bothers me.
”
And it’s been happening like that from day1.
@TBill
Posted November 27, 2016 at 8:39 PM
@Matt Moriarty
Re your file:- https://docs.google.com/document/d/1ldmi5byrvUAW6zMBRJ5oPo8ED6k8N6RfuWX0mYTHxLM/edit?usp=sharing
Thank you for doing that, a mass of data to study.
@all
Link to Victor’s latest paper on sim data.
https://www.reddit.com/r/MH370/comments/5ffp88/further_analysis_of_simulator_data_by_iannello/
Sorry, don’t mean to get in the way of TBill’s excellent discussion.
But I’ve been wondering these past few days whether or not the Donald would’ve already been briefed on MH370 by now…
Pres Obama mentioned a few key briefings about “our deepest secrets.” (He once joked that after his very briefing in November 2008 he wanted jump out the window)!
Damn, it is just so bloody tantalizing to think MH370 might be included down there among all those other state secrets! Even if the US wasn’t involved, some intel man just pulling out a file named ‘Top Secret MH370’ and placing it on the table… damn!
(Sorry, daydream over…) ☺
@Sajid UK – IT been reported he doesn’t even attend daily security debriefings.
@Sajid UK:
Mh370 is secretly married to a Catalina and together they are now roaming the skies above Area 51.
The ways of the world: Dylan’s Nobel Prize finally took the better of Leonard Cohen and Trump’s election was what finally made Fidel give up his breath. Perhaps Trump could revisit Operation Nortwoods or try changing the system from within.
[Comment deleted by JW. Political and rude.]
@Jeff
I guess you are the judge of rude around here.
Your post:
“@DennisW, I find it truly weird that you are so quick to ridicule others whose opinions you disagree with, and then trot out the most outlandish, unsupported, and indeed asinine theory.”
One of the many reasons I will not be posting here any longer.
@all,
Not sure if someone has posted about Mike Chillits “pin pointing the 7th arc”
Very interesting how Mike has used two different sets BTO of bias examples from MH370 one from the ground another when MH370 was cruising at 35,000ft..
With Mikes calculations he claims both immarsat and ATSB ping calculations for the 7th arc are wrong… Too far west… Mike calculates that MH370 final resting place is some where near zenith..
Here is a link to Chillits page..
http://www.seventharc.net/2016/11/22/pinpointing-the-search-arc/
@DennisW, It was great sparring with you on this site on the different theories. Your vast knowledge is immense and amazing, no matter the subject. You are a smart man, and you know it! Not being a mathematical or physics wizard myself, it is interesting to see how the scientist species in this area locks horns so often. Must be a man thing. I have found your contributions very valuable and your wit most entertaining. But you are also smart enough to understand that politics has no place on this blog and that someone’s linguistic skills isn’t really relevant at all. Hoping you will continue to post on this site. If not, perhaps I will see you elsewhere sometime It was great knowing you and wishing you and Ami all the best.
@DennisW: Aloha Oe……
@DennisW
Thanks for the ‘VictorI-link’.
It looks like this settles it regarding the SIM-points. They are connected in one simulated flight into the SIO.
VictorI is rightfully cautious though not to name Zaharie or someone else but; ‘a user created a simulation that passed over the Malacca Straight to the Andaman Sea into the SIO’.
Seems you were right all along with your SIM-points being connected in a single flight.
And a tip; shut off your computer before hitting that Black Daniels bottle.. 😉
@Matt Moriarty,
You said: “Please go through these tables and see what you think but I cannot get your PDA+temp theory to pencil out, even using numbers from the GE engine which has a lower sfc (although, maybe at sea level, the Trent outperforms [??]).”
As you also said, I agree it would be great to have a Climb Fuel table for the RR Trent engines at two different temperatures (ISA and ISA+10C). Without this, trying to discern a temperature dependence of fuel flow by comparing the GE and RR engines, as you were attempting, will not be sufficiently accurate without knowing their relative fuel flows as a function of altitude, which we don’t.
However, the Climb Fuel tables for the GE engines directly demonstrate my point regarding the increased fuel flow with elevated temperature. For a 500,000 lb takeoff weight (closest to MH370 in the tables), it takes 9,700 lbs of fuel to reach 35,000 feet at ISA – 10C, 10,100 lbs at ISA temperature, and 10,600 lbs at ISA + 10C. The average slope is 4.5% more climb fuel per 10C. That’s in the ballpark of the Boeing-stated cruise ratio of 3.4%/10C SAT. So now we have two similar estimates of the temperature dependence of the fuel flow for the GE engines – one for climb and one for cruise. As I said before, this temperature effect applies to all turbofan engines, including the Rolls Royce Trent 892’s. There is no reason to expect the temperature dependence to vary much from engine to engine.
This temperature effect is a fact, not a theory, and it causes a significant reduction in endurance (~15 minutes) or range (~110-120 NM).
I also note that the Climb Fuel tables are for “maximum climb power”, and perhaps MH370 used slightly less than maximum power during the initial climb and burned slightly less fuel than the table value. That might explain the small difference between the 17:07 ACARS fuel reading and your (lower) fuel remaining estimate based on a higher tabular value of climb fuel using maximum climb power.
@Keffertje
I would also like to referre to earlier statistics used by @Brock McEwen.
He calculated back then (from memory) that with a debris-field of ~10.000 pieces starting in the current search area ~600 pieces should have landed on African shores and islands after ~20 months and ~300 pieces on Australian shores.
We know now probably nothing landed on Australian shores due to a more Northern crash area excluding the southern half of the current search area.
So you can theoreticaly add those ~300 to the ~600.
If at least statistically ~900 pieces should have landed on African shores and islands by now and you find only 22 after almost 3 years, IMO you can savely assume there were far less than ~10.000 pieces to start with.
~900 is about 10% of 10.000.
So multiply 22 with 10% and you have 220 pieces.
IMO this is a far more realistic amount for a debris-field to start with, which also correlates with the @MPat and CSIRO amount of historical drifters that passed through the current search area.
@DennisW
I hope you won’t disappear so quickly! I prescribe one evening viewing
Hickok45, in conjuction with a minimum intake of some multiple 0f 250mL
of your favourite beverage.
@Jeff
It is perhaps unreasonable to expect DennisW (who I have reason to
believe takes an interest in ‘left‘ political leaning blogs,
even in Texas {yes, such an animal exists}) not to respond to
a previous posters political post. The fault is more in allowing
political posts which are not MH370 related to remain (especially as
that previous post matched Trond levels of bizarreness).
I find (OK, in the last couple of months) that DennisW is actually
not so quick to ridicule, so why should you single him out unless
you transposed him with other of your posters?
@Ge Rijn said;
“regarding the SIM-points. They are connected in one simulated flight
into the SIO.”
This webpage;
http://www.flightsim.com/vbfs/showthread.php?154236-Tip-start-FSX-from-flt-file
explains that an FLT file from a previous flight can be utilized to
expeditiously load a later flight.
Therefore, the ‘identical values’ only suggest that three of the
Coords were within a flight or a shared progression of
(however many other) flights.
Back in July 2016 I pointed out several flight-physical anomalies in the data from MS Flight files recovered from one of Z’s HDD’s. Victor I responded with a convoluted construction where he changed the meaning of pitch attitude and body axes, and assumed crosswind and updraft to ‘explain’ that the anomalies were not in fact anomalies.
In his 2016-11-29 paper he confirms that the anomalies are in fact anomalies of the FS software and his attempt to explain them away was simply rubbish. He also explains that the anomalies occur when some flight parameters are changed manually before saving the current condition of the simulation, rather than straightforwardly saving the actual flight simulation conditions in a *.FLT file. That means that in his earlier Excel table four of the six points have been tampered with before being saved. The two exceptions are the point on ground at KLIA, and Coördinate 2, at 5N and FL320.
On page 6 Iannello cs. write:
Decreasing speed is not a “stable flight condition” which he calls “unsteady aerodynamic state” in the next sentence. Since angle of attack is zero the value given for pitch is actually flight path angle, which is not “consistent with” speed.
The biggest unexplained anomaly remains the fuel on board along the assumed flight path. Iannello cs. explain that away by writing: “Using the fuel data from the recovered flight files as evidence, we can confidently say that flight parameters were changed during the course of the simulation”. However, the B777 is not equipped for in-flight refuelling, and fuel quantities cannot be changed in the simulator MAP page. So how were they changed during the supposed “single flight” simulation?
Actually the whole concept of a “single flight” simulation can hardly be maintained. What is the difference between three separate flights that used the same *.FLT file as starting condition, and three conditions obtained in a single session that were arbitrarily modified before saving, or even edited after saving? Why would anyone preparing for that flight make such arbitrary changes to the saved parameters? What is the value of a simulation that was repeatedly stopped and disturbed by resetting parameters that introduced instabilities?
@DennisW
C’mon dude, grab the tractor by its bucket and get your ass back on here. I won’t write no flowery cyber-obituary for you, maybe in 10 years time when they’ve started discussing the South Pacific and you start having second thoughts about that Wacko List of yours, but for now the forum needs your technical mind. I wish I had never made that Trump comment which I assume started this all off, but the thought of him being be privy to such a profound state secret while all the great aviation minds are falling over themselves to work it out is simply too hilarious not to share!
@all
I think Jeff’s doing a great job on here. I have no idea what was said last night but I found Dennis’ most offensive comment to be one where he labelled the forum ‘pathetic.’ I thought that was a little uncalled for, especially as he continued to post on here after that. Yet Jeff simply let it go and moved on. We do not commend Jeff enough on here, he’s created a fantastic space for experts, professionals, and fantasists alike to all throw their ideas into the mix.
@Johan @MH
Johan – haha love that post!
MH – yeah you’re right, he’s been missing the daily intel briefings, but I think there are a couple which are more serious and I don’t think he’d be allowed to miss those.
@Sajid UK, Thank you!
@Gysbreght, You wrote, “the whole concept of a “single flight” simulation can hardly be maintained. What is the difference between three separate flights that used the same *.FLT file as starting condition, and three conditions obtained in a single session that were arbitrarily modified before saving, or even edited after saving?”
Very well put.
@buyerninety, You can’t tell because I deleted it, but DennisW’s comment went beyond the pale. It’s gone and hopefully now we can all move on.
@all
As per Victor, FS2004 starts flights with 100% fuel load, which the user can change at any time including during the flight.
FS2004 is missing a lot of minor waypoints, but it does have lots of airports such as McMurdo NZPG is in there. For example. as you may deduce from Victor’s paper, flight path N571 (MEKAR, NILAM) does not seem to be in the FS2004 data base, so I am using TOSOK and SANOB as close substitutes.
Also it is relatively easy to make your own waypoints by using WordPad to manually edit the flight plan files, and various other methods to add custom waypoints. The PSS 777 add-in model may allow user created waypoints.
@All
I realize that at times I must come across as a blusterer, a troll even. I apologise unreservedly now if I have offended or hurt anyone. Please believe me when I say I respect other peoples’ points of view, even if I don’t agree with them :(.
Now this is just a possibility I admit, but the ability to dump fuel might come in useful if you wanted to arrive (more specifically, run out of fuel)in a certain area at a certain time. For example, to rendezvous with a particular sun angle.
RE Iannello’s paper 2016-11-29:
The following graph shows the fuel quantities versus altitude from the data recovered from Z’s HDD according to above paper in red, and the corresponding data from the Continental Flight Manual Climb tables for the same Brake Release weight and ZFW at ISA temperature:
https://www.dropbox.com/s/ykboay6ihwufa8g/FuelVsAlt_Zsim.pdf?dl=0
The blue points are the fuel quantities (on the right scale) recorded in the ACARS Position Report for MH370.
This illustrates that either the points at FL’s 320 and 400 are from a different flight with increased fuel at brake release, or fuel was added between points 1 (3N) and 2 (5N).
@Rob
I agree fuel dump is possible action if you are trying to land in a specific location in the sea. On YouTube, Z said he liked the fuel dump visual feature of the PSS 777 model. It creates a cloud contrail that I assume might be seen in satellite views, so I am thinking a hypothetical clandestine fuel dump might have to be done under sky darkness.
On the other hand, I assume flame out of engines is best done in sunlight to hide from possible satellite views. Question- what does a flame-out look like if it caused by fuel starvation?
@DennisW:
I hope it wasn’t me that set you off. And I hope you can put an (anyone’s) oblique hit behind you and return. You’re the valuable asset.
We others might take it as a reminder that many on here already have “heard and seen it all”, and that it is preferrable to keep to the knowable and the subject matter.
I have been busy some, otherwise I had reminded Keffertje a little while back that politics is a difficult area to approach in that way, in this context. And that an elected government (by a death-defying logic)just might see differently on what they should put up with in terms of what they are being called by those apparently not satisfied with the result. There is no simple way to grapple with something like that, and personally I couldn’t recommend anyone Malaysian about how to act. Besides being a bit cautious and careful. You need to have a plan. A really, really big one. Called something like durable national government. I don’t have one on me.
@JeffWise
I saw the comment last night. My first thought was: “Let’s see if Jeff pulls this one.”
Good job, man.
@All
Chartered Avro RJ85 went down in Columbia with a Brazillian soccer club aboard. Not good.
http://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/colombia-plane-crash-what-we-know-about-avro-rj85-n689426
@TBill
I’m not an expert on engine behaviour, but I would have thought a flameout due to fuel ⛽ exhaustion would be a non-event from a satellite’s perspective.
People generally leave this forum when their long held and ferociously defended axioms have eroded to little heaps of dust.
One thing I’ve noticed both lurking and posting on Jeff’s site – the amount of internecine sturm und drang seems inversely proportional to the amount of fresh debris discovered on beaches… Amelia Earhart forums must be like one continuous 1990s Usenet flamewar!
@Jeff: It’s your blog, your rules.
@DennisW: Be a great pity to lose your input, sense of humour and numbercrunching skills…
We’re all still here, experts, professionals and fantasists alike, for one reason: to theorise about what the Hell happened that night, and to ask how, in this obsessively overwatched age, could a passenger jet just… disappear the way it did?
Everyone here has something to contribute, even if it’s only playing Devil’s Advocate. It would be a shame to lose useful skillsets over infighting and (non-Malaysian) politics.
@Ge Rijn
Your nose-up ditching makes a lot of sense for a quick-sink/low debris scenario – I’d always visualised something like a steeper banked Ethiopian 961 cartwheel. The slower the better, I guess.
@Gysbreght
I believe FS2004 777 allows adjusting fuel up or down anytime during the flight. Not sure about the add-on PSS 777 Pro.
@Stendec
When you run out of fuel, it looks like the model plane wants to go into the water tail down. But for some reason (thicker air?) after falling seemingly forever tail down from 34000 feet, it levels out at the last minute. I’ll have to see if starting at different altitudes makes the tail go in first. Hard to believe the model is real accurate on the phugoids, but it’s got that behavior.