The above graph is taken from the DSTG book “Bayesian Methods in the Search for MH370, ” page 90. It shows the probability distribution of MH370’s endpoint in the southern Indian Ocean based on analysis of the different autopilot modes available to whoever was in charge of the plane during its final six hours. It was published earlier this year and so represents contemporary understanding of these issues. As you can see, the DSTG estimated that the probability that the plane hit the 7th arc north of 34 degrees south longitude is effectively zero.
I interviewed Neil Gordon, lead author of the paper, on August 11. At that time, he told me that experts within the official search had already determined that the BFO values at 0:19 indicated that the plane was in a steep descent, on the order of 15,000 feet per minute.
Such a rate of descent would necessarily indicate that the plane could not have hit the ocean very far from the 7th arc. Nevertheless, Fugro Equator, which was still conducting its broad towfish scan of the search area at the time, spent most of its time searching the area on the inside edge of the search zone in the main area, between 37.5 and 35 degrees south latitude, about 25 nautical miles inside the 7th arc. At no point between the time of our interview and the end of the towfish scan in October did Equator scan anywhere north of 34 degrees south.
Shortly thereafter, the ATSB hosted a meeting of the experts it had consulted in the course of the investigation, and the result of their discussion was published on December 20 of this year as “MH370 – First Principles Review.” This document confirms what Gordon told me, that the group believed that the BFO data meant that the plane had to have been in a steep dive at the time of the final ping. What’s more, the report specified that this implied that the plane could not have flown more than 25 nautical miles from the 7th arc, and indeed most likely impacted the sea within 15 nautical miles.
By the analysis presented above, a conclusion is fairly obvious: the plane must have come to rest somewhere south of 34 degrees south, within 25 nautical miles of the seventh arc. Since this area has already been thoroughly scanned, then the implication is that the plane did not come to rest on the Indian Ocean seabed where the Inmarsat signals indicate it should have.
I would suggest that at this point the search should have been considered completed.
Nevertheless, the “First Principles Review” states on page 15 that the experts’ renewed analysis of the 777 autopilot dynamics indicates that the plane could have crossed the 7th arc “up to 33°S in latitude along the 7th arc.”
Then in the Conclusions section on page 23 the authors describe “a remaining area of high probability between latitudes 32.5°S and 36°S along the 7th arc,” while the accompanying illustration depicts a northern limit at 32.25 degrees south.
In other words, without any explanation, the northern limit of the aircraft’s possible impact point has moved from 34 degrees south in the Bayesian Methods paper in early 2016 to 33 degrees south on page 15 in the “First Principles Review” released at the end of the year. Then eight pages later within the same report the northern limit has moved, again without explanation, a half a degree further north. And half a page later it has moved a quarter of a degree further still.
Is the ATSB sincere in moving the northern limit in this way? If so, I wonder why they did not further search out this area when they had the chance, instead of continuing to scan an area that they apparently had already concluded the plane could not plausibly have reached.
I should point out at this point that the area between 34 south and 35.5 south has been scanned to a total widtch of 37 nautical miles, and the area between 32.5 and 34 has been searched to a total width 23 nautical miles. Thus even if the ATSB’s new northern limits are correct, they still should have found the plane.
As a result of the above I would suggest that:
a) Even though most recent report describes “the need to search an additional area representing approximately 25,000 km²,” the conduct of the ATSB’s search does not suggest that they earnestly believe that the plane could lie in this area. If they did, they could have searched out the highest-probability portions of this area with the time and resources at their disposal. Indeed, they could be searching it right now, as I write this. Obviously they are not.
b) The ATSB knew, in issuing the report, that Malaysia and China would not agree to search the newly suggested area, because it fails to meet the agreed-upon criteria for an extension (“credible new information… that can be used to identify the specific location of the aircraft”). Thus mooting this area would allow them to claim that there remained areas of significant probability that they had been forced to leave unsearched. This, in effect, would allow them to claim that their analysis had been correct but that they had fallen victim to bad luck.
c) The ATSB’s sophisticated mathematical analysis of the Inmarsat data, combined with debris drift analysis and other factors, allowed them to define an area of the southern Indian Ocean in which the plane could plausibly have come to rest. A long, exhaustive and expensive search has determined that it is not there.
d) The ATSB did not fall victim to bad luck. On the contrary, they have demonstrated with great robustness that the Inmarsat data is not compatible with the physical facts of the case.
e) Something is wrong with the Inmarsat data.
@VictorI: “Hence, it is logical to conclude that the simulation files were created in the weeks prior to the disappearance.”
You have an unconventional definition of logic. To me it smells of confirmation bias.
ZS was the Captain of MH370, that establishes opportunity.
ZS had FS9 installed on disk MK 25 until Feb 20, 2013, the same date that FSX was installed on disk MK26. That establishes the opportunity to save FS9 FLT files until that date.
We know that the Shadow Volume was dated Feb 3, 2014. That establishes that the information in the Shadow Volume was created on or before that date.
We also know that between the creation and the deletion of the FLT files, many clusters that those files occupied on the disk partition where they had been saved, had been overwritten. That establishes that a certain amount of file saving activity must have taken place between the time that those files were deleted and the time that the Shadow Volume was created and copied that partition.
We don’t know when those files were created. Therefore it is not logical to conclude that the simulation files were created in the weeks prior to the disappearance.
@TBill
I saw it as well and it prompted me to ask the prior questions. Ahh, the Catch-22 of MH370, the seemingly suspect only 2 ground-to-air call attempts 4 1/2+ hours apart, kept the ping data no one knew existed accurate.
That is why it would be nice to know how rare that reaction may be
@jeffwise: I think you are saying you are basing your theory on the distribution of barnacles on the flaperon. However, you have no idea how the flaperon floated and what areas were wetted with sufficient regularity to support barnacle growth. The assertion that portions of the flaperon with barnacles were dry for sufficiently long periods of time to kill the barnacles is an assumption that would be very hard to prove unless you dropped a replica of the flaperon in the ocean and followed it for months. That would be much more involved than taking data from replicas to calibrate the inputs to a drift model.
I’d say the sim data is more than just suspicious looking. By your own words, it would be a freak coincidence if the captain’s simulation was completely innocent.
@Gysbreght said, “ZS had FS9 installed on disk MK 25 until Feb 20, 2013, the same date that FSX was installed on disk MK26.”
No. FSX was installed on MK26 on Dec 20, 2013. FS9 was installed on MK25 on Dec 23, 2013.
You are conveniently neglecting the installation data of FS9 on Dec 23, 2013. That serves as the earliest date that the simulator files could have been created.
I gave a specific sequence of dates: We know that FS9 was installed on MK25 on Dec 23, 2013. We know that the Shadow Volume was dated Feb 3, 2014. We know that the installation of FS9 was removed on Feb 20, 2014. We know that MH370 disappeared on Mar 8, 2014. Hence, it is logical to conclude that the simulation files were created in the weeks prior to the disappearance.
I’m done debating this with you. No new facts are being presented. Believe what you want.
@VictorI
Your reply above seems to answer my question if the FS2004 was a relatively new install (apparently yes). One nice thing about FS/FSX are all the tweaks and fine tuning you can do over time by downloading various patches and improvements. Sounds like Z had maybe moved onto FSX but needed to go back to FS2004 for some reason such as using the PSS model (some heresay out there that his FSX version had a bug – which is what sometimes happens when the tweaks are added.)
@TBill: He was definitely fond of the PSS 777 model as evidenced by this YouTube post:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bCL5gLw_2Nw&lc=z13bcdh5ppmvsrih304cffuouwfpxzor4q00k
Australian pilots go for a controlled ditching.
The Australian. Under the heading of, “Malaysia ‘must not abandon’ MH370 jet search” Ean Higgins writes:
Professional pilots and air crash investigators have warned against allowing Malaysia to “get away” with not continuing the hunt for Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370, with the remaining search vessel due to complete the last sweep of the southern Indian Ocean within weeks.
They called on Australian authorities to drop their public reluctance to consider whether a “rogue pilot” hijacked his own aircraft and ditched it, saying a new search strategy should include that scenario and a revised target zone to allow for it.
The last ship to scour the 120,000sq km search zone, the Fugro Equator, is well into its second week of what is usually a four-to-five-week deployment.
It appears likely to bring to an end a fruitless $200 million hunt for the Boeing 777 that disappeared on a scheduled flight from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing on March 8, 2014, with 239 people on board.
This month a panel of international experts and the CSIRO defined a new possible area to look north of the current target zone, but the three governments funding the operation — China, Malaysia and Australia — have said it will not be resumed without new information identifying a specific location.
Since MH370 was Malaysian-registered, Malaysia has primary responsibility for the investigation and the decision of whether to continue the hunt.
The president of the Australian Federation of Air Pilots, David Booth, said his profession internationally had an “overriding principle … the need to recover the wreckage to determine the cause of every accident”. “This means funding a search of all feasible areas,” he said.
Some suggested Malaysia would be content if the aircraft were not found because it could not be determined that — as many aviation experts believe — MH370 captain Zaharie Ahmad Shah hijacked his own aircraft and flew it to the end.
“If the Malaysians try to call this off, you would have to ask the reason why; any major airline would want to find out what happened to its aircraft,” Captain Mike Keane, a former chief pilot of Britain’s largest airline, EasyJet, said.
“They are ducking litigation and embarrassment, loss of face … they have a vested interest, to my mind, not to find the aircraft.”
The Australian Transport Safety Bureau, which is directing the underwater search at the request of Malaysia, has based its strategy on the “ghost flight” and “death dive” theories that the pilots were incapacitated and MH370 went down fast after running out of fuel on autopilot.
“I am surprised they have not looked at the other argument that the captain has carried out some sort of controlled ditching,” Captain Keane said, saying the known facts suggest Zaharie tried to hide the aircraft through an elaborate plan including turning off the radar transponder.
1 COMMENT
David
All very well hypothesising a controlled ditching but Boeing simulations and other evidence indicate a steep descent. One needs to refute that, not just ignore it. Besides, where specifically would David Booth recommend searching?.
@VictorI
Yes, I and most others here have read your 2016-11-29 report, and
these Co-Ord points were discussed over a month ago. MinimumGForce,
MaximumGForce and MaxReachedEngine values did not ‘prove’ that those
Co-Ords were exclusively joined in a specifc flight, because we
don’t know however many other FLT files exhibited those particular
values, and we don’t know because you choose to produce only a tiny
sample of the 348 FLT files recovered from MK25, (and the 348 FLT
files represent only what could be recovered from that drive, not
however many FLT may have actually existed).
The conclusion can be just as reasonably made that those values can
exist in a linked progression of however many other flights to
other places that have nothing to do with the SIO – however you now
assert, as if it were fact rather than your opinion, that you have
‘proved’ the (Co-Ord) points are specific to a particular flight – at
the same time as you refuse to produce the Co-Ord values for all the
other FLT files in the Malaysian report that you possess.
Further, you state you have ‘proved’ Shahs simulator “wasn’t broken”,
although no data leads to this conclusion, and this claim is simply
untrue.
(And in fact, as reproduced in Data-from-Flight-Simulator-Computer.pdf,
the Malaysian report specifically states that Shah was experiencing
“application crashes” of his flight sim.)
Jeffs Forum is meant to clarify events relating to MH370, not add a
further layer of opaqueness, and I have no doubt if this matter were
left unchallenged, that in a month’s time I’ll be reading someone
asserting ‘Yeah, that sim, VictorI (‘)proved(‘) it wasn’t broken‘.
@TBill
Do not if you have seen this or if the content is legitimate
http://www.x-sim.de/forum/viewtopic.php?f=3&t=20&start=110
know
@buyerninety: You are completely wrong. The simulator data files that were presented in the RMP report were the only deleted flight files recovered from the MK25 drive. They were grouped together in a Shadow Volume with a date of Feb 2, 2014. I did not select these files from among many as you incorrectly state. ZS already did that for us.
Regarding the broken simulator, again you are wrong. There was a claim here that the specific values for the variables in the flight files proved the simulator was broken because an aircraft could not fly with those values. Yves and I proved with 100% certainty that the values were not indicative of a broken simulator. Rather, the values were created because of the particular sequence of operations for changing variables and then creating the flight file. It is all repeatable. He might have experienced crashes, but the variables show no evidence that the simulator was not functioning.
@Victor, You wrote, “you have no idea how the flaperon floated and what areas were wetted with sufficient regularity to support barnacle growth.” Yes, I absolutely know how the flaperon floated, because the CSIRO report includes a photograph of the French flotation test. This shows that the upper trailing edge is out of the water in both of the stable orientations. It is physically impossible for barnacles to grow in the air.
This is an unequivocal smoking gun — physical proof (corroborated by the Mg/Ca data) that the flaperon did not arrive at Réunion by natural means.
The absence of the main plane wreckage in the southern Indian Ocean is equally compelling evidence that a simple scenario — such as a pilot suicide — is non-viable. Though you do not understand the DSTG methodology, it indicates that if Zaharie had flown a suicide mission the plane would have been found by now.
The question is no longer “What happened to MH370?” but “How long will it take for people to understand the unequivocal evidence that’s sitting in front of their eyes?”
@buyerninety: In fairness to VictorI, I think he rightfully claims to have proven that the FS9 software “wasn’t broken”. Most of the anomalies identified in the past have been shown to be due to oddities of the software when it saves *.FLT files after a MAP change. The only anomaly not yet explained is the anomalous value of DynPres in 45S2. I’m resigned to the possibility that a particular sequence of MAP changes may produce that result when the software functions as designed.
I remain sceptical about the age of those fragments, and the reason for their creation.
Victor says that ZS wanted to ‘experience’ fuel exhaustion at a particular location in the SIO. Indeed it must be an exhilarating ‘experience’ to be able to drop 33,000 ft by pushing the “P” key. Better still would be the reverse. Imagine how many tons of fuel airlines would save during climb if Boeing had installed that option.
Victor: Let me know if you want me to throw you a rescue rope.
@jeffwise: It is not hard to show why the DSTG analysis predicted what it did. It’s also not hard to show that there are other possibilities that are not allowed by the assumptions in the DSTG study. Some of us pointed this out when the study first was published.
You claim you have found the unequivocal smoking gun. That means you now believe this a certainty, and no longer a theory. Your proposed plan, masterminded by Putin, would include:
1. Overtaking the crew and hijacking the plane.
2. Spoofing the BFO.
3. Flying to Kazakhstan over land and undetected by any radar.
4. Hiding the plane somehow.
5. Deforming plane parts to look similar to what would occur if the plane crashed into the ocean.
6. Sea-aging parts so that they appear to have been in the ocean for 18 months and longer.
7. Planting parts along the shores of Eastern Africa.
8. Recruiting Blaine Gibson to help with the planting deception.
If you still believe the plane landed at Baikonur, you also believe:
1. The plane landed beyond the 7th arc, so the last handshake was created to mimic fuel exhaustion.
2. The plane flew hundreds of miles beyond its fuel range.
What did I leave out? What did I get wrong? I mean this very seriously. Please make your list of how you believe this all occurred.
@Gysbreght
I understand VictorI does not wish to discuss the matter of dates further.
He said” You are conveniently neglecting the installation data of FS9 on
Dec 23, 2013. That serves as the earliest date that the simulator files
could have been created”.
I beleve there is a misunderstanding, that FLT files could not have been
created earlier than Dec 23rd, 2013. Perhaps this does not take into
account that the FLT files were retrieved from a VOLUME SHADOW COPY, i.e
the FLT files were originally created by flight sim software but the actual
copy (found in the sim data.pdf) of that FLT file was therefore made by an
operating system. (I believe the ‘saved copy’ is usually found
written on the disk as a partial file, if I understand how Volume Shadow
copies of files are usually seen when forensically retrieved from a
Volume Shadow copy on a disk, and this accords with what we see when
we view the copy of the file in sim data.pdf – it is a partial FLT file.)
What I am suggesting is that the Volume Shadow Copy FLT files could be
from simulation flights prior to Dec 23rd 2013 , if we assume Shah
had done previous installation(s) of FS9. It is not unreasonable to
suggest this, as reinstalling a software program is an action that
persons may do when experiencing problems with that software (and we
from several sources that Shah was experiencing problems with his
flight sim software).
When we view the file list at Table 7 in the Data-from-Flight-Simulator-
omputer.pdf , we see (Last Accessed) dates for FLT files, and some of those
dates are prior to Dec 23rd 2013 , therefore this may be evidence
to support my assertion above.
(We may assume those listed files in Table 7 could be a list of the FLT
{Co-Ord} files we see in the sim data.pdf , as the Malaysian report did
particularly explore those FLT files, but we can’t state it as a fact they
are the same files as, of course, VictorI declines to specify which {or if}
of the FLT files dates match the Table 7 file dates… )
@Victor
The malaysian government and all independent searchers were force-fed the Inmarsat data chain like a noose around our neck. Now that the Inmarsat data proved to be useless to corroborate a free fantasized suicide story we are force-fed a leak of SIM data, equaly questionable.
I know so many desperados in casinos who believe, that it just needs another shot at their number system to be rich and free of all troubles. Numbers are wonderful, but you can get lost in it, thats what i want to say. The governments of China and Malaysia are wise enough not to follow up.
They have semingly reasonable council.
@ALSM
nobody wants to hurt Victor. he is showing character and as such wont need a rescue rope
@VictorI
Thank you. Besides Boeing and Honeywell, any merit to asking BlackBox (PSS) or PMDG their understanding of real world end of route programming approach? Presumably other aircraft (eg; 787, 767) have the same logic?
@Gysbreght
I think you are getting the hang of it. Yesterday in FS9 at 35000-ft and Mach 0.84, I switched from the 777-300 to a Cessna. I did not wait for the conclusion but seems like the Cessna was falling in speed and altitude and would come to normal flight in a few minutes. As a user, it is extremely handy to be able to transition to a new condition set, but obviously a FLT file saved during the transition will be interesting, to say the least. This short-cut might be how I switch over to the PSS 777 model at altitude ( to check end-of-route behavior).
@SusieC
That picture of the Z simulator is fascinating, but most of that stuff is easy to get but that arm-rest control panel was fancy. Notice the little joy stick on the left…that’s all I have.
@buyerninety: You again asserted that I have more simulator data than is publicly available. I do not. Understand now?
@VictorI, You wrote, “It’s also not hard to show that there are other possibilities that are not allowed by the assumptions in the DSTG study.” There are routes that are physically possible according to Inmarsat data alone, but these are contraindicated by other evidence (drift, lack of observation by aerial search) and/or probabilistically implausible (e.g. curved routes.)
Otherwise your list is accurate. I would point out that the route was derived from BTO by the DSTG and is shown in their Bayesian Methods report,so I can’t claim credit for it. It notably bypasses areas of intense radar coverage.
I am agnostic as to whether the plane went to Baikonur or somewhere else in Kazakhstan — I am well aware of the fuel difficulties as you know.
Finally, I don’t know if Blaine had to be recruited; he reportedly spent 10 years in Russia, is fluent in Russia, and made most of his money there, so it might only have been a matter of activating an existing asset.
@TBill: I doubt we will get any help from PMDG because there is no problem to solve regarding an EOR condition in a route. They would reply that the LNAV function in the 777-200LR model behaves exactly as they understand the real plane to behave. And we already know what that behavior is because I tested it.
Now, if we believed the LNAV was incorrectly modeled, that would get their attention.
@jeffwise: Since you are certain the plane went to Kazakhstan, and since this is after all your blog, perhaps you should change the focus on only discussing this scenario. Anything else is just a distraction. Again, I am being serious.
Is the “assembly of FSX and FS9” Z mentions in the link as being October 2012 irrelevant to the “installation data of FS9 on Dec 23, 2013.”?
http://www.x-sim.de/forum/viewtopic.php?f=3&t=20&start=110
@VictorI, The purpose is not to attain for oneself the feeling of having solved the mystery; it’s to work together with a community to try to arrive at a consensus. The only way to do that is to provide a forum where well-meaning people can come together to freely exchange ideas and opinions.
I contrast this approach with the IG, in which a few individuals decided that they knew where the plane was and suppressed dissent in order to present a unified front to the outside world. This had a powerful effect — many media outlets turned to the IG as the go-to authorities on the technical aspects of the case — but the price was severe: the IG was wrong, and so the media were misled.
Interesting comments about the satellite calls.
Aside from crediting the lack of satellite calls with effectively allowing the ping data to be generated and stored, there is a more important implication:
A “spoof” is incompatible with diligent attempts to reach the plane by phone. The spoof would fail if too many calls were made. Logically, if the spoofed values were expected to be used to steer the search, the spoofer had to ensure that the phone didn’t ring. That would implicate the Malaysians more than anyone else.
@Jeff Wise,
I have to say that I am tired of your totally incorrect denigration of the IG.
The IG got together, after Duncan closed his blog site. It was a group of very disparate people, to try to collaborate using complementary skills, in order to approach the problem in a way that they chose. It was never an open forum. There was a tremendous amount of background work done, and when there was something that the group felt was of moment the work was formalised and published. Later individual members of the group published their own work.
Surely the group can operate in any way it chooses, just as you can operate your blog in any way you choose.
Suck it up Jeff.
Jeff is doing an excellent job ” to provide a forum where well-meaning people can come together to freely exchange ideas and opinions.”
It seems some IG members are coming back to suppress this effort.
`@Susie Crowe: Thank you, that was my thought too.
Jeff, sorry to say I’ve been reading your posts over recent weeks with mounting concern.
This is not the JW that wrote so well on AF447 or penned the ‘What we know now’ article on MH370 in September 2014.
The retro-active justification of your pet spoof theory is really stretching things now. Talk of ‘activating’ Blaine and ‘unequivocal’ evidence of debris planting is not doing you much credit. I can hardly believe that YOU believe it. But we have to trust that you do.
I find myself hoping for a return to a more balanced and scientifically robust approach from you. It is important in setting the tone and quality of the debate on this forum.
@Susie Crowe. “Ahh, the Catch-22 of MH370, the seemingly suspect only 2 ground-to-air call attempts 4 1/2+ hours apart, kept the ping data no one knew existed accurate.” Yes, agreed, if this is technically correct then its very important and gives weight to various “data were fabricated” theories.
@TBill
Thought you may find this interesting from the founder of PMDG
http://www.avsim.com/topic/436853-pmdg-simulations-comments-on-the-loss-of-mh-370/
@jeffwise: If you feel that the evidence is unequivocal that the debris was planted, you should pen a piece, co-authored with one or more recognized experts, that clearly lays out the case for why the marine life could not have populated the flaperon, as it was found, by drifting across the ocean. This would be much stronger than getting short quotes from experts over the phone or by email. That kind of piece would certainly get MY attention.
As for your claim that the drifter temperature data is not consistent with Mg/Ca data, we don’t know the accuracy of that data. Also, somebody has shown me evidence that there were drifters that had almost exactly the same temperature history as the Mg/Ca data predicted. I’ll see whether I can get the person to share their work publicly.
@all
IMO, the IG never misled anyone. I, for one, am very grateful for the analytical templates they provided. While I have had disagreements with various members, that does not denigrate the useful work they have done in any way.
@VictorI. While there is no answer available to the implied 6 connection with 6-2, it is on my watch list.
Thanks for your other comments and your continuing supplementation, amplification and clarification of your joint paper, which has lifted comprehension of it.
@Buyerninety. Yes it was the program I thought Z might have been looking at, not data acquisition. For a while it looked tempting to see causation, or Z obtaining a feel for a follow up but I think Gysbreght’s sardonic remark encapsulates the unlikelihood of that, “Indeed it must be an exhilarating ‘experience’ to be able to drop 33,000 ft by pushing the “P” key”.
As to a tyre burst that was Oleksandr’s theory as I remember it but I was on about a wheel explosion (separation of wheel halves) with the large flying chunks of metal that would entail. As you point out history suggests that tyre bursts at altitude are unlikely and it could well be that a wheel explosion is likewise. However I have come across overtightening of nuts (though not on wheels) by maintainers being the cause of loss of two aircraft and it remains a problem. In this instance a nosewheel tie bolt, replaced before this flight, caught my attention.
I am pleased to find another who spells tyre correctly.
@David
When people who spell tire “tyre”, manage to put a man on the moon, you might have an argument. In the meantime try to adjust to your place in the world (which is largely as an observer).
@AM2
Not sure why that link seems endless.
I am thinking the ground to air call would have to coincide with the timing of an hourly ping to interfere. Not sure if the ground to air call’s capability is in the same guise of state of the art, never been done, never been heard of ping data.
https://www.google.com/amp/samp.news.com.au/travel/travel-updates/incidents/mh370-report-malaysia-airlines-only-attempted-to-contact-missing-plane-twice-over-six-hours/news-story/0f5c230dc2f6da2b09612d0654234c5d?client=safari
@AM2
That did not work, I will try to locate it again
@AM2
Here we go, this Reddit link gives you the same article
https://m.reddit.com/r/MH370/comments/2cd8k5/mh370_report_malaysia_airlines_only_attempted_to/
@Victorl
Is the “assembly of FSX and FS9” Z mentions in the link as being October 2012, irrelevant to the “installation data of FS9 on Dec 23, 2013.”? Or perhaps not irrelevant but different?
http://www.x-sim.de/forum/viewtopic.php?f=3&t=20&start=110
@Susie Crowe and @All
Thanks Susie. This is not my area of expertise so could someone (perhaps Ventus) please clarify:
From Reddit http://auntypru.com/forum/-Australia-ATSB-and-MH-370?page=34
comments by Curtis and Ventus45, if there had been regular calls to the plane, they would have reset the GES timer and we would have had far fewer BTOs.
But from http://www.news.com.au/travel/travel-updates/incidents/mh370-report-malaysia-airlines-only-attempted-to-contact-missing-plane-twice-over-six-hours/news-story/0f5c230dc2f6da2b09612d0654234c5d
“If they’d been calling the plane, the satellite would have tried to log on and the aircraft pinger would have tried to respond,” said Captain Woodward.
“That would have given you a distance from the station and they would have got a more accurate idea where the aircraft went. The very act of the pinging would have narrowed down where to look.”
So these appear to contradict… if MAS had tried calling often what would have been the result? [For Aussies…I hesitate to say this but please explain :-)]
Sorry … Auntypru not Reddit in the above
@JS, Everytime a phone call would come in after 18:25, it would generate a BFO value, but not a BTO value. As I pointed out to you in my last reply, spoofers would be concerned about BFO, not BTO values. So this would not be a concern at all.
@Brian Anderson, I just think it’s important for everyone to understand that the IG’s prediction of where the plane would be found was wrong, and that its subsequent browbeating of anyone who disagreed with them was the product of equal parts arrogance, incompetence, and bullying, and that its subsequent inability to acknowledge its failure is a stunning of moral failure.
However, as an admirer of Vladimir Putin, you are free to create whatever reality you choose and pump it out into the world in a toxic smokescreen of misunderstanding.
Who are you, anyway?
@M Pat, And what is your theory?
@VictorI, I would certainly co-author such a paper if I was able to find a marine biologist who specialized in air-breathing Lepas. Suggestions welcome.
You do not need permission from your elusive friend. Just tell me the drifter number and I will retrieve the data myself. Why must you always be so obtuse?
@Susie Crow: ZS was a long-time MSFS enthusiast. I imagine over the course of many years he installed various versions of MSFS on multiple machines. I don’t know how to relate the statement from October 2012 to the specific installation of FS9 in Dec 2013.
@AM2
If ground to air calls cause the timer to reset thereby affecting ping intervals, in my opinion it would take a significant number of calls in an hour to eliminate a ping by pushing it into the next sequence from constant timing delays. Most important though and I think what you are asking, if dozens of calls were made, could that data be used in the same manner or is it one and the same ping data
@Jeff – I am inclined to disagree that the BTO logging was not known to a theoretical spoofer.
First of all, we don’t really know who the “spoofer” was, so we don’t know if they had inside information or not.
Second, spoofing only BFO doesn’t seem to have much value as a spoof. Because of the vertical aspect of the doppler shift, BFO alone really doesn’t tell anyone much unless they know approximately where the plane is. If you had no radar or BTO data, could BFO even tell you north or south? I don’t think it would. You couldn’t tell a diving southbound plane from a level northbound plane.
While I understand your logic about the knowledge of the BTO logging and the difficulties in spoofing BTO vs BFO, I believe any viable spoof scenario requires knowledge of both.
If the spoofer had knowledge of both, we must assume both could be spoofed. But not if the phone was ringing off the hook.
@jeffwise: Despite your snide remark, I’ll answer politely. You should find one or more experts who agree that the flaperon tests conclusively prove that barnacle growth was impossible on the upper trailing edge, as you assert. Part of this would be proving that the upper trailing edge remained dry. If the evidence is as incontrovertible as you suggest, it should be easy to find a corroborating expert. Write a paper together documenting your findings, and allow peer review. I assure you that you will be taken more seriously if presented in this manner, even if the consensus is not in agreement with your conclusions.
Regarding the temperature histories along the drift path, the two drifters that were identified were 70854 and 9525791. I take no credit for identifying these. It was the work of somebody else.
@ Jeff Wise,
There you go again. Half cocked. Various members of the IG made various predictions based on the data available at the time. Members of the IG have made and published other predictions since, based on later data. Isn’t that the way science works ?
And where did you get the impression that I am an admirer of Vladimir Putin? I’ve not mentioned his name here. Oh, maybe because I said that I met my wife in Moscow. Well that’s how the MSM works isn’t it? Create a conspiracy where there is none. As it happens I have also been to Russia 4 times [3 when it was the Soviet Union]. But I have also been to Canada, USA, Japan, Singapore, Malaysia, Thailand, UK, France, Italy, Spain multiple times. It’s tough being an agent of them all.
Who am I ? All you need to know is. . . just some average Jo Bloggs interested in the scientific aspects of the loss and search for MH370.