'Contact lost' with Malaysia Airlines plane

Iran could provide it. He'd have to be a pretty good programmer too, although the TCAS II spec is in the public domain... if you know what you are looking for.

More TFH: they already have jets that they can fly at Israel :(
 
I still reckon its at the bottom of the Indian Ocean.... Pilot suicide or Hijacking Fail...

Though the remote possibility that it did sneakily land somewhere, if that turns out to be true... we'll never hear the end of it from CT nutters...
 
Tuppy_Glossop said:
As for the mobile phones, what about a small signal jammer ? How big are they ? Could you disguise one as a laptop ? The two Iranians on false passports have at least one laptop bag between them. Cockpit door stays locked, nobody knows the Iranians are involved. Pilot says "We've been diverted", everybody is calm.

[tfh]Do they want the Freescale guys ? (hope they don't need tech to set off enriched uranium) or just a jet to fly into Israel ?[/tfh]
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Mobile jammers are tiny and *very* effective.
 
A good summary on PPRUNE:
- 1:06 - ACARS last transmission (thru VHF)
- 1:11 - Boeing received attempted message to their AHM (thru Satellite)
- 1:19 - Transmitter shut off
- 1:21 - 'Alright, Good Night' at handover (supposedly by co-pilot)
(those previous two might be reversed, we have multiple sources seemingly confirming both possibilities. One happened at 1:19. one at 1:21 though)
- approx 1:15-1:30 - Vietnam sees plane turn around
(meaning turn was possibly before transponder was disconnected unless it was a military radar picking up the plane at that location both before and after it went dark. We don't know which told them it turned)
- 1:36 - ACARS misses scheduled transmission
- 1:30-1:45 - at minimum 11 eye witness reports from around and past the Kota Bharu, Malaysia/Thailand border areas (including one saying 'plane descending fast' like one of the later radar hits indicates)
- 2:11 - Boeing received attempted message to their AHM (thru Satellite)
- between 1:30-2:40 - Military radar picks up an "unidentified" plane flying around (and possibly Civilian radar too, as officials said "corroborated by civilian radar" in one of their press conferences). Those include a couple radar hits we have been told about (and who knows how many that haven't been provided/leaked):
... VAMPI
... GIVAL
... IGREX at 2:40 (there might be another possible explanation for this one, as it is sometimes reported one of the above 2 which was at 2:15 is the last time it was picked up)
post 2:15/2:40 apparent absolute complete blackout of plane (except...)
- 3:11 - Boeing received attempted message to their AHM (thru Satellite)
- 4:11 - Boeing received attempted message to their AHM (thru Satellite)
- 5:11 - Boeing received attempted message to their AHM (thru Satellite)
- 6:11 - Boeing received attempted message to their AHM (thru Satellite)
- 7:11 - Boeing received attempted message to their AHM (thru Satellite) near 40 Degree line
- 8:11 - Boeing received attempted message to their AHM (thru Satellite) on 40 Degree line


A few other things we know(/might know) and notes

- ELT never picked up in all searched areas

- absolutely no possible way there is wreckage at or near last ATC contact point. 14 countries with Ships, Planes and Satellite focusing on the small, unbelievably shallow area can not have missed a 777 for 8 days. Seriously, compare that to AF477 evidence being found on day 2. That is despite AF447 taking place in the middle of the Atlantic in roughly 15,500 Feet of water (with a sub at a depth of 12,800 feet eventually finding the black box), where MH370 was 120 miles off the coast of Kota Bharu (and a similar distance from Vietnam) in water with a mean depth of 150 feet. In fact submerged AF447 debris was spread for over at least 50 miles, or approximately 1/5th-1/6th the distance from land (Malaysia) to land (Vietnam) where MH370 would have been crashing. IT IS JUST NOT THERE!

- no other unexplained "unidentified" radar hits have been reported by any country in the area.

- ACARS never sends(/attempts to send) emergency transmissions indicating systems are being affected from a catastrophic event taking place (compare that to AF447 which sent 25 such messages over the roughly 3 minutes of catastrophic failure)

- the scheduled maintenance troubleshooting system that was refused because of Malaysia not having the AHM subscription is apparently, but not absolutely confirmed, a ACARS report

- it is not confirmed that Boeing received an overall total of 8 AHM attempts; we have been told of "6" such messages. That said, there were a scheduled 6 such messages after disappearing. So, either those are the 6 they are referring to, or the plane landed for 2-3 hours somewhere along the trail (Has any Government indicated they believe it might have landed and taken off prior to 8:11? If not, then the "6" would have to be assumed the 6 coming post last radar contact)

- possible contact from another plane just past 1:30. We do know multiple people were "frantically" attempting to get a hold of it for quite a while after the transponder went off
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Has it been confirmed that during the AHM 'pings' the plane was definitely flying still? I assume any confirmation will be due to either signal would be lost if the plane has crashed and/or the timing of the signals was different so they know the plane was moving.

Apologies if this has been covered, I haven't been keeping up to date the last couple of days. Skim read the last page but seemed to be mostly a discussion on plane location if they had two satellites.
 
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Greboth said:
Has it been confirmed that during the AHM 'pings' the plane was definitely flying still? I assume any confirmation will be due to either signal would be lost if the plane has crashed and/or the timing of the signals was different so they know the plane was moving.

Apologies if this has been covered, I haven't been keeping up to date the last couple of days. Skim read the last page but seemed to be mostly a discussion on plane location if they had two satellites.
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No they haven't said whether it was flying or not (and they have raised the possibility that it could have been on the ground with engines running). Interesting that the last two pings were both around the 40 Degree line...
 
touch said:
It's not 2D projecting onto a 3D surface, it's a 2D plane intersecting a 3D sphere.

I'll do another diagram to explain, because that wasnt very clear :p

edit: here we go
bgpqFNF.png

Perspective isnt quite right on the circle, but you get the idea.
With 2 satellites, plane could be at any point on that circle. The curve of the circle is very flat near the earth, so any small changes in altitude can move the plane a large distance along the line.
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Ok, I'll wade in...:(

Explain in your situation then how with one satellite they have managed to get a small arc of a few tens of km wide. If a satellite at another location picked up the ping then you could have had another arc of similar style indicating an area along that arc where the plane could have been. Where both of those intersect is where the plane would have been at the time of the ping (or 50% chance).

We are actually looking at two cones projecting onto a sphere so your circle makes no sense. Are you calculating this mathematically? If so can you provide the formula?

My calculations suggest with a geostationary satellite at 38,000km you're looking at a 1:3,800 change in the length of the cone which results in a variation of about 10-15km for the hypotenuse. Considering the error in the system is going to be significantly larger than that there is no reason you couldn't have ended up with two 1,000km2 areas to search at each intersection. That was my initial point.

EDIT: AHH! Just a sec, are you making the assumption that the cone radius is that of earth? That would explain your diagram! That's not going to be the case though as it was the angle of return that was also used. The maximum radius of the cone would be 6,300km (that of earth - although the inmarsat website suggests it's actually less than that, with the poles not covered) however with the angle or return calculated as well the radius is a lot smaller, potentially 5,300km. That gives two intersecting cones on a spherical earth that don't reach the poles.
 
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Just as an aside - not that the spherical geometry lesson isn't interesting - does the satellite in question actually log any location data at all? I read somewhere that they know something about signal strength of the Ping but if this data transmission is not designed to be tagged for location would we have ever had anything to query?
 
IIRC there's a theory in problem solving (like Occam's razor etc) that says "Give the evidence to a massive number of the general public, and see what logical solution they come up with. It will probably be more accurate than what a couple of experts say"

Can't remember what that theory is called or whether my lecturer made it up though!
 
Westyfield2 said:
IIRC there's a theory in problem solving (like Occam's razor etc) that says "Give the evidence to a massive number of the general public, and see what logical solution they come up with. It will probably be more accurate than what a couple of experts say"

Can't remember what that theory is called or whether my lecturer made it up though!
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To be honest, I don' think that's true. Case in point, looks at the some of the drivel that has been said in here.
 
Beren said:
Just as an aside - not that the spherical geometry lesson isn't interesting - does the satellite in question actually log any location data at all? I read somewhere that they know something about signal strength of the Ping but if this data transmission is not designed to be tagged for location would we have ever had anything to query?
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From what I understand the satellites communications for this sort of ping is basically a "is unit 123 there?" and logging a "yes" reply.
The response doesn't include any GPS or other location data and as there is only the one satellite listening in it can only go by the signal strength, for anything more to be learned it would require at least two or three receivers to pick up the signal and all of them to be synced very precisely.

As it is from what I understand they're going purely by the signal strength as received, the known location of the receiver, and the designed strength of the transmitter.
If the transmitter is outputting at higher or lower than their assumption (it shouldn't really because will be a very highly tested design) their calculations will be off, likewise the moisture content of the air can affect it I think.

So basically they've got a ball park figure based on what they know, and the design.
 
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