The shock is wearing off as we realize the missing airliner could have OUR loved ones aboard. Folks, this disaster affects each one of us no matter where we are, or what we do, let's hope and pray this apparent air disaster is resolved very soon!
What do you think really happened?
Heck I wonder if they will ever find out. Airplane disappears 40k ft in the air out in the middle of the ocean..... Gonna take a lot of CSI'ing to figure it out.
I figure he flew into a cloud full of rocks in Vietnam or Laos. The mountains over there are treacherous.
Quote from: DanG on March 10, 2014, 01:49:56 PM
I figure he flew into a cloud full of rocks in Vietnam or Laos. The mountains over there are treacherous.
He was at 31,000 feet over the ocean. Kind of hard to find rocks up there. They have his radar track up until the point it disappeared. After that, if he was still in one piece, military radar, which doesn't depend on a transponder on the plane, would have been able to track him. There is no indication that any of those radars had contract beyond shortly after the transponder went silent.
They're in the water somewhere.
I just heard on the radio that there maybe a Iranian involvement in this..take that with a salt tablet as DanG would say.
Other things they said was that the Pilot was some kind of pilot, guru, techie guy who had a simulator of this plane in his house and practiced all the time..
That if it was a plane malfunction in just about any way there are so many alarms, warnings, and automatic transponder signals that would occur everyone would have known.
That leaves a catastrophic occurrence.
There was a plane crash In 2007 that took 9 or 10 days to find and over a month to find the black box. I'm with Bill, hard to believe that there was no distress signal without some type of big time failure. I'm definitely not an expert but hold an Airframe and Powerplant license. Theres so may redundancies built into modern planes it would take a huge failure to bring one down with no time to signal. Wouldn't it be nice if they were floating out there somewhere like the miracle on the Hudson?
The Iranian bought the tickets for the two who are known to have had stolen passports. Reports say he bought four total. He wasn't on the plane himself.
The pilot was very talented. He built his own simulator. There are pictures of it online.
In my opinion, there are only two logical scenarios:
1. Massive and catastrophic electrical failure, possibly a battery explosion, leading to loss of control and breakup or crash of the aircraft.
Why? Because the aircraft's radar transponder went silent and there was no mayday or other communications from the crew. In addition, there were no ACARS transmissions after the transponder went silent. ACARS is an automated message system that reports aircraft system information to the airline's maintenance people. If the plane had remained intact and airborne for any length of time, there would have been ACARS transmissions.
2. Bomb in the luggage. The airline, like most others, removes checked luggage if the owner doesn't board. That requires someone aboard to be sacrificed, either knowingly or unknowingly. We don't know how well the checked luggage is otherwise screened. There has been recent intelligence gathered terrorist Internet chatter about a new undetectable bomb having supposedly been developed. The passengers with stolen passports whose tickets were purchased by a third party. The real reason they were on the plane may have simply been to get their luggage into the hold. All of this fits together, but isn't proof.
Makes me think of the Quantas A380 that had an uncontained engine failure a few years back. Bit's of turbine flew in all directions and badly damaged the plane. They were lucky that it still flew. Could just as easily suffered explosive decompression / caught fire / lost flight controls (maybe all 3?)
Check the photos here and see how lucky they were.
http://www.businessinsider.com.au/frightening-photos-from-the-report-on-the-qantas-a380-incident-show-exactly-what-happened-2013-7#qantas-atsb-1 (http://www.businessinsider.com.au/frightening-photos-from-the-report-on-the-qantas-a380-incident-show-exactly-what-happened-2013-7#qantas-atsb-1)
Not hard to imagine how with a bit of bad luck that sort of damage would bring a plane down?
I see NZ is sending a P3 search plane up to help.
Fellows:
I am no aviation expert, but I think that if a catastropic failure occured at that elevation that there would be a large debris field easily spottable from the air. Would someone explain to me why this would not be the case. Gerald
Quote from: GAB on March 10, 2014, 08:14:11 PM
Fellows:
I am no aviation expert, but I think that if a catastropic failure occured at that elevation that there would be a large debris field easily spottable from the air. Would someone explain to me why this would not be the case. Gerald
I was of the same opinion, but the experts being quoted by the press say that the field would be so wide and the pieces so small they would be very difficult spot from the air.
I would think that there would be floaters like suitcases, etc. To me, it makes more sense that it went down whole, but at this point, who knows??
Have been reviewing the Space Shuttle "Columbia" disaster back in 2003. It blew up as it enter the Earth's atmosphere...strewing debris over three states, over 2000 debris fields were found and as recently as 2011 a 4' piece of debris recovered from a lake near Natcogdoches, La.
Of course, NASA was watching closely as the disaster happened; the Shuttle exploding directly over U.S. land mass, big difference land vs. sea in recovery.
I originally felt that it made an unscheduled landing somewhere, but then if the plane had been comandeered, surely someone would have made a cellphone call to somewhere!
If it was terrorists, there was no warning given to the passengers, just got over some land (jungle) and poof.
No time for phone calls!
50 yrs. ago in the USN I was in VP-50 a squardon that did S.A.R.(sea air rescue) and other stuff in that place We flew the P5M ( a sea plane that no one in the U.S every heard of ) We flew low and slow and was good at finding parts. In 50 mission we never found any people alive. Finding parts isn't great.
A year after I got out they had to find one of our planes that went down, which caused a lot of broken hearts that never could heal,
VP-50 went from P5M to P3 (eletral II) to P8 (737) now days.
I think a meter got the plane thats down now.
This is reminding me more and more of the Air France flight that flew into the ocean a couple of years ago. They didn't know they had a problem until just before they hit the water...from 35,000 feet. This one was supposedly 1 hour into the flight, which would put them over a mountainous wilderness in Cambodia.
The news story is this: "The plane has disappeared, know one knows what happened, crews are searching, nothing has been found so far." Period. Full stop.
That's not good enough for the media, so they speculate. Dozens of tiny bits of information surface that only form part of the picture. But the media wants a "story" so they put the bits of information together in whatever way that makes a "story", even if it bears no resemblance to reality.
Quote from: DeepCreek on March 10, 2014, 02:02:03 PM
... He was at 31,000 feet over the ocean. Kind of hard to find rocks up there. They have his radar track up until the point it disappeared. After that, if he was still in one piece, military radar, which doesn't depend on a transponder on the plane, would have been able to track him. There is no indication that any of those radars had contract beyond shortly after the transponder went silent. ...
"The Malaysian military has radar data showing the missing Boeing 777 jetliner changed course and made it to the Malacca Strait, hundreds of kilometres from the last position recorded by civilian authorities, according to a senior military official."
"A high-ranking military official involved in the investigation confirmed the report and also said the plane was believed to be flying low."Quote from: DeepCreek on March 10, 2014, 04:08:18 PM
... The Iranian bought the tickets for the two who are known to have had stolen passports. ...
"Interpol Secretary General Ronald K. Noble said the two men travelled to Malaysia on their Iranian passports, then apparently switched to their stolen Austrian and Italian documents. He said speculation of terrorism appeared to be dying down 'as the belief becomes more certain that these two individuals were probably not terrorists.' " The current thinking now is that the two men were fleeing Iran and seeking refugee status. There are very few cases of Iranians carrying out suicide attacks.
Quote from: GAB on March 10, 2014, 08:14:11 PM
... I am no aviation expert, but I think that if a catastropic failure occured at that elevation that there would be a large debris field easily spottable from the air. Would someone explain to me why this would not be the case.
The wings falling off would be a catastrophic failure. Without it's wings, a plane at that elevation travelling at cruising speed would travel several miles. If it completely lost power it could glide much further. If there was a failure in one of the control surfaces, it could plunge straight down.
All that leaves an enormous area to search.
The problem with searching large areas is that if the searchers are low enough to identify debris, they have to fly an incredibly long search pattern. If they're high to scan a large area, they won't be able so see the smaller debris. On the ocean, the larger debris will sink immediately.
It can take days to years to find a large aircraft that disappears outside heavily populated areas. The search is most intense right after the crash because that's when there is the greatest chance of finding survivors. And that is what attracts the media.
PS: My quotes (in italics) are from this article, which is being updated routinely.
http://www.cbc.ca/news/world/malaysia-airlines-flight-mh370-was-well-off-course-military-says-1.2567697
Certainly a mystery. But a plane with a disabled crew (lack of oxygen?) can continue to fly for hours until it eventually runs out of fuel and crashes. If it headed out into the Indian Ocean it could be thousands of miles away from the search area, or ANY land.
Ian
Quote from: Ianab on March 11, 2014, 03:31:20 PM
Certainly a mystery. But a plane with a disabled crew (lack of oxygen?) can continue to fly for hours until it eventually runs out of fuel and crashes. If it headed out into the Indian Ocean it could be thousands of miles away from the search area, or ANY land.
Ian
That was the situation that killed Golfer Payne Stuart in a Lear Jet. They left Florida bound for Texas and crashed in S.Dakota hours later.
http://www.golftoday.co.uk/news/yeartodate/news99/stewart1.html
I have not read all the replies but I don't miss the news on this subject.
Personally, I think the plane landed, by force.......somewhere.
Quote from: POSTONLT40HD on March 11, 2014, 08:35:15 PM
I have not read all the replies but I don't miss the news on this subject.
Personally, I think the plane landed, by force.......somewhere.
I'm with Poston. Something straight out of a movie. Disable the transponder and land at some abandoned air strip.
i feel like the plane went under the radar and flew someplace and landed. they could have disabled all cell phones/or plane radios with some sort of device in the luggage.
how many plane crashes had we had where the beacon did not ping when it crashed? just curious.
its a bad deal no matter how you slice it, the next time we see that flight it may be shot down by jet fighters, bad guys could put any sort of armament on it and fly it wherever they want. i would say homeland security better keep their eyes open.
This is entirely possible. The 2 guys with stolen passports are Iranian. News media says they aren't linked to any terrorist orgs. but what do they know. ::) Maylasian Air Force says the plane turned back and overflew Maylasia. The plane has a range of 5700+ miles, well within range of Somalia and several other rogue nations. No worries about cell phones, as they don't work out over the ocean, and satellite phones don't work inside a metal tube. It will turn up somewhere, sometime. Until then this is all speculation.
Quote
... plane landed, by force.......somewhere.
... land at some abandoned air strip.
... flew someplace and landed.
I have an idea. Tell us where "someplace" might be. Seriously. You should be able to do it. Here's what to look for ...
- An airstrip in an unpopulated area.
- Has to be at least 1 mile long to land. 2 miles if it's going to take off.
- Needs to be paved & well-maintained (that aircraft weighs 600,000 pounds).
You can narrow the possibilities a lot. The plane disappeared off the civilian radar about an hour before it was widely reported. At a cruising speed of below 600 MPH, that gives you a pretty specific area to examine.
After that the military would have been actively looking for it so it would have to fly very low. Much of the landmass in the region is very mountainous. The aircraft would pretty much have to stay over the ocean, and the airfield would have to be near the ocean.
Don't forget, that's not a Beechcraft or a Cessna. The 777 is one huge airplane. If it were flying into a remote area, it would be noticed.
North Korea?
you probably right, it just disappeared, don't worry about it.
Wonder what caused the oil slick that was originally spotted? I wonder if a sample was taken to analyze to determine if it was jet fuel?
Maybe the plane had the capability to dump fuel as a diversion tactic?
I read or heard somewhere that the slick was not aircraft related.
The pictures I saw of it did not look like a fuel slick. Much heavyer than that. Looked more like, and I hate to say this, something from drilling ar somebody blew their bilges. Fuel slicks will be shiny and multi colored, or at least that is my experiance.
Quote from: Magicman on March 12, 2014, 09:46:01 AM
Wonder what caused the oil slick that was originally spotted? I wonder if a sample was taken to analyze to determine if it was jet fuel?
Maybe the plane had the capability to dump fuel as a diversion tactic?
The Vietnamese recovered a sample and sent it to a lab. They reported it be something other than jet fuel or lubricant, according to press reports.
I read they now suspect it flew for hours after the transponder quit. The engines automatically upload data while in flight an this is how they figured it out. The transponder doesn't get turned off and the plane gets flown for several more hours on accident. It's somewhere. And probably not at the bottom of the ocean If you wanted to steal a plane, make them search millions of acres of ocean while you land it somewhere far away. Great diversion tactic.
I read that, then I read that Malaysian authorities denied it.
The latest (from a US official) is that Boeing has a satellite data service to monitor aircraft function (for a fee) but that Malaysia airlines didn't subscribe to it.
The plane's system was automatically pinging the satellite but without the subscription, no actual data was sent. The ping signal went on for 4 hours after the last communication. All the official can say for sure is that the Boeing transmitter had power during that time.
Just read on FaceBook that the plane was found and it is located over 2,000 miles off-shore and THERE ARE SURVIVORS!
Edit: Can't be true, read another post and it said the plane was found in the Bermuda Triangle! :-\
Just don't add up!
I can speculate with the best of 'em. What if terrorists were on board, they introduced a chemical that neutralized everyone within minutes, except the terrorists. The terrorist turns off all communications and flys the jet over ocean until engines fail, mission accomplished.
The purpose is to put fear into the commercial aviation industry knowing the cause will not be known for a long time.
I hope I'm terribly wrong.
I think our government or others know whats happened to to it and its a terrorist situation and their trying to figure out how to deal with it.
Bush did it.
The one that hasnt been president,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,Yet!!!!!! :D
Nice to think it landed somewhere and they are all alive, but just not probable. Its a big ocean and I'm afraid that's where it will be found soon.
I haven't followed this too closely, but I feared from the beginning that the plane was commandeered...a terrifying prospect. As bad as it sounds, I was and am still hoping that the plane somehow took a nosedive into the ocean and is gone.A tragedy certainly, but the alternative is unthinkable.
I haven't followed this to closely but if the Maylasian Air Force suspected terrorists could they have shot the plane down and made a story that the plane changed coarse after the transponder stopped? I hope not but it could have happened..
The Malaysian authorities seem terribly inept in reporting all information, fortunately I think they're out of the main picture now and we have much more responsible and less political entities involved.
But, what about the crew, the stewards, and those more than two hundred innocent passengers flying nowhere for several hours. Were they all incapacitated by some form of gas ? No contacts by personal cell phones. Did the perpetrator turn off the oxygen and heating, then fly up to 45,000' to make sure no one could survive?
They have already reported that if you called their cell phone.....it would ring......but the phone itself would not ring because of the altitude of the plane away from the cell tower.
I'm believing, like you said chain.....the oxygen was turned off and the plane went to 45,000 ft.....it would then be "seconds" for the passengers to go right to sleep and die.
Now, when the plane went back down to 23,000......it is possible the dead were thrown out to sea or left on the plane.
But I am sticking to my first thoughts that this plane is on the ground somewhere. It was landed by at least 2 well educated terrorist who knew the operations of this plane blind folded. Pilots, and everyone else are gone.
We hear people complaining all the time how Government can take satellite and zoom in on the earth and read your tag number or can see what your eating........why can we not look for this plane in the same manner? The U.S. may be. It was reported that we (the U.S.) probably know more than they can tell and I believe that.
For the last 3 days I've keep hearing the subject UFO coming up.......No comment. :)
There are only a finite number of places where that size plane could have landed (in one piece) Even less where it could be landed AND hidden. Maybe 5 in the whole of NZ? You can bet that satellites have taken snaps of those places to check, even if the locals haven't looked over the fence and tweeted about the new plane there. Hijack / piracy gone wrong? Crew gone off the deep end? Sounds most likely. But I still think it's now in bits at the bottom of the ocean.
State sponsored terrorism? Doubt it. Anyone with the resources to pull that off could just charter a commercial jet anyway.
Ian
Good point of view Ian. This whole tragic event is probably a movie in the making.
Sure gives me a warm fuzzy feeling about all the flying I do. :(
Quote from: POSTONLT40HD on March 16, 2014, 03:02:55 PM
Good point of view Ian. This whole tragic event is probably a movie in the making.
Don't you know it, I can't help but think about what it must have been like when Amelia went missing,
albeit a totally different situation, tragic all the same,
I just read that the last voice transmission was made after the transponder and tracking devices were turned off. Weird.
the more I see on the news and what I've read on this, I almost hate to say it seems like a conspiracy of some sort. How could it be so perfectly disguised? No contact from anyone, the pilot's keen understanding of the plane, not that all pilots don't have the same, but this is a strange case, almost like they were hired to ditch and bale out, who knows,
I just hope they find the aircraft and that everyone is ok
Quote from: drobertson on March 16, 2014, 09:23:12 PM
the more I see on the news and what I've read on this, I almost hate to say it seems like a conspiracy of some sort. ...
"Never attribute to malice, that which is adequately explained by stupidity."
The whole situation was so badly handled that people were searching in the wrong places at the wrong times. Zooming in with a satellite is fine, provided the people who control them A) know they're supposed to, and B) know where to look.
I just drew a circle on the map, centered on the planes last confirmed position (one hour into the flight) with a radius equal to the flying distance from their to Beijing. It covers all of India, 2/3 of China, part of South Korea, just touches Japan, a portion of New Guinea, all of Indonesia, and a nice chunk of Australia. Land accounts for about 1/3 of the area -- the rest is ocean.
The latest bit of news has to do with the satellite-based diagnostic system that the airline didn't pay to use. The transponder on the plane pinged the satellite every hour but sent no information (because they hadn't subscribed to the service). All that tells the authorities is that the plane was still functional. But the people who operated the system are trying something that has never been done before. It seems that after getting pinged a couple of times, the satellite automatically "points" it's receiver roughly toward the expected location of the next signal an hour later. This is all pretty crude but they are trying to refine the data. Instead of a huge circle, it looks like they will be able to identify two large fan-shaped search areas, one to the North and one to the South.
The visual search is greatly complicated by the fact that there is so much junk floating on the worlds oceans. There have been hundreds of false alarms already.
Many of us have that curiosity that we want to know what happened, how it happened and how to stop it from happening in the future. We can get wrapped up in wanting to know as soon as possible. Sure, I want to know, but I normally record the news shows and fast forward through most of it to get to spots where I can actually learn something. I watch as much news as anybody. I am fast forwarding through almost all of the talk on the missing plane, because there is not much new to be learned. It is possible that we may never know what happened if the plane went into the ocean and most of the debris sank. If enough floats that they can retrace using wind and currents, they may eventually find a smaller place to look.
The plane may very well never be found :(
They think this plane landed on an island......they just can't find it.
(https://forestryforum.com/gallery/albums/userpics/24625/Plane.jpg)
Remember the TV show LOST came out a few years ago hmmm?????
Quote from: POSTONLT40HD on March 17, 2014, 05:32:00 PM
They think this plane landed on an island......they just can't find it.
(https://forestryforum.com/gallery/albums/userpics/24625/Plane.jpg)
Good one. Not a funny situation but sometimes a little humor is due. Too much misinformation coming out for me to ever believe that the truth will come out.
Wouldn't surprise me if the plane was safely landed somewhere and all communications stuff was confiscated!
The whole situation is a mess. Officials passing off conjecture as fact, assumptions being made on misinformation, several countries searching in the wrong place with the wrong equipment, etc.
Hijacked? Where is it? Where's the ransom demands? IF it was a hijacking, it most likely went wrong and the plane crashed.
Terrorists? Terrorists exist to cause terror. No one has claimed responsibility (unless one or more governments is holding out on us).
Mechanical or electrical failure? I suspect this is the answer. The one absolutely solid source of information was from the transponder system that commercial aviation uses.
Aviation radar sends out a continuous stream of signals that bounce off aircraft and identify their bearing, elevation, and distance from the ground station. And unlike military radar systems, when the signal reaches the aircraft it is picked up by a transponder on the airplane which fires back a unique identification number.
That signal stopped 40 minutes into the flight. It COULD have been turned off (hijacking, terrorism, electrical overload), but it could also have been shut down by an electrical failure or an electrical fire.
All the other systems that "tracked" the plane have a weak connection. Military radar can't directly identify a civilian aircraft. Someone has to feed identification to the system and then it follows the aircraft. That's the weak link -- the military would have to "know" that signal they followed was actually the missing plane. The satellite system that was supposedly being "pinged" by the aircraft has never been used to locate an aircraft before. That was a desperate experiment.
My guess (and that's all it is) is that there was a serious incident, probably a fire, that took out the electrical communications system. It caused the pilots to turn back toward the nearest airfield, which would be standard operating procedure under the circumstances. And they didn't make it.
The black boxes on the plane send out a signal if they come down in the water, one that can best be detected by a specialized sonar device. The US Navy has one of the specialized units in that region, but they don't know where to send it to start searching.
According to an article I read, the transponder had been shut off and the plane had already turned when the last voice transmission was made.
Quote from: LeeB on March 16, 2014, 03:38:48 PM
Sure gives me a warm fuzzy feeling about all the flying I do. :(
Want to buy a ticket on Malysian Airlines now? Bet they are real cheap. :)
I've flown on others I felt were worse.
They gotta find their airplane before they can sell more tickets, Gary. ;D
I'm beginning to wonder why the airlines don't just subscribe to Onstar. They are tracking the movements and actions of tens of millions of GM cars constantly. With today's technology it is absurd that all of the info on every airliner is not being constantly monitored via satellite telemetry. ::)
The pilot was highly experienced flying those jets in that part of the world. Surely he knew where to fly and how high to fly to a avoid radar as much as possible. He had his own flight simulator and so probably knew how to fly an unthinkable course through a mountainous path and land at a short and terrible landing strip in the mountains or some other desolate spot somewhere. Anyone should know that planes can quickly be covered with camoflauge and there are even secret hangers built into mountainsides.
As far as terrorists causing terror, what could be more terrifying than a commercial airliner flying into crowded airspace around LAX or JFK loaded down with an Iranian or North Korean nuke?
If that nuke is detonated as high as possible somewhere over a major country the resulting electronic catastrophe would be enormous. What is to keep a plane from north Korea from doing just that?
I'd said North Korea from the beginning, glad to see someone agrees. But maybe all of us around here are just nuts. :D
Looks like the seller couldn't get the zero's straight on the price. :-\ Musta still been rattled from being lost for so long. ::)
I knew it would turn up!
Quote from: DanG on March 19, 2014, 12:32:39 PM
... With today's technology it is absurd that all of the info on every airliner is not being constantly monitored via satellite telemetry. ::)
Well, mostly they are. Except that some airlines choose not to subscribe to the service due to the cost.
But even without that, the radar/transponder system works very well. That's used on all large commercial aircraft.
The problem with both systems is that the pilots (on any airline) have the ability to turn them off. They insist on it. If there's a short circuit (they claim) then they need to be able to turn off the systems to prevent the short from shutting down all the electrics.
Yesterday CBC compiled a list of verified facts, including a timeline of events. Interestingly enough, they couldn't confirm an exact time for the last voice communication.
The search is deadlocked. The official search area is now about 1/3 the size of the United States :o.
The one thing that is certain is the plane's location when it stopped showing up on aviation radar. It would seem to me that's a logical place to bring in the US Navy ship that can detect the data recorders. Start from there and work outward to cover the initial search radius. Then move to where it was last believed to have been detected by military radar.
It may be a wasted effort, but so is sitting around waiting. The problem is that this might not sit well with the Malaysian authorities, who have said the plane is somewhere else. Unfortunately, egos are on the line.
And egos play a big part in certain regions.
Aussie have sent planes out to check some large floating stuff spotted by satellite. But it's 2300 km out into the Indian Ocean, West of Australia. First plane (Aussie P3) is supposed to get there about now, but they still have to find whatever it is. It's on the "Southern Arc", and the plane could have reached there. But it's one of the remotest spots on the planet. If it was any populated place it would have been found by now...
Even if it is the wreckage, they still have to find the rest of the plane and flight recorders to work out WHY it ended up there...
Ian
If the plane did indeed ditch , Diego Garcia had hard copy on this event within minutes, not to mention all the subs transiting to and from this base whose job it is to listen.Typically this data is classified and may never reach the "surface ', along with the plane. If it didn't ditch , I can't comment - that would be speculation.
Watching the Aussie search on the local news. Even if it is there, it will take a minor miracle to find. Search area is 1/3 the size of Texas, and the planes (Local P3s and a US P8) only have 2 to 3 hours endurance in the search area. Sea is ~4,000m deep, so they may not pick up the sonar pings anyway. :-\
Monitoring that area? That's a bit like when they asked the Indian Military if they had picked it up. "Well actually we don't usually turn the radars on in that area because nothing even happens there." They watch Pakistan, Afghanistan, China borders etc because "things" happen there. But that part of the Southern Ocean may as well be labelled "Here be Dragons" ::)
Ian
Quote from: Ianab on March 21, 2014, 02:46:03 AM
may as well be labelled "Here be Dragons" ::)
Ian
Musta landed in Hudsons Bay. And they made it ashore to York Factory. :D
They are continuing to torture the relatives of the passengers on that plane.
Ships race to investigate signals in jet search (http://apnews.myway.com//article/20140407/DAD0VIN00.html)
Houston confirmed the report and said the Haixun 01 detected a signal again on Saturday within 2 kilometers (1.4 miles) of the original signal, for 90 seconds. He said China also reported seeing floating white objects in the area.
The crew of the Chinese ship reportedly picked up the signals using a sonar device called a hydrophone dangled over the side of a small boat - something experts said was technically possible but extremely unlikely. The equipment aboard the British and Australian ships is dragged slowly behind each vessel over long distances and is considered far more sophisticated.
Footage on China's state-run CCTV showed crew members poking into the water a device shaped like a large soup can attached to a pole. It was connected by cords to electronic equipment in a padded suitcase.
"If the Chinese have discovered this, they have found a new way of finding a needle in a haystack," said aviation expert Geoffrey Thomas, editor in chief of AirlineRatings.com. "Because this is amazing. And if it proves to be correct, it's an extraordinarily lucky break."
I was on a whale watch earlier this year in Mexico. They dangled one of those hydrophones overboard to listen for whales. There was one in the area. I could hear one faintly. But, it worked, and I don't know how deep it was. But, the sloshing of the waves was a lot louder, due tot he wind.
Who knows? If they had it deep enough, they could have heard something. But, I remember when the Chinese said they spotted it from their satellite. It seems like the Chinese are trying to showcase their technological prowess.
Sometimes the simple things work better than the more complicated ones.
The Australians also picked up the ping twice, so there is something down there. I think there is talk of sending down a submersible.
I have a question regarding all this technology being used.Do large submarines not have the capability to do the work that surface ships are doing?
Don, Yes they do. I had mentioned in an earlier post a hint about the role that subs might play in this mystery. My job in the 80's was to hide, and seek acoustical signatures , most definitely in that geographical area, as well as elsewhere....My heart goes out to the surviving family members involved, if indeed the plane did ditch.
Submarines certainly could pick up the sonar pulses, but I don't know they would do any better than the surface ships towing a submerged detector?
It's also a case of what resources you have in the area. The detector they are using was flown out from the US and loaded aboard an Australian navy survey ship that was in the area.
It may also be that the towed sensor can be more sensitive, being separated from the electrical and mechanical "noise" of the ship?
Ian
Just a thought: Being knowledgeable about a subject comes from experience over time. Being smart is knowing when and where to apply that knowledge appropriately. Wise comes from being smart for a very, very long time. My thought is that I should to go back to chopping wood......
It's been eight years since the disappearance of MH 370 and now there is new news and some old news that may not have been disclosed at the time of the disappearance. Shocking new claims shed light on doomed MH370 flight (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CcIwt2bRDkc)
New news is the flight path has been refined by using a new technology WSPR Weak Signal Propagation Reporter (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WSPR_(amateur_radio_software)) of tracking airplanes using abnormalities in ham radio signals that may be caused by aircraft flying thru the signal. Using records they have now refined the flight path and determined a much smaller area to search which coincides with a location previously identified by a ocean drift pattern expert.
In May 2021, aerospace engineer (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aerospace_engineer) Richard Godfrey suggested an examination of historical WSPR data to further define the flight path of Malaysian Airlines flight MH370 (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malaysian_Airlines_flight_MH370) on 8 March 2014, suggesting that there were "518 unique transmission paths that cross the area of interest around Malaysia, the Malacca Strait and the Indian Ocean. With the WSPR data provided every two minutes and the ability to check against the satellite data every hour it is possible to detect and track MH370 from two independent sources."[7] (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WSPR_(amateur_radio_software)#cite_note-%E2%80%9D2021-05-05_ABC%E2%80%9D-7) In November 2021, Godfrey reported that analysis using WSPR technology indicated the aircraft flew in circles for around 22 minutes in an area 150 nautical miles from the coast of Sumatra (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sumatra) before vanishing.[8] (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WSPR_(amateur_radio_software)#cite_note-8) Later that month, Godfrey announced a proposed search area with a radius of 40.0 nautical miles (74.1 km) centered around 33.177°S 95.300°E in the southern Indian Ocean (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indian_Ocean). This new location was identified through extensive analysis of separate data sets, including Inmarsat (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inmarsat) satellite data, Boeing performance data, oceanographic floating debris drift data, and WSPR net data.[9] (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WSPR_(amateur_radio_software)#cite_note-9)[10] (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WSPR_(amateur_radio_software)#cite_note-10)
In February 2022, the Australian Transport Safety Bureau (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Australian_Transport_Safety_Bureau) and Geoscience Australia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geoscience_Australia) confirmed they have renewed the search for MH370 by reviewing old data, following the release of a detailed report by Godfrey.[11] (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WSPR_(amateur_radio_software)#cite_note-11) Marine robotics company Ocean Infinity (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ocean_Infinity) aims to resume the search for MH370 in the first half of 2023.
The other previously undisclosed information was also highlighted by WSPR data that showed that MH 370 had circled over the ocean just west of Malasia and perhaps was communicating with government officials over a political matter the pilot was involved with in the days before the fatal flight. Apparently some Malaysian government officials told Australian officials years ago they were certain the flight disappearance was caused by the pilots actions and his political involvement. Apparently the Malaysian government has always been certain the captain was solely responsible for the hijacking and attempted political ransoming of the plane and it's occupants.
That is what I had heard a few years ago. Some governments do not want the truth to be known. But that is what it is.