Malaysian Flight Hijacked?

[Mooneymite]

 

No one has indicated an ELT transmission from MH370. Unlike the old 121.5 Mhz ELT that needs to be on for about  an hour to get a fix  the new 406 ELT needs a fraction of a second to convey identity and location of the aircraft. The ELT on the B777 is tied to the master warning for automatic activation 20 seconds after a warning. For sure running out fuel would have activated the ELT or just the plane crashing. But no ELT signal from MH370 has been detected.

 

 

 

ELT's, even the newer 406's don't have much range when underwater.

[Mooneymite]

The other one I could not figure out is the sea state indicated by the news. If the sea is that rough how come I never see white caps on the search area. 

 

José

 

Perhaps the "file footage" they show of the search area was taken on a calmer day when the search aircraft were flying.

 

With a high sea state, search conditions are terrible.  A low flying recon aircraft's windows get encrusted with salt spray so thick you can't see out.  (And you think you have corrosion problems in your Mooney!)

 

I suspect there are weather charts for surface winds that would confirm that the wind was howling on any given day at most locations of interest.

[Piloto]

Maybe, maybe not.

 

30 days is a minimum.  I suspect the pingers are still sounding, but just weaker.

 

While much has been speculated, there is actually not much hard evidence.

 

I have two questions:

 

Has anyone heard anything about deployment of Global Hawks in the Indian Ocean?  The only place I've heard of Global Hawks deployed in any significant number is not in the current "area of probability" for Flt 370.

 

Has anyone heard any reports from the US Navy which maintains a "listening watch" over much of the earth's oceans.  Back in the day, the U. S. Navy knew when a Soviet Sub flushed a toilet.

 

The official silence from the two best sources of information seems strange to me.

 

However, there may be an official reason for not divulging capabilites.  Either that, or the location is well known and this search is just cover-drama.

 

100% with you on this one. Russians go on diapers now to avoid detection.

 

José

[Mooneymite]

100% with you on this one. Russians go on diapers now to avoid detection.

 

José

Uh, oh!

 

This is not a good thing.

 

People will think I'm on the same pills you take!

[Guest]

I see post 250 coming and 300 on the horizon! Are we working toward a new record?

[aviatoreb]

I see post 250 coming and 300 on the horizon! Are we working toward a new record?

 

Here - I will help and do my part.

[Piloto]

ELT's, even the newer 406's don't have much range when underwater.

 

Very true. That is why they need to be activated before crash. On a fire or underwater they are useless. On the old 121.5MHz it needed to be on for an hour or more just to get an approximate location by satellite. And by that time the ELT is gone even if turned on before crash. I have a velcro strip on top of the glareshield to quickly velcro on my 406 PLB and activate it while in-flight. After I ditch or crash I just pull it out from the glareshield. I have the original McMurdo Fast Find floating PLB with integral GPS. You can get them at marine stores for less than $250.

 

I also carry a floating marine VHF hand held two way radio. You do not want to miss a ride on that cruise ship on the horizon while waiting for the Coast Guard. 

 

Make sure you choose the best rescue option.

 

José

[AmigOne]

I know it is a big ocean out there but based on fuel autonomy, sea currents and other clues they have the possible crash areas narrowed down by now…..and not a single piece of floating debris?…that's strange.

[N33GG]

Well, in an effort to support the quest for 300, I will commit a thread hijacking...

I have been thinking about buying a PLB, and looking at the ResQLink+, as well as a few others. Any Pireps or opinions?

[Piloto]

The US Navy famous TPL-25 pinger locator has a detection range of 1nm when placed 1,000ft from the ocean floor. How come so many ships claim to heard the pings on the surface at more than 20nm from each other and at over 12,000ft from the ocean floor.

 

Most beacons transmit a pulse once a second at 37.5 kHz.^[3][2]

The hydrophone must be positioned below the thermocline layer which reflects sounds, either back to the surface or back to the ocean floor. Since the pinger signal is relatively weak, the hydrophone must be within about one nautical mile (6,076 feet (1,852 m)) to detect it. The hydrophone is typically deployed about 1,000 feet (300 m) above the ocean floor, where it can scan a swath approximately 12,000 feet (3,700 m) wide, on a flat, level

 

More details of the TPL-25 at:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Towed_pinger_locator

 

José

[Piloto]

Well, in an effort to support the quest for 300, I will commit a thread hijacking...

I have been thinking about buying a PLB, and looking at the ResQLink+, as well as a few others. Any Pireps or opinions?

I do not think you are going to get any Pireps on these PLBs. I have the floating original McMurdo Fast Find but has never used. After 7 years the lights still blinks when I push the TEST button. I do verify pulse transmission on 406 Mhz with my Icom 706. Hope never have to use it.

 

José

[N33GG]

 

The US Navy famous TPL-25 pinger locator has a detection range of 1nm when placed 1,000ft from the ocean floor. How come so many ships claim to heard the pings on the surface at more than 20nm from each other and at over 12,000ft from the ocean floor.

 

Most beacons transmit a pulse once a second at 37.5 kHz.^[3][2]

The hydrophone must be positioned below the thermocline layer which reflects sounds, either back to the surface or back to the ocean floor. Since the pinger signal is relatively weak, the hydrophone must be within about one nautical mile (6,076 feet (1,852 m)) to detect it. The hydrophone is typically deployed about 1,000 feet (300 m) above the ocean floor, where it can scan a swath approximately 12,000 feet (3,700 m) wide, on a flat, level

 

More details of the TPL-25 at:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Towed_pinger_locator

 

José

 

I think the biggest issue is that the plane was probably last pinging in Pakistan, not in the South Indian Ocean.  But it is still hard for me to imagine that our government would ever actually tell us a lie!   So I guess I'm conflicted....

[jkhirsch]

Bored at work...up until now I hadn't put any thought into the Flight 370 deal, but I just did some basic caluclations based on the information I could find.

 

I have heard that the "range" of the 777 that took off from WMKK was "7 hours," at a "typical cruise speed" cruise speed of 490kts would be a range of 3430nm.

According to the wikipedia page for Flight 370 the range was 5,300km which translates to only a difference of say.....~568nm!

 

When I started looking around for actual information an not the nonsense that the media presents to us it appears to be actually difficult to find.

I'm not calling conspiracy, but it just amazes me in 2014 how little hard facts are actually released to the public.

 

Also just for kicks I threw it on the great circle mapper, and radius around a point to be more "exact" from the last point of contact with ATC. I'm somewhat skeptical of military radar reports.

I assumed a 30 minute difference in fuel from the "last ATC contact point." ~245nm.

 

I'm not saying the plane has landed somewhere, but no one has presented any real information on why the "engineers" decided that the plane went south into the middle of nowhere.

I do understand they've mapped up satellite pings and whatnot, but I haven't seen any of the science behind it.

I think a hidden plane is impossible, unless they somehow got to Africa and literally have no contact with the rest of the world/depressurized the cabin and killed everyone.

 

I mean let's be honest about how a plane flies into the middle of nowhere:

Complete electronic failure and the pilots were lost?

The pilots were dead, and the plane flew itself there? 

 

I just think it's interesting, and I love information, even if it leads to junk science.

[yvesg]

I think they have found it... look at this:

http://www.cbsnews.com/news/malaysia-airlines-flight-370-georesonance-wreckage-of-a-commercial-airliner-found/

They claim these patterns appeared somewhen between March 5th and March 10th.

Yves

[yvesg]

OK Ned, you are currently the closest one among us to that spot... do you see or ear any action from your point of view? Too bad you don't have your Mooney around cause you would have been able to go take a peek....

Yves

[jkhirsch]

I saw this this morning while I was junk sciencing it up, regardless of whether or not this is the real deal, it would certainly make more sense--to me--for the plane to be there...

[yvesg]

Over a month ago, they said that the plane could have taken two possible paths... north or south...see the following:

http://www.cnn.com/2014/03/14/world/asia/malaysia-airlines-plane/

Looks like someone decided then to focus the search on the south... why didn't they also searched on the north path? I guess the British guys that did the analysis missed something....

Yves

[Piloto]

.

 

I have heard that the "range" of the 777 that took off from WMKK was "7 hours," at a "typical cruise speed" cruise speed of 490kts would be a range of 3430nm.

According to the wikipedia page for Flight 370 the range was 5,300km which translates to only a difference of say.....~568nm!

 

When I started looking around for actual information an not the nonsense that the media presents to us it appears to be actually difficult to find.

I'm not calling conspiracy, but it just amazes me in 2014 how little hard facts are actually released to the public.

 

Also just for kicks I threw it on the great circle mapper, and radius around a point to be more "exact" from the last point of contact with ATC. I'm somewhat skeptical of military radar reports.

I assumed a 30 minute difference in fuel from the "last ATC contact point." ~245nm.

 

I'm not saying the plane has landed somewhere, but no one has presented any real information on why the "engineers" decided that the plane went south into the middle of nowhere.

I do understand they've mapped up satellite pings and whatnot, but I haven't seen any of the science behind it.

I think a hidden plane is impossible, unless they somehow got to Africa and literally have no contact with the rest of the world/depressurized the cabin and killed everyone.

 

I mean let's be honest about how a plane flies into the middle of nowhere:

Complete electronic failure and the pilots were lost?

The pilots were dead, and the plane flew itself there? 

 

I just think it's interesting, and I love information, even if it leads to junk science.

I agree with your range calculations. If you draw a line from the departure point going west to Somalia MH 370 would not have been detected by ground radar just because of the distance from land.

 

MH370 could have easily landed somewhere in Somalia in the middle of the night when nobody knew about its disappearance yet.

 

The GeoResonance press release looks to me like a free way of getting publicity for the company.

 

To me the facts indicates no aircraft failure but a hijack for a purpose not suicidal. 

I still think the passengers are alive. After all a $1billion+ ransom for the passengers is a good deal for the pirates. China would be happy to pay it.

 

By this time the B777 was disguised in Somalia as a cargo plane, now parked somewhere in the US getting ready for its final flight. Even if you drive by it how would you recognize it?

 

Hope they find it before it is too late. I do not want a 911 revenge event for what happened a year ago this week. 

 

José   

[Piloto]

Over a month ago, they said that the plane could have taken two possible paths... north or south...see the following:

http://www.cnn.com/2014/03/14/world/asia/malaysia-airlines-plane/

Looks like someone decided then to focus the search on the south... why didn't they also searched on the north path? I guess the British guys that did the analysis missed something....

Yves

 

The Brits missed a hypothetical reason of why would you ditch a B777 in the middle of no where. When all the facts pointed to be an intentional flight deviation. 

[Ned Gravel]

OK Ned, you are currently the closest one among us to that spot... do you see or ear any action from your point of view? Too bad you don't have your Mooney around cause you would have been able to go take a peek....

Yves

For real?

Sorry guys, but I do not fit the profile to offer comment, useful or otherwise on this. And frankly, there is no one in the neighbourhood I would trust to do so otherwise.

Not a lot of real aviation going on here. Last year I visited a local flying club to see if I could keep flying during my deployments. Then I saw the state of the aircraft.

Not me.

Sorry Yves.

Sent from my iPad

[fantom]

Latest update below.

 

Personally I suspect the Captain was studying emergency procedures in cruise and his lack of attention to 'more important stuff' finally caught up with him.

 

The captain of MH370 is now the "chief suspect" in the loss of the aircraft after investigators found some deleted files in his elaborate home flight simulator. According to various reports, Capt. Zaharie Shah flew a route on the sim that ended on a runway on a remote, still unidentified, island in the southern Indian Ocean. Searchers are now shifting their focus to the route plotted in the files recovered from the simulator. "We have to continue with the lead because the best lead we have is based on the handshake on the Inmarsat [satellite data] and still in the southern corridor," Malaysia's Acting Transport Minister Datuk Seri Hishammuddin Hussein said at a news conference.

 

There was early suspicion that Zaharie might have had something to do with the bizarre story that gripped the world for weeks and has led to several failed searches in the vast oceans in the Asian southern hemisphere. The seizure of the simulator was widely publicized. There have been reports that Zaharie had domestic issues and that of all the people on board the Boeing 777, he was the only one without personal and business appointments scheduled for after the flight. Malaysian officials have cautioned that it's too early to rule out mechanical failure as the cause of the presumed loss of the aircraft and its 239 occupants but if an accident is ruled out that Zaharie is the "chief suspect."

[bonal]

I suspected the Capt and or crew from day 1 and that the plane was diverted to an undisclosed location.

[flyboy0681]

I suspected the Capt and or crew from day 1 and that the plane was diverted to an undisclosed location.

 

Just what we need, more speculation. I think I mentioned here that we can't rely on any early information. This proved to be correct to a certain extent when the "official" record stated the first officer said "all right, good night" at which time the so called experts ran with that in all directions as if their hair was on fire. The initial speculation was that a gun was being held to his head, why else would he break from standard ATC speak.

 

Fast forward a few weeks later when the "officials" revised that to, and ATC audio tapes confirmed, they said  "Good night from Malaysian Three Seven Zero". Wow, what a difference.

[bonal]

And that could be true as well I just dont think it crashed in the ocean. Someone diverted that jet from its original flight plan. Thats my opinion and I'm sticking to it.  And it dont matter a hill of beans what I think. None of this does. What matters is the loss of that aircraft and all the lives that went with it.

And I saw on the news today that after almost a year the NTSB reported its findings on the asianna crash at SFO to paraphrase the pilots failed to maintain proper airspeed and altitude control on the visual approach.  YA THINK!

[201er]

They couldn’t come up with a better explanation so now they’re reverting to the suicide excuse:

http://www.foxnews.com/world/2018/05/14/mh370-captain-was-attempting-suicide-aviation-experts-say.html

Why the heck would he have to climb, descend, and try hard to evade radar to crash the plane out of sight?