Malaysia Airlines Flight Goes Missing En Route to China - Flight MH370

[bhavlobhuro]

10. Why a plane can not be facilitated to 10s of other way of communication and video monitors thro out, so that any 1-3 CVR or this and that fails,. Still they have other 10s of way to talk to at least someone ! What is so difficult to video monitor the entire plane of its each compartment of every activity, been recorded downstairs, which can be rewind and viewed, just like any CCTV cameras ?
Sorry, I don't understand what you're saying here.

[QUOTE=Speed Daemon; Sorry, I don't understand what you're saying here.[/QUOTE]


I think Voyager 10 is trying to ask that why in plane there is no closed circuit TV type system that record everything and every part of inside plane and send it's live streaming to earth control station so in case of emergency rescue steps can be taken fast...

[RAFF]

Again been discussed already and bandwidth was mentioned, although after this incident, something much more robust will have to be done.............maybe. (although sending info up to a satellite rather than down to a ground station might be better where there are gaps in service/transmitters/receiving stations).

[speedbird1960]

Welcome Back Angie33, misunderstandings do happen in a text based area like a forum.

As for tomnod, all I know is that a) people here have had difficulty accessing their site, and b) a lot of people have mentioned here that the ability to choose a search are (or at least know *where* they are currently searching, would be much apppreciated. As far as I know those suggestions have not been implemented by tomnod, I imagine they are busy just trying to keep their site online in the face of massive traffic from people who want to help.

Sorry I can't be more helpful.

Mart

I think the reason that Tomnod probably don't identify the area you are searching is they need to control the Finds, because if location was revealed it would cause untold problems resulting in more false leads and unnecessary searches.

[Speed Daemon]

If you think back, D.C. Hayes came out with the Micromodem II for the Apple II which dispensed with the need for an acoustic coupler and made possible the increase in speed from 110/300 Baud to a blazing 1200/2400 Baud. Overtime, like you, I graduated to ISDN and the Motorola Bitsurfer Pro and my re-collection about Telco ISDN charges is similar to yours. Though, electronics, computers, amateur radio has been an interest of mine since I was 12 years old, I haven't been professionally involved in the field (if you exclude the Tech Hedge fund that I run) since completing my graduate studies. So, if I make mistakes while commenting on technical issues please excuse them.

No problem! I briefly flirted with SWL with an old Hallicrafters receiver belonging to a family member who didn't return from Korea. When scanning radios came out I soon got hooked on VHF/UHF public service listening. I never had a modem for my Apple II because back then I couldn't afford a phone. My next door neighbor in college interned for AT&T, and had a free phone line, so I mostly watched him. Later I got onto BBS services before the Internet wiped them out. I've heard that The Source was the place to be, but never got to be on any of those services. Frankly I never had that much interest in computers until they started earning me lots of money!

Actually the cost of ISDN service was cheaper than POTS for some reason. All of the extra cost options (like CallerID) were included in one low flat price. My Internet service provider charged more for bonded channels, but back then a single 64kbps BRI was ~2x as fast as a POTS modem, at no extra charge, which was a great bargain.

[Speed Daemon]

Someone (Scott Henderson aka @_AntiAlias_ on Twitter) put together this composite map showing arcs for each hourly ping, and shows how it leads to the area the Aussies were asked to search:

https://twitter.com/_AntiAlias_/stat.../photo/1/large

Thanks! That resembles the drawing that I would have made if I could have. The only difference is that I'd cut it short at the limit of the plane's endurance as fueled. There's no possible way to fly past that point without refueling, and if they stopped for fuel, that track becomes worthless. Not sure why the NTSB believes the plane flew beyond its normal fuel load. I wonder what they know that we don't.

[Speed Daemon]

Sorry, this reminiscing is waaay OT...

My apologies if it's against the rules! Normally I'd share this in an "Introduce Yourself" section. However Mike says: "Postings whose purpose is just to introduce new members are not allowed on this forum!"

I can't speak for MIT EE, but my intended purpose, at least at first, was to make it known that I had experience with and knowledge about X.25 and ISDN, both of which are/have been used by Inmarsat terminals.

[Speed Daemon]

It seems the Northern track could only be possible "incognito" - ie if it were a zombie plane on autopilot until is crashed the northern routes are EXTREMELY dense with air traffic and radar, there is no way it could go unnoticed. The southern arc though has practically no air traffic or radar so its quite conceivable it could fly on autopilot that way and crash into the sea going complteley unnoticed all the way.

I agree. With the northern arc being mostly over China (PRC), and many passengers being from PRC, it's beyond reasonable belief that PRC could have completely missed the incursion, or stay quiet about it. And since Vietnam ATC was expecting the flight, they would most likely have taken notice of a primary return at jet altitudes, and sounded the first alarm.

[MartH]

Thanks! That resembles the drawing that I would have made if I could have. The only difference is that I'd cut it short at the limit of the plane's endurance as fueled. There's no possible way to fly past that point without refueling, and if they stopped for fuel, that track becomes worthless. Not sure why the NTSB believes the plane flew beyond its normal fuel load. I wonder what they know that we don't.

That IS a great drawing. My only slight concern is the vertical text down the left side which divides the North/South areas into High and Low "probability of avoiding radar and/or cell tower registration". To me that suggests the map originator (NTSB?) might be slightly biased toward the theory that the aircraft was under the control of somebody who did not want to be tracked rather than the autopilot.

And yes, fuel load / range seems to be something they either don't know or aren't able to publicly discuss.

[Speed Daemon]

With all these expert assumptions, theories, and evidence coming out supporting one conclusion...all mixed together with other expert or non-expert assumptions,theories and evidence coming out supporting some opposite conclusion...there again seems to be multiple perceptions or misconceptions of exactly what happen or could have happened to MH370...causing the usual great confusion.
...

So which scenario is it?...deliberately done with bad intent for evil purposes or deliberately done with good intent to try and save lives?

That's the great unknown, and may never be answered satisfactorily. I can only represent myself, and for my part I've tried to weigh the probability of each scenario. The one that requires the least "leap of faith" is the most likely, per Cokham's Razor.

However one variable that is highly variable is human nature. The most expert people from the US NTSB apparently believe that a plane full of people sat idly by as a deranged captain flew it into the deepest part of the Indian Ocean. I don't understand that reasoning, as there is no precedent for it. The closest that I know of comes from fiction -- D.O. Guerrero in Arthur Hailey's seminal novel "Airport", a bankrupt and suicidal man who intended to blow up the airliner he was on in the deepest part of the Atlantic ocean, so that his wife could collect the flight life insurance, which was common back then. Even in fiction, it didn't work out.

When it comes to human nature, I can't accept that a plane full of people just sat in their seats passively, awaiting their death as a hijacker flew the plane out over the deepest ocean. Nor can I accept any scenario that is ignorant of the fact that the flight crew does have emergency breathing equipment for the express purpose of staying alive and awake long enough to reach safe harbor. AFAIK switching to an alternate FMS program instead of reaching for the oxygen mask is NOT an approved procedure! That's not to say that those things didn't happen; it will require a lot more evidence to prove definitively that that is what happened.

So the people who are shouting "pilots are always heroes" have zero factual basis and way too much prejudice to be listened to. It's a very slim possibility that the course change could have been made innocently, but it would still be an indictment of the flight crew -- "pilot error". Air piracy of some sort is still the most likely scenario, and more importantly, the only one that doesn't require ridiculous leaps of faith.

[Speed Daemon]

I think Voyager 10 is trying to ask that why in plane there is no closed circuit TV type system that record everything and every part of inside plane and send it's live streaming to earth control station so in case of emergency rescue steps can be taken fast...

Ah...OK. The simple answer is cost. The added weight of the CCTV gear, radio transmitters and a sophisticated antenna system on the plane, the cost to outfit the plane with the gear, the cost to maintain the gear and the many ground stations needed to receive these broadcasts. (Even as highly compressed digital data, it's simply beyond the capability of ant current communications satellite system.)

Somebody has to pay for things like that. Nobody wants to pay for things like that.

[MIT EE]

The NY Times has a "background" piece on the pilot:

http://thelede.blogs.nytimes.com/2014/03/19/pilot-of-missing-jet-expressed-interest-in-democracy-and-atheism-on-social-networks/?hp

Maybe the co-pilot did it and the pilot found out and........

[Speed Daemon]

Yes. I was shocked to find out that X.25 was still in use.

I wouldn't accept that is actually the case on the sole evidence of a not-so-technical document from 2010. I know that Inmarsat used X.25 as recently as the turn of the century (my experience was on land portable devices), but since then the bulk of their business has gone towards IP traffic. Likewise, the Airinc protocols have embraced IP as their standard networking protocol. It's hard to believe that a plane with multiple IP networks would be outfitted with an ACARS box that produced X.25 packets that more likely than not would have been encapsulated by IP anyway.

The next time I get down to the GA terminal at my local airfield, I'll have to find some avionics techs to badger with questions about that!

[Speed Daemon]

I wasn't modding (I leave that to the moderators)

Understood. Still, I'm new enough that I don't have a good feel for where "the line" is. And until I do, I prefer to err on the side of being a model netizen.

Maybe we need an "Old Tech Farts Reminiscing about stuff loosely connected to FR24 board" here? LOL

Whenever this topic gets worn out, let's all meet in the O/T area and start a thread!

[peterhr]

I'm repeating myself here -

they should fit all passenger planes with a trickle charged, battery powered, gps pinger - inaccessible while in flight - that once every 5 minutes or so sends a signal to satellite to say where the plane is, it's height and speed.

This doesn't take the place of ADS-B which would be much more precise but would have been a huge aid here and would be useful to oceanic ATC

By all means encrypt the signal.

The device could be one size fits all Boeing, Aibus, Embrar etc.

[Speed Daemon]

That IS a great drawing. My only slight concern is the vertical text down the left side which divides the North/South areas into High and Low "probability of avoiding radar and/or cell tower registration". To me that suggests the map originator (NTSB?) might be slightly biased toward the theory that the aircraft was under the control of somebody who did not want to be tracked rather than the autopilot.

The original "arc" map was released by the Malaysian government; I saw a minister holding a hard copy in his hand during a news conference. While the angle of incidence data was almost certainly provided by Inmarsat and SITA, neither company released it directly to the press or the public, and did not endorse the highlighting of certain segments and deliberately ignoring possible locations closer to Malaysia.

I have little doubt that the Malaysian government was the sole decision-maker when it came to drawing those two red arcs. It was deliberate editorializing, which is precisely what they have been doing all along. Even still, it looks like most people who look at the arcs believe that it's a flight path, and don't even begin to understand that it's a circle upon which there is a single, unknown point from where the last Inmarsat ping was answered. The straight lines added by the NTSB are the actual likely flight paths.

I suppose that in order to launch a reasonable SAR mission, that lots of assumptions must be made just to get a manageable search area to start with. The risk that the NTSB is taking in indulging their "flight to nowhere" theory exclusively is that their reputation will suffer massively if it turns out that the passengers were abandoned at some remote airstrip and starved to death while all eyes were focused so far away. I sure wouldn't want to be responsible for making that decision! If they do find the wreckage, they'll save their reputation, but the fact remains that it is a giant leap of faith.

When it comes to the possibility of someone getting a cellular call out, there are numerous technical reasons why that's improbable. What's more probable is that the flight couldn't have flown over the mainland at cruising altitude without being detected. That is, to me at least, the main reason why the northern path is far less likely.