MH370 search finds man made objects, none from jet
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Also overlooked in the Senate Estimates treasure trove last night was news that the MH370 search being run by Australia, has found what appear to be man made objects as large as shipping containers.
The ATSB crash investigator directing the search operations, Peter Foley said eight such level two objects had been detected by sonar scanning.
There had been about 300 detections of objects that might be man made at what he termed level three findings, while there had bee no level one detections, which would be objects that might be part of an aircraft debris field and would require immediate close up investigation.
A high quality YouTube of Mr Foley’s testimony to the Senate Rural and Regional Affairs and Transport Legislation committee can be found here, from which a frame is shown below.
It is statistically probable that discoveries of man made objects not from MH370 would vastly outnumber identifiable parts of the wreckage even if the location of the point of impact with the ocean was known with a high degree of precision.
A great deal of shipping, and items of flotsam and jetsam, has been lost in modern times in the world’s oceans, which are linked by currents, weather systems and deep layer exchanges.
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It’s terrible that the oceans are full of junk.
But what’s amazing is that this is such a remote location, and there are still large human-made objects on the bottom of the sea floor.
Around 4,500 containers lost in the Indian ocean in 2013, plus all of hundreds in each previous year. Fishing nets, wrecks etc too.
A good mate used to operate an undersea towed plough that dug a trench in the sea floor for all the fibre optic cable laid in the 80’s and 90’s. He told me that he would hit some junk most days in every ocean.
What a load of bunkum lies. Statistical probability of finding two shipping container drifting just 60km apart one 22.5 metres long and another 24 metres long is absolute zero. The largest shipping container is 53 foot long (16m)
The 300 floating objects which he refers to were spotted by Thaichote at a 2m resolution on 24 March in a concentrated area but not in an ocean eddy.
Some days earlier French satellites pored over 122 floating objects and verified them with Ground mapping radar from Terra SAR-X.
https://sites.google.com/site/mh370debris/home/debris-images
Given that there was a huge TOMNOD crowd campaign to spot floating objects and yet this concentrated debris field was the only such concentrated clump spotted then STATISTICALLY speaking the odds of these being mere clumps of floating rubbish are extremely unlikely.
On 24 March China announced that their analysis of reverse drift suggested impact at 45.30 South, 85.30 East.
Immediately Malaysia objected and next day the aerial search near these debris was grounded on the pretext of a terrible storm, yet in that search area the surface winds were a mere 15 knots. On 27 March Malaysia demanded that the search be shifted north. On 28 March all effort to locate and study these debris were abandoned.
Peter Foley is retrospectively trying to justify the unconscionable abandonment of efforts to recover and study these objects. He is trying to dismiss their importance and justify the JACC’s stupidity.
Apologies Ben, but I just skim read the article and responded hastily because I was about to rush off to work.
We all wish MH370 could be found. I would happily be proven wrong if it meant MH370 was found. In just eight weeks time they will wrap up the seabed search.
It is self evident that all the prominent locations predicted by theories based on satellite handshakes have already been searched and the remaining search is clutching at straws with no real idea.
By May we will be shaking our heads in disbelief and already conspiracy theorists are having a field day speculating about a flight North, Diego Garcia, impact off Vietnam and all sorts of claims.
The reason why this search based on satellite handshakes has failed and lost credibility owes to contamination of data with false assumptions and false facts.
INMARSAT engineers drove this circus by insisting that MH370 was well east of Malaysia at 18:25 UTC+ and false evidence has been manufactured in terms of bogus radar sightings to falsely corroborate this. It is time to say screw Malaysia’s sensitivity for being called out on its evidence and time to establish the truth.
It is accepted by all that ATSB concluded MH370 flew decompressed at least from 19:41 UTC. Extrapolating from that the cabin including the avionics bay was exposed to extreme sub-zero temperatures. Because electrical resistance in metal is significantly reduced in cold, it also follows the signal path delay, which forms the basis for calculating BTO rings was altered by cabin decompression.
Had decompression happened before 18:25 UTC – and there is no evidence to the contrary, then the JACC Satellite Working Group’s assumption that MH370 turned south from north of Aceh is based on flawed information.
The real 7th Arc location is likely much further away from the satellite and they have been looking in the wrong place.
https://sites.google.com/site/mh370debris/home/bto-error
Come May 2015 with no wreck located then it is time they examine the impact point suggested by floating debris sighted in March 2014.
Those who have closed their minds to this idea have all but been proved wrong and it is time they let fresh ideas take the helm.
Without detracting from anything Simon Gunson has written (and he knows far more than I do on this issue), may I put forward my amateur’s theory as to the reason for MH370’s disappearance? I do this because my theory points to the wreckage being further north than the location of the main searches.
Given that the pilot was a flying enthusiast and even had a flight simulator at home, is it not possible that he wanted to put the plane through its paces, over-riding all built-in performance limits? That is, he wanted to see how high he could fly, how fast, how the plane performed a loop-the-loop and, possibly, could he pull the plane out of a vertical dive? If this did happen, and the authorities had any evidence to support the idea, it would explain why they told the survivors almost nothing: imagining the terror that may have lasted for hours in a shuddering, heaving plane would be something any person would want to shield passengers’ families from.
Such a flight would use a lot of fuel and may have reached a fatal threshold well before the assumed flight off into the distant Southern Ocean.
Simon Gunson,
on your cooling/delay point: where do you get this info from? if you look at http://www.copper.org/resources/properties/cryogenic/images/Electrical-Resistivity.gif you’ll see that e.g. copper’s resistance falls from around 2 at room temperature to 1 at -70C. Hardly a huge change. also i don’t recall propagation speed changes much with conductivity either. and even if it did, signal paths are surely too short within a plane compared to plane to satellite to make the slightest bit of difference.
Maybe you could explain it to us?
@Keith Thomas I understand what you are saying which is essentially that if a pilot were to take MH370 on a bizarre excursion – ie diving to low level from IGARI, “throwing it around at 5,000ft like a fighter jet to avoid radar” and all manner of climbs and zig-zags in the Straits of Malacca (all attributed to MH370) then that would burn up too much fuel to reach the southern Arc.
Not that I accept this mythical turn west from IGARI but let’s examine the fuel flow:
When it reached FL350 at 17:07 UTC ACARS reported 43,800kg on board ie 96,475lb. Since the Flight Crew Training Manual refers to fuel burn in pounds per hour let me cite imperial weights. From 17:07 to 17:21UTC the fuel burn at FL350 would be 223lb/min for 14 minutes = 3122lb leaving total fuel on board at 17:21 UTC =93,353lb remaining.
Although Malaysia published two different flight routes (ie IGARI-VAMPI-GIVAL-IGARI on 11 March) and different timelines, the one currently accepted claims MH370 reached Pelau Perak at 18:02 UTC.
There was also a claim that the co-pilot’s phone made contact with a cell tower in Penang, which means MH370 had to fly directly over Penang before crossing VAMPI and allegedly reaching MEKAR at 18:22 UTC.
To reach the small islet of Pelau Perak by 18:02 UTC from IGARI via Penang required a speed no less than 430 knots. That required an altitude no less than 18,000ft where MH370 could be seen by several primary radar sites -but wasn’t.
The optimum altitude fuel burn at HGW would be 27,000ft flying for 41 minutes using 11,300lb fuel.
So to reach Pelau Perak in 41 minutes flying at 18,000ft burns about 12,500lb. MH370 therefore used 305lb/minute or 12,505lb, leaving total fuel =80,848lb remaining.
So from Pelau Perak to MEAKAR taking 20 minutes to cover 154nm requires a speed of 462kt @no less than 25,000ft burning 275lb/minute or 5,500lb total = 75,348lb fuel remaining on board at MEKAR.
Assuming no further altitude changes and a turn south at 18:29 UTC above Aceh means burning another 1,925lb before turning south =73,423lb fuel remaining aboard.
To reach the 7th Arc below Broken Ridge from above Aceh flying at 25,000ft and 462kt means flying 5hr 42min @ 275lb/hr fuel consumption (2,596nm).
That implies intersecting the 7th Arc at about 36.40 South, 96.23 East. Since this area has already been searched without result you can virtually say MH370 is not where fuel burn predicted.
Had MH370 flown higher then it would have gone further south. Had it flown slower then you would have to ask why it suffered fuel exhaustion at the 7th Arc?
Had it flown slower you would not expect it to run out of fuel at the 7th Arc, because that would be well within the fuel range flying at 25,000ft.
So either the Satellite Working Group assumptions are wrong or the 7th Arc is calculated to be in the wrong place due to erroneous BTO calculations – or what I believe which is that it never took any detour through the Straits of Malacca whatsoever and simply flew pilotless on autopilot from Vietnam at FL350.
@NiallOC for resistance to drop from 2 to 1 is a 50% drop in resistance.
If you had a 50% reduction in the signal path delay then the 7th Arc would be located passing half way between Australia and New Zealand.
You only require a difference of 2-3% to alter the location of the true 7th Arc by 50-80nm. A difference of 10% in signal path delay jumps the true location of the 7th Arc 265nm east from INMARSAT, so your 50% change in electrical resistance is huge.
Thank you for making my point.
@NiallOC Perhaps I need to explain more since you asked me nicely?
The signal path delay inside the plane’s avionics is not an insignificant figure. BTO transmission delay Bias of -495679 µsec was applied from an average of 17 R-channel signals before take-off. This bias was subtracted from the total signal time.
The calculated signal round trip at 16:00:13 was 510,499 µsec. If there was a 10% difference (reduction) in signal path delay within the aircraft then the correct BTO signal bias would be -49568 µsec. That would materially alter all BTO calculations.
Simon, we’ve been here so many times. The satcom ping response delay is not analogue it’s digital. It’s the time the device’s software takes — the number of processor calculation cycles — to interpret the signal it’s received from the ground station, notice it’s for it, formulate a reply and transmit that back. The time that takes does not depend in any significant way on the impedance of copper.
(If you wanted to make such a case you might try saying something rational about the satcom processor’s clock frequency, but you’d be hopelessly straw-clutching if you did.)
@Glen Yes I suppose ignorance keeps you coming back but that’s okay, I have all the time in the world.
I have in the past commented on the eclipse effect on the AFC and the effect of intense cold on the EAFC in MH370. That alone introduces a whole new set of issues which you aren’t grown up enough yet to discuss with you.
Re the point you raise software processes the signal was physically delayed in MH370 by the because ACARS data has to be converted from 8-bit protocol to continuous streaming data. That task is performed by the CMU processor which controls ACAR, Transponder and VHF radio. Therefore the impairment of the CMU at any point by overheating, fire or deep chilling also affects the signal processing. Even when there is no data to send, the protocols themselves inflict a delay.
R-Channel transmissions are in time slots referenced to the P-Channel as received by the aircraft using the slotted aloha protocol. The BTO is a measure of how long from the start of that time slot the transmission is received. This is essentially the delay between when the transmission was expected (given a nominal position of the aircraft) and when it actually arrives, and is a measure of twice the distance of the aircraft from the satellite less the signal path delay which is subtracted from the total time.
Let’s hold the name calling while we contemplate the latest utterly appalling statement from Deputy PM Warren Truss on MH370 related matters. See later post.
@Simon Gunson
sorry, i just don’t understand your answer. yes there’s a 50% drop in resistance, but the speed of light through copper is between 50 and 90% of vacuum levels at room temperature. a 50% drop in resistance will make barely any difference to that number. and the chip is 35,000km away. i just don’t see how the resistance makes any difference, or if it did why the error introduced would be more than the order of centimetres at most. What length signal path do you assume in the chip, and what do you estimate is the speed of light through it at 20C and -70C?
Simon, I followed your posts for a long time and have great respect for your approach to this puzzle, for that is what it is.
However, I am an electronics engineer, which you are clearly not. And your argument of the signal delay is just so much twaddle, I am unable to keep silent. The resistance of the cable has no impact on the speed of data through it, and in any case, as has been pointed out, the amount of cable is small, not exceeeding a few tens of meters, and would have no significant influence on the propogation delay. Nialloc and Glen are correct in their comments. For you to call them ignorant, is a show of your total lack of understanding of physics, and I have now lost any respect I had for your theories. This is not “name calling”. This is no more and no less than simple physics. And I suggest that you drop your ridiculous comments about delay due to resistance. You should concentrate more on the change in the VCO of the transmitters due to temperature, which at least might have had some basis for argument.
And any calculations based on the supposed time it takes for an onboard processor to return data to a query is completely useless. This time is subject to so many variables, such as what other processes were running on that computer at the time and how many of them, which is totally unknown and can never be known.
I will not make another post here, because I do not take part in pissing contests with people who have no idea what they are talking about, and make assumptions from things they half understand and present them as fact.
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