Re: Malaysia Airlines place vanishes. : Tue Jun 17, 2014 3:14 pm  

A number of people were interested to learn what happened to all the poor souls on this plane, so you may be interested to know that they pretty much know where it is - give or take the odd 100km and more details are likely to be revealed at 9pm tonight in Horizon on BBC2.

So far as I can gather the best and likeliest spot is more or less in the centre of this graphic:



The location will be on within a short distance either side of the arc (the 7th arc), but the INMARSAT boffins have plotted a course from all their 7 data arcs, and there is only one course that fits so they seem supremely confident about the location area.

Of course it is still a huge area and is between 3km and 6km deep so the problems remain immense but they are presently using ships to better plot all the sea bed in the proposed new search area and then I am optimistic that submersibles will now eventually be able to find debris.

Re: Malaysia Airlines place vanishes. : Tue Jun 17, 2014 6:24 pm  

wonder if it was on its way to Perth

Re: Malaysia Airlines place vanishes. : Wed Jun 18, 2014 8:57 am  

No, the only solution that fits all the INMARSAT transmissions is a perfectly straight line heading a couple of thousand km west of Perth. Looks certain to me that it had been put on autopilot on that course many hours previously and just flew itself till it ran out of fuel.

Re: Malaysia Airlines place vanishes. : Wed Jun 18, 2014 11:56 am  

I found the documentary fascinating, but it left me with a few questions (aside from the obvious ones).

Apologies for any ignorance in the below:

Quite near the beginning of the doc, they explain the basics of radar, and how primary radar can only identify that a plane is present in the sky and track its movements etc. It does NOT offer any details of the aircraft.

With this in mind, skip ahead to the part of the doc where they explain how primary radar tracks the initial deviation of flight that the aircraft undertakes - it pretty much makes a 180 degree turn and flies back over Malaysia for a time.
We know that contact was lost with the plane when it was out of reach of primary radar (something I can't see being a coincidence) but then presumably ventures back into range which is why the flight path can be traced. I might have misheard this bit, but I think the doc mentioned it was army or military radar that picked it up?

Anyway, my question is, if it was only primary radar tracking this flight path, how did they know that it was definitely MH370? Were the inmarsat pings used to confirm this part of the flight path too?
And also, presuming somebody was monitoring malaysian airspace at the time, why were they not alarmed when this plane (that shouldn't have been there) suddenly showed up on their primary radar? Why didn't they try and contact/intercept the unidentified plane while it was flying across land?

Re: Malaysia Airlines place vanishes. : Wed Jun 18, 2014 1:24 pm  

There was a considerable delay before it even came out into the open that any military radar tracks existed, presumably the relevant military choosing to give away as little as possible.

I agree with you that the changes in course and unusual behaviour and circumstances must surely have initiated a scramble of military jets (else what's the point of the radar). I don't readily accept that they would have seen what they saw, yet sat on their hands.

It's a curious feature. Had the plane disappeared roundabout that point, teh finger would be pointed strongly at that military. However, we know it didn't. We know it flew south, far beyond the range of fighters and that strange behaviour seems to get them off the hook.

But I am sure that military must know more, as I suspect do the owners of a number of reconnaisance satellites which must during these hours have passed over the general area. Many of whose basic function you'd guess, would be precisely to detect high flying metallic tubes of unknown origin.

Re: Malaysia Airlines place vanishes. : Wed Jun 18, 2014 8:55 pm  

This is the best explanation I can figure out. Primary radar has a nominal range of around 50-60NM and certainly no further than 100NM if operating at the typical L-Band, as most civilian primary radar does. Secondary radar generally has a nominal range of 200NM. Military primary radar sometimes operates at the lower HF-UHF band which can look over the horizon (OTH) but require huge antenna arrays, often hundreds of metres long. This lower band gives much lower resolution returns returns but is better for spotting incoming aircraft or missiles early - the range can be up to 1,600NM. This may account for why the military were able to follow MH370 throughout though I doubt the RMAF are too keen to give away data which may reveal their radar locations and capabilities which could explain the delay. This map shows radar locations on the Malaysian peninsular. Primary and secondary radar are located together. The 200NM secondary range is shown for each antenna, from that you can work out the 50-60NM range. This is the Department of Civil Aviation Malyasia's primary and secondary radar services (opens a pdf).

This is the best explanation I can figure out. Primary radar has a nominal range of around 50-60NM and certainly no further than 100NM if operating at the typical L-Band, as most civilian primary radar does. Secondary radar generally has a nominal range of 200NM. Military primary radar sometimes operates at the lower HF-UHF band which can look over the horizon (OTH) but require huge antenna arrays, often hundreds of metres long. This lower band gives much lower resolution returns returns but is better for spotting incoming aircraft or missiles early - the range can be up to 1,600NM. This may account for why the military were able to follow MH370 throughout though I doubt the RMAF are too keen to give away data which may reveal their radar locations and capabilities which could explain the delay. This map shows radar locations on the Malaysian peninsular. Primary and secondary radar are located together. The 200NM secondary range is shown for each antenna, from that you can work out the 50-60NM range. This is the Department of Civil Aviation Malyasia's primary and secondary radar services (opens a pdf).

Re: Malaysia Airlines place vanishes. : Thu Jul 17, 2014 3:54 pm  

Malaysian Airlines flight MH17 has crashed near the Ukraine Russia Boredr en route from Amsterdam to Kuala Lumpur. On this route it would have been at around 30,000 - 35,000 feet so as there are no reports of any distress or emergency calls, maybe the first things to consider are being shot down especially where it was, but obviously that's pure speculation.

Re: Malaysia Airlines place vanishes. : Thu Jul 17, 2014 6:33 pm  

it was shot down by a missile this one, think there could be some serious trouble ahead

Re: Malaysia Airlines place vanishes. : Thu Jul 17, 2014 8:06 pm  

brearley84 wrote:

it was shot down by a missile this one, think there could be some serious trouble ahead

Serious trouble for who? It was shot down by militants, not by an official army of a country.

Re: Malaysia Airlines place vanishes. : Thu Jul 17, 2014 9:24 pm  

100% Wire wrote:

Serious trouble for who? It was shot down by militants, not by an official army of a country.

I think the wider issue is that IF pro-Russians have shot it down, Russia have almost certainly supplied the weapons. There's been a build up of Russian hardware in recent days and concern the separatists are being massively bolstered by Russian weapons and perhaps manpower once again.

The US has already stiffened their sanctions against Russia, if the above is proven to be the case you can expect wider reaching consequences.

Edit: looking more likely this is the case. Russian-backed separatist leader Igor Girkin posted pictures of the smoke plumes boasting of the shooting down of an aircraft, saying "The plane has just been taken down somewhere around Torez (Donetsk Oblast). It lays there behind the Progress mine. We did warn you – do not fly in 'our sky,'". The post has been deleted and he's in full denial mode.

The Ukrainians have also released recordings of phone calls which appear to show pro-Russians stating they (or more specifically, Kazaks) have shot down an aircraft, later confirming they have found many bodies and it's actually a civilian aircraft. The calls are allegedly between a separatist commander and a 'colonel of the Main Intelligence Directorate of the General Staff of the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation', Vasili Geranin.