Seajet
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And I'm not one of them; I do know a bit about aircraft and systems though, military and civil.
MH370 debris- lack of fouling
- Thread starter Yara
- Start date
bbg
Active member
Maybe there are systems that were capable of tracking this flight but there is a big difference between having the technical capability to do something specific if you want to do it and looking back after the fact. You would have us believe that every flight that is identified as being a non-threat is tracked? There are 100,000 flights per day in the world. I simply don't believe that any government or military has operating procedures that require them to track flights that are positively identified as commercial and non-threatening.
Believe what you will, but you sound like "one of them".
Buck Turgidson
Well-known member
You're not the only one. But you are talking out of your tailpipe here.
seaplane
Active member
Nothing new there then.
Twister_Ken
Well-known member
When a german wings first officer went dolally and flew a plane into the side of a mountain there were no conspiracy theories because there was flight recorder evidence. When a Malaysian pilot does likewise but plants it in the sea so no black boxes the tin foil brigade have a field day.
Seajet
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Strangely enough, these systems have recorders, one doesn't have to have been stood there watching a display to know what happened...
Happy foil hats,
Andy
BrianH
Active member
After being tracked by conventional radar of the Malaysian and Thai military, both have equipment with a range not much over 250nm, depending on the aircraft's altitude. By that time the normal airborne transponders had been turned off so no data was being transmitted, other than the engine monitor whose pings were picked up via the INMARSAT satellite for a further 7 hours and which furnished the potential Indian Ocean path. No satellite is known to have any radar functionality that would track normal commercial aircraft in flight.
Once beyond the conventional radar range, only the over-the-horizon system, JORN2 in Western Australia, would have a chance to have detected the flight, but its range is quoted as being 3000km and the believed flight path was beyond that.
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vyv_cox
Well-known member
Duralumin is a complex, precipitation hardening alloy that has a relatively small copper content. If copper present in an alloy worked as antifouling there would be no fouling on brass, DZR, bronze, manganese bronze, aluminium bronze, etc., which we all know is not the case. AFAIK the only copper alloys to have antifouling properties are some grades of copper-nickel, plus copper itself.
Seajet
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After being tracked by conventional radar of the Malaysian and Thai military, both have equipment with a range not much over 250nm, depending on the aircraft's altitude. By that time the normal airborne transponders had been turned off so no data was being transmitted, other than the engine monitor whose pings were picked up via the INMARSAT satellite for a further 7 hours and which furnished the potential Indian Ocean path. No satellite is known to have any radar functionality that would track normal commercial aircraft in flight.
Once beyond the conventional radar range, only the over-the-horizon system, JORN2 in Western Australia, would have a chance to have detected the flight, but its range is quoted as being 3000km and the believed flight path was beyond that.
If you believe quoted coverage by classified sensitive resources like RORSAT's, spiffing; I and a few ex military & / or airliner pilot chums don't.
BrianH
Active member
What, exactly, do you then believe? As a one-time engineer specialised on communications engineering and then, after a further computer science degree course, working on the Fylingdales BMEWS radar system maintaining its software control systems, I too "know a bit" and the account I quoted fits the facts in my mind. Perhaps you could enlighten me on where I am being misled? I would like to know what you know and I do not - seriously.
Seajet
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With your background you should know, just use a little imagination as to Tempus Fugit, and satellites; among other things which go very high, very fast; I am not referring to SR71 but think on those lines modern day, but that would indeed be pure luck even with that coverage - mainly sats and the ground radar in that area.
RORSAT's can indeed discriminate aircraft, it's rather handy being able to give a ' God's eye view ' even if originally set up only to observe fleet dispositions etc, but I expect you know there's a helluva lot more capability than that.
RORSAT's can indeed discriminate aircraft, it's rather handy being able to give a ' God's eye view ' even if originally set up only to observe fleet dispositions etc, but I expect you know there's a helluva lot more capability than that.
RAI
Well-known member
Wasn't RORSAT a Russian series of satellites? They finished operations in 1988 and were intended to track NATO shipping. They would need a different kind of radar for tracking aircraft rather than ships. They were low earth orbit too, so even if one were still operating, it would be a lucky glimpse to see MH370. Sadly, those nuclear reactors are still in space amongst the other junk, due down in 600 years.
BrianH
Active member
I'm sorry, you give no facts whatsoever why I should disbelieve the official line that I quoted above, that no tracking of MH370 occurred after it passed beyond the range of Malaysian and Thai military radar. As others have pointed out, there is no feasible reason to use satellite-based radar technology to try to track the many thousands of civil aircraft plying their world-wide courses over the planet - constantly and continuously with all the power requirements that would need, unlike the short intermittent bursts used to measure wave heights, for example, and I would not expect such functionality to be in use. For that the present transponder technology suffices utilising, as it does, receiver equipment only. If, as with MH370, the transponder is turned off, tracking by satellite is lost and it will be also lost to all land-based radar when far enough out to sea. There is no known system that could have monitored a silent radio frequency body at normal airliner altitude over the Indian Ocean if beyond the range of the Australian OTH radar system.
However, MH370 wasn't entirely a silent body, despite someone on board disabling the ACARS reporting system the hourly interrogation by the INMARSAT satellite was receiving an automatic handshake response for 7 hours after the aircraft had ceased all other communications. From the analysis of the time between request and response it is possible to work out the distance of the plane from the satellite and which established its path deep into the Indian Ocean.
Too bad for all the conspiracy theorists that Diego Garcia isn't anywhere on that path.
Buck Turgidson
Well-known member
Unfortunately you're flogging a dead horse wearing a tinfoil hat here.
BrianH
Active member
A strange and uncharacteristic silence on the subject from a prolific poster. Either he's given me up as a lost cause, totally under the lizards' spell, or, in a vain search for some actual facts to support a fantasy, giving the subject some serious thought, research and revision.
Well, I always was an unrealistic optimist, but hope springs eternal.
Seajet
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Barnac1e,
if it's me you're referring to I was rather hoping you'd look it all up yourself; quite seriously I have a busy day so will only bother supplying the details if I end up with free time, otherwise why don't you look it all up ?!
if it's me you're referring to I was rather hoping you'd look it all up yourself; quite seriously I have a busy day so will only bother supplying the details if I end up with free time, otherwise why don't you look it all up ?!
BrianH
Active member
Erm, what exactly should I look up? I accept the official theory, you are the one that questions it. I followed the facts avidly at the time, as I'm sure you did. I did wonder about many open points but in all logical analysis the most likely scenario in my mind is as generally assumed and as I posted.
As you are the one who questions that scenario, it is up to you to introduce something to try to refute it and so far you haven't even started. Just to refer to a now-discarded Russian spy satellite to back up a statement that MH370 must have been tracked without evidence that it was, has no validity. I have used my knowledge of radar theory (yes, I accept it was a lifetime ago but the basic physics involved has not changed) to base my assumption that it was not tracked and that the INMARSAT hourly pings established its path. I await your theory that it was tracked, by whom and to where.
KellysEye
Active member
>I am amazed at how little fouling there is on the metal surface
It had Barnacles encrusted on the surface of the Flaperon which they think a chemicala analysis might place where the wreckage is.
It had Barnacles encrusted on the surface of the Flaperon which they think a chemicala analysis might place where the wreckage is.
Alfie168
Well-known member
I also believe from what I read that the flaperon had been out of the water for quite some time before the penny dropped as to where it might have originated. In that time UV had plenty of time to degrade growth on it and indeed the mollusc shells on it look well bleached to me......allowing for the brief glimpse I was getting on the telly, and not being a mollusc expert either...etc etc.
Tim
Yara
Member
Firstly please dont waste space talking about why or how MH370 ended up in the drink. That is for other fora/forums. This thread is about fouling or lack thereof.
The video I saw showed people carrying it up the beach and there was only barnacles visible on the rough edges of components. The flat surfaces seemed completely devoid of barnacles. In my experience, even long dead barnacles can still be seen on surfaces, and take hard work with a scraper to remove them. What I am wondering is if there is some chemical in the resin or surface finish of these components which could act as an anti-fouling. Hopefully there is a specialist in design of composite aircraft components out there who can tell us if this is possible. I am hoping for a replacement of the old tri-butyl tin which worked so well in the past, but is now banned in my part of the world.