MH370 Search Vessel turns off transponder for 3 days

a reply to: carpooler

The satellite pings weren't ACARS, they were the aircraft SDU.

As for the distance it could fly, maximum range is irrelevant. They would carry enough fuel to get to their destination, and possibly back to somewhere else, depending on fuel quality at the destination.

a reply to: Zaphod58

i just find it interesting that it was supposedly de-registered and scheduled for dismantling but then given a new registration number and has been sitting idle since as far as anyone is aware. Still in its Malaysian livery as well.

a reply to: AndyFromMichigan

Only if it went south. it could have equally been the same distance north.

a reply to: BeReasonable

Which is perfectly common, and happens to every plane out there, unless it's sent to storage for the airline. If the airline is storing it to reuse in the future, or to sell, it keeps the registration number and paint. If they're selling it to someone else, they remove their livery and name, but leave most of the paint the same, and the new owner registers it. Once an aircraft is sold they have to change the registration. If they sell it to a company that's going to part it out, they're not going to repaint it, because it's going to be cut into pieces within a couple years.

The airlines don't dismantle them, they sell them to other companies to do that. You can find those companies out there all over the place. GA Telesis is one of them.

Some examples of aircraft in storage in the US:

a reply to: carpooler

Here are a couple

Read any of the material on the subject. The only thing the investigation had for comm was the logon and pings to the sat network.

01:07: The plane sent its last ACARS transmission - a service that allows computers aboard the plane to "talk" to computers on the ground. Some time afterwards, it was silenced and the expected 01:37 transmission was not sent.

Link

it was at 1.07am that the plane’s Acars signalling device sent its last message before being disabled some time in the next 30 minutes, apparently deliberately. A separate transponder was disabled at 1.21am but investigators believe the Acars was shut down before Hamid’s final, 1.19am farewell.

Link

The theory of the path out the straight to avoid radar or something seems strange since it had already crossed through a radar monitored area. But then that might play into your theory since it became difficult to know which direction it turned later.

a reply to: roadgravel

will be interesting to see what new info will come of this....such a big mystery

a reply to: Zaphod58

Its crazy how many perfectly operating planes are just left to rot. Same goes with cars.

a reply to: BeReasonable

A lot of those 747s are not efficient enough anymore. There are twin engine aircraft that carry similar numbers of passengers, as far as they could fly, for a quarter the cost.

Many were also put into storage when oil prices were high. Fuel was so high that the airlines were putting anything that was even a few years old into storage.

One of the reasons that they store them where they do, like Tel Aviv and Arizona is low moisture, and dry air. Those planes can sit for years and be returned to service with only a few months of work.

a reply to: Zaphod58

It becomes pretty serious when the fuel gauges read empty. Get my string out, find a Globe, stretch the string from Kualu Lumpur to Beijing, China, and then take said string and stretch it between Kualu Lumpur and Lahore, Pak.???
TPTB's searchers did a higher tech version, but stretched it as far out into the Indian Ocean as they could discern that the plane's fuel would last.

The problem with this is that these bad guys were intent on going someplace. And no one really knows just how much fuel they ran through before reaching the Straits of Malacca.

My understanding is that the ACARS are discreet, engine attachments, and they could only be shorted out by salt water, or turned off at the two RR engines, not from the flight deck. The Brits may now be back pedalling, but when the search was on in the first weeks, they said that these ACARS kept pinging beyond the fuel range of the airliner.

ATS denizens, must be aware that TPTB like to "crop" photos and news clips to eliminate any divergent possibilities, from what their party line is, or becomes. Three classics are the deck hand's 8mm movie film showing the dock at Valdez, in the 1964 Quake, the Challenger's last moments, and San Bernardino, taken by a lady on the third floor. All of these show a different version of the MSM's pet accounts, and so have been "Cropped", for that reason. Yes, Malaysia Airlines Flight MH-370 went to a watery grave, but not in that first 24 hours. It was deliberately ditched in the Ocean, after a long second day's flight, low and slow, down the West Coast of India. It landed in the Himalayas, was refueled, but not repaired for pressurized flight, and so had to stay below 15,000 feet. So it stayed visible, all day, and was easily heard flying overhead in the Maldives, around 8:00 PM local time.

I've listened to bombers from B-36's, as a school kid, to B-1B's, fly over me low, if not slow, and I'll attest to the fact that they get your attention. With two B-1 B's at the Yakima Air Show some years back, they went super sonic directly across the valley from my Bro. in law's, patio deck, at about the same altitude. And that really got our attention. He lived up on Tower Hill, South of the Yakima Airport.

As part of our little dowsing team's effort, I down loaded all of the photos I could get of the MH-370's crew, printed off, and then doused those 4 x 6 photo prints, and then e-mailed my files Down Under. The Australian News, both T.V. and print, really got into this search. It was the big news item for quite a while, there.

4 x 6 prints from my HP's photo tray, aren't the best medium, but the Captain's righteous demise, south of Bangladesh, and the landing, in Northernmost India, were obvious. It was the Aussie dowser, who carried the ball down India's west coast, and the final hit out in the British Protectorate Waters, well to the East of Diego Garcia Island.

FWIW, that Flight Captain did his job, as long as he could, and then checked out honorably, before they made landfall over India. But the Malaysian Gov't must know, by now, who those hijackers were, and where they came from. Some of our 9-11 Hijackers, went up to the top of the World Trade Towers, and set in their pocket GPS coords. about a week earlier. The Malaysians have had plenty of time to work out a GPS, way point driven escape path for that airliner, and so those hijackers would have belatedly stood out like sore thumbs.

originally posted by: carpooler
My understanding is that the ACARS are discreet, engine attachments, and they could only be shorted out by salt water, or turned off at the two RR engines, not from the flight deck. The Brits may now be back pedalling, but when the search was on in the first weeks, they said that these ACARS kept pinging beyond the fuel range of the airliner.

Your understanding is wrong. ACARS is a cockpit system for transmitting short messages. It sends the aircraft health monitoring system messages to where they need to be. ACARS can transmit through SATCOM, or VHF if the aircraft doesn't have SATCOM. If ACARS is turned off or disabled, the system won't transmit, but it will send handshakes to the system, saying "I'm ready to transmit", even if no data is sent.

At 2:03, the aircraft failed to respond to a message that was sent. At 2:25, the SDU sent a log on message, apparently indicating that there was some kind of power interruption to the system, and it had power again. Between 2:25 and 8:19, two satellite calls were acknowledged but not answered. The 8:19 log on appears to be after the aircraft ran out of fuel and the APU started.

a reply to: Zaphod58
I'm not going to keep going around the bush with this. Those two RR engines had a link back to RR in the U.K. Even though Malaysia Air never paid for the updates, the computer network between MH 370 and the U.K. kept in touch.

UMT will always be in 24 hr. formats. India is on the other side of the World, from the U.K. The T.V. news was reporting this crime in local time, from Malaysia. So it took a few days to I.D. that these pings went on after their fuel ran out.

Your math may be correct, but how many hours in U.M.T. from their takeoff from Kualu Lumpur , to the last ping?? "Experts", on T.V. said the pings exceeded their fuel range, by a couple of hours. When several Gov'ts looked out at sea, then this was dropped.

What got me was that these same "experts", couldn't see the pattern of the Lorans, still being in their flight path. They were plotting on flat maps, and you have to use a Globe. So a piece of string stretched over a Globe is more tech savvy.

a reply to: BeReasonable

Humm, did you read the official website oceaninfinity.com...

On 4 February 2018, Seabed Constructor departed the search area at 0200 UTC to commence transit to Fremantle for resupply and crew change. The vessel is expected to arrive port on 8 February and schedule to depart on 12 February 2018 to continue with the search operations

a reply to: carpooler

Ah yes, the "I was wrong so I'm done" argument.

The RR health monitoring is optional. It connects to RR with a handshake, but unless they're paying for monitoring, it doesn't send data. And that handshake, just like ACARS, goes through the SDU. So if the SDU is disabled for whatever reason, no handshakes occur with anyone.

The aircraft departed at 0042 MYT. It was scheduled to land in China after a 5 hour and 34 minute flight. With reserves, they had roughly 7 hours and 30 minutes of fuel on board. The final satellite ping occurred at 0819 MYT. That puts it at roughly 7 minutes after the estimated 7 hours 30 minutes of fuel on board, well within the margin of error when calculating fuel consumption, and it matches to the APU starting after they lost power due to fuel starvation. The "experts" on TV also claimed they could tell that the Air AsiaX flight that crashed a few years ago stalled, because its ground speed on radar dropped precipitously before it crashed. Which is total BS.

As for the pings, contrary to popular myth, you can't track a location to within several feet from a short handshake like they were getting. You can't even generalize it in real time. You have to do a lot of analysis afterwards to even get the general area it was coming from.

And another nail in your hijacker theory is that they received a communication that was nothing but mumbling and slurred speech, after the last communication from both ACARS and the crew. That's consistent with hypoxia and the aircraft not being under manual control.

Under the international "Rules of the Sea", Don't you have to attach a line to an abandoned vessel to claim the salvage rights? Would this also apply to a sunken aircraft?

If you do not tag it somehow, it would be free for any other researcher to re-find it and claim it, I would think.

If they somehow tagged it , with a submerged buoy and very accurate GPS coordinates, would that satisfy the salvage rights and protect their rights to the salvage at a later time?

Wondering if this is perhaps why the transponder was turned off, so no one could locate where they actually stopped or maneuvered for those 3 days.

ACARS is uses the sat network much like a web browser or email client uses an internet connection.

The ground station sends a message (ping) to the sat data unit on the aircraft after a length of inactivity to determine if the aircraft is still intending to be on the network. The SDU will also send a logon to the ground station after it initializes.
For example after a power loss or start up.

Here are the comms on the network after the aircraft was missing. Handshake is the so called ping, the two endpoints talking.

Time (MYT) Time (UTC) Initiated by Name (if any) Details

02:25:27 18:25:27 Aircraft 1st handshake A 'log-on request' message. Flight 370 now registered as an active terminal on Inmarsat network.
02:39:52 18:39:52 Ground station – Ground to aircraft telephone call, acknowledged by SDU, unanswered
03:41:00 19:41:00 Ground station 2nd handshake Normal handshake
04:41:02 20:41:02 Ground station 3rd handshake Normal handshake
05:41:24 21:41:24 Ground station 4th handshake Normal handshake
06:41:19 22:41:19 Ground station 5th handshake Normal handshake
07:13:58 23:13:58 Ground station – Ground to aircraft telephone call, acknowledged by SDU, unanswered
08:10:58 00:10:58 Ground station 6th handshake Normal handshake
08:19:29 00:19:29 Aircraft 7th handshake[h] A 'log-on request' from the aircraft, followed by an acknowledgement and four other transmissions from the ground station.
08:19:37 00:19:37 Aircraft 7th handshake[h] 'Log-on acknowledge' message transmitted by aircraft. This is the final transmission received from Flight 370.
09:15 01:15 Ground station Unsuccessful ping/handshake Three handshake requests from the ground station, without a response from the aircraft.

Link

ACARS (aircraft communications addressing and reporting system) is a digital datalink system for transmission of short messages between aircraft and ground stations via airband radio or satellite.

a reply to: Zaphod58

Do you have a post on ATS that gives you theory on what went wrong and how the damage was limited so that the aircraft continued it's flight.

I'm interested because of your knowledge of aircraft and would like to read your thoughts.

a reply to: roadgravel

Somewhere, but it boils down to the cockpit crew oxygen system. Certain Triples that came off the line together had a chafing issue with wiring, and the First Officer oxygen mask feed line. It led to an EgyptAir Triple suffering a cockpit fire while parked at the gate that burned through the side of the fuselage. There was a lot of damage to the FO seat area, and side of the fuselage, but not enough that it would have caused an immediate break up in flight.

aviation-safety.net...



It was either that, or the outflow valve was left open. But something caused them to lose pressure. A fire would explain the power loss, and oddities with the SDU and ACARS, as well as the course change.

a reply to: puzzled2

I read that after the fact. It was scheduled for resupply at Freemantle then heading back to the search area. It was more the switching off of the tracking system and the circling of an object that got me interested. Since i posted this the more i read the more interesting it becomes.

a reply to: carpooler

Can you point me towards some info about the Challengers last moments that you mentioned? Very interested in all things Challenger related. It fascinated me as a child.

originally posted by: Zaphod58
a reply to: AndyFromMichigan

Fighters don't operate out of Diego. It's only a fuel stop for bombers and cargo flights usually, although they do sometimes base bombers there for short times. It's too far away for fighters to operate anywhere useful from, and too small to tie up the ramp space with them.

Sorry stray off topic a little but I find that strange, you have a bomber and logistics stop where bombers and cargo are get that can provides a strong outpost so to speak and no air protection. What if to say an enemy sent a carrier fleet toward the islands to capture it. Or is it a case that there are naval defence systems in place