Kikapu wrote:Very informative post, Pyro. Very impressed with your technical knowledge on the subject at hand. Thanks
Just wanted to clarify to some, that you meant to say, "Those satellites are on orbit at fix positions 35,786 Km above the Earth and not 35.786 Km above the Earth."
So the question that comes to mind is, why didn't Inmarsat share the flights path with everyone from day one, because if the flight path was at a constant direction, then the aircraft (crash site) has to be somewhere on that constant path from the point of the 7th ping and the 8th ping that never happened, and since the pings were coming one at every hour and if the plane was going at 500 mph, at most, the crash site was going to be 500 miles from the 7th ping, which was the last ping. They could have started searching for the crash site first thing on March 10th. It has been very obvious to the families that they have not been given the truth from the beginning, and it seems they were correct to question the authorities. Any debris found now of flight MH370 is going to be very far away from the crash site, but still, any debris found now can still be useful to try and find the crash site by measuring the speed and direction (set) of the currents and vector back to the flight path, and where the two lines cross, should give the general area of the crash site.
And by the way, after all the satellite images with the know LAT-LONG co ordinance of the debris and with 26 countries using their planes and sea going vessels, they are yet to find one piece of the flight MH370. Really?
Inmarsat had no idea of the aircraft's position and had no reason to look at any pings.
The initial few days, everyone was convinced that the aircraft was in the South China Sea so that is where the search began. Ho Chi Minh Centrre reported the aircraft as disappearing from their radar (when the transponder and ADS-B were switched off), hence the catastrophic failure hypothesis.
It's only after when they received a report that MH370 was detected by primary radar at RMAF Butterworth showing the aircraft to turn on a Westerly Heading, then a Northerly heading to the Adaman Islands. From there, the aircraft took on a heading of 180M at 35000FT - hence the suicide scenario.
So then, catastrophic failure was sidelined and other possible scenarios such as Human Intervention began to be a lot more feasible and likely. So they had a final Primary contact just before MH370 began its Southerly Flight Path. Then, they began to analyse pings because that was the only thing they had, but unfortunately they could not determine position from then onward.
On 14 March, the final ping was analyzed which placed the aircraft along an arc northwards and southwards. So the search area was expanded.
On 15 Mar, Australia, US and NZ begin searching the Southern Search Zone and on that day, a Satellite Image was released by AMSA on 20 Mar of images taken on 16 Mar and 18 Mar (why the delay?). They were convinced that MH370 would be found south west from Perth.
After the Australian Image, there were subsequent images from China and France (but notice how there were no images from the US). The latest French Image has detected approximately 122 objects all within 400 sq kms. Those objects are fragments of MH370.
Now the most interesting thing is that Australia and US were behaving as though they were convinced as to the whereabouts of MH370. I believe that MH370 was picked up by Australia's JORN as it traveled southwards. This radar has an official range of 3000nms which is equivalent to 5500kms. It bounces its signal from the ionosphere and the radar is capable of detecting aircraft and ships at 0FT. Aircraft can't fly under it. Even at 2500kms from the Australian Coast, is within range and some people say that the actual range of this radar is over 10000 kms. It works well beyond the horizon to 0FT since it deflects radio waves from the ionsophere. Then there are the military satellites. Remember that the Australians admitted they had images on 16 Mar but revealed the first image on 20 Mar. They knew a lot more about MH370 than they were prepared to admit to so they had to feed the information through AMSA and other commercial outlets with watered down images. They were never prepared to release images or information from military satellites, as was the case with Thailand which also detected MH370 and admitted to it a week later.
It's just interesting that the search had already begun some 10 days before Inmarsat, and before images were released from Chinese and French commercials satellites.
Basically, from 08 Mar to at least 14 Mar, no one had any clue and everyone was looking in the wrong spots. From 14 Mar to 16 Mar, the focus began to mysteriously shift to the Southern Indian Ocean. It is my opinion that this had something to do with JORN and Pine Gap. The Australians and Americans stated that they did not believe MH370 went northwards and stated that MH370 would be detected by Primary Radars. This is true and it is also one of the reasons why I was suss about the northern arc.
2500kms from Australia's coast is beyond the range of Primary Radar but it is not beyond JORN.
Basically, all countries were unwilling to reveal information about their surveillance capabilities but there was an intense willingness by all involved to help the Malaysian Government as much as possible.
