Malaysia Airlines Plane "Loses Contact"
Discussion
GarageQueen said:
Apologies if its been discussed earlier in the thread...........but why the hell are pilots allowed to turn off tracking devices / responders???? Why do they even have an 'off' switch at all??? That troubles me
If that troubles you, how do you feel about letting the pilots have control of the plane in the first place? i.e. if you can't trust your pilots not to disable trackers, then you can't trust them not to just fly the plane into a mountain for fun either..........(the point i am trying to make, is that the entire system depends upon "trustworthy" pilots at some point. You cannot sensibly engineer a practical system otherwise)
Ian974 said:
I'm looking at these pictures of micro SD cards thinking that's all fine and well, but if they can't find any sign of the aeroplane in the first place then the amount of data it has on board is pretty irrelevant.
One point is that SD cards are so cheap for a high capacity it would be possible for the recording part of the black box to be replicated in several locations around the aircraft, including 'pods' designed to break free and float to the surface once it has been submerged below a preset depth and/or for a preset duration. These pods, being on the surface with a radio beacon would be much easier to locate than a submerged black box emitting sound pings for s month before it dies which can only be located by specialised equipment towed behind a ship, and even then only if the detector comes within the relatively short range of the pings.MartG said:
One point is that SD cards are so cheap for a high capacity it would be possible for the recording part of the black box to be replicated in several locations around the aircraft, including 'pods' designed to break free and float to the surface once it has been submerged below a preset depth and/or for a preset duration. These pods, being on the surface with a radio beacon would be much easier to locate than a submerged black box emitting sound pings for s month before it dies which can only be located by specialised equipment towed behind a ship, and even then only if the detector comes within the relatively short range of the pings.
Fair enough on the cost of the SD cards, but I'd have thought the majority of the cost of the recorders is to ensure they can survive a crash. An SD card is very reliable in day to day use, but I'm unsure how much of a cost/ size advantage there would be once all the survival requirements are accounted for.Max_Torque said:
If that troubles you, how do you feel about letting the pilots have control of the plane in the first place? i.e. if you can't trust your pilots not to disable trackers, then you can't trust them not to just fly the plane into a mountain for fun either..........
(the point i am trying to make, is that the entire system depends upon "trustworthy" pilots at some point. You cannot sensibly engineer a practical system otherwise)
It is possible to mount external tracker independent of main power so if it catches fire it couldn't impact the plane itself. It would rely on its batteries and last few months. However it seems to be too expensive for airline companies, this search is cheaper heh...(the point i am trying to make, is that the entire system depends upon "trustworthy" pilots at some point. You cannot sensibly engineer a practical system otherwise)
Ian974 said:
Fair enough on the cost of the SD cards, but I'd have thought the majority of the cost of the recorders is to ensure they can survive a crash. An SD card is very reliable in day to day use, but I'm unsure how much of a cost/ size advantage there would be once all the survival requirements are accounted for.
Agree that most of the cost must go toward the construction of the recorder unit to make it crash survivable, but does all of it need to be? So what if the chassis is smashed to bits, all that's needed is that the data has survived on one of these theoretical breakaway pods. They could all be connected up to the recorder unit by Wi-Fi, no? 
Vipers said:
Why?, explain, I am interested.
Another reason for allowing the transponders to be turned off is that, at an airport, where there can be hundreds of planes, it's not a good idea to have them all squawking at the same time, or keying over each other at the same time in radio terms. Confuses the network so they are allowed to be turned off at airports. GSE said:
Another reason for allowing the transponders to be turned off is that, at an airport, where there can be hundreds of planes, it's not a good idea to have them all squawking at the same time, or keying over each other at the same time in radio terms. Confuses the network so they are allowed to be turned off at airports.
Any technical docs or world experience to illustrate that view?Just asking like....
GSE said:
When it was announced that sonar pings had been picked up, the authorities (the Australian PM?) seemed confident that the pings were from MH370, and that the plane would be located very soon. Yet weeks later it seems that they have no idea if the pings were from MH370, from other ships in the area, or from marine life trackers. Surely they know what the signal from the black box on MH370 should sound like, and they should have been able to rule out these other "detections" much earlier on.
Analysis of the three groups of "pings" detected has now led to all being discounted as false signals except the first, which were monitored for 2 hours 20 minutes.The later discounted detections have been ruled out because some were simply noise generated within the British warship which claimed to have detected them and others were found to have emanated from a passing freighter.
None of the pings detected were at the "correct" frequency, even those which are believed to be genuine. It is thought that their frequency was affected by failing batteries and deep submersion.
Searching of the ocean floor continues.
jmorgan said:
Lots of things are possible, how easy is it to get it (SD card, memory stick in any form) approved for flight? I am assuming that anything in a critical position such as a recorder has to meet certain criteria. The end result must be something robust and proven to be so.
I'm talking about external transponder not tracker, which should sense if main transponder is working and if not, start transmitting.Ozzie Osmond said:
The later discounted detections have been ruled out because some were simply noise generated within the British warship which claimed to have detected them and others were found to have emanated from a passing freighter.
I hope that particular warship never has to do anything important like track down an enemy submarine."We've got a target lock! Fire anti-submarine things!"
closely followed by:
"What was that bang?" Why are we sinking?"
AreOut said:
jmorgan said:
Lots of things are possible, how easy is it to get it (SD card, memory stick in any form) approved for flight? I am assuming that anything in a critical position such as a recorder has to meet certain criteria. The end result must be something robust and proven to be so.
I'm talking about external transponder not tracker, which should sense if main transponder is working and if not, start transmitting.jmorgan said:
AreOut said:
jmorgan said:
Lots of things are possible, how easy is it to get it (SD card, memory stick in any form) approved for flight? I am assuming that anything in a critical position such as a recorder has to meet certain criteria. The end result must be something robust and proven to be so.
I'm talking about external transponder not tracker, which should sense if main transponder is working and if not, start transmitting.AreOut said:
It is possible to mount external tracker independent of main power so if it catches fire it couldn't impact the plane itself. It would rely on its batteries and last few months. However it seems to be too expensive for airline companies, this search is cheaper heh...
You want to invent something that, if it catches fire at high altitudes, has no means of being turned off?How are you going to mount it externally, how are you going to check the status of the batteries, how are you going to replace them, what is 'a few months', how are you going to train people to service it, where is the redundancy, etc, etc.
KTF said:
You want to invent something that, if it catches fire at high altitudes, has no means of being turned off?
How are you going to mount it externally, how are you going to check the status of the batteries, how are you going to replace them, what is 'a few months', how are you going to train people to service it, where is the redundancy, etc, etc.
it is a tiny thing mounted externally nowhere close to another component, if it catches fire it will burn out quickly without affecting the planeHow are you going to mount it externally, how are you going to check the status of the batteries, how are you going to replace them, what is 'a few months', how are you going to train people to service it, where is the redundancy, etc, etc.
there are many ways of mounting, some other components are also mounted externally...
it could report status of its batteries to a cabin and engineer would write it down after every flight, service would be easy as it would only need new batteries, if it breaks - buy another one(such device shouldn't cost more than $100 if so), redundancy would be too much to ask for since there is already transponder on the plane, the chance of both transponders breaking at the same time is negligible
Airline suffers £80 million loss in the last quarter due to passengers avoiding them.
http://news.sky.com/story/1262143/missing-mh370-pa...
http://news.sky.com/story/1262143/missing-mh370-pa...
NinjaPower said:
Airline suffers £80 million loss in the last quarter due to passengers avoiding them.
http://news.sky.com/story/1262143/missing-mh370-pa...
Well they lost £770m over the last 3 years, so £250m a year average, £60m a quarter average, so it's not that big a jump in losses?http://news.sky.com/story/1262143/missing-mh370-pa...
A colleague flew with them recently from the US and said it was a very quiet flight with no-one sleeping...
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