Originally Posted by
RadioGirl
I haven't seen anything saying that Inmarsat had records of more than the last ping, or had analysed the other pings, or had given all that to MH. I'm not saying it didn't happen, just that I haven't seen it reported. Do you have a cite for this?
On The Aviation Herald in their article, "
Crash: Malaysia B772 over Gulf of Thailand on Mar 8th 2014, aircraft missing, high degree of certainty: deliberate action" there is the following quotation: "On Mar 14th 2014 Inmarsat released following statement on their website: "Routine, automated signals were registered on the Inmarsat network from Malaysia Airlines flight MH370 during its flight from Kuala Lumpur. This information was provided to our partner SITA, which in turn has shared it with Malaysia Airlines. For further information, please contact Malaysia Airlines." (Editorial note: this statement does NOT state at which times this occurred, nor does it state that those signals were registered after 17:22Z on Mar 7th)." I take that statement to mean multiple pings, not just one ping. If they received one ping, I believe it's completely reasonable to assume they would have received multiple pings.
Originally Posted by
RadioGirl
The you.tube link above showed how multiple pings could have been used but the final results didn't look that different (to me) than simply using the last ping and putting a corridor around it for another hour flight time.
In my opinion, the chance of the aircraft flying a continuous track that maintained a constant Inmarsat signal strength is zero. Each successive ping should have a different signal strength which can be plotted just like the last ping. This is not unlike target motion analysis, which is how submarines are tracked.
Originally Posted by
RadioGirl
Those tracks are thousands of miles long and possibly 200 miles wide. The northern is over difficult terrain where debris might be hard to see. The southern is over ocean where debris has had 11 (?) days to drift with the current. It is way too early to say that they've been comprehensively searched.
If the aircraft took the southern track, it would have eventually run out of fuel and gone down. If it took the northern track, I'm speculating that it eventually landed. I don't disagree that there is a lot of area to cover, however, there are a lot of assets, both airborne and satellite that can cover a lot of area in a short time. If a 777 went down in the ocean, there would be a lot of debris.
Originally Posted by
RadioGirl
Both north and south are mysteries. If south, as you say, why? If north, how did they hope to avoid detection from radar (and how did they actually avoid detection.) I don't think there's yet a plausible explanation for either.
Well, the Malaysian air force got caught with their pants down. Not trying to offend anyone, but we're not talking about the most sophisticated air forces in the world in this region.