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Flight MH370: Malaysian radar, passenger phone contact, high-altitudehypoxia
Just a comment about what a terrible position this put the Malaysian
military in. They were backed into a corner and had to admit: a) they were not monitoring radar returns in real time from targets not broadcasting ACT beacons. Because if they were, they would have admitted to trying to contact the target as the first in a series of actions that any self-respecting military would or should take b) because of (a), they did not scramble a jet to investigate the target. This is why it took several days for the world to learn what data the Malaysian military had. They knew they had radar data, but how to tell the world - without revealing (a) and (b) above? ========== Flight 370 did a wide U-turn in the middle of the night over the Gulf of Thailand and then spent nearly half an hour swooping over two large Malaysian cities and various towns and villages, there was apparently silence. As far as investigators have been able to determine, there have been no phone calls, Twitter or Weibo postings, Instagram photos or any other communication from anyone aboard the aircraft since it was diverted. According to military radar, the aircraft was flying extremely high shortly after its turn — as much as 45,000 feet, above the certified maximum altitude of 43,100 feet for the Boeing 777-200. It then descended as it crossed Peninsular Malaysia, flying as low as 23,000 feet before moving up to 29,500 feet and cruising there. The hijacked planes on Sept. 11 were flying very low toward urban targets when passengers and flight attendants made calls from those aircraft. Base station signals spread out considerably over distance. So cellphones in a plane a few miles up, like Flight 370, would receive little if any signal. Base station design has improved since the Sept. 11 attacks to provide better, more focused coverage of specific areas on the ground. But that also means somewhat less signal intensity is wasted in directions where callers are unlikely to be located, such as directly overhead. Cellphones transmit at one watt or less, while base stations typically transmit at 20 watts and sometimes much more. So even if a cellphone showed that it was receiving a signal while aloft, it might not be able to transmit a signal that was strong enough to make a connection. The metal in an aircraft reduces cellphone signals somewhat. If a passenger had pressed a cellphone against a plastic window with a line of sight to a cellphone tower then it is possible a connection might have been made even at a fairly high altitude, because plastic barely blocks a cellphone signal at all. ============ So it's possible given a phone held in contact with a window might have been able to transmit a text message to a line-of-sight tower, even if the plane was 20k feet in the air. It seems likely that such a geometry did exist for some period of time. If no such transmission took place, then: a) passengers were alive, but unaware there was anything wrong with the flight to try such measures to make contact using their phone b) passengers were alive, did realize the plane was being taken off course, but did not try the cell-phone-against-the-window trick, (or they did try but it didn't work) c) passengers were unconcious or dead when in range of cell phone towers I can say that GPS reception in a plane works somewhat well, given the unit is near a window. An old unit I have (Garmin Geko, circa 2004/2005) needs to be pressed up against a plane's window in order to get a GPS fix. A newer model (like a car GPS, TomTom 1400 or Garmin Nuvi) can still get a fix even when placed on the seat-back tray of a window seat. FM radio reception works quite well, even when sitting in an isle seat in a large plane. AM radio reception does not work at all, even if the radio is pressed against a window. I've made it a habbit of using a GPS of one sort or another on at least half of the flights I've been on since 2005. I've programmed the coordinates of every airport that I've flown to (or from) and when landing, on approach, I can even predict which runway I'm lined up for. Had I been on that flight (and I can hear the wise cracks now) I would have known we were off course, and at what altitude we were at (yes, my Geko tells me that). ============= Many aircraft carry satellite phones, and the Malaysia Airlines jet was equipped with them in business class. The plane continued to send satellite pings for nearly seven hours after it was apparently diverted. But the satellite phones are part of an aircraft’s in-flight entertainment system. If someone deliberately diverted a plane and turned off its transponder and other communications equipment, that person is likely to have disabled the in-flight entertainment system so that passengers could not figure out from the map that they were flying in the wrong direction, said a telecommunications expert who insisted on anonymity because he was not authorized to talk to the news media. If the entertainment system was turned off, the satellite phones also would not work, the expert said. ============== The only question here is this: Can the entertainment system be turned on from outside the cockpit - or is there a master power switch for the system in the cockpit? One thing is clear - once the system is turned off from cockpit, the crew will be trying to find out what's wrong with it, and will be trying to contact the pilots in the (presumably locked) cockpit. For how long that could happen - who knows. What the world should learn from this is that there should be an alternate communications radio in the tail of passenger planes THAT CAN'T BE TURNED OFF FROM THE COCKPIT. =============== Investigators do not know if anyone aboard the plane even tried to make a call. One theory is that someone may have intentionally depressurized the plane as it soared to an unusually high altitude right after the turnaround, which would have quickly rendered passengers and flight attendants unconscious, pilots said. Whoever diverted the plane could have disabled the release of oxygen masks. =============== Now there is the block-buster. The release of passenger oxygen masks can be disabled from the cockpit? That makes the following all the more pertinent: ========= Dr. James Ho, an associate professor of medicine at Hong Kong University, said that death could come within minutes if someone were the equivalent of outdoors at 45,000 feet. But without information on the speed of depressurization, it is hard to predict the medical consequences, he said. A table used by pilots for “time of useful consciousness” without an oxygen supplement at various altitudes shows only nine to 15 seconds at 45,000 feet, compared with five to 10 minutes at 22,000 feet. ========= So we have a plane-load of dead people. ========= Mobile phone service is widely available in sizable areas of western China and eastern Kazakhstan, raising the question of why nobody from the plane has tried to make a call if it did fly north and land safely, instead of flying out into the Indian Ocean until it ran out of fuel. ========== Because they were all dead. Or if not, and if it landed, it landed somewhere where it was known there is no functional cell towers. Or it crashed (on land or water) or while trying to make a controlled landing on land. |
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Flight MH370: Malaysian radar, passenger phone contact,high-altitude hypoxia
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Flight MH370: Malaysian radar, passenger phone contact,high-altitude hypoxia
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Flight MH370: Malaysian radar, passenger phone contact, high-altitude hypoxia
In article ,
Home^Guy "Home"@@Guy . com wrote: My point is that in terms of the military watching for radar signals 24/7 from planes not transmitting ATC beacons, it's obvious that the Malasian military wasn't doing that, because the thinking is that anyone trying to hijack a plane obviously wants to fly the plane into a landmark, and they can really only do that with the aid of daylight. I don't know for sure, but did the plane actually enter the airspace of Malaysia after turning off the transponder. If they did not and/or was heading away from Malaysia, why would they care? They can hardly take umbrage at every plane that wonders by unless there is some kind of hostile profile. At 45,000, there really isn't any. The plane would be stalling at 45k feet. I've heard some pilots say that anything over 40k feet is a crapshoot in terms of being able to keep a plane like that flying. The rated ceiling for the 777 is 43,100. Given the FAA's penchant for safety buffers, I would find it hard to believe that 45K is so far out of parameters. -- "Statistics are like bikinis. What they reveal is suggestive, but what they conceal is vital." -- Aaron Levenstein |
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Flight MH370: Malaysian radar, passenger phone contact,high-altitude hypoxia
Kurt Ullman wrote:
The plane would be stalling at 45k feet. I've heard some pilots say that anything over 40k feet is a crapshoot in terms of being able to keep a plane like that flying. The rated ceiling for the 777 is 43,100. With what? No passengers and maybe half a tank of gas? How about a full plane, with a huge load of avgas for a long flight? |
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Flight MH370: Malaysian radar, passenger phone contact, high-altitude hypoxia
In article ,
H0me^Gvy "H0me"@@Gvy . com wrote: Kurt Ullman wrote: The plane would be stalling at 45k feet. I've heard some pilots say that anything over 40k feet is a crapshoot in terms of being able to keep a plane like that flying. The rated ceiling for the 777 is 43,100. With what? No passengers and maybe half a tank of gas? How about a full plane, with a huge load of avgas for a long flight? That is what the FAA certified it to fly. They put no restrictions. I really hate to put facts into your flights (get it?) of fantasy. -- "Statistics are like bikinis. What they reveal is suggestive, but what they conceal is vital." -- Aaron Levenstein |
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Flight MH370: Malaysian radar, passenger phone contact, high-altitude hypoxia
"Kurt Ullman" wrote in message
stuff snipped The rated ceiling for the 777 is 43,100. Given the FAA's penchant for safety buffers, I would find it hard to believe that 45K is so far out of parameters. If Shah rose that high to extinguish a bad fire, I don't think he intended to stay there long and that's bolstered by the fact the plane did drop down to an altitude where the passengers and crew wouldn't die from lack of oxygen in the air. -- Bobby G. |
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Flight MH370: Malaysian radar, passenger phone contact, high-altitude hypoxia
In the case of fire if they had enough time and wherewithall and
control to turn the plane around and fly it up and down to that extent then it seems equally likely they would have been able to make a mayday and should have done. The absence of a mayday suggests sudden and catastrophic failure which does not appear to have happended in this case if the information being given is to be believed. I think until the aircraft is found this one will remain an enigma. On Tue, 18 Mar 2014 17:40:12 -0400, "Robert Green" wrote: "Kurt Ullman" wrote in message If Shah rose that high to extinguish a bad fire, I don't think he intended to stay there long and that's bolstered by the fact the plane did drop down to an altitude where the passengers and crew wouldn't die from lack of oxygen in the air. |
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Flight MH370: China and the gold equation
Metspitzer wrote:
Glenn Beck says 20 of the passengers were semiconductor experts. The cargo changed from mangosteens to lithium batteries. It is starting to seem like "The West" is searching for a plane that was hijacked by the US. If it was hijacked by the pilots for the value of it's cargo - that means only one thing. Gold. China's been on a gold-buying binge for the past year - and not on paper. Taking actual physical possession. Which means gold in the hold. That, and don't overlook those chinese passengers each bringing back a kilo or two of gold in their luggage. The Indians are doing it by the planeload themselves since their gov't put controls on gold imports. China is in the midst of a liquidity crisis starting about a week or two ago, and the ultra rich are selling their expensive foreign properties to raise case. |
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Flight MH370: Altitude issues, flight-recorder operation
trader_4 wrote:
Another thing no one has mentioned. Malaysian military said they had it on radar somewhere over the Straits at 29,500 ft. No one AFAIK has commented on that. That's not a standard altitude. I've monitored the flights I've been on using hand-held GPS, and I can tell you that flight altitudes rarely match up with what the pilots claim to be their cruise altitude or in-flight map display. Being off by 500 feet is common. Altimeters based on air pressure are not as accurate as consumer GPS. ATC or military ground radar also is not that good at measuring altitude. But I'll tell you what is or has gotten little comment: The fact that the plane was carrying a load of batteries (lithium ion? lithium polymer?). I'll tell you what happened: The cargo load was not secure, it shifted during takeoff causing damage, batteries were punctured, fire ensued, plane systems were damaged, smoke and fumes incapacitated passengers and crew, plane flew some random course until it ran out of fuel. Fire damage could have disrupted power to black boxes, so there is a chance that they stopped recording much closer to the start of the flight and would therefore contain extremely relavent and useful information during the phase of the flight where humans were likely to be alive, concious, or otherwise in control of the plane. |
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