Malaysia Airlines MH370: black box ping detected - reports

[mrsat_98]

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worl...d-reports.html

A Chinese ship searching for the missing Malaysian Airlines plane has detected a signal from a location in the South Indian Ocean, according to reports.
The Haixun 01 vessel reportedly picked up the "ping" at 25 degrees south latitude and 101 degrees east longitude.
It is yet to be determined whether the signal is related to the missing flight MH370 of the Malaysia Airlines, the report from China's official state media said.
China's Liberation Daily reported that three people on board had heard the signals, however these were not recorded as they came without warning.
Dozens of ships, planes and submarines resumed the search on Saturday, the 28th day since it disappeared, as time runs out before the black box loses its battery power.
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Up to 10 military planes, three civilian jets and 11 ships took part in the protracted search in the southern Indian Ocean for the Boeing 777 which disappeared on March 8 with 239 people onboard.
The 128-metre Haixun 01 patrol ship arrived on Friday at a new search area, north of a 1million square mile area earlier designated by Australia.
The ship, which can reportedly travel for 10,000 nautical miles without refuelling, is one of two Chinese vessels currently searching for missing plane off the Australian coast.
Military and civilian planes, ships with deep-sea searching equipment and a British nuclear submarine are scouring a remote patch of the southern Indian Ocean off Australia's west coast, in the increasingly urgent hunt for debris and the "black box" recorders that hold vital information about Malaysia Airlines Flight 370's last hours.
However, the race is on as the black box battery powering those emissions is nearing the end of its roughly 30-day life span.

[Carson]

It sounds like more of the same manure they've been reporting.

When I heard this start this morning it was some sort of real iffy, they may have heard a ping. It only gets more definite the longer they repeat it to themselves.

I mean really. You pick up a signal or you don't. If it WAS a maybe they would have double checked by now to confirm it.

[Nirvikalpa]

So what was the media saying would stop giving out pings after 72 hours?

[Zippyjuan]

The "ping detector" has a range of 20,000 feet but some of the waters they are searching right now can be 19,000 feet deep so they will have to be nearly on top of it to find it. The detector towing boat has to also keep its speed below five knots so they can't cover very much ground which is why they have wanted to get as close of a possible "fix" on the location before hauling out the detector but the batteries on a flight data recorder only last about 30 days (it may last longer or shorter) so that time is running out. Australian news report from earlier today:

http://www.cbsnews.com/news/malaysia...-boxes-begins/

PERTH, Australia -- Crews searching for the missing Malaysia Airlines jet launched a targeted underwater hunt on Friday for the plane's black boxes along a stretch of remote ocean, with just days left before the devices' batteries are expected to run out.

The Australian navy ship Ocean Shield, which is dragging a towed pinger locator from the U.S. Navy, and the British navy's HMS Echo, which has underwater search gear on board, will converge along a 150-mile track in a desolate patch of the southern Indian Ocean, said Angus Houston, the head of a joint agency coordinating the search.

The plane's data recorders emit a ping that can be detected by the equipment on board the ships. But the battery-powered devices stop transmitting the pings about 30 days after a crash - meaning searchers have little time left before the batteries on Flight 370's black boxes die out. Locating the data recorders and wreckage after that is possible, but incredibly difficult.
Houston acknowledged that the clock was ticking for search crews.

"The locater beacon will last about a month before it ceases its transmissions - so we're now getting pretty close to the time when it might expire," he said.

Because the U.S. Navy's pinger locator can pick up black box signals up to a depth of 20,000 feet, it should be able to hear the devices even if they are lying in the deepest part of the search zone - about 19,000 feet below the surface. But that's only if the locator gets within range of the black boxes - a tough task, given the size of the search area and the fact the pinger locator must be dragged slowly through the water at just 1 to 5 knots, or 1 to 6 miles per hour.

Finding floating wreckage is key to narrowing the search area, as officials can then use data on ocean currents to try and backtrack to the spot where the Boeing 777 entered the water - and where the coveted data recorders may be. Those devices would provide crucial information about what condition the plane was flying under and any communications or sounds in the cockpit.

On Thursday, the HMS Echo reported one alert as it searched for sonic transmissions from the missing plane's flight data recorder, but it was quickly discounted as a false alarm, the search coordination center said. False alerts can come from animals such as whales, or interference from shipping noise.

[tangent4ronpaul]

press conference just now.

Chinese ship re-detected pings today for 90 seconds, 2km from where they detected it yesterday.

All search resources being moved to that area. They are not confirming that this is it, but it's looking good.

-t

[RCA]

Let's imagine for a second that the plane IS somewhere in this new area. How in the world did the plane get that far off course without a SINGLE distress call?

[Warrior_of_Freedom]

Let's imagine they find the plane. Then what? Was there 20 tonnes of gold on board?

[tangent4ronpaul]

Let's imagine they find the plane. Then what? Was there 20 tonnes of gold on board?

That's an interesting question. Discussion about what was on the cargo manifest disappeared early, but apparently these routes were routinely used to transfer money, gold, etc. The area they are looking at isn't that far away from the AU outback. One can imagine a scenario where it flew under the Aussie radar. That's a lot of coast to watch... Other landing spots are possible.

-t

[Zippyjuan]

Let's imagine they find the plane. Then what? Was there 20 tonnes of gold on board?

20 tonnes of gold on a commercial airliner loaded with passengers and baggage and fuel (thinking about weight and storage space)? Gold from where? (the insurance company covering the German gold repatriation will only cover one tonne per shipment).

[Zippyjuan]

Can't confirm if the pings picked up are from the airplane or not. There may be other sources which must be ruled out.
http://www.nydailynews.com/news/worl...icle-1.1746661

Military and civilian planes, ships with deep-sea searching equipment and a British nuclear submarine were scouring the remote patch off Australia’s west coast.

Flight MH370 departing from Kuala Lumpur bound for Beijing with 239 people aboard disappeared March 8.

Authorities were not about to declare a breakthrough in the search.

Previous sightings of possible debris from the plane have turned out to be unrelated to the crash — raising the hopes of grieving families desperate for answers, only to have them dashed again and again.

The China Maritime Search and Rescue Center said it had not yet been determined whether the pulse signal picked up by a black box detector deployed by the ship Haixun 01 was related to the missing Boeing 777, Xinhua reported.

Malaysia’s civil aviation chief, Azharuddin Abdul Rahman, confirmed that the frequency emitted by Flight 370’s black boxes were 37.5 kilohertz and said authorities were verifying the report. The Australian government agency coordinating the search would not immediately comment on it.

There are many clicks, buzzes and other sounds in the ocean from animals, but the 37.5 kilohertz pulse was selected for underwater locator beacons on black boxes because there is nothing else in the sea that naturally makes that sound, said William Waldock, an expert on search and rescue who teaches accident investigation at Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University in Prescott, Arizona.

“They picked that (frequency) so there wouldn’t be false alarms from other things in the ocean,” he said.

But Waldock cautioned “it’s possible it could be an aberrant signal” from a nuclear submarine if there was one in the vicinity.

If confirmed, the search area would be reduced to roughly 4 square miles, Waldock said. Unmanned subs would then scour the area with sonar.

[KCIndy]

Let's imagine they find the plane. Then what? Was there 20 tonnes of gold on board?

More likely a couple thousand pounds of cheap-ass defective Lithium batteries, which have been documented to melt down even when they're packed "safely."

Consider:

http://www.thedailybeast.com/article...for-mh370.html

...In the U.S., however, the Federal Aviation Administration’s Office of Security and Hazardous Materials Safety keeps a list of incidents involving these batteries. They include:

The hands of a passenger on a Southwest Airlines flight burned when spare lithium-ion batteries for a cell phone melted the zip-top bag in which they were carried, breached the passenger’s carry-on bag and produced smoke and flames.

A package of 18 lithium-ion batteries melted through their plastic wrap and set fire to their outer package at the UPS flight center in Louisville, Kentucky.

A FedEx pilot was taking the jump seat in the cockpit of a flight from Memphis when a lithium-ion battery in a flashlight carried in his backpack caught fire while the airplane was still at the gate.

The FAA cautions that their published list of scores of incidents does not represent all the information collected nor “all investigative or enforcement actions taken.”

As became apparent during a National Transportation Safety Board hearing last year into fires in the larger lithium-ion batteries used to power the systems of the Boeing 787 Dreamliner, even the manufacturers concede that the technology has not matured enough for them fully to understand how spontaneous meltdowns occur, either in a single cell or when one cell meltdown breaches its casing and spreads to another cell.

[FindLiberty]

Maybe something worse than this and totally catastrophic happened or the crew quickly turned all breakers off before any "Mayday" call was attempted???

Geeez, even lead acid batteries might be safer if flaming hot Lithium turns out to be the cause of MH370's crash at sea. (Bring back those tried and true aviation NiCad's!)

(pics are 787 not 777) ???

[FindLiberty]

A lithium battery fire is a strong possibility IMO, but I'm trying to keep an open mind.

Forget aviation and just consider that ubiquitous, 99.99% great battery technology:

I managed to personally start a fire while charging/diagnosing some "defective" ones...
It was very strange (I limited max voltage, max current, added a series light bulb with
a timer) but somehow, even with their internal temperature protection...SMOKE AND FIRE!

It was difficult to extinguish those little flames! (It took 2xHalon + 2xH2O extinguishers.

DON'T EVER LEAVE 'EM UNATTENDED! Obviously that includes while charging them (or
discharging 'em), but now it even applies while they're just sitting there, undisturbed.

It's easy to understand how*, but I'm shocked to hear about those spontaneous Lithium Ion
Battery fires. Like tiny Fukushima mini-meltdown disasters waiting in your purse or pocket!
Those batteries are sitting around everywhere! Small % fail, but one more thing to add to this
brave new world full of concerns that we all have to cope with. Is this bad chemistry (like the
electrolytic capacitor plague) or this time is it just bad "O" rings, again (Challenger solid fuel)?

*Some lithium metal science experiment URLs to ponder:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vxqe_ZOwsHs

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mXv38UvP_tQ

Back to the aviation topic again:

Quick recovery of those two flight recorders and/or the wreckage is so very important
to determine the actual cause of the crash, especially if it's an accidental technology fire
that can be prevented from happening again. Those pinger batteries now hold
that lost flight's last best hope for discovery. They are probably reliable alkalines.

[Thor]

[Zippyjuan]

No new "pings" heard.
http://www.cbsnews.com/news/malaysia...-sounds-heard/

PERTH, Australia -- Search crews hunting for the missing Malaysia Airlines jet have failed to relocate faint sounds heard deep below the southern Indian Ocean that officials said were consistent with a plane's black boxes, the head of the search operation said Tuesday.

Angus Houston, the retired Australian air chief marshal who is heading the search far off Australia's west coast, said sound locating equipment on board the Ocean Shield has picked up no trace of the signals since they were first heard late Saturday and early Sunday.

Time may have already run out to find the devices, whose locator beacons have a battery life of about a month. Tuesday marks one month since the plane vanished. Once the beacons blink off, locating the black boxes in such deep water would be an immensely difficult, if not impossible, task.

"There have been no further contacts with any transmission and we need to continue (searching) for several days right up to the point at which there's absolutely no doubt that the batteries will have expired," Houston said.
Up to 14 planes and 14 ships are scouring the 30,000-square-mile search zone.

Despite the excitement surrounding the Ocean Shield's sound detections, Houston warned that the search had previously been marred by false leads - such as ships detecting their own signals. Because of that, other ships cannot be sent in to help with the underwater search, as they may add unwanted noise.

But these signals are being detected by computer sweeps, and "not so much a guy with headphones on listening to pings," said U.S. Navy spokesman Chris Johnson. So until the signals are fully analyzed, it's too early to say what they are, he said.

"We'll hear lots of signals at different frequencies," he said. "Marine mammals. Our own ship systems. Scientific equipment, fishing equipment, things like that. And then of course there are lots of ships operating in the area that are all radiating certain signals into the ocean."

The Ocean Shield is dragging a ping locator at a depth of 1.9 miles. It is designed to detect signals at a range of 1.12 miles, meaning it would need to be almost on top of the recorders to detect them if they were on the ocean floor, which is about 2.8 miles deep.

[FindLiberty]

Golly, where did those (discounted*) eye witnesses say the VERY LOW FLYING plane was headed?
(Just interview 'em and watch for hand gestures. It might not be where they are still weeping the sea looking for that, now long gone signal.)

http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/w...w/32251148.cms

residents of the remote Maldives island of Kuda Huvadhoo in Dhaal Atoll said they saw a "low-flying jumbo jet" around 6.15am (Maldivian time) on March 8, the day when the flight disappeared. It also said the residents reported that that it was a white aircraft, with red stripes across it

Some were reporting the sightings to local police before they even knew a plane was missing.

++++

*Something is very wrong with this whole search/investigation IMO...

[Zippyjuan]

6:15 am would have been six hours after the plane took off. (It was expected in Bejing at 6:30 am) and almost five hours after air traffic controllers lost track of the flight- 3 1/2 hours after its last radar tracking.

Distances. Kuala Lumpur to Beijing : 2700 miles. Kuala Lumpur to Maldives: 1,900 miles. Beijing is to the north of Malaysia, the current search are off Australia to the south and the Maldives almost directly west. If it flew OVER the Maldives, the nearest destination after that would be the Seychelles- 3,200 miles away (a 7 1/2 hour flight if they went directly). Not likely given a large number of airports available in a much closer range.

[Danke]

So what was the media saying would stop giving out pings after 72 hours?

Certified for 30 days, doesn't mean it can't go on longer.

[Danke]

A lithium battery fire is a strong possibility IMO, but I'm trying to keep an open mind.

Forget aviation and just consider that ubiquitous, 99.99% great battery technology:

I managed to personally start a fire while charging/diagnosing some "defective" ones...
It was very strange (I limited max voltage, max current, added a series light bulb with
a timer) but somehow, even with their internal temperature protection...SMOKE AND FIRE!

It was difficult to extinguish those little flames! (It took 2xHalon + 2xH2O extinguishers.

DON'T EVER LEAVE 'EM UNATTENDED! Obviously that includes while charging them (or
discharging 'em), but now it even applies while they're just sitting there, undisturbed.

It's easy to understand how*, but I'm shocked to hear about those spontaneous Lithium Ion
Battery fires. Like tiny Fukushima mini-meltdown disasters waiting in your purse or pocket!
Those batteries are sitting around everywhere! Small % fail, but one more thing to add to this
brave new world full of concerns that we all have to cope with. Is this bad chemistry (like the
electrolytic capacitor plague) or this time is it just bad "O" rings, again (Challenger solid fuel)?

*Some lithium metal science experiment URLs to ponder:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vxqe_ZOwsHs

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mXv38UvP_tQ

Back to the aviation topic again:

Quick recovery of those two flight recorders and/or the wreckage is so very important
to determine the actual cause of the crash, especially if it's an accidental technology fire
that can be prevented from happening again. Those pinger batteries now hold
that lost flight's last best hope for discovery. They are probably reliable alkalines.

If they had a fire on board, they (the pilots) would have been reporting the incident and diverting under Air Traffic monitoring.