Malaysia Airlines Flight 370

It's worth noting that the Towed Pinger Locator on board the Ocean Shield is actually U.S. Navy kit. It's fairly safe to assume that it came with personnel who know exactly how to use it.

is it possible that the Chinese claims aren't as reliable as we first thought if the Aussies are discounting them? And what's the only way of locating the plane, once the signal stops?

From The Guardian online :

Quote:Angus Houston, head of the joint agency co-ordination centre, said the naval vessel had twice detected a signal in the northern part of the search area – first for two hours and 20 minutes, and then for 13 minutes. The vessel is continuing to monitor the area to relocate the signal.

"Significantly, this would be consistent with transmissions from both the flight data recorder and the cockpit voice recorder."

China's state news agency Xinhua announced this weekend that a Chinese patrol ship, the Haixun 01, detected a signal that could be from one of the black boxes of the missing plane, about 300 nautical miles from the location of Ocean Shield.

The report raised hopes because it said the frequency of the signal was 37.5kHz, which the beacon's manufacturer said would be consistent with its product. Oceanographers said this frequency would be unlikely to arise naturally.

But the Chinese vessel Haixun 1 detected it for just over a minute. But footage later released showed the crew using a handheld sonar device called a hydrophone, which is far less sophisticated than the towed pinger locator used by Ocean Shield and, said experts, would be highly unlikely to detect the beacons.

Houston said it was unlikely the Chinese and Australian crews had detected the same source, though he added: "In deep water, funny things happen with acoustic signals."

(07-04-2014 20:30 )babelover48 Wrote:  is it possible that the Chinese claims aren't as reliable as we first thought if the Aussies are discounting them? And what's the only way of locating the plane, once the signal stops?

I think the Aussies have pretty much discounted the Chinese claims. If the Signal detected by Ocean Shield are confirmed, the Chinese are going to look very silly..

As for locating the wreckage, it's been done before...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/South_Afric...Flight_295

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Air_France_Flight_447

If the plane is largely intact (the lack of confirmed debris suggests it may be) then recovering the Recorders will be more difficult, but not impossible. On the 777, they're located in the rear of the Aircraft, above the Galley Ceiling i believe.

(07-04-2014 20:30 )babelover48 Wrote:  what's the only way of locating the plane, once the signal stops?

Even if the signal stops they must have a decent idea of whereabouts it's been coming from, which means that the search area in the future will be tiny in comparison to what it's been like so far.

This image was issued by the Australian searchers to show the underwater search area. Going by this map it looks as though they haven't dismissed the Chinese report entirely.

So do they now think it is possible they have located the boxes?

They (rightly) won't confirm they've found anything until they either recover them, or find some wreckage/debris.

Quote:"I believe we are searching in the right area," said Air Chief Marshal Angus Houston, who heads the joint agency co-ordinating the search.
"But we need to visually identify aircraft wreckage before we can confirm with certainty that this is the final resting place of MH370."

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-26950387

(24-03-2014 23:17 )Tumble_Drier Wrote:  FAA Regs require a battery back up for both recorders.

CNN has been saying that the batteries on the recorders might only be good for 10 minutes recording. In which case if someone popped the circuit breakers on them even success in finding them won't tell us what happened.

They haven't located the needle in the haystack yet, but they are at least closing in on defining where the haystack is exactly. I think Inmarsat and the Australian searchers have done a great job in putting together this science jigsaw puzzle and they are surely close now to the achievement of finding something physical. It's not taken that long either, considering the vastness of the ocean. Remember it took 73 years to locate the wreck of Titanic.