Search on after Malaysia Airlines flight vanishes

[macdoc]

A little standard 100 gig solid state hard disk will record about 2,000 hours of good quality, and cost about fifty pounds. If you had four separate streams, it would still record 500 hours. 2 hours is pathetic. My usb memory stick would be more use.

would not stand what a black recorder needs to.

[Hermit]

You may need to be of a certain age to get it.

[JimC]

My resume would say "Good with quadratic equations. Fuck off if you want anything involving people skills"

[mistermack]

A little standard 100 gig solid state hard disk will record about 2,000 hours of good quality, and cost about fifty pounds. If you had four separate streams, it would still record 500 hours. 2 hours is pathetic. My usb memory stick would be more use.

would not stand what a black recorder needs to.

Ha.
Apart from posting nothing to back that up, you've managed to miss the point by miles.

A bit like the plane.

[pErvinalia]

So why don't they stick a 100gig ssd in there, do you think?

[mistermack]

So why don't they stick a 100gig ssd in there, do you think?

They're cunts.

[Calilasseia]

So, can you inform us whether or not your 100 gig SSD would survive a high speed impact into the side of a mountain, as happened with an Air New Zealand DC10 in the past? Or survive two years being marinated in sea water at a depth of 4,000 metres, as happened in the case of Air France Flight 441? Or survive a combination of cockpit fire and sea impact, as happened with Swissair Flight 111? Or how about SilkAir Flight 185, which impacted the ocean at close to the speed of sound? Or PanAm flight 103, famously brought down by a terrorist bomb exploding at 35,000 feet?

If the people who make flight data and cockpit voice recorders thought that a 100 GB SSD would survive the rigours that the current system has to survive, do you really think they wouldn't have started shipping new, improved data and voice recorders with a far longer recording duration? Only there's an engineering discipline known as "flight systems", which involves testing components for survivability and reliability under aerospace operating conditions, and any component that goes into a CVR or FDR unit has to pass a large battery of such tests, otherwise it doesn't end up in the final assembly. Now if you have some nice stats for your 100 GB SSD, suggesting that it would indeed pass that battery of tests, then we can start talking, or, more appropriately, you can start talking to Honeywell and the other manufacturers. Until then, I suspect we can file your comments on this under "random Internet dude" rather than "expert".

[FBM]

BBC's leading headline at the moment is "Search Resumes for Malaysia Jet." OK, I searched my resume and didn't see anything in there but my work history, etc.




Sorry.

Incidentally, and unrelatedly, there is another BBC headline at the moment that reads "Two face genital mutilation charges." What is a a "face genital"? I've never seen anybody with one; I assume it's a genetic thing. But anyone who mutilates anyone with a face genital should definitely be charged. That's just wrong.

[mistermack]

So, can you inform us whether or not your 100 gig SSD would survive a high speed impact into the side of a mountain, as happened with an Air New Zealand DC10 in the past? Or survive two years being marinated in sea water at a depth of 4,000 metres, as happened in the case of Air France Flight 441? Or survive a combination of cockpit fire and sea impact, as happened with Swissair Flight 111? Or how about SilkAir Flight 185, which impacted the ocean at close to the speed of sound? Or PanAm flight 103, famously brought down by a terrorist bomb exploding at 35,000 feet?

Yes, it would do all of those things.
And you've missed the point, by as many miles as Macdoc.

[cronus]

http://uk.reuters.com/article/2014/03/2 ... 2H20140320

Loss of Malaysia plane spurs calls to upload black box data to the 'cloud'

(Reuters) - The disappearance of a Malaysian plane has prompted calls for in-flight streaming of black box data over remote areas, but industry executives say implementing changes may be complex and costly.

Mark Rosenker, former chairman of the U.S. National Transportation Safety Board, said this incident and the 2009 loss of an Air France flight in the Atlantic should spur reforms in what he described an outdated accident investigation process.

Rosenker, a retired U.S. Air Force general, said finding a way to transmit limited information from flight data and cockpit voice recorders to a virtual "cloud" database would help authorities launch accident investigations sooner and locate a plane if it got into trouble while out of reach of ground-based radars.

(continued)

[macdoc]

Nice idea except the cloud is nowhere near most airline paths.
Now balck boxes for cars and trucks in the cloud....you can bet that is coming.....trucks are pretty much there already.

Would need to be satellite - no easy task. Tho not impossible and will likely come.
It's why radios are used. Now if the software had been upgraded.....we'd know.

•••

Washington (CNN) -- Somewhere in the vast Indian Ocean, a tiny aluminum cylinder may be emitting a steady ping.
The ping itself is unremarkable, says Anish Patel, president of beacon manufacturer Dukane Seacom Inc. Patel snaps his fingers to match the pinger's rate -- one snap per second. In fact, it is inaudible to human ears.
But the whole world is listening. And the ping is taking on the cadence of a slowly failing clock.
Friday marks the 14th day of the hunt for Malaysia Airlines Flight 370, and near the halfway mark in the pinger's minimum battery life. When the battery dies, possibly around April 6, the job of finding the flight data and cockpit voice recorders will get significantly harder. And so will the job of solving the mystery of Flight 370.

A beacon of hope
Every commercial airplane is required to have pingers -- technically called underwater locator beacons -- to help locate lost aircraft. One is attached to the flight data recorder; another to the cockpit voice recorder. Find the pingers and you find the recorders. Find the recorders, experts say, and you solve the mystery of Flight 370.
But, like virtually everything in aviation, the current technology represents one step in an evolutionary path. Today's recorders are better than recorders of the past, when data was recorded on magnetic tape. But they fall short of current technical potential, with short battery lives and -- on voice recorders -- only two hours of recording capacity.
Since Flight 370 flew almost seven hours beyond the point where something went terribly wrong, it's almost guaranteed that crucial cockpit sounds have been erased.
On the positive side, the depletion of the battery will not wipe out data. Data has been known to survive years in harsh sea water conditions on modern recorders.
Standards today
Cockpit voice recorders memorialize pilot's words -- from the inconsequential to the tragic. In 1999, a voice recorder captured the last words of the startled captain of EgyptAir 990 as he fought to maintain control of his plane. The cockpit voice recorder helped establish that the pilot was trying to pull the plane out if a dive while his co-pilot flew it into the ocean.
Voice recorders also record clicks and hums -- sounds that can reveal pilot's actions.
Flight data recorders capture a wide array of data, including altitudes, air speeds, headings, engine temperatures, flap and rudder positions.
"The newer aircraft typically are to record 88 or 91 parameters now, but usually we see recorders that come in for the newer aircraft of at least a few hundred parameters if not more than 1,000," a National Transportation Safety Board official said.
They must record the previous 36 hours of operations.
Enter the data into a flight simulator, and you can re-create history, using technology to solve a technological mystery.
But first you have to find the boxes.

Data recorders are built to withstand the rigors of flight and the trauma of crashes.
Recorders are required to survive short, hot blazes, such as a fuel fire, or longer but cooler blazes, such as a forest fire, were a plane to crash in the woods.
They are required to survive an impact shock of 3,400 G-forces, and have standards for static crush and fluid immersion.
They must be able to withstand hydrostatic pressures found at 20,000 feet deep. The region where searchers are now looking for Flight 370 has depths up to 13,000 feet.
The pingers are activated upon immersion in fresh or salt water, and emit a signal at 37.5 kilohertz.
To detect the signals, searchers drag hydrophones behind boats, drop them from ships or planes, or use specially equipped submersibles.
Under favorable sea conditions, the pingers can be heard 2 nautical miles away. But high seas, background noise, wreckage or silt can all make pingers harder to detect.

Changes since Air France 447
The 2009 crash of Air France 447 was a game changer in the history of underwater beacons. The battery died before searchers could locate the wreckage. It was another two years before the recorders were recovered.
Since then, regulators and the airline industry have undertaken efforts to increase the beacon battery life from 30 to 90 days. And there are efforts to require pingers to be attached to aircraft airframes, making it easier to locate wreckage. The next-generation pingers emit pings that can be heard 6 to 10 miles away, said Patel.

After 30 days
Patel believes his company manufactured the pingers on Malaysia 370.
"We are confident it could be one of ours," he said. Malaysia Airlines is a customer of Dukane Seacom, and the company's pingers have been installed on Boeing 777s.
"We're preparing to address questions should it be ours," he says.
And what is happening now with the pingers?
If it's not found soon, Malaysia 370's pingers may die with a whimper.
After 30 days, the battery will continue providing power and the beacon will ping, but the output will quickly drop, Patel says.
"As the battery 'wears down' the pinger output decreases until the battery reaches a point that no ping is emitted," Patel wrote in an e-mail to CNN. "The pings get lower and lower in 'volume' as the battery weakens."
"Our predictive models and lab tests show 33-35 days of output before we drop below the minimal value," he wrote. "Depending on the age of the battery, it could continue pinging for a few days longer with progressively lower output levels, until the unit shuts down."

http://edition.cnn.com/2014/03/20/world ... ?hpt=hp_c1

Data recorders are built to withstand the rigors of flight and the trauma of crashes.
Recorders are required to survive short, hot blazes, such as a fuel fire, or longer but cooler blazes, such as a forest fire, were a plane to crash in the woods.
They are required to survive an impact shock of 3,400 G-forces, and have standards for static crush and fluid immersion.
They must be able to withstand hydrostatic pressures found at 20,000 feet deep. The region where searchers are now looking for Flight 370 has depths up to 13,000 feet.

hardly an SSD drive territory.

[mistermack]

Macdoc, you continually miss the point. Or you're just being deliberately stupid.
The modern recorders now use solid state memory :

Thus, the latest designs employ solid-state memory and use digital recording techniques, making them much more resistant to shock, vibration and moisture. With the reduced power requirements of solid-state recorders, it is now practical to incorporate a battery in the units, so that recording can continue until flight termination, even if the aircraft electrical system fails.

The point is that more memory would cost a miniscule amount, and I used the examples of an ssd drive and usb memory stick to illustrate that point. Your point about survivability is bordering on the moronic.
Firstly, it's the tail location that does most of the protection work. Then the housing. Last and least by a long way is the construction of the memory chips.

The point is that 2 hours isn't enough, and it would cost peanuts to increase it to 20 or 200 or 2000.
Why on earth do you need that explaining?

[pErvinalia]

BBC's leading headline at the moment is "Search Resumes for Malaysia Jet." OK, I searched my resume and didn't see anything in there but my work history, etc.




Sorry.

Incidentally, and unrelatedly, there is another BBC headline at the moment that reads "Two face genital mutilation charges." What is a a "face genital"? I've never seen anybody with one; I assume it's a genetic thing. But anyone who mutilates anyone with a face genital should definitely be charged. That's just wrong.

A "dickhead"?

I was more taken by the fact that a potential bearded lady circus performer had mutilated multiple genitals.

[pErvinalia]

So, can you inform us whether or not your 100 gig SSD would survive a high speed impact into the side of a mountain, as happened with an Air New Zealand DC10 in the past? Or survive two years being marinated in sea water at a depth of 4,000 metres, as happened in the case of Air France Flight 441? Or survive a combination of cockpit fire and sea impact, as happened with Swissair Flight 111? Or how about SilkAir Flight 185, which impacted the ocean at close to the speed of sound? Or PanAm flight 103, famously brought down by a terrorist bomb exploding at 35,000 feet?

Yes, it would do all of those things.
And you've missed the point, by as many miles as Macdoc.

I thought the point was that you reckon you know more about flight recorders than the experts do. A bit like your stance on global warming, actually.

[FBM]

BBC's leading headline at the moment is "Search Resumes for Malaysia Jet." OK, I searched my resume and didn't see anything in there but my work history, etc.




Sorry.

Incidentally, and unrelatedly, there is another BBC headline at the moment that reads "Two face genital mutilation charges." What is a a "face genital"? I've never seen anybody with one; I assume it's a genetic thing. But anyone who mutilates anyone with a face genital should definitely be charged. That's just wrong.

A "dickhead"?

I was more taken by the fact that a potential bearded lady circus performer had mutilated multiple genitals.

Yeah, that was a shocking turn of events, wunnit?