Malaysia Airlines Flight Vanishes

[steveincowtown]

Regarding smart phones, everyone I deal with an Asia has goofy rings (songs, music, etc.) that always ring whether there phone is on or off.

Baldeagle, actual cruise is about 550ish; which only reinforces your point.

As someone who has spent millions of miles on this aircraft, and in this area of the world, the whole situation is extremely disconcerting.

[philip964]

http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/03/ ... 1720140311" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

Transponder turned off or failed. Hundreds of miles off course. Dropped to a much lower altitude. Tracked by military radar.

[Keith B]

They said on Channel 5 News last night that radar only has a range of about 120 miles. After that they are dependent upon the plane to communicate with satellites to report its position. They only do this once an hour. So "disappeared" might not be referring to vanishing off the radar screen. It may mean that they didn't report in when they should have.

Since planes are flying about 300mph, they would cover a lot of territory between transmissions, which would make the search area very large even if they stayed on their flight path. If they diverted, then the search could be off by 200 miles or more.

Actually, this is not totally correct. At the last info received by one of the flight tracking services, the plane was at about 470 knots (540 MPH).

The commercial radar only has a radius of about 125 miles, but Vietnam and Malaysia have military radar that covers all of that area.

The ADS-B information is sent on 1090Mhz and stations can receive a plane at that altitude between 200 - 250 miles out if the antenna is in a good location. ADS-B data is transmitted 2 times a second. The ADS-B reception was lost to station T-WMKC1 (Sultan Ismail Petra Airport ADS-B receiver) at about 17:20UTC on 3/7. It doesn't mean it went down right then, but that it went out off the grid as far as the ADS-B reception went. Without knowing how far out that station can receive the signal normally we can't tell if that is a valid last transmission point or if it just went out of range. I don't believe Vietnam or Cambodia allow real-time tracking of flights to be transmitted out to the Internet, so there would be no private station data from there if the plane came into range. I am one of the private stations here in the US that is a feeder to one of the the tracking services. I am currently using my personal equipment but am being sent equipment from the company to host for them.

Here is the real-time track of the flight http://fr24.com/2014-03-07/17:05/12x/MAS370/2d81a27" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false; and a good article on what the service I am part of saw http://www.foxnews.com/tech/2014/03/10/ ... nly-holes/" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

[Keith B]

http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/03/ ... 1720140311

Transponder turned off or failed. Hundreds of miles off course. Dropped to a much lower altitude. Tracked by military radar.

This still doesn't smell right. Malaysia would have checked their military radar data first thing, not 4-5 days later. If the plane had that long a flight back across Malaysia they would have known it as the aircraft would have been unidentified and they would have been tracking it at a minimum, including possibly scrambling fighters. I am back to the theory that if they did track it, sent a fighter up and it was not responding to any calls but heading back to Malaysia, they may have given orders to shoot it down and have been covering it up.

[RPBrown]

They said on Channel 5 News last night that radar only has a range of about 120 miles. After that they are dependent upon the plane to communicate with satellites to report its position. They only do this once an hour. So "disappeared" might not be referring to vanishing off the radar screen. It may mean that they didn't report in when they should have.

Since planes are flying about 300mph, they would cover a lot of territory between transmissions, which would make the search area very large even if they stayed on their flight path. If they diverted, then the search could be off by 200 miles or more.

Actually, this is not totally correct. At the last info received by one of the flight tracking services, the plane was at about 470 knots (540 MPH).

The commercial radar only has a radius of about 125 miles, but Vietnam and Malaysia have military radar that covers all of that area.

The ADS-B information is sent on 1090Mhz and stations can receive a plane at that altitude between 200 - 250 miles out if the antenna is in a good location. ADS-B data is transmitted 2 times a second. The ADS-B reception was lost to station T-WMKC1 (Sultan Ismail Petra Airport ADS-B receiver) at about 17:20UTC on 3/7. It doesn't mean it went down right then, but that it went out off the grid as far as the ADS-B reception went. Without knowing how far out that station can receive the signal normally we can't tell if that is a valid last transmission point or if it just went out of range. I don't believe Vietnam or Cambodia allow real-time tracking of flights to be transmitted out to the Internet, so there would be no private station data from there if the plane came into range. I am one of the private stations here in the US that is a feeder to one of the the tracking services. I am currently using my personal equipment but am being sent equipment from the company to host for them.

Here is the real-time track of the flight http://fr24.com/2014-03-07/17:05/12x/MAS370/2d81a27" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false; and a good article on what the service I am part of saw http://www.foxnews.com/tech/2014/03/10/ ... nly-holes/" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

There are a couple of things that I saw and had to go back and look at it again to make sure.
1) There are 2 additional aircraft just to the right labeled CCA970 and KAL672. Both of these aircraft vanished from the screen just prior to MAS370 disappearing. This would lead me to believe what Keith (and I) saw on channel 5 last night.
2) It looks like it is lost when it starts to change direction
3) I found it strange that 1 of the aircraft early on was shown going backward.

[jmra]

Recently watched episode one of Air Disasters on Netflix. Great insight into some of the ATC systems around the world. Human error/poor training combined with equipment failure can result in great tragedy. In this episode it is believed that one of the contributing factors to a midair collision was the transponder on one of the planes may have been turned off when the pilot placed his foot on a foot rest close to the transponder switch. The system used by the country's ATC continued to tract the projected route of the plane changing only one letter on the plane ID to indicate that the transponder had been turned off. The controller never realized the change. Evidently the plane was recorded on radar but showed the plane varying in altitude greatly throughout the flight. In fact the plane had not changed altitude at all. The variation in readings was due to the limitations of the radars capabilities.
If you fly through a lot of underdeveloped countries you may not want to watch this.

[Keith B]

A little more investigation shows that previous flights over that area track all the way across the water to over Vietnam. Additionally I was able to verify there are ADS-B stations in Vietnam and they picked up the reception of the flight as it came across without interruption. Now, if someone was able to disable all transponders and flight tracking systems, then it is possible it would disappear to flight tracking systems, but would still be visible as a blip on military radar.

[Oldgringo]

A little more investigation shows that previous flights over that area track all the way across the water to over Vietnam. Additionally I was able to verify there are ADS-B stations in Vietnam and they picked up the reception of the flight as it came across without interruption. Now, if someone was able to disable all transponders and flight tracking systems, then it is possible it would disappear to flight tracking systems, but would still be visible as a blip on military radar.

Even so, it would have had to land somewhere by now.

[suthdj]

A little more investigation shows that previous flights over that area track all the way across the water to over Vietnam. Additionally I was able to verify there are ADS-B stations in Vietnam and they picked up the reception of the flight as it came across without interruption. Now, if someone was able to disable all transponders and flight tracking systems, then it is possible it would disappear to flight tracking systems, but would still be visible as a blip on military radar.

Even so, it would have had to land somewhere by now.

I would guess middle of Indian Ocean.

[SewTexas]

It's all scary that's all I know....and one more reason not to get on a plane.

[tomtexan]

It's all scary that's all I know....and one more reason not to get on a plane.

I've never flown on a commercial jet airliner. I vowed that I never would. This incident reinforces my thoughts.

[VMI77]

The ADS-B information is sent on 1090Mhz and stations can receive a plane at that altitude between 200 - 250 miles out if the antenna is in a good location. ADS-B data is transmitted 2 times a second. The ADS-B reception was lost to station T-WMKC1 (Sultan Ismail Petra Airport ADS-B receiver) at about 17:20UTC on 3/7. It doesn't mean it went down right then, but that it went out off the grid as far as the ADS-B reception went. Without knowing how far out that station can receive the signal normally we can't tell if that is a valid last transmission point or if it just went out of range. I don't believe Vietnam or Cambodia allow real-time tracking of flights to be transmitted out to the Internet, so there would be no private station data from there if the plane came into range. I am one of the private stations here in the US that is a feeder to one of the the tracking services. I am currently using my personal equipment but am being sent equipment from the company to host for them.

Here is the real-time track of the flight http://fr24.com/2014-03-07/17:05/12x/MAS370/2d81a27" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false; and a good article on what the service I am part of saw http://www.foxnews.com/tech/2014/03/10/ ... nly-holes/" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

Are you using RTL-SDR for ADS-B tracking? If so, what antenna do you use? I just ordered a TV28T v2 USB DVB-T & RTL-SDR Receiver, RTL2832U & R820T Tuner.

[Keith B]

Are you using RTL-SDR for ADS-B tracking? If so, what antenna do you use? I just ordered a TV28T v2 USB DVB-T & RTL-SDR Receiver, RTL2832U & R820T Tuner.

Yes I am currently using an RTL-SDR dongle. I built a collinear antenna myself like the one in this article http://www.arrl.org/files/file/QST/This ... 013QST.pdf" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

What's funny is I had just finished setting up my station the day this issue of QST arrived in the mail. Was almost part for part identical. I use RTL1090 software to decode the Mode-S signals and then use the feeder software from the company to send it to them the data.

There are lots of other things you can receive with the RTL-SDR. I use SDR# software to do general reception and have also done some Packet and other digital mode decoding with the receiver. The RTL-SDR dongle is pretty good on sensitivity for a ultra wide-band $15 USB device.

To not drift this topic any further, you can PM me if you have any questions or need input on device setup and use.

[mojo84]

I wish you guys would start talking English.

I can't believe in this day and time a plane can just disappear as this one appears have. The technology available and knowing the government (NSA), Google, Facebook, Yahoo, etc can keep tabs on all of us but a plane with over 200 folks can just disappear is amazing to me.

I also think the Malaysian government is hiding something.

[anygunanywhere]

I also think the Malaysian government is hiding something.

This^^^^.

Anygunanywhere