[Peetwo]

Is Dong, is good suspect?? - 

The Australian government is truly at risk P2;

"Hmm...maybe some more potential for political embarrassment in that lot for miniscule Dazzling Dazza and PM Malcolm... "

The Chinese were never really going to contribute any additional value to the search. And as anyone in the 'security' industry knows, although the Dong is not by nature an intelligence gathering vehicle, it will have some capability and will have intelligence analysts onboard. Freemantle is not the place that you want Chinese hardware parked.

Then again, this is the same Government that sold Darwin port assets to the Chinese!!!! Of all places and of all infrastructure, the port in Darwin!!! UFB. Idiots.

Today in the Weekend Oz Bailey is back with yet another sideswipe at the perceived ignorance and ineptitude of the ATSB, while calling for the search to continue... :

MH370 search must go on

12:00amBYRON BAILEY

In a couple of months the longest and most expensive search in ­aviation history will come to a close.

...This “head in the sand” attitude by the ATSB has not enhanced its professional reputation. It must be awful for the families of the ­deceased not to know where the bodies of their loved ones are.

The search must go on...

 
Also 'that man' Higgins, with a few minor additions (i.e. he got a 'no comment' from the Defence Minister's office), has almost word perfectly regurgitated his piece from Friday's Oz...   

Lips mum over Chinese ‘spy ship’

12:00amEAN HIGGINS

Marise Payne has dodged claims a Chinese ship searching for Flight MH370 is probably spying on the Australian military.

Not sure what the Oz is playing at? Maybe there is a bump in circulation whenever the repetitive lines are again rehashed?

The following comment from Byron, in his post from 3 days ago, would seem to suggest there is some Editorial method in the madness:

Byron

3 days ago

@Brian Not so. Pilot could have started slow descent after first engine flameout. Below 20,000' start APU and select flap before second engine flameout. I write when requested by the editorial staff - why dont you give it a go.

 So maybe it is some editorial strategy about keeping the pot boiling until something breaks that the Oz has got wind of??- too much for my wooden head..

However the Higgins recent Dong stories does raise a spectre of suspicion on the less than stellar performance of the designated Chinese search vessel...

So for the benefit of Higgins and the Oz, Mike Chillit has put together a package of Dong related tweeps, that track all the movements (or not ) of the search ship ever since it came on line back in late February.

Courtesy MC via his blog the 7th Arc... :

China’s MH370 Efforts
Posted on September 23, 2016 by Mike Chillit

For now, this post is just a summary of my (Mike Chillit’s) Tweets related to the Chinese vessel Dong Hai Jiu 101 since February 2016 when she was tasked by China to assist Australia’s ATSB locate Malaysia Airlines’ long lost MH370. This follows an article in The Australian (paywalled) that notes the vessel has not spent much time actually scanning, and speculates that she and her crew may actually be “spying” on Western Australia’s military apparatus. The article further estimates that Dong has only engaged in scanning for the lost plane some 17 to 30 days since her arrival in early February.

While Twitter’s format for the tweet archive I have included below does not include date, it appears to me that the only serious scanning Dong engaged in was between February 27th and 29th in an area off to the east of the main scan strip that some observers – inside and outside of Australia – believed Fugro vessels passed directly over aircraft debris and failed to grasp the importance of what they were seeing. Fugro has been using EdgeTech sidescan sonar, which is believed by some to be inferior to the ProSAS-60 installed on Dong.

So Dong initially sailed directly to that area and used her sidescan equipment to investigate. Without saying it in so many words, Dong failed to find anything related to the plane and joined the other vessels farther south on February 29th. That was essentially the end of Dong’s contribution to the effort. Three weeks later, Dong “lost” that ProSAS-60 in a March 21, 2016 mishap that remains fuzzy.

Dong never returned to active scanning. She “tested” sidescan west of Mandurah, AU after two months spent recovering and repairing her sonar, then spent most of her time north of Broken Ridge because weather was too severe south of there in the search area.

After another port call, Dong aborted her return to the search area due to a “non-life-threatening” incident involving a crew member. That was it for Dong.

The paucity of scanning conducted by Chinese vessels has been noted several times by moi via Twitter posts. It is not just Dong. All three of the vessels China has formally tasked to “assist” with the search have spent the majority of their time in port or “sailing around” with little obvious contribution to the primary search effort.

There may be good reasons for China’s arm-length distance from the Australian-led effort. For starters, most honest observers do not believe Australia has any idea what it is doing after repeatedly refusing to consider scanning any but the now certifiably pristine search area they began in two and a half years ago. It is obvious to even the most casual observer that if Australia did the data analysis as well as it claimed, it would have tried other locations long before now. And China is equally capable of coming to the same conclusion. So in the world of international relations, China may be trying to avoid a public split with Australia over the latter’s inability to conduct a proper search for the missing airliner.

With that brief intro, here is a downloadable index page (“archive.html”) that displays 314 Tweets and images posted by me. They are also available on Twitter, of course, but are all in one place here. Please let me know if you have problems accessing the material.

Downloadable Tweets from Mike Chillit

    
As usual MC choc frog quality summary and with MTF possibly a gold key to the Tim Tam cupboard...



MTF...P2