[Peetwo]

IG asks MSM for less noise & more signal -

Following from today's the Oz article here:

Reference Wikipedia - A phugoid or fugoid /ˈfjuːɡɔɪd/ is an aircraft motion where the vehicle pitches up and climbs, and then pitches down and descends, accompanied by speeding up and slowing down as it goes "uphill" and "downhill." This is one of the basic flight dynamics modes of an aircraft (others include short period, dutch roll, and spiral divergence), and a classic example of a negative feedback system.

MH370 & Hoody's floating, diving leaf theory? -   

Totally agree "V" too many variables, unknowns & educated guesses. Couple that with the latest unverified ROD calculations made from previously stated 'unreliable' ping data and dramatic throw away lines like...

"..MH370 could have been plunging at almost 400km/h just before it smashed into the sea with 239 passengers and crew.."

...makes you wonder what on earth Hoody & Foley are playing at? Why on earth would the ATSB be drawn into such an obvious pissing match?

A rehash:

MH370 & the "he said, she said", spin & deception wars -

Bizarrely the 'he said, she said' wars continue unabated in the Oz today:

MH370 in catastrophic death dive, says analysis


Search director Peter Foley and Australian Transport Safety Bureau chief commissioner Greg Hood. Picture: Kym Smith

• Brendan Nicholson
  
• The Australian
  
• 12:00AM August 9, 2016
  

Defence Editor
Canberra

[img=0x0]http://pixel.tcog.cp1.news.com.au/track/component/author/9e8d7209e1c2ac7ea9fc05a8a39849e0/?esi=true&t_product=the-australian&t_template=s3/austemp-article_common/vertical/author/widget&td_bio=false[/img]
Exhaustive analysis by Defence scientists of automated signals ­received from Flight MH370 in its final moments has revealed that the Malaysia Airlines jet fell very fast — up to 20,000 feet a minute — as it crashed into the Indian Ocean off Western Australia.
The scientists have found that happened at 8.19am (WA time) on March 9, 2014, after the aircraft ran out of fuel and the two giant engines flamed out, the left engine first and then the right about 15 minutes later.

The Australian has been told in a series of briefings that simulations by Boeing, the aircraft’s manufacturer, indicate that once engine power was lost, MH370 would have slowed and lost lift. Its nose would have dropped and it would have descended in what the scientists call a fugoid motion in a series of downward swoops.

As it gathered speed, it would have gained lift and climbed again. As that speed fell off, its nose would have dropped rapidly once more, the aircraft falling into ­another steep dive.

That process is likely to have been repeated until it hit the water, probably with one wing down.

The impact would have been catastrophic. That fits with new analysis of sets of brief signals sent automatically between the aircraft and a satellite.

While the aircraft has not been found, the discovery of some ­pieces of its interior indicate it broke up on impact. Critics of the search strategy have suggested that the pilot could have landed MH370 ­intact on the ocean well outside the current search area. But Australian Transport Safety Bureau chief commissioner Greg Hood said analysis of the signals most closely matched a scenario in which there was no pilot at the controls at the end of the flight.

Mr Hood said the new data ­extracted from the signals reinforced the view of those leading the search for MH370 and its 239 passengers and crew that it was likely to have crashed in the 120,000sq km area now being searched.

He said extensive testing by Boeing indicated that after running out of fuel the aircraft would have dropped from 35,000 feet at a rate of between 12,000 feet a minute and 20,000 feet a minute. That rapid descent was confirmed by the signals data.

An aircraft making a normal landing would descend at 2000 feet a minute.

ATSB specialists in Canberra are examining a wing flap likely to have been torn from MH370 by the impact which drifted for over a year and eventually washed up on the coast of Tanzania.

The flap would have been part of the right wing next to the flap­eron which washed up on Reunion Island.

GRAPHIC: Boeing’s crash theory

A 2014 FBI report revealed that MH370 pilot Zaharhie Ahmad Shah had previously plotted a course down into the southern Indian Ocean on a simulator in his home computer, but that ­report does not deal with what happened to MH370 in its final hours.

The Australians leading the search do not doubt that the pilot may well have been responsible for the jet’s disappearance but they say critics of the search strategy are wrong to assume that means they are looking in the wrong place.

There are two distinct questions, they say: who was responsible for the disappearance, and where is the aircraft now?

MH370 search program director Peter Foley told The Australian that with almost no tangible ­evidence, the likely crash area was not defined by investigations of what the pilot might have done but by months of unprecedented examination of signals transmitted by automatic systems on the jet as it made its lonely flight southward and calculations of when it would have run out of fuel.

Crucial to that research was a Defence Science and Technology Group team headed by Neil Gordon, Mr Foley said.

Just after midnight MH370 took off from Kuala Lumpur as normal and headed for Beijing. The last heard from the crew was a standard radio message bidding KL “goodnight”.

Malaysian military radar picked up the jet making two turns which took it back over the Malaysian Peninsula.

As more evidence emerged it became clear that MH370 made at least one more turn at the northwest tip of Sumatra towards the southern Indian Ocean.

Those three turns would have to have been made by a pilot.

As the plane flew south, equipment fitted to it automatically sent routine signals as a series of “handshakes” with a satellite linked to a ground station in Perth.

That maintenance system was separate from systems controlled by the crew and was designed to provide data, via satellite, about the state of parts such as the ­engines.

Seven such connections were completed, which is how technicians worked out that MH370 was still flying long after ground controllers lost contact with it.

Two satellite phone calls made to MH370 went unanswered but analysis of the signals enabled the Defence scientists to confirm that the jet was then still heading south.

After the six hourly maintenance “handshakes” came a seventh signal from the aircraft which was out of sequence. The investigators believe that was when MH370 started to run out of fuel and the first of its two engines flamed out. That automated signal warned that something was wrong.

Mr Foley said the ATSB had ­always kept an open mind. “Our hypothesis is based on what we know to be hard facts,’’ he said. “We have actively looked at all scenarios and anything that will help us find the aircraft.”

"HARD FACTS"? - BOLLOCKS!

Nope my questions still stand...

The above Oz article was followed by this other NewsCorp article from lunchtime today:

Missing plane MH370 dived from the air, new analysis shows

NEW analysis of automated signals from MH370 has revealed the missing plane took a massive dive at up to 20,000 feet a minute, as it plunged into the sea.

The Australian reports that Defence scientists found the crash occurred at 8.19am (WA local time) on March 9, 2014 in the Indian Ocean off Western Australia, after the plane ran out of fuel.

The plane’s left engine flamed out first and then the right went about 15 minutes later.
The Australian also reports that simulation tests by Boeing showed that after the plane’s engines lost power, MH370 would have slowed and lost lift.

The plane’s nose would have dropped and it would have plunged into downward swoops where it would have gathered speed and lifted, then fell down repeatedly before hitting the ocean.

Australian Transport Safety Bureau chief commissioner Greg Hood told The Australian that the pilot would not have been in control of the plane when it crashed.

Pilot Zaharie Ahmad Shah who was flying MH370. Picture: SuppliedSource:Supplied

Mr Hood said the new data ­showed it is likely to have crashed in the 120,000sq km area now being searched.

The new data comes as Malaysian officials said that one of MH370’s pilots plotted a path over the Indian Ocean on a home flight simulator, but warned this did not prove he deliberately crashed the plane.


The search zone for MH370. Picture: SuppliedSource:Supplied

The Malaysia Airlines jet was carrying 239 passengers and crew when it disappeared en route from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing on March 8, 2014.

It is believed to have crashed into the Indian Ocean, but an extensive hunt off Australia’s west coast is drawing to a close without any sign of the plane.

Pilot Zaharie Ahmad Shah had used a homemade flight simulator to plot a very similar course to MH370’s presumed final route, said Transport Minister Liow Tiong Lai.
But he emphasised this was just one of thousands of practice routes discovered on Zaharie’s hard drive.

“There is no evidence to confirm that (the pilot) flew the plane into the southern Indian Ocean,” he said.

The discovery of the flight simulator data was first reported last month by New York Magazine, which said the FBI had recovered the deleted files.

But the end point of the simulated route was some 1,450 kilometres from the area where the plane is believed to have gone down, the report said.

MH370 families have posted photographs of personal items found on the beach of Madagascar in the area where other suspected aircraft debris was found by Blaine Gibson. Picture: FacebookSource:Facebook

Zaharie was the subject of intense media speculation when MH370 first vanished, with reports scrutinising everything from his political beliefs to his mental health for clues as to what could have happened.

Australia, Malaysia and China, where most of the passengers were from, have agreed that when the current search area is fully searched, expected around December, they will pull the plug unless “credible new information” emerges.

Meanwhile, Australian MH370 search authorities are hopeful a wing part found in Tanzania will shed light on how the flight crashed, amid a lack of public information on debris found a year ago.

The debris that washed up on Reunion Island. Picture: 60 MinutesSource:Supplied

The first debris linked to MH370 — a two-metre-long wing part known as a flaperon — washed up on the French Indian Ocean island of Reunion a year ago.

But it has remained in the hands of French investigators, leaving questions unanswered on how the airliner entered the ocean.

“We have also seen some analysis from the French that suggests that it’s a possibility that (the flaperon) was in a deployed state,” Peter Foley, the Australian Transport and Safety Bureau (ATSB)’s head of MH370 search operations, told Channel Nine’s 60 Minutes.

That above quoted statement from Folley, coupled with his other stated ROD bollocks, would suggest to me that he doesn't know if he is punch drunk; or Martha rather than Arthur - truly bizarre...  

Which brings me to the latest from Duncan Steele (IG) on the latest charade of spin, bulldust, lies & deception coming out of the ATSB and being fuelled by a lazy, tabloid inflicted 24/7 MSM..

Lying in Plain Sight
2016/08/09 Duncan

Lying in Plain Sight

Duncan Steel
9th August 2016

 
This has been a peculiar week or so for MH370-watchers in Australia and New Zealand. Amongst other items about MH370 appearing in the mass media was a segment of Channel 9’s 60 Minutes current affairs programme which could best be described as utter buffoonery.

The story – and it was a story, in that it was mostly fictional – told on that programme has been carried by many media outlets around the world. There are too many webpages for me to list on which lazy journalists simply copied text from that program segment.

There were also too many mistakes made in the program for me to describe and contradict them. Just a few, then: (a) No parts of the aircraft interior have been found, we were told, implying that the fuselage remained intact. Wrong. At least three parts of the interior have already been found, and more will surely be, mostly on the coasts of the western Indian Ocean. (b) There should have been at least two million fragments produced, if it were a high-speed impact, and only a few have been found. Nonsense. If there were two million equal-mass fragments, then each would be under 100 grams (based on the 175 tonne aircraft mass after fuel exhaustion). You can’t recognise parts that small as being definitely from a B777. What has been recognised has been about 20 pieces that floated (a sharp selection effect there) with masses of a few kilograms upwards. The drift analysis is consistent with there having been about 10,000 such items starting their slow voyages across the Indian Ocean from wherever MH370 crashed.
10,000 at a few kilograms each indicates 20, 30, 40 tonnes. Of course the larger flaperon and flap parts that have been found would pull the overall mass of floating debris upwards. © The damage to the trailing edges of the flaperon and part-flap could only be caused by a controlled ditching. Again, nonsense. As the IG pointed out very soon after the flaperon was found, the trailing edge damage and the damage to its connection or hinges to the wing appear to be consistent with high-speed fluttering: once the fuel is exhausted, the hydraulic power that would damp the flaperon’s motion is lost, and it would be expected to flutter at a high rate (perhaps 10-20 hertz) until failure. Look up the Boeing manuals, folks. It may well be that these two large items remained intact because they detached from the aircraft some time before hitting the ocean, and so actually dropped at a lower speed due to their size and shape compared to the overall aircraft.

Now an article has appeared today in The Australian newspaper that is almost the definition of ‘old news’. The article begins:

“Exhaustive analysis by Defence scientists of automated signals ­received from Flight MH370 in its final moments has revealed that the Malaysia Airlines jet fell very fast — up to 20,000 feet a minute — as it crashed into the Indian Ocean off Western Australia.
The scientists have found that happened at 8.19am (WA time) on March 9, 2014, after the aircraft ran out of fuel…”

If you had been following the various posts/papers that have appeared on this website (this is the 97th, I think) you would know that the Independent Group (IG) has been saying this for a long, long time.

Here I wrote the following:

A rapid dive/descent is evidenced by various pieces of information, including: (a) The two final BFO values, spaced by eight seconds, which are indicative of a downward acceleration of about 0.7g, if they are interpreted as being valid indicators of the aircraft speed; (b) The fact that the final SATCOM logon was not completed, which should have occurred within about 90 seconds of the process that prompted the above two BFO values; © Simulator runs that show a spiral dive commencing once all power is lost; (d) Fragments of the aircraft now being found, which might be interpreted as implying a very violent crash in which the aircraft disintegrated. These matters have largely been discussed in previous posts here. This dive scenario is consistent with there being no conscious/able person left at the controls of the aircraft in this very final phase of the flight. 

That was only five months ago, on 7th March 2016. However, I was merely repeating what the IG had been saying for a long time. For example, on 26th September 2014 an IG statement was published on this website, saying the following (amongst other matters):

Although questions may remain as to the interpretation of the BFO values at 00:19:29 and 00:19:37 (182 Hz and then –2 Hz, compared to the steady, linear increase to 252 Hz at 00:11:00), there is no reason to reject the recorded values outright. The BFO values cannot be explained by an onboard AES-compensated horizontal speed in any direction. The fact that there were no more records logged after 00:19:37 we interpret as being due to the aircraft having crashed very soon thereafter, consistent with the final two BFO values representing a rapid downward trajectory.
The rate-of-descent we calculate from the final BFO value is approximately 15,700 feet per minute. This is an almost vertical dive at 287 km per hour (155 knots). The descent rate was very likely increasing rapidly (i.e. accelerating under gravity, only limited by the aircraft drag). 

If the article in The Australian is correct in what it says as quoted above, so that the official investigators have only just come to the stated conclusion, then there are various Australian Government employees who should be ashamed of themselves; there would be many Australian taxpayers who will be furious; and there should be some Australian politicians tearing into the Government in Canberra. This is a national disgrace.

The article in The Australian continues:

“The Australian has been told in a series of briefings that simulations by Boeing, the aircraft’s manufacturer, indicate that once engine power was lost, MH370 would have slowed and lost lift. Its nose would have dropped and it would have descended in what the scientists call a fugoid motion in a series of downward swoops.”

It happens that IG member Mike Exner took it upon himself to make use of his aviation industry contacts and conduct just such a set of simulated flights in an industry-standard B777 simulator. This was in early November 2014. When I watched the movie of the simulated plunge from the skies, the experience made me feel green with motion sickness. (Memo to The Australian  journalists and sub-editors: it’s normally spelled phugoid because it’s derived from ancient Greek.)

I just did a search on my own website, and find that the first suggestion of phugoid motion appeared in a comment made on April 9th, 2014. That’s four weeks after MH370 was lost. On April 10th, Brian Anderson of the IG (which at that stage did not yet exist) wrote on my website:

“I have a good description of a real B777 full motion Sim test, done to see what happens at fuel exhaustion. To paraphrase briefly, – – one engine fails, the aircraft maintains stable flight on track and altitude, but at reduced speed. At the point the second engine fails the autopilot drops out and a series of phugoids develops with an increasing descent rate on each cycle. Shortly into this the RAT [ram air turbine] is deployed automatically, and some electrical systems come alive. The APU tried an auto restart but failed [ – – no fuel]. The phugoids continue until the end.”

In various reports, such as here (and dated 26th September 2014) the IG described the expected phugoid motion and overall rapid descent after the aircraft apparently ran out of fuel at altitude.

Now, more than 22 months after the IG published that report, and 29 months after MH370 was lost, The Australian newspaper is apparently saying that this phugoid motion is a new discovery on the part of Boeing, using their flight simulators. What is going on?
About all I can do is to appeal to the media in Australia to take seriously the idea of the Fourth Estate. The people at 60 Minutes may have thought that they were doing their bit, but they stuffed up, adding to the noise rather than improving the signal, by broadcasting things that are demonstrably false, and indeed even silly. The Australian has now published as ‘news’ things that should have been known to the official investigators more than two years ago.

Why does this matter, in terms of the underwater search that has cost so much of Australian taxpayers’ money? The answer is because the search has been conducted in the wrong place.

Early on the end points calculated by IG members were indeed further south than we have been advocating for a long time, because we had made various assumptions that we later recognised to be dubious or false (e.g. an early Final Major Turn southwards; ‘straight line’ paths rather than the possibility of a gradual trend eastwards because of the autopilot by default following a path defined by magnetic north rather than true north), but as we understood more that southerly end point suggestion was revised and in several posts we have pointed to likely crash locations further north. (“When the facts change, I change my mind. What do you do, Sir?” – John Maynard Keynes.)

Whilst we have not been afraid to look at alternatives (for example here, and here), we have been saying for a long, long time that the final BFOs, and other information, point towards a spiral dive from altitude and therefore that MH370 must have crashed close to the 7th arc. For most of the past year the expensive underwater search has generally been covering areas spaced ever-further from the 7th arc, but at latitudes south of 35S. This is wrong: those areas would require a long glide, which is contraindicated by the information we have. A rapid descent would imply a crash close to the 7th arc. Again, the IG has been saying this for a long time:

The occurrence of a near-vertical spiral dive
[*] has significant implications in reducing the width of the target search area, as mentioned previously. We argue that the aircraft could not have flown far beyond the 7th arc before crashing into the ocean, if it went beyond that arc at all: the BFO data at that time (00:19:29 and 00:19:37) indicate that MH370 was in a tight spiral dive (radius below 1 NM) over the 7th arc and therefore the crash may actually have been just inside that arc.

(IG progress report of 26th September 2014 again.)

[*]
[*Note dated 2016/08/09: This specific phrase “a near-vertical spiral dive” was perhaps too strong and/or misleading; in retrospect we would likely write “a rapid descent, perhaps with phugoids, evolving into a spiral dive“. At that stage we did not yet have Mike Exner’s experiences in a B777 simulator to work from, those simulator runs occurring about a month after the above statement was written.]
[*]
Regarding that “tight spiral dive”: take a look at the report published today in The Australian, and what is on the large piece of paper on the table in the photograph at the head of the article. Do those curly lines look like a couple of tight spiral dives to you? Such spiral dives ending with crashes near the 7th arc were not only discussed, but also graphically illustrated, in posts by IG members Brian Anderson and Richard Godfrey in April and May 2015 (see here and here).

The best place to search is near that 7th arc, but further north. If you look at various posts published on this website, you will see that several lines of evidence have been pulled together that are consistent with a crash near the 7th arc, but between latitudes of 28S and 35S. That’s where the underwater search should have been looking.

[*]
Although I don't agree on many of the IG assumptions, mainly due to the total lack of bona fide factual and/or hard evidence. However I do agree with Duncan's opinion on the bizarre narrative being pedalled by the ATSB, aided and abetted by the MSM, ever since the factually wanting segment presented on 60 minutes...
MTF...P2