Posted on 03/17/2014 1:37:17 PM PDT by blam
What Pilots Think About The Crazy New Theory That The Missing Malaysia Jet Used Another Jet To Hide
Alex Davies
March 17, 2014
Not surprisingly, the disappearance of Malaysia Flight 370 with 239 people on board more than a week ago has led some people to come up with very interesting theories about what might have happened.
On his Tumblr, self-identified hobby pilot and aviation enthusiast Keith Ledgerwood put forward the most elaborate and interesting suggestion we've heard yet.
He argues the 777 could have flown over India and Pakistan, avoiding military radar detection by turning off its communications systems and following a Singapore Airlines 777 so closely the two aircraft "would have shown up as one single blip on the radar."
In the post, Ledgerwood established that the Singapore Airlines flight was in the area.
The collision avoidance systems installed on all modern airliners operate using the transponder, which someone on the Malaysia flight could have turned off. So the Singapore crew wouldn't have detected a plane on their tail, Ledgerwood speculates.
"Once MH370 had cleared the volatile airspaces and was safe from being detected by military radar sites in India, Pakistan, and Afghanistan," Ledgerwood writes, "it would have been free to break off from the shadow of SIA68 and could have then flown a path to it’s final landing site."
We asked Michael G. Fortune, a retired pilot who now works as an aviation consultant and expert witness, if that would be possible. After a lengthy pause, he gave us a skeptical "maybe." It would depend on what kind of radar equipment the Singapore 777 had on board, he said, and would require some serious aviation skill to find and stay behind the plane.
(snip)
(Excerpt) Read more at businessinsider.com ...
Yes I believe so, And I am not buying into “Rudder Failure” either.
Of coarse, if you know the transponder was ahead of you you would only need two antennas to establish to vector to the signal.
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Commercial transponders operate on 1090 MHz ,, sounds familiar? FM radio operates on 88-108MHz but I believe a 10X signal would bleed through and make a whine so the transponder is conveniently just above 10X the top of commercial FM ... Could a manual tune (non-electronic) FM radio ,, a cheap $10 one ,, be tuned above 107.7 to 109.0 and used to find a bearing to another craft? Just a thought .. old manual tune TV’s could tune that freq... it’s in the UHF band.. food for thought..
I personally believe that this had to be pulled off by a country and not a handful of people... only they would have the ability to allow the craft through active military radars and deny that anyone passed through ... I put my money on China ,, they want those embedded processor engineers for what they know of the exact design changed demanded by the NSA.
One might have said the same thing about using airliners to bring down the WTC on 9/10/01...
Unit load device - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unit_load_device
A unit load device (ULD), is a pallet or container used to load luggage, freight, and mail on wide-body aircraft and specific narrow-body aircraft.
I would assume it’s proportional to the size of the planes, but how far apart would two Boeing 777’s have to be to be (clearly) distinguishable on radar...???
(I say “clearly” because these are all third world countries involved.)
“It is my opinion that something happened to the pilot,” said Mr Geller.
“The pilot was either pushed into a situation to divert the plane by another force or he did it of his own accord.
http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/world-news/malaysia-airlines-flight-mh370-uri-3242685#.UydWA6JuwnU.twitter
It worked for Obama.
And obsolete by 1950.
It wouldn't be that far below. The closer the better -- I'm thinking below and behind, 100-200 feet.
These guys weren't likely trained for it, but C-5's fly close formation for 25 minutes or more at a time while refueling from a tanker, with only a few feet separation. 100 feet is much easier.
The Singapore flight has it’s transponder on, suction cup a directional antenna to the windshield and put a signal meter on your thigh, then just fly the plane at the Singapore flight transponder. (Just like finding a bear/wolf/shark with a radio collar on animal planet TV.). The Singapore flight is lit up like a Christmas tree, you might easily see it at 20 miles, 50 with binoculars.
Why would you need night vision? Just follow the navigation lights.
I can’t speak to the skill of tailing another plane that closely, but everything else doesn’t seem like a high hurtle.
Ultimately, this doesn’t seem plausible, but it’s not beyond the pale.
I don’t t
Here is a link ... http://www.hermes-cargo.com/wp-content/uploads/PDFs/ULD-Build-Up-White-Paper.pdf
Thank you Rummy.
100 to 200 feet at night? barely less than a wingspan?
dicey enough during the day.
well, it’s a theory!
I was thinking about this aspect of this theory as well, and certainly, the Malaysia Air pilot would not have been able to mind read the lead pilot, but as far as the distance and position, there would be a very rudimentary solution to this. In WWII, the Lancaster pilots who flew the dam buster missions had to be as close as possible to an altitude of 60' above the water for their drum bombs to skip to target. Altimeters at the time were not that precise so theater spotlights were fixed to the bottom of the fuselage, one up front and one towards the rear, and were angled to converge at 60'. The aircrews knew if they saw two beams they were either too low or too high, but when the spots merged they were just right. One could similarly use green lasers angled to converge at virtually any desired distance one needed them too, and make a simple bracket with two laser pointers that could be mounted inside the trail plane's windshields and visually maintain a precise interval behind and above another airliner...
Most airline types are lit up at night like a Las Vegas strip joint.
Passenger windows, strobes, the legally required running lights, lights focused on the vertical stabilizer...etc.
No haze at that altitude, at close range even starlight alone would enable the following aircraft to see the other.
As for the difficulty in joining up, look at the map and at how close Singapore is.
From his altitude, he would have no trouble at all monitoring Singapore’s departure frequency, the clerance, etc.
An the clibing aircraft would be covering the ground at a much lower rate than one already established at altitude, so he would be able to catch up.
Sure it is tricky, but who knows how long he had planned and whether it was genius, luck or never happened?
In the sentence about starlight, I meant to add that at after they joined up, starlight would suffice.
With the transponder off they can flash their weather radar within 25 miles or so to get a skin-paint range estimate.
And a portable ADS-B receiver might prove useful for that purpose, and for ID of who they're joining up with. The call sign will be their clue to the destination.
I have a friend who suggests that N. Korea or Iran could be looking to commercial jetliners to deliver their new-found nukes. They have or will soon have, nukes. What they lack is a deliver system. With a little creativity, BINGO, they’ve got it.
Ultimately, were this theory true...then wouldn’t the engine data for the MH370 flight be almost perfectly coincident location wise with the same from the Singapore flight?
That would imply this is already all well known to the powers that be?
Just say’in.
One puzzlement and you may have seen it ... The co-pilot had been looking at aircraft insignia information. For what purpose, I do not know.
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