Yes it takes practice. The biggest problem with the theory is that at night, it would be very hard to track down the singapore jet; especially with the transponder turned off. With the transponder on they could track the singapore jet with TCAS up to about 30 miles. With the transponder turned off, it would not be so easy.
With the transponder on they could track the singapore jet with TCAS up to about 30 miles. With the transponder turned off, it would not be so easy.
I’m confused here, mind you its been years since I was up on the latest technology. But the Malaysia Flight 370 could have turned off it’s transponder, thereby eliminating the primary way of tracking it.
But it in turn shouldn’t have needed it on to utilize the weather/search radar in the nose of the aircraft to find the Singapore jet and follow it.
The transponder is a separate piece of equipment from the on-board radar and the on-board radar can, (well they used to anyway), be set to receive only and not transmit. It’s the transmitter that makes them easy to track. If they needed to they could turn on the radar transmitter for a couple of sweeps and then turn it off and look at the returns on the stored memory in the cockpit instruments.
In any case I would say it was an amazing feat of flying for any pilot today who has been trained to rely on so much of the modern equipment in the planes they fly today.