On 4/22/2014 5:44 PM, F*O*A*D wrote:
On 4/22/14, 4:55 PM, wrote:
On Tue, 22 Apr 2014 16:24:58 -0400, F*O*A*D wrote:
Just look how hard it has been to find the Malaysian airline. And
they can
limit that search to a 100000 sq mile area.
Especially with that airplane painted red and floating on the surface as
it is, right Bill? 
I suppose it is possible that they got a tip from a navy source "over
the transom" that makes them so certain they are looking in the right
place but if this current search doesn't pan out, they will just be
easter egging around a very big ocean, trying to get lucky.
Our best chance of finding that plane is to have a russian sub go down
near by, then a "manganese nodule" mining ship might stumble upon it.
Surely there is a way to equip commericial planes with some sort of
external EPIRB device that would pop loose if the plane hits the water
and at least signal a general location that could be found via signals
and traced.
No question the "black box" thing is pretty old fashioned in this day
and age. Your EPIRB idea would be an improvement but lacks the recorded
voice, instrumentation and flight data that helps determine the cause of
the crash. It seems like in this day and age of high bandwidth
communications via satellites a system that transmits the data from the
aircraft in flight to a remote storage file might also be feasible. The
thing is, crashes are so rare and usually the black box is found much
more easily, so there has been no major impetus to improve the data
collection system.