Re: [LINK] Flash drives in the sea?
On Tue, 29 Apr 2014, Stephen Loosley wrote: When so much is connected to the Internet, why is the aerospace industry using technology that predates fax machines to look for flash drives in the sea? That is to focus on the device rather than on the system. For sure planes could send data continuously. But just consider the systems integration aspects of that. Firstly, the black box cabling has to be duplicated, without threatening the integrity of the black box. Secondly there has to be antennas at multiple attitudes on the aircraft (as we want it to work when the plane is out of a normal attitude). Multiple antennas implies multiple transmitters. And transmitters imply power and contol cabling, to areas where no cabling had been planned. And antennas imply changes to the airflow over the aircraft, which have to be modelled; and changes to fuselage inspection. And before you know it a handwaving idea is a considerable design and refit in practice. In the case of MH370 it wouldn't have helped at all. The transmitter would have been turned off with the other aircraft position reporting systems. The only reason MH370 maintained contact with Inmarsat is that the pilot-in-command (whether the pilot paid by the airline or some interloper) had no knowledge of that aspect of the Inmarsat terminal's operation. Oh, it shouldn't be able to be turned off? Well given the odds of fire being started by cabling plant doesn't that present issues of its own? And does it really run 24x7? And how is maintenance done? I am not saying this is impossible. I am saying that to characterise a black box as a flash drive is to miss the items which cause the design hassle. -glen -- Glen Turner http://www.gdt.id.au/~gdt/ ___ Link mailing list Link@mailman.anu.edu.au http://mailman.anu.edu.au/mailman/listinfo/link
Re: [LINK] Flash drives in the sea?
On Tue, Apr 29, 2014 at 7:50 AM, Jan Whitaker jw...@internode.on.net wrote: Good question. Answer: the same reason they didn't switch to long-life batteries after the French crash in the Atlantic - cost. Most airlines are broke and running on the smell of an oily rag. Add anything to the cost that isn't required by regulation and they freak out. Flight MH370 mystery prompts call to modernize tracking technology http://share.d-news.co/UOee2SU FAA gave Boeing and the airlines THREE YEARS to install two light bulbs for extra safety... In March 2011, the Federal Aviation Administration in the United States released an airworthiness directive requiring all Boeing 737 aircraft from −100 to −500 models to be fitted with two additional cockpit warning lights. These would indicate problems with take-off configuration or pressurization. Aircraft on the United States civil register were required to have the additional lights by 14 March 2014 Yes, three years for two bulbs on each plane. Makes me want to setup a donations web site for the poor Boeing and the USA airlines. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Helios_Airways_Flight_522#Subsequent_developments FC -- During times of Universal Deceit, telling the truth becomes a revolutionary act - George Orwell ___ Link mailing list Link@mailman.anu.edu.au http://mailman.anu.edu.au/mailman/listinfo/link
Re: [LINK] Flash drives in the sea?
On Wed, Apr 30, 2014 at 9:59 AM, Fernando Cassia fcas...@gmail.com wrote: FAA gave Boeing and the airlines THREE YEARS to install two light bulbs for extra safety... In March 2011, the Federal Aviation Administration in the United States released an airworthiness directive requiring all Boeing 737 aircraft from −100 to −500 models to be fitted with two additional cockpit warning lights. These would indicate problems with take-off configuration or pressurization. Aircraft on the United States civil register were required to have the additional lights by 14 March 2014 For starters, you are understating the actual work included (for at least some planes it's more than just 2 lights), but lets let that one slide... If you actually read the Airwirthiness directive, you'll see it states : *Boeing Alert Service Bulletin 737-31A1325, dated January 11, 2010, specifies an estimate of * *32.5 work-hours to do the modification. Continental declared that it has historically found that * *Boeing estimates given in service bulletins are unachievable. Continental believed it would be * *possible to accomplish the modification in approximately 50 work hours, if the modification * *is done during a heavy maintenance visit.* 40+ hours, times the 3000 of these planes built (ok, not all are still in service, but even so) is a fairly non-trivial amount of work - and a lot of downtime for planes that would never otherwise sit idle for even 12 hours except during planned maintenance. The FAA normally gives 3-5 years for such directives as it fits in with the airlines existing maintenance schedules. I don't know if anyone has done the math, but I wouldn't be surprised to find out that for a change like this where the gain was relatively minor, that doing it outside of a regular maintenance program actually had an increased risk to safety over not doing the change at all! Yes, three years for two bulbs on each plane. Makes me want to setup a donations web site for the poor Boeing and the USA airlines. For the US airlines I'm sure that would be welcome, given that many of them either are in, or have recently been in, Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection. Scott ___ Link mailing list Link@mailman.anu.edu.au http://mailman.anu.edu.au/mailman/listinfo/link
Re: [LINK] Flash drives in the sea?
On Wed, Apr 30, 2014 at 2:27 PM, Scott Howard sc...@doc.net.au wrote: For starters, you are understating the actual work included (for at least some planes it's more than just 2 lights), but lets let that one slide... If you actually read the Airwirthiness directive, you'll see it states : Boeing Alert Service Bulletin 737-31A1325, dated January 11, 2010, Are we talking about the same bulletin? You quote one dated 2010, the one referenced is 2011-3-14. http://avherald.com/h?article=43778c6b In any case, you might have a point, yet I prefer this readers' comment on the above bulletin: /// Maybe not too little but definitely too late By Sakeb on Tuesday, Feb 8th 2011 19:32Z 3 years before compliance becomes mandatory... And 6 years after the accident. The saying goes that aviation laws are written in blood and this is obviously in response to Helios 522 flight but in the 9 years it will take to implement this, most of the jurrasic and classic 737s will be gone. 741 flying jets (in the US alone) are over 80,000 unsafe seats used by half a million passengers everyday and the risk of pressurization issues goes up with age. Weighing that risk against the minor 3.3 million cost of fleetwide update should be a no brainer but this money is the only thing that the relaxed implementation period of this AD will eventually save. /// FC ___ Link mailing list Link@mailman.anu.edu.au http://mailman.anu.edu.au/mailman/listinfo/link
Re: [LINK] Flash drives in the sea?
On Wed, Apr 30, 2014 at 10:57 AM, Fernando Cassia fcas...@gmail.com wrote: Are we talking about the same bulletin? You quote one dated 2010, the one referenced is 2011-3-14. http://avherald.com/h?article=43778c6b Yes. If you click on the directive in that entry you'll see the text I quoted. 741 flying jets (in the US alone) are over 80,000 unsafe seats used by half a million passengers everyday and the risk of pressurization issues goes up with age. Weighing that risk against the minor 3.3 million cost of fleetwide update should be a no brainer but this money is the only thing that the relaxed implementation period of this AD will eventually save. Except that $3.3 million isn't the real number. It doesn't take into account the time the aircraft are unavailable, nor does it take into account that there potentially aren't sufficient staff/etc available to carry out the work without impacting other maintenance, which could obviously have a flow-on effect. At the end of the day, the event that triggered this came down to a crew misinterpreting an alarm. This isn't a fault with the aircraft, and thus the fix wasn't to fix a problem, it was to make the exact problem more obvious in case the flight crew misinterpreted the alarm. You can guarantee that these lights were only one part of the solution, that would likely have involved everything from updating the on-board flight manuals (which was covered by the directive) all the way through to training and simulators. The 3 years (or 9 years, depending on where you start counting from) has now expired and there hasn't been another incidence of this, so... Scott ___ Link mailing list Link@mailman.anu.edu.au http://mailman.anu.edu.au/mailman/listinfo/link
Re: [LINK] Flash drives in the sea?
On Wed, Apr 30, 2014 at 4:15 PM, Scott Howard sc...@doc.net.au wrote: At the end of the day, the event that triggered this came down to a crew misinterpreting an alarm. This isn't a fault with the aircraft, Well, that´s up to discussion, having a single alarm for two purposes seems like a design deffect for me. fix wasn't to fix a problem, it was to make the exact problem more obvious in case the flight crew misinterpreted the alarm. The 3 years (or 9 years, depending on where you start counting from) has now expired and there hasn't been another incidence of this, so... I wonder if all the planes world-wide have been updated or just the ones under FAA (US) jurisdiction. In any case, back to topic, having an onboard system that gets GPS positioning data and relays such position data over inmarsat low-bitrate data link is doable going forward for trans-oceanic flights (it´d be overkill for domestic flights I assume), IF industry agrees on the cost and implementation details. Hughes 9201 http://www.hughes.com/technologies/mobilesat-systems/mobile-satellite-terminals/hughes-9201-bgan-inmarsat-terminal … I saw these up close being used by the CNN cew. The electronics in these are the size of a large tablet pc and self-contained... I´m sure the military have designed ways to embed such kind of sat uplink in fuselages... https://pbs.twimg.com/media/BfjltHqCUAEB4a_.jpg Key being ¨Cost-effective “always-on” access—_only charged for data sent and received_¨ GPS positioning data is just a few bytes per each read like... $GPRMC,081836,A,3751.65,S,14507.36,E,000.0,360.0,130998,011.3,E*62 66 characters every 5 mins... 792 bytes per hour Plus, it could be turned on only during long flights over areas without radar coverage, ie trans-oceanic flights... Just a thought... FC PS: I´m just thinking aloud, daydreaming, I´m not saying this will happen, probably never will. But wouldn´t it be nice? ;) ___ Link mailing list Link@mailman.anu.edu.au http://mailman.anu.edu.au/mailman/listinfo/link
Re: [LINK] Flash drives in the sea?
Why are they using flash drives that sink? On 2014/Apr/29, at 8:42 PM, Stephen Loosley wrote: When so much is connected to the Internet, why is the aerospace industry using technology that predates fax machines to look for flash drives in the sea? http://www.nytimes.com/2014/04/29/opinion/finding-a-flash-drive-in-the-sea.html? -- Kim Holburn IT Network Security Consultant T: +61 2 61402408 M: +61 404072753 mailto:k...@holburn.net aim://kimholburn skype://kholburn - PGP Public Key on request ___ Link mailing list Link@mailman.anu.edu.au http://mailman.anu.edu.au/mailman/listinfo/link
Re: [LINK] Flash drives in the sea?
On Wed, Apr 30, 2014 at 4:03 PM, Kim Holburn kim.holb...@gmail.com wrote: Why are they using flash drives that sink? Because creating something that is able to withstand the forces of a crash, and then have sufficient battery power to ping for several months (or more), which is also capable of floating, is extremely difficult... And of course, that presumes that it was able to be detached/ejected from the fuselage itself in some safe way, otherwise even if the black box floated it'd still end up on the bottom of the ocean. Scott ___ Link mailing list Link@mailman.anu.edu.au http://mailman.anu.edu.au/mailman/listinfo/link
Re: [LINK] Flash drives in the sea?
On 29/04/14 20:42, Stephen Loosley wrote: ... Airlines Flight 370 ... Tony Abbott, calls “probably the most difficult search in human history,” ... The searchers were mostly sitting in air-conditioned comfort, so it is not quite the same test of human endurance as Bernard O'Reilly's solo trek through the rugged McPherson Range in Queensland, to find aircraft VH-UHH Brisbane: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bernard_O%27Reilly_%28author%29 Also the Royal Australian Air Force (RAAF) and Royal Australian Navy (RAN) found and rescued Tony Bullimore and Therry Dubois from the Southern Ocean in 1997 (my job was to do the web pages about the rescue, most of which seem to have been deleted): http://www.defence.gov.au/media/1997/01697.html When so much is connected to the Internet, why is the aerospace industry using technology that predates fax machines to look for flash drives in the sea? ... Automatic dependent surveillance-broadcast (ADS-B) provides the position of airliners in populated areas: http://blog.tomw.net.au/2008/07/improved-air-traffic-control-with.html Outside the area covered by ADS-B, crew will report the aircraft's position by radio. Airliners also carry radio beacons to be activated after a crash. Programming the aircraft satellite communications to transmit periodic position reports may help post-accident investigation, but it is not going to assist those on board and may pose a risk to the aircraft. The ANU and Australian Computer Society run a course in Systems and Software Safety (COMP8180), with staff from the the High Integrity Systems Engineering group, University of York, to teach how to build such systems: http://programsandcourses.anu.edu.au/course/COMP8180 -- Tom Worthington FACS CP, TomW Communications Pty Ltd. t: 0419496150 The Higher Education Whisperer http://blog.highereducationwhisperer.com/ PO Box 13, Belconnen ACT 2617, Australia http://www.tomw.net.au Liability limited by a scheme approved under Professional Standards Legislation Adjunct Senior Lecturer, Research School of Computer Science, Australian National University http://cs.anu.edu.au/courses/COMP7310/ ___ Link mailing list Link@mailman.anu.edu.au http://mailman.anu.edu.au/mailman/listinfo/link
