I will feed you just a little of my thinking at this point.
As a "mission planner", who has planned a "vanishing" in the SIO, the planner would have needed a simple, foolproof, "backup navigation plan", to use in the event that the aircraft's navigation systems were, or became "unserviceable".
Anyone planning such an operation (must be a "Navigator" at heart - and I am) would know full well the magnetic variations in the Indian Ocean, and would quickly conclude that relying on the magnetic compass (if all else failed)) would be inviting disaster.
The only "reliable and external to the aircraft" navigation information available, is the stars.
Canopus is the obvious answer.
The plan entails simply heading directly for Canopus as you fly south.
Starting from IGARI, this gives an initial south westerly course, which gradually curves towards south.
Refer back to Table 1 in Post # 245
By the time of crossing the equator, the true heading is 217.
By the time of reaching 20 South, the the true heading is 212.
Follow the table from there, you should get the idea.
Now, the significance of this is that it is easy to plot the resultant ground track (in no wind conditions for the moment) if you know:-
(a) the time of crossing the equator,
(b) the actual longitude of crossing the equator, and
© the ground speed.
What complicates matters is determining the ground speed made good, given cruise altitude, Mach, TAS, and of course, the winds encountered.
However, what my analysis has shown so far (I will not put up the plots yet) clearly indicates, that the aircraft would have flown further west/south-westerly, than the BTO's "as published by Malaysia" allow.
This is significant.
Let's go back to square one.
The whole question of the ISAT data as published by Malaysia has been done to death, and the consensus of "the experts" is that the BTO's are "solid". They "argue" over the BFO's, seemingly incessantly.
I disagree with the experts. I have a different view.
Think outside the square for a minute.
If you were Malaysia, and you "DID NOT WANT THE AIRCRAFT FOUND", the easiest, simplest, and safest thing to do, would be to "tamper with the BTO's", not the BFO's.
Furthermore, it is significant, that in ALL the press conferences given by Inmarsat, and in ALL the public presentations given by them, they have "steadfastly refused" to release "their actual data", and have always said "we gave all the information to the <quote> Investaigation </unquote>. The interview where Paul Sladen put the acid word on them was "telling", in my view.
Even in their "Journal of Navigation" paper, they used, and were VERY careful to "reference" all data used in the paper, from the Malaysian and ATSB publications. How quaint. What serious researcher uses second hand sources of "their own data" for "their own paper" ?
Furthermore, one must ask the question, why would a bunch of engineers, communications engineers, publish such a paper in the journal of the Navigation society in the first place, rather than their own professional societies and their journals ?
Were Inmarsat trying to protect their own credibility ?
Were they trying to give us a "clue", that what had been published by Malaysia, in that "much delayed", and "highly redacted", and "copy protected" PDF File, might not be, 100% "ridgi-dige" ?
(Ref: https://www.docdownload.com.au/australia...erms-abuse)
I will leave it there for now.
As a "mission planner", who has planned a "vanishing" in the SIO, the planner would have needed a simple, foolproof, "backup navigation plan", to use in the event that the aircraft's navigation systems were, or became "unserviceable".
Anyone planning such an operation (must be a "Navigator" at heart - and I am) would know full well the magnetic variations in the Indian Ocean, and would quickly conclude that relying on the magnetic compass (if all else failed)) would be inviting disaster.
The only "reliable and external to the aircraft" navigation information available, is the stars.
Canopus is the obvious answer.
The plan entails simply heading directly for Canopus as you fly south.
Starting from IGARI, this gives an initial south westerly course, which gradually curves towards south.
Refer back to Table 1 in Post # 245
By the time of crossing the equator, the true heading is 217.
By the time of reaching 20 South, the the true heading is 212.
Follow the table from there, you should get the idea.
Now, the significance of this is that it is easy to plot the resultant ground track (in no wind conditions for the moment) if you know:-
(a) the time of crossing the equator,
(b) the actual longitude of crossing the equator, and
© the ground speed.
What complicates matters is determining the ground speed made good, given cruise altitude, Mach, TAS, and of course, the winds encountered.
However, what my analysis has shown so far (I will not put up the plots yet) clearly indicates, that the aircraft would have flown further west/south-westerly, than the BTO's "as published by Malaysia" allow.
This is significant.
Let's go back to square one.
The whole question of the ISAT data as published by Malaysia has been done to death, and the consensus of "the experts" is that the BTO's are "solid". They "argue" over the BFO's, seemingly incessantly.
I disagree with the experts. I have a different view.
Think outside the square for a minute.
If you were Malaysia, and you "DID NOT WANT THE AIRCRAFT FOUND", the easiest, simplest, and safest thing to do, would be to "tamper with the BTO's", not the BFO's.
Furthermore, it is significant, that in ALL the press conferences given by Inmarsat, and in ALL the public presentations given by them, they have "steadfastly refused" to release "their actual data", and have always said "we gave all the information to the <quote> Investaigation </unquote>. The interview where Paul Sladen put the acid word on them was "telling", in my view.
Even in their "Journal of Navigation" paper, they used, and were VERY careful to "reference" all data used in the paper, from the Malaysian and ATSB publications. How quaint. What serious researcher uses second hand sources of "their own data" for "their own paper" ?
Furthermore, one must ask the question, why would a bunch of engineers, communications engineers, publish such a paper in the journal of the Navigation society in the first place, rather than their own professional societies and their journals ?
Were Inmarsat trying to protect their own credibility ?
Were they trying to give us a "clue", that what had been published by Malaysia, in that "much delayed", and "highly redacted", and "copy protected" PDF File, might not be, 100% "ridgi-dige" ?
(Ref: https://www.docdownload.com.au/australia...erms-abuse)
I will leave it there for now.