3 ms·
If this is part of MH370 then you'd wonder why Jindalee didn't pick it up in the air. Just bad luck?
by leoc 13y ago
If this is part of MH370 then you'd wonder why Jindalee didn't pick it up in the air. Just bad luck?
- simonh 13y agoAt that time, nobody was looking for it. Unless you know to look out for something specific, it's just one more of the approximately 5,000 aircraft in the air at any one moment. Also these radars can have very narrow beam widths, typically half a degree. Suppose it was already being used for some other task?
- leoc 13y agoBut isn't Jindalee primarily an air defence system, intended to look for unidentified and unannounced aircraft?
- ibmthrowaway218 13y agoWith no active transponder MH370 would have been unidentified, and no communication with ATC would make it unannounced. It was also unexpected as there was no 'plane due to be in that area according to the filed flight plans (or every other one was identifiable).
- dingaling 13y agoJindalee is marvellous, but unfortunately ( AFAIK ) it isn't possible to use it in a general surveillance manner. It needs to be directed to a specific area which it monitors; this is partly dictated by HF propagation conditions. Consider that it bounces its signal off the ionosphere to 'illuminate' an area on the surface. You can move that area around like a viewport but you can't make the viewport bigger. If the MAS a/c didn't enter the areas they were monitoring that day then they wouldn't have contacted.
- leoc 13y agoPresumably the idea is to scan the search area in a methodical (though not completely predictable) fashion, like destroyers trawling the North Atlantic for U-boats?
- dingaling 13y agoYes, I think so! Or set-up a barrier-pattern of searching a linear range of areas continuously. I think they have four or five of these HF radars now, so they could co-operate.