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Time for satellite plane tracking

Discussion in 'Fred's House of Pancakes' started by bwilson4web, May 20, 2016.

  1. bwilson4web

    bwilson4web BMW i3 and Model 3

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    That Egypt Air 804 has not be found, yet, drives home that any flights over water should have a satellite beacon that periodically 'phones home' with GPS ephemeris (longitude, latitude, altitude) and primary flight metrics, airspeed, engine metric(s), crew status. It needs to be a system that is always on with a battery back-up. Loss of aircraft power should put the unit in data-burst mode. Only landing gear weight should turn the system OFF and ON. In effect, a radio based, black-box.

    Bob Wilson
     
  2. 2k1Toaster

    2k1Toaster Brand New Prius Batteries

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    You can't get the majority of passengers to pay $25 for a bag, who is going to pay extra for tracking when even with all the crashes in the news it is still one of the safest ways to get from A to B? And then of course you also have airlines who can't be bothered to spend money on new planes or retrofit them, but will prefer to pay deferred maintenance costs and extend the life of the plane for many extra decades.

    With about $25 worth of kit at retail consumer price levels and a weekend of coding on a hosting server for the backend, there could be a system to do exactly that. No it wouldn't survive a crash, but it lets you know where it stopped working...
     
  3. Former Member 68813

    Former Member 68813 Senior Member

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    irrelevant in this case, the plane was tracked by Greek radars.

    then you pay the satellite subscription to use it. as you might remember the missing Malaysian flight had the hardware, but not the subscription.
     
    #3 Former Member 68813, May 20, 2016
    Last edited: May 22, 2016
  4. 2k1Toaster

    2k1Toaster Brand New Prius Batteries

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    Yes. But a satellite internet link with minimal bandwidth (we're sending KB's of data, not streaming 4K cat videos) is on a consumer level, a few hundred dollars a month.

    The "Staralliance" alliance has 18,521 daily flights as of early spring last year, with an average daily passenger load of 1,791,260 people (just less than 100 per flight on average). Multiply by 30 and you've got 53.73 million people every month. If air fares raised one penny per person, that's $537K per month. I believe that would pay for a satellite com link especially on such a large scale.
     
  5. tochatihu

    tochatihu Senior Member

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    FDR and CVR are very robust but lack latest technology. This list is incomplete:

    List of unrecovered flight recorders - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

    Someday a decision point will be reached. Or has it already? Build the recorders even better, or replace the system with enroute satellite data offloading. I really don't know what would be involved to make that decision.
     
  6. wrprice

    wrprice Active Member

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    Yeah, but with as infrequent as these events are, it's easier to let the lawyers bill a little more "on demand", raise the fares anyway (why stop at 1ยข?) and pocket a few million per month as profit. That's how you look after your shareholders, after all.

    2PS64 ?
     
  7. tochatihu

    tochatihu Senior Member

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    Perhaps the technology is all in place and just awaiting 1 (or more) airlines to buy in. I could imagine a marketing scheme "We have slightly higher ticket prices but are leading the industry in safety innovation".

    Even though it is the safest transportation tool, commercial jet travel is feared. Irrationalia can often be viewed as money-making opportunities. This is also looking after shareholders.
     
  8. ETC(SS)

    ETC(SS) The OTHER One Percenter.....

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  9. ETC(SS)

    ETC(SS) The OTHER One Percenter.....

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    Hmmmmm....you mean they never recovered the [sic]Black Boxes from the WTC????

    Ooooooooooooooo.

    I'm surprised that the aluminum-foil hat crowd hasn't made more of a case about that one! :D

    upload_2016-5-26_16-46-31.jpeg
     
  10. wjtracy

    wjtracy Senior Member

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    It would sure help if the black box pingers lasted more than 30 days...
     
  11. bwilson4web

    bwilson4web BMW i3 and Model 3

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    Or the time between pings was log of SOC. Also two electrodes that in sea water makes a primary cell. Then a listen before response long duration mode.

    Cheaper to sat broadcast metrics.

    Bob Wilson
     
  12. Former Member 68813

    Former Member 68813 Senior Member

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