They don't know everything - they just know whether you prefer Burger King or McDonalds, and that you lied to your friends about how pretty your girlfriend is.
I don't often bump a comment, in fact I never have - please tell me why I shouldn't "place too much faith in FlightRadar24"? Explain what to look out for so that I can use an educated opinion as to whether the data is valid or not.
Not educating me just means that I will continue to use the data as given as you've not supported your opinion.
How so? Are the points often grossly inaccurate (out by 10s of km), are the timestamps invalid, do they simply make up data? If you can tell me why the data shouldn't be relied upon (or at least believed), I'm willing to listen.
The reason I'm pushing FlightRadar24 is because the data is there. I also am "trusting" that their data is real because they show gaps in the data as opposed to filling estimated positions in the track between known points. This means that people are less likely to jump to conclusions because they don't realise they're looking at an estimated great circle track.
I've seen no kinks in the tracks to imply that the data is jumping around, or that the points are collected out of order. What I've read about ADS-B gives me no reason to think that the positions and data shouldn't be accurate - otherwise Australia, the US and EU wouldn't be requiring it for some aircraft.
So we're left with the receiving stations - is it possible that amateur receivers are pushing corrupt data to the website, though from what I've read:
ADS-B messages (transmitted every sec without interrogation, with (plane symbol) or without (ball symbol) position, Mode-S downlink format=17) are encoded together with an unambigious 24-bit CRC checksum and would be discarded by a proper decoder if that checksum is false
so receivers shouldn't be doing that.
So, as far as I can tell, we're left with purposely corrupted data, which I'd like to think wouldn't happen, or if it did would be picked up by users.
They're not mutually exclusive - if I run somebody over while drink driving, it was an accident - I didn't mean to do it - but it was still a crime.
Would the US or Britain permit an external power (e.g. Ukraine) to investigate any of their territories?
The Korean Aviation and Railway Accident Investigation Board (ARAIB) helped take part in the Asiana 214 investigation
350 Palestinians deliberately killed in the past 4 days
While distressing, it's [to be blunt] irrelevant. Just because other terrible things are going on in the world, doesn't mean that we can't discuss the handling of this accident.
The United States and England lost all credibility the second they (predictably) mounted their co-ordinated propaganda campaigns.
Actually, I kind of agree with this - the speed at which Ukraine, the US and the western media jumped at blaming Russia may have been a mistake - it could have been better to keep calm until the facts were in. It's quite possible that the Pro-Russian rebels would have provided better access. However It's also quite possible that - with no criticism - that the rebels would have been even less willing to provide access to the site. Blocking access to investigators was an appalling act.
The other question I have of the theory that an SU-25 shot MH17 down with a R-60 missile is this - it's a IR guided missile with a 3kg warhead. This means that it will home in on the engines before detonating - meaning that the engine should take the brunt of the explosion. Reading the wikipedia entry, it cites a BAe-125 being hit by one and causing the engine to fall off. The twin engined (not any more it wasn't) business jet managed to make a successful emergency landing. I don't know what altitude this happened, so the pressure difference may not have been too great, but keep in mind that the BAe-125 has a service ceiling of 41,000ft
Compare this to KAL 007 which was shot down by a radar guided K-8 missile which has a 40kg warhead - that's over 13 times the mass of an R-60 warhead. The 747 continued to fly for 12 minutes.
In my mind, a radar guided missile show target the fuselage (the largest radar return), which is what happened with KAL 007 - The co-pilot reported to Captain Chun twice during the flight after the missile's detonation, "Engines normal, sir.", which is more likely cause explosive decompression (MH17 and KAL007 were at similar altitudes).
We are being expected to believe that a IR guided warhead less than 1/10 of that which allowed KAL007 to continue flying downed MH17. It seems far more likely that a BUK radar guided SAM (with a 70kg warhead) was the cause.
Finally, the competing theories are: 1. Accidentally shot down with a BUK missile (either Ukraine or Pro-Russian) 2. Purposefully shot down with a Ukraine R-60 launched from a ground attack aircraft.
I struggle to understand the logic required to even consider #2, regardless of who one believes was responsible.
Fair point - they do have that timestamps, etc - however they don't use their hi-res data when rendering the track - they also insist on draw points that are unknown - hence the utter confusion being caused (especially with those with an axe to grind*).
* I've been called a shill, but nowhere have I made an assumption over who was responsible - MH17 appears to have been shot down (there's evidence of shrapnel in multiple photos). Whether it was a SAM or AAM, I don't know. I do however get pissed of when people don't think about the information they're looking at, and post it without considering how valid it may be.
Also, you'll notice from the 16th July data pretty much the whole flight from the Poland-Ukraine border to India is estimated (great circle between two known ASD-B points). The FlightRadar24 data has ADS-B data all the way from Amsterdam to Turkmenistan - then they have a gap in their data (which they don't draw, as drawing points you don't know is bad practice) until Pakistan. From what I can tell, FlightRadar24's coverage is far better.
I've also watched [on Russia Today's youtube channel] the Kremlin's presentation on how MH17 was diverted. That diversion wasn't reflected the ADS-B data (although Russian military's should be more accurate**) - it'll be interesting to see what the FDR comes back with.
** What I'm struggling with is the orientation of the chart shown - if it's North-Up, then they're saying MH17 was flying due west when it was directed out of the corridor, where as the ADS-B data show it flying a "fairly" consistent 118 deg.
Um, where in my post did I say who was responsible? All I did was give my reasons for not believing that MH17 was "over 500km from its usual path", and providing data to support my reasoning. You continue to solely use FlightAware as supporting evidence, even though I have demonstrated that their data [as provided in their basic maps] is not accurate enough to jump to conclusion that MH17 was off it's usual flight path.
At least explain to me why the FlightRadar24 data (with a 1 minute resolution) doesn't agree with your assertations?
Again with the altitude - please explain why you would need to reduce the altitude of civilian airliner by 600m, even though it was flying at less than half the maximum altitude of an SA-11
Oh, and why have I been "accused" of being an American?
I've realised why people keep saying this - they're using FlightAware, which uses low resolution data, unlike FlightRadar24 which uses 1 minute resolution data. So, people have the choice of using low resolution lat/lon pairs, or 1 minute timestamped lat/lon data which also contains course, speed, altitude and ATC zone. Whether people are are using rubbish data to support their hypothesis out of ignorance or malice doesn't matter - it's rubbish data.
If you now look at FlightAware's website - they show the known track in green, and fill in the unknown track with a great circle. In fact their [ADS-B, I think] data appears to stop around the Poland-Ukraine border in all cases: 15th May 16th May 17th May
Compare this to the high resolution data I downloaded from FlightRadar24 - I overlaid all the tracks in Google Earth: All MH17 flights since 14th May You can see from the image a myriad of data-points, something that is missing from the FlightAware data.
As for the altitude - FL350 was requested and refused - I can't comment on why, but there are plenty of reasons - congestion, weather, etc. However if you're planning to shoot down a civilian airliner with an SA-11 (which has a altitude range of 60 - 25,000 metres), then a difference of 600 metres isn't going to make a difference.
I've realised why people keep quoting this. FlightAware provides a low resolution track of the flights - about 100 points* for a flight between Amsterdam and KL. FlightRadar24 provide a track with a 1 minute resolution (~600 points, with large sections missing where there is no ADS-B or MLAT coverage).
* They now seem to have slightly improved resolution, but now highlight where the track is actually known. Check for yourself - the tracks where data is available is in green, then they draw a great circle where the track is unknown. MH17 2014-07-15 MH17 2014-07-16 MH17 2014-07-17
This is the data I originally compiled from FlightRadar24 - All MH17 flights since 14th May - and as you can see, they have data points provided every minute, as opposed to guessing where the aircraft was.
Basically, you've a choice of using a website that provides low resolution lat/lon pairs (FlightAware), or a website that provides timestamped lat/lon data, along with speed, course, altitude and area (FlightRadar). If you're going to use rubbish data to support a hypothesis, you'll end up with a rubbish hypothesis. In fact, you're doing it wrong if you need to use rubbish data to "prove" your hypothesis.
As for the altitude, it's true that the pilots request FL350, but were refused - this could have been for any given reason - congestion (apparently there have already been reports of near misses over Russia due to congestion due to aircraft avoiding Ukraine airspace - I'm trying to find where I read that), weather (which has been suggested by a pilot's group). However seeing as an SA-11 has an altitude range of 60 - 25,000m, 600m isn't going to make a difference if you're attempting to shoot down a civilian airliner.
I tend to reload the page until a 4 second advert pops up. The other think to do is click the "disable sound" button on some adverts - they should collect information that people don't want to listen to it.
Have a look at this image - A track of all MH17's flights since May 14 - Id definiteyly wasn't rerouted into a dangerous area - it flew the same route over and over again (which incidentally is very close to the great circle between Amsterdam and KL).
I beg to differ with the assertation that it was rerouted - I heard that it was much further North (by 300mi) from somebody on the BBC, so decided to check. I downloaded all the tracks from flightradar24, and imported them into Google Earth - the red track is the final flight, and the popup is the final placemark. You'll also see that the tracks were all within 110km zone, and the final flight was bang in the middle. The track to the South was the 27th May flight.
Maybe butcher was a bit far, but I certainly enjoyed the hypocrisy of the quote.
I guess I can't stand the arrogance of fellow English speaking tourists complaining how natives* in foreign lands couldn't understand them. I spent a fortnight in France, accompanied solely by a 1970s Berlitz phrase book - I dread to think about how much I butchered their language, but generally the meaning came across. I also discovered near the end of the trip that I went around asking if people were a room, etc, rather than whether they had one, and nobody bloody corrected me - embarassing, but at least I'm unlikely to ever meet them again.
* Native in the literal sense of the word, not in a colonial "why don't these bloody natives speak a real language" sense!
One of my mum's colleagues was applying for a job in a different part of the civil service, so she was asked to provide a reference. My mum didn't want to be responsible for this person getting a job where they could possibly do some real damage, but at the same time couldn't give a negative reference. So she ended up giving the following:
Works well under direct supervision
Compare this to the UK Ordnance Survey where I temped for a year - there were permanent member of staff with 20 years of production experience who still couldn't read a map. One guy was proud of the fact that he came "highly recommended" when he got passed from department to department. Not only was he completely useless, but incredibly sleazy - no wonder they wanted shot of him.
I think the dead give-away is when somebody quotes a nice even number - $100B - how convenient!
If people are going to make up numbers and hope that they will be believed, then at least make an effort and select something that looks like a "real" number, even if it vastly inflated to suit your argument. Quite frankly, it's depressing how people nowadays are too lazy to even lie properly.
The problem is that tide tables in the UK are [as a rule] published with times explicitly in UTC. However, tides are occasionally published on the sailing instructions (regatta race information) without any mention of timezone, so do you assume that they're using local time (most likely), or UTC. It's easy to check, but it annoys me when it's done by a big event organiser such as Cowes Week - three letters are all you need to make everything completely unambiguous.
My car's clock live on UTC, mostly because I'm too lazy to adjust it. The problem is that when it's serviced the mechanic "helpfully" adjusts the time, which caused a fair amount of confusion the first time. Same goes for the clock in my flat - fortunately it doesn't get messed around by my garage.
Funny you mention tides and ambiguity - what really winds me up is when things like tide tables are published with no mention of a time zone, Pop quiz hot shot, you draw 2.2m, do you assume you're at HW+3, or HW+4 and hope that there's a roller skate on the keel.
Slashdot Mirror
Just use a decent ISP - at the risk of sounding like a shill/employee/investor - Andrews & Arnold are pretty good, plus they provide native IPv6.
Thanks for that - found it and added it to my favourites.
They don't know everything - they just know whether you prefer Burger King or McDonalds, and that you lied to your friends about how pretty your girlfriend is.
I don't often bump a comment, in fact I never have - please tell me why I shouldn't "place too much faith in FlightRadar24"? Explain what to look out for so that I can use an educated opinion as to whether the data is valid or not.
Not educating me just means that I will continue to use the data as given as you've not supported your opinion.
How so? Are the points often grossly inaccurate (out by 10s of km), are the timestamps invalid, do they simply make up data? If you can tell me why the data shouldn't be relied upon (or at least believed), I'm willing to listen.
The reason I'm pushing FlightRadar24 is because the data is there. I also am "trusting" that their data is real because they show gaps in the data as opposed to filling estimated positions in the track between known points. This means that people are less likely to jump to conclusions because they don't realise they're looking at an estimated great circle track.
I've seen no kinks in the tracks to imply that the data is jumping around, or that the points are collected out of order. What I've read about ADS-B gives me no reason to think that the positions and data shouldn't be accurate - otherwise Australia, the US and EU wouldn't be requiring it for some aircraft.
So we're left with the receiving stations - is it possible that amateur receivers are pushing corrupt data to the website, though from what I've read:
ADS-B messages (transmitted every sec without interrogation, with (plane symbol) or without (ball symbol) position, Mode-S downlink format=17) are encoded together with an unambigious 24-bit CRC checksum and would be discarded by a proper decoder if that checksum is false
so receivers shouldn't be doing that.
So, as far as I can tell, we're left with purposely corrupted data, which I'd like to think wouldn't happen, or if it did would be picked up by users.
Bit late, but to put in my 2p worth:
It's the scene of an "accident", not a crime.
They're not mutually exclusive - if I run somebody over while drink driving, it was an accident - I didn't mean to do it - but it was still a crime.
Would the US or Britain permit an external power (e.g. Ukraine) to investigate any of their territories?
The Korean Aviation and Railway Accident Investigation Board (ARAIB) helped take part in the Asiana 214 investigation
350 Palestinians deliberately killed in the past 4 days
While distressing, it's [to be blunt] irrelevant. Just because other terrible things are going on in the world, doesn't mean that we can't discuss the handling of this accident.
The United States and England lost all credibility the second they (predictably) mounted their co-ordinated propaganda campaigns.
Actually, I kind of agree with this - the speed at which Ukraine, the US and the western media jumped at blaming Russia may have been a mistake - it could have been better to keep calm until the facts were in. It's quite possible that the Pro-Russian rebels would have provided better access. However It's also quite possible that - with no criticism - that the rebels would have been even less willing to provide access to the site. Blocking access to investigators was an appalling act.
The other question I have of the theory that an SU-25 shot MH17 down with a R-60 missile is this - it's a IR guided missile with a 3kg warhead. This means that it will home in on the engines before detonating - meaning that the engine should take the brunt of the explosion. Reading the wikipedia entry, it cites a BAe-125 being hit by one and causing the engine to fall off. The twin engined (not any more it wasn't) business jet managed to make a successful emergency landing. I don't know what altitude this happened, so the pressure difference may not have been too great, but keep in mind that the BAe-125 has a service ceiling of 41,000ft
Compare this to KAL 007 which was shot down by a radar guided K-8 missile which has a 40kg warhead - that's over 13 times the mass of an R-60 warhead. The 747 continued to fly for 12 minutes.
In my mind, a radar guided missile show target the fuselage (the largest radar return), which is what happened with KAL 007 - The co-pilot reported to Captain Chun twice during the flight after the missile's detonation, "Engines normal, sir.", which is more likely cause explosive decompression (MH17 and KAL007 were at similar altitudes).
We are being expected to believe that a IR guided warhead less than 1/10 of that which allowed KAL007 to continue flying downed MH17. It seems far more likely that a BUK radar guided SAM (with a 70kg warhead) was the cause.
Finally, the competing theories are:
1. Accidentally shot down with a BUK missile (either Ukraine or Pro-Russian)
2. Purposefully shot down with a Ukraine R-60 launched from a ground attack aircraft.
I struggle to understand the logic required to even consider #2, regardless of who one believes was responsible.
Fair point - they do have that timestamps, etc - however they don't use their hi-res data when rendering the track - they also insist on draw points that are unknown - hence the utter confusion being caused (especially with those with an axe to grind*).
* I've been called a shill, but nowhere have I made an assumption over who was responsible - MH17 appears to have been shot down (there's evidence of shrapnel in multiple photos). Whether it was a SAM or AAM, I don't know. I do however get pissed of when people don't think about the information they're looking at, and post it without considering how valid it may be.
Also, you'll notice from the 16th July data pretty much the whole flight from the Poland-Ukraine border to India is estimated (great circle between two known ASD-B points). The FlightRadar24 data has ADS-B data all the way from Amsterdam to Turkmenistan - then they have a gap in their data (which they don't draw, as drawing points you don't know is bad practice) until Pakistan. From what I can tell, FlightRadar24's coverage is far better.
I've also watched [on Russia Today's youtube channel] the Kremlin's presentation on how MH17 was diverted. That diversion wasn't reflected the ADS-B data (although Russian military's should be more accurate**) - it'll be interesting to see what the FDR comes back with.
** What I'm struggling with is the orientation of the chart shown - if it's North-Up, then they're saying MH17 was flying due west when it was directed out of the corridor, where as the ADS-B data show it flying a "fairly" consistent 118 deg.
Um, where in my post did I say who was responsible? All I did was give my reasons for not believing that MH17 was "over 500km from its usual path", and providing data to support my reasoning. You continue to solely use FlightAware as supporting evidence, even though I have demonstrated that their data [as provided in their basic maps] is not accurate enough to jump to conclusion that MH17 was off it's usual flight path.
At least explain to me why the FlightRadar24 data (with a 1 minute resolution) doesn't agree with your assertations?
Again with the altitude - please explain why you would need to reduce the altitude of civilian airliner by 600m, even though it was flying at less than half the maximum altitude of an SA-11
Oh, and why have I been "accused" of being an American?
Gah - double post as when I reloaded the page I couldn't see my comment so had to rewrite the bloody thing.
I've realised why people keep saying this - they're using FlightAware, which uses low resolution data, unlike FlightRadar24 which uses 1 minute resolution data. So, people have the choice of using low resolution lat/lon pairs, or 1 minute timestamped lat/lon data which also contains course, speed, altitude and ATC zone. Whether people are are using rubbish data to support their hypothesis out of ignorance or malice doesn't matter - it's rubbish data.
If you now look at FlightAware's website - they show the known track in green, and fill in the unknown track with a great circle. In fact their [ADS-B, I think] data appears to stop around the Poland-Ukraine border in all cases:
15th May
16th May
17th May
Compare this to the high resolution data I downloaded from FlightRadar24 - I overlaid all the tracks in Google Earth:
All MH17 flights since 14th May
You can see from the image a myriad of data-points, something that is missing from the FlightAware data.
As for the altitude - FL350 was requested and refused - I can't comment on why, but there are plenty of reasons - congestion, weather, etc. However if you're planning to shoot down a civilian airliner with an SA-11 (which has a altitude range of 60 - 25,000 metres), then a difference of 600 metres isn't going to make a difference.
I've realised why people keep quoting this. FlightAware provides a low resolution track of the flights - about 100 points* for a flight between Amsterdam and KL. FlightRadar24 provide a track with a 1 minute resolution (~600 points, with large sections missing where there is no ADS-B or MLAT coverage).
* They now seem to have slightly improved resolution, but now highlight where the track is actually known. Check for yourself - the tracks where data is available is in green, then they draw a great circle where the track is unknown.
MH17 2014-07-15
MH17 2014-07-16
MH17 2014-07-17
This is the data I originally compiled from FlightRadar24 - All MH17 flights since 14th May - and as you can see, they have data points provided every minute, as opposed to guessing where the aircraft was.
Basically, you've a choice of using a website that provides low resolution lat/lon pairs (FlightAware), or a website that provides timestamped lat/lon data, along with speed, course, altitude and area (FlightRadar). If you're going to use rubbish data to support a hypothesis, you'll end up with a rubbish hypothesis. In fact, you're doing it wrong if you need to use rubbish data to "prove" your hypothesis.
As for the altitude, it's true that the pilots request FL350, but were refused - this could have been for any given reason - congestion (apparently there have already been reports of near misses over Russia due to congestion due to aircraft avoiding Ukraine airspace - I'm trying to find where I read that), weather (which has been suggested by a pilot's group). However seeing as an SA-11 has an altitude range of 60 - 25,000m, 600m isn't going to make a difference if you're attempting to shoot down a civilian airliner.
Don't be ridiculous - 660Hz is what they need to use if they connect them.
I'm a big fan of FlashBlock for this reason.
I tend to reload the page until a 4 second advert pops up. The other think to do is click the "disable sound" button on some adverts - they should collect information that people don't want to listen to it.
Have a look at this image - A track of all MH17's flights since May 14 - Id definiteyly wasn't rerouted into a dangerous area - it flew the same route over and over again (which incidentally is very close to the great circle between Amsterdam and KL).
And no clue this is rerouted civilian plane...
I beg to differ with the assertation that it was rerouted - I heard that it was much further North (by 300mi) from somebody on the BBC, so decided to check. I downloaded all the tracks from flightradar24, and imported them into Google Earth - the red track is the final flight, and the popup is the final placemark. You'll also see that the tracks were all within 110km zone, and the final flight was bang in the middle. The track to the South was the 27th May flight.
Google Earth of MH17 flights since May 14
Maybe butcher was a bit far, but I certainly enjoyed the hypocrisy of the quote.
I guess I can't stand the arrogance of fellow English speaking tourists complaining how natives* in foreign lands couldn't understand them. I spent a fortnight in France, accompanied solely by a 1970s Berlitz phrase book - I dread to think about how much I butchered their language, but generally the meaning came across. I also discovered near the end of the trip that I went around asking if people were a room, etc, rather than whether they had one, and nobody bloody corrected me - embarassing, but at least I'm unlikely to ever meet them again.
* Native in the literal sense of the word, not in a colonial "why don't these bloody natives speak a real language" sense!
This one is my favourite - somebody complaining that staff in a restaurant in Bordeaux don't speak English, while butchering the language themselves:
I went there last holidays, waiters were very rude, barley understanding english and not really helpfull. The food is alright, but overpriced.
It's quite amusing to see that this court case has spectacularly backfired, but does anyone really take TripAdvisor's reviews seriously?
One of my mum's colleagues was applying for a job in a different part of the civil service, so she was asked to provide a reference. My mum didn't want to be responsible for this person getting a job where they could possibly do some real damage, but at the same time couldn't give a negative reference. So she ended up giving the following:
Works well under direct supervision
Compare this to the UK Ordnance Survey where I temped for a year - there were permanent member of staff with 20 years of production experience who still couldn't read a map. One guy was proud of the fact that he came "highly recommended" when he got passed from department to department. Not only was he completely useless, but incredibly sleazy - no wonder they wanted shot of him.
Yeah, but there was no citation, so the piece was reverted.
To paraphrase one of my aerodynamics lecturers:
Helicopters - Man's ingenuity over common sense
I think the dead give-away is when somebody quotes a nice even number - $100B - how convenient!
If people are going to make up numbers and hope that they will be believed, then at least make an effort and select something that looks like a "real" number, even if it vastly inflated to suit your argument. Quite frankly, it's depressing how people nowadays are too lazy to even lie properly.
The problem is that tide tables in the UK are [as a rule] published with times explicitly in UTC. However, tides are occasionally published on the sailing instructions (regatta race information) without any mention of timezone, so do you assume that they're using local time (most likely), or UTC. It's easy to check, but it annoys me when it's done by a big event organiser such as Cowes Week - three letters are all you need to make everything completely unambiguous.
My car's clock live on UTC, mostly because I'm too lazy to adjust it. The problem is that when it's serviced the mechanic "helpfully" adjusts the time, which caused a fair amount of confusion the first time. Same goes for the clock in my flat - fortunately it doesn't get messed around by my garage.
Funny you mention tides and ambiguity - what really winds me up is when things like tide tables are published with no mention of a time zone, Pop quiz hot shot, you draw 2.2m, do you assume you're at HW+3, or HW+4 and hope that there's a roller skate on the keel.