#tpl-25

New Post has been published on http://www.therakyatpost.com/news/2014/03/28/pinpointing-the-blackbox/

Pinpointing the blackbox

INFOGRAPHIC:

Malaysia Airlines passenger aircraft MH370′s flight path ended over the southern Indian Ocean and with no land mass within flying distance, it can be concluded that the plane is now underwater.

To find out what happened, investigators must recover the plane’s flight recorder, known commonly as the black box, but to do so they will need to use the US Navy’s Towed Pinger Locator 25 System (TPL-25).

According to the US Navy’s website, the TPL-25 is “used to locate emergency relocation pingers on downed navy and commercial aircraft up to a maximum depth of 20,000 feet (6,096 metres)”.

New Post has been published on http://www.therakyatpost.com/news/2014/03/26/pinpointing-the-black-box-underwater/

Pinpointing the black box underwater

By Hamzah Nazari

KUALA LUMPUR, March 26:

Malaysia Airlines (MAS) passenger aircraft MH370′s flight path ended over the southern Indian Ocean and with no land mass within flying distance, the conclusion that can be made is that the plane would now be under water.

Investigators must recover the plane’s flight recorder, known commonly as the black box, in order to find out what actually happened on that flight.

But to find the black box, they will need to use the US Navy’s Towed Pinger Locator 25 System (TPL-25).

According to the US Navy’s website, the TPL-25 is “used to locate emergency relocation pingers on downed navy and commercial aircraft down to a maximum depth of 20,000 feet (6,096 metres)”.

The entire system consists of the tow fish, tow cable, winch, hydraulic power unit, generator and topside control console, but not all of these components are used on every mission.

Mounted on the tow fish is a passive listening device which detects the acoustic pulses automatically transmitted by pingers such as the one mounted on a black  box.

Although most pingers transmit a repetitive 37.5kHz pulse at one second intervals, the TPL can detect any pinger transmitting at a frequency of between 3.5kHz and 50kHz at any repetitive rate.

In order to locate the pinger, the TPL is towed behind a vessel at a speed of between one and five knots, depending on the depth.

The received acoustic signal of the pinger is transmitted up the cable and presented audibly to either an Oscilloscope or Signal Processing Computer.

An operator monitors the strongest signal and records the navigation coordinates, repeating the procedure on multiple track lines to triangulate the pinger’s final position.

Morning Coffee: F-35 Software May Delay Production

Morning Coffee is a robust blend of links to news around the internet concerning the Naval Air Station Patuxent River economic community. The opinions expressed here do not necessarily reflect those of the Leader’s owners or staff.

A draft report from the US Government Accountability Office (GAO) says delays in software testing for the F-35may slow production and increase costs, reports Bloomberg…