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Post by the light works on Dec 8, 2015 15:10:32 GMT
suggestions to add to the good ideas so far... thinking that a small cylinder housing placed just short of the tail, or even part of the tail structure, and therefore out of way of engines with a li-ion rechargeable battery that breaks away from the onboard recharge circuit when deployed works well. Thinking.... If this deployment holds an electronic device that blips an emergency signal, that signal can state the exact GPS lat and long of when it was deployed?... it needs be no more than that, because its not as if it will be needed to be collected, and that way, it can drift away and the rescue can start at the exact location of where the plane went down... closest to half a mile is enough if you know where to start looking... even better if it can be closest to the nearest 100 yds?.. you will start to see wreckage at that point?... Thinking... If this is a Helium balloon, it can then be spotted from the air, or get enough hight to broadcast over mountains, again, it doesnt need to be tethered if its giving the exact location of the plane in its broadcast. Multiple balloons can take care of what happens if one is lost or malfunctions. Make them deploy in the same way as air-bags, thus smaller and easier to store onboard. Small "Just enough" gas cartridge powered, that can be checked yearly. Does it need to be tethered if it is GPS aware of where the accident started?.. If also there was tracking permanently on the aircraft by satellite link, that two signals and the flight path logged could triangulate the location... well, some of your thoughts are mutually exclusive - there is no airbag style gas generator that makes helium, for example. but yes, those thoughts are very good. I think enough helium to get it airborne, might be an issue - but if it was compressed gas charged, you could use helium to get it to float higher in the water multiple balloon technology might be a bit higher tech than we want to equip it with. I am envisioning a sort of limpet device that sticks on near the tail section, has shock and pressure sensors that cause it to decide to break away, and a compressed gas bouyancy system. done right, you could set it up to have pressure regulated charge and overpressure valves pretty simply. that way if it did hang up and get dragged to an extreme depth, it could charge the balloon enough to get positive bouyancy and bleed off pressure as it ascended. once it entered transmission mode, it would alternate between a wideband "ping" and a lower powered upload of its first captured GPS coordinates. I also like the idea of a near field charge system, rather than a direct plug-in. that lets its protective shell be completely sealed until it decides to breach it. a magnetically activated battery check could let the battery strength be monitored without breaching the seal. |
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Post by Cybermortis on Dec 8, 2015 17:18:03 GMT
suggestions to add to the good ideas so far... thinking that a small cylinder housing placed just short of the tail, or even part of the tail structure, and therefore out of way of engines with a li-ion rechargeable battery that breaks away from the onboard recharge circuit when deployed works well. Thinking.... If this deployment holds an electronic device that blips an emergency signal, that signal can state the exact GPS lat and long of when it was deployed?... it needs be no more than that, because its not as if it will be needed to be collected, and that way, it can drift away and the rescue can start at the exact location of where the plane went down... closest to half a mile is enough if you know where to start looking... even better if it can be closest to the nearest 100 yds?.. you will start to see wreckage at that point?... Thinking... If this is a Helium balloon, it can then be spotted from the air, or get enough hight to broadcast over mountains, again, it doesnt need to be tethered if its giving the exact location of the plane in its broadcast. Multiple balloons can take care of what happens if one is lost or malfunctions. Make them deploy in the same way as air-bags, thus smaller and easier to store onboard. Small "Just enough" gas cartridge powered, that can be checked yearly. Does it need to be tethered if it is GPS aware of where the accident started?.. If also there was tracking permanently on the aircraft by satellite link, that two signals and the flight path logged could triangulate the location... well, some of your thoughts are mutually exclusive - there is no airbag style gas generator that makes helium, for example. but yes, those thoughts are very good. I think enough helium to get it airborne, might be an issue - but if it was compressed gas charged, you could use helium to get it to float higher in the water multiple balloon technology might be a bit higher tech than we want to equip it with. I am envisioning a sort of limpet device that sticks on near the tail section, has shock and pressure sensors that cause it to decide to break away, and a compressed gas bouyancy system. done right, you could set it up to have pressure regulated charge and overpressure valves pretty simply. that way if it did hang up and get dragged to an extreme depth, it could charge the balloon enough to get positive bouyancy and bleed off pressure as it ascended. once it entered transmission mode, it would alternate between a wideband "ping" and a lower powered upload of its first captured GPS coordinates. I also like the idea of a near field charge system, rather than a direct plug-in. that lets its protective shell be completely sealed until it decides to breach it. a magnetically activated battery check could let the battery strength be monitored without breaching the seal. Ideally you'd want a system that could be fitted to any aircraft without having to modify it in any way, so entirely self-contained. But you'd also want a system that could be plugged into the aircraft's systems so it could act as a blackbox, at least as far as speed and heading were concerned at the time of deployment, either as an upgrade to existing designs or something included in future designs. In both cases you'd want to know where the device was, as any wreckage, survivors or bodies would have been carried along on the same currents. So finding the device gives you a starting point when searching for such things. Being able to map its own location as it goes would further assist in estimating a search area along that path. Recovery would, in any case, be desirable as you don't want something floating around the ocean transmitting a distress signal once you have SAR assets in the area. Chances are that someone would report the signal, not realizing operations were already in progress...or had been carried out weeks ago. So you'd want to pick the device up just to shut it off, even if it doesn't have any data to aid a search. |
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Post by silverdragon on Dec 9, 2015 7:38:16 GMT
Why not?... the impossible is only something no one has ever done before.
We need to think inside the box on this one.
Thinking outside the box requires you know exactly what was going on inside before you stepped out, and I can always be sure I did know that anyway...
Works better than the idea I wa having of pretty watertight seals.
Eventual recovery, but let it not be the first target.. limited battery life would run the distress signal down anyway, and then its just debris.
I am all for the small "Sparklets bulb" type of air canister, they can be safe, even at height.
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Post by the light works on Dec 9, 2015 14:43:36 GMT
Why not?... the impossible is only something no one has ever done before. We need to think inside the box on this one. Thinking outside the box requires you know exactly what was going on inside before you stepped out, and I can always be sure I did know that anyway... Works better than the idea I wa having of pretty watertight seals. Eventual recovery, but let it not be the first target.. limited battery life would run the distress signal down anyway, and then its just debris. I am all for the small "Sparklets bulb" type of air canister, they can be safe, even at height. okay, what chemical process is helium a byproduct of? an airbag gas generator manufactures the gas by a chemical reaction. recovery is why I had the idea of alternating between a wideband ping and an initial GPS dump. the goal is that the ping gets yo an immediate trouble report, and then when you get reasonably close you can pick up the GPS and know what area your primary search happens in - while ONE minor resource tracks down the balloon and picks it up. - from there they can do a hard connection to retrieve KEY data - NOT a full log recorder dump. this is to be a locator device, NOT a flight data recorder. |
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Post by Cybermortis on Dec 9, 2015 21:46:53 GMT
You should be able to download speed, heading and altitude to a mini recorder in the device at the time of deployment, and for several minutes before this. Assuming you can connect it to the internal systems. This data would be useful in locating a downed aircraft. More traditional data recorders contain a lot more information than this, but most of that information is intended to allow investigators to determine why an aircraft went down.
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Post by GTCGreg on Dec 9, 2015 22:21:56 GMT
You should be able to download speed, heading and altitude to a mini recorder in the device at the time of deployment, and for several minutes before this. Assuming you can connect it to the internal systems. This data would be useful in locating a downed aircraft. More traditional data recorders contain a lot more information than this, but most of that information is intended to allow investigators to determine why an aircraft went down. The device could easily contain its own GPS receiver and determine and store heading, speed and altitude directly with no connection to the plane's system other than power. It would have it's own internal battery anyway so all that would be needed is a power connection to run the GPS and keep the battery charged while in flight. It probably be a lot cheaper and more reliable than trying to interface to the plane's systems. It would also keep recording should there be some catastrophic failure of the plane's electronics. |
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Post by the light works on Dec 10, 2015 2:16:01 GMT
You should be able to download speed, heading and altitude to a mini recorder in the device at the time of deployment, and for several minutes before this. Assuming you can connect it to the internal systems. This data would be useful in locating a downed aircraft. More traditional data recorders contain a lot more information than this, but most of that information is intended to allow investigators to determine why an aircraft went down. The device could easily contain its own GPS receiver and determine and store heading, speed and altitude directly with no connection to the plane's system other than power. It would have it's own internal battery anyway so all that would be needed is a power connection to run the GPS and keep the battery charged while in flight. It probably be a lot cheaper and more reliable than trying to interface to the plane's systems. It would also keep recording should there be some catastrophic failure of the plane's electronics. That's sort of what I had in mind. - a completely autonomous device, so no modification of the plane is required. - with the idea in mind it spends most of its life passive |
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Post by silverdragon on Dec 10, 2015 8:40:25 GMT
Ahhh... right...
Clarification.
I was referencing the airbag technology as a "Trigger", sensors that deploy the airbag can be just as effective at noticing an aircraft has "suddenly de-accelerated"....[crashed?}
As in dump the last 2 mins from "Black Box"... (orange cylinder....) yeah, that works... could be a wireless dump that also keeps recording?... for as long as it is able, if the GPS of the black box keeps sending data it could also be a "Here I am", independent of the buoy/balloon.
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Post by Cybermortis on Dec 10, 2015 11:13:08 GMT
The device could easily contain its own GPS receiver and determine and store heading, speed and altitude directly with no connection to the plane's system other than power. It would have it's own internal battery anyway so all that would be needed is a power connection to run the GPS and keep the battery charged while in flight. It probably be a lot cheaper and more reliable than trying to interface to the plane's systems. It would also keep recording should there be some catastrophic failure of the plane's electronics. That's sort of what I had in mind. - a completely autonomous device, so no modification of the plane is required. - with the idea in mind it spends most of its life passive You'd probably want to think about giving the device both stand alone tracking abilities, so you can fit it to existing aircraft without having to modify them. But also the ability to be plugged into the aircraft to download data if desired. There are two reasons for this. First it effectively means that you have a backup tracker, as you can compare both sets of data and have the ability to check that they match up. If they don't you can see if the device is in error or the aircraft's systems were, valuable information to have especially if the pilot was able to send a distress call out. Second is that as technology improves it seems likely that the storage capability of the device would as well, which might allow it to act as an additional flight recorder capable of storing more and more information. Airlines might find this feature helpful not just after a crash but in general use as a way to how the aircraft has behaved and if there might be some issue that needs to be looked at. |
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Post by silverdragon on Dec 10, 2015 11:34:38 GMT
I am wondering if modern craft need to think of how this may affect performance, if you sling an extra "pod" on the outside...
Maybe above the tail, and of course, streamlined to the max, in a disposable shell that could break-away before the beacon is deployed....
But would any kind of pod change the characteristics of how the thing flies?...
I am thinking this because I know the pilots I have worked with take it as read that the handling of a jet "Fighter" changes, dependant on what you have slung underneath on the weapons pods...
And extra pods on heavier stuff, even a Hercules, if put in the wrong place, may change how it responds.
Smaller aircraft may have a greater change of handling.
Weight issues as well.
It HAS to be damn light for smaller craft....
I am thinking that maybe carbon fibre structure where at all possible to keep the weight issues down?...
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Post by the light works on Dec 10, 2015 15:06:11 GMT
I am wondering if modern craft need to think of how this may affect performance, if you sling an extra "pod" on the outside... Maybe above the tail, and of course, streamlined to the max, in a disposable shell that could break-away before the beacon is deployed.... But would any kind of pod change the characteristics of how the thing flies?... I am thinking this because I know the pilots I have worked with take it as read that the handling of a jet "Fighter" changes, dependant on what you have slung underneath on the weapons pods... And extra pods on heavier stuff, even a Hercules, if put in the wrong place, may change how it responds. Smaller aircraft may have a greater change of handling. Weight issues as well. It HAS to be damn light for smaller craft.... I am thinking that maybe carbon fibre structure where at all possible to keep the weight issues down?... yes, the aerodynamic performance of the thing is a very critical issue. a newer plane could be built with an indentation for it to mount into. retrofitting it to an older plane might require a variety of protective housings to be available. but yes, I am fully in agreement that we want a sealed protective shell around the device. - which can then be jettisoned when it becomes active. |
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