Flight recorder...

[imamartian]

Just on the BBC news, in relation the the recent air disaster, the reporter said..... "the black box, is rarely black!" ok, makes sense.... but, he talked about the signal generating, bottom of the ocean finding, unit thing on the side... which lasts for a month? and he talked about the difficulty of finding it within a month at the bottom of the ocean....

So my question is.... WHY NOT MAKE THE BLACK BOX FLOAT !!!!!!!!!

Like make the black box just a bit bigger, cover it in foam and fill it with those polythene air pockets that screwfix send you, when you didn't even order them !!!!

 

[Steve]

black box must cost thousands of pounds, imagine how much it'd cost to replace every black box on every plane in the world. Not gonna happen, with the margins airlines operate on (20 min turnaround on the airfield, 95% time in air etc)

 

[xerxes]

That's a good idea.

It might be necessary to build a mechanism to make sure that the flight recorder is automatically ejected from the aircraft on impact, otherwise it will simply sink to the bottom along with all the other wreckage, no matter what flotation devices are incorporated.

 

[ColJack]

we've discussed this before..

with the number of satelites up there, and the constant radio contact and the inclusion of air phones etc.. why not have each plane send it's data out to be stored on the local air trafic control center as well as on the flight recorder..

if you can't send it direct, then you could relay it to any other nearby airctraft.. ..

there should be 4 flight recorders per plane, one in the cockpit / wherever it is now.. 1 in the very tip of each wing and on in the very tip of the tail..
the ones in the tail and wings would be fitted with ejection devices that automatically eject on impact, or when submerged in water..

 

[imamartian]

we've discussed this before..

with the number of satelites up there, and the constant radio contact and the inclusion of air phones etc.. why not have each plane send it's data out to be stored on the local air trafic control center as well as on the flight recorder..

if you can't send it direct, then you could relay it to any other nearby airctraft.. ..

there should be 4 flight recorders per plane, one in the cockpit / wherever it is now.. 1 in the very tip of each wing and on in the very tip of the tail..
the ones in the tail and wings would be fitted with ejection devices that automatically eject on impact, or when submerged in water..

I did a search on "flight recorder" and got only 5 unrelated posts....

But you make a very good point... why not 'beam' the data via radio waves.... and there would never be a problem of finding it !
Genious!

 

[dextrous]

More to the point, any malfunction may possibly be picked up sooner and disaster avoided; and if it ended up with even 1 life being saved, it'd be worth it.

Like the idea of an ejector seat for the black box - how about one for the passengers too and f**k the flight recorder!!!

 

[ColJack]

you'd have to build in more rigidity in the fuselage to make up for the holes for the ejection..
the thing would never get off the ground..

bring back the hindenburgs.. 2 nights on a blimp to get to greece sounds ok to me..

 

[Shytalkz]

Two nights on a blimp in Greece sounds ok too

 

[dextrous]

Find a better way of travelling is the answer. We're all in too much of a rush to get anywhere nowadays.

Somewhat off topic, but an anecdote I feel like telling anyway - along the North Wales coast they built the A55 a few years ago. Whilst so doing, they managed to ruin an awful lot of the charm of the towns and villages along the route, including the beautiful beaches of Penmaenmawr (which you may be interested in noting that this was the only sea promenade built in the 20th Century). Thus it has occurred to me that although we may get from A to B more efficiently, there is a decreasing point of getting to B anymore. You only need to look at holiday resorts abroad to exemplify this.