Cont: The Sinking of MS Estonia: Case Re-opened Part III

[LondonJohn]

Since your entire response is predicated on a false premise, that my information comes from some crackpot called Bjorkman, or even from an internet site - wrong, again! - your entire reasoning fails.

Oh really? Well perhaps you'll tell us all exactly where you got the following quote from (the quote you used in the post to which I was responding):

Russian soldiers silence

"Ešt0fl! 3" call for help "Estonia"

The call for help on the 16th international radio channel was silenced by a Russian military transmitter on the island of Hogland, the Swedish newspaper "Aftonbiadet" reported. The newspaper refers to Heimo Iivonen, a member of the International Commission of Inquiry, who said that a Russian military envoy based in Hoglandll had prevented him from attending the emergency call. Since September, a Russian radio transmitter has disrupted radio communications on the southern coast of Finland. Even on the night when "Estonia" sank, the transmitter was working and blocking the emergency call frequency. Therefore, it was difficult to understand the "Estonia" call for help.

"The first call for help heard on" Silja Symphony "was partly buried in the Russian carrier frequency coming from Hogland. Later," Estonia "was connected to ..Silja Europa". It is unlikely that "Estonia" tried to sound the alarm in the past. The island of Hogland is a closed Russian military area. Therefore, the Finnish authorities cannot do anything directly to stop the jammer. and also in the Gulf of Finland.Radio stations on ships sailing in the Baltic Sea and the Gulf of Bothnia are constantly tuned to VHF 16. To ensure that calls for help are received. "Iivonen has temporarily failed to intervene in order to take action on this issue." (BNS-,, Aftonbladet 1 ’)

Stop pretending to 'know' that Estonia's APIRB's were all in good working order and correct usage. That is a massive whopper of a lie.

LOL. So the fact that the EPIRBs (again: not "APIRB") were checked a week or two prior to the disaster - and found to be in proper working condition - has no bearing on my claim.....

"Pretending" AHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!

 

[Vixen]

Where is your evidence that the Titanic was a 'prototype'?

Titanic's impact with the iceberg was not a 'scrape'

What is your source for these claims?

Common knowledge. It was one of the first large passenger ships to utilise the concept of watertight bulkheads in the hull. It spotted the iceberg ahead and went full throttle in reverse to try to avoid it, turning sharply - it was too late to miss it - and the iceberg scraped its side, causing ocean water to seep into its for'ard bulkheads as they were not quite high enough to withstand water flooding in over the top.

 

[Andy_Ross]

Can you confirm you are stating that ships sail without activating their APIRB's?

If they were active they would be transmitting a distress signal.
They are not active until they are switched on when the ship sinks, either by hand or by immersion.

 

[Andy_Ross]

The point is, it was unnecessarily delayed. A weak signal was picked up half an hour beforehand. As Channel 16 is the international distress signal, having to send a Mayday by Channel 2182 instead is hardly satisfactory. The nearby ships themselves had to use hand held devices to ring up the Coast Guard's landline.

Maybe you need to learn more about this case.

2182 kHz is the International distress carrier frequency.is one of the international calling and distress frequencies for maritime radiocommunication.
It is not a channel.

2182 kHz is analogous to channel 16 on the marine VHF band, but unlike VHF which is limited to ranges of about 20 to 50 nautical miles depending on antenna height, 2182 kHz has a reliable range of around 50 to 100 nautical miles with sufficient broadcast power and antenna size during the day and 150 to 300 nautical miles night.

Stations using 2182 kHz were required to maintain a strictly enforced three-minute silence and listening period twice each hour, starting at h+00 and h+30.
This allowed any station with distress, urgent or safety traffic the best chance of being heard even if they were at long distance, operating on reduced power or antenna efficiency
A clock in a ship's radio room has these silence periods marked by shading the sectors from h+00 to h+03 and from h+30 to h+33 in green.


Why don't you learn something about the basics?

 

[Andy_Ross]

Since your entire response is predicated on a false premise, that my information comes from some crackpot called Bjorkman, or even from an internet site - wrong, again! - your entire reasoning fails. Stop pretending to 'know' that Estonia's APIRB's were all in good working order and correct usage. That is a massive whopper of a lie.

The buoys were never activated.

 

[Jack by the hedge]

No, the Russian intelligence agencies would never think of anything as crazy as putting enough Novichok nerve agent to kill 5,000 people in a perfume spray bottle or

or

No, you'd have to be crazy to write a script like that.

They poisoned some people. Okay, why didn't they poison the smugglers? Why didn't they set fire to the smugglers' truck? Why didn't they tail the smugglers and shoot them when they got to wherever they were going?

Imagine for a moment you're one of their trained killers. Instead of attacking the people you're trying to stop, or seizing or destroying the cargo they stole, you're ordered to follow them onto a ship and then sabotage it. So the ship you're travelling on sinks in the Baltic at night in a storm. Good plan, eh comrade? Any questions?

 

[Here_to_learn]

The point is, it was unnecessarily delayed. A weak signal was picked up half an hour beforehand. As Channel 16 is the international distress signal, having to send a Mayday by Channel 2182 instead is hardly satisfactory. The nearby ships themselves had to use hand held devices to ring up the Coast Guard's landline.

Maybe you need to learn more about this case.

You need to learn more about radio.

VHF is short range communications, and CH16 (156.8 MHz) is the distress channel for that band.

MF is medium range communications, and 2182 kHz is the distress frequency for that band.

A ship that is out of range for VHF communications uses MF (or today of course satellite). VHF worked between the ships (short range).

ETA - the Captain is of course faster!

 

[LondonJohn]

No, the Russian intelligence agencies would never think of anything as crazy as putting enough Novichok nerve agent to kill 5,000 people in a perfume spray bottle or

or

No, you'd have to be crazy to write a script like that.

Ooh look! Is this precisely the same sort of sarcasm and (attempted) mockery that you were telling another poster off for just now? Why yes, yes it is!

And you seem to be missing the point entirely. In your examples, the Russians were targeting specific dissident individuals. And solely those specific dissident individuals. Your hysterical exaggeration about "enough Novichok to kill 5,000 people" is irrelevant: their aim was to use it to kill just two people. The fact that a local nutter searching through bins found the discarded bottle and gave it to a woman he knew who consequently got fatally poisoned.... is neither here nor there. The Russians were targeting only two people, and only a totally unforseen (and unforseeable) development resulted in the death of someone - ONE person - who had not been their target.

By contrast, anyone claiming (incorrectly, of course) that Russia - or any other nation state, for that matter - was behind a plan to sink the Estonia would be claiming that the plan allowed for the very real possibility of killing literally hundreds of innocent people as "collateral damage". The victims' home nations would necessarily require answers as to what caused the disaster which claimed their lives. It's a totally different kettle of fish from the examples you gave here.

 

[LondonJohn]

If they were active they would be transmitting a distress signal.
They are not active until they are switched on when the ship sinks, either by hand or by immersion.

Exactly. And we know that the particular EPIRBs aboard the Estonia were the type that needed to be switched on by hand (ie they did not contain immersion sensors, which would have made the transmitters activate automatically once the buoys were immersed in seawater).

Given the above, given that we know the EPIRBs on the Estonia were in good working order, and given that we know the EPIRBs didn't transmit after the ship sank, there is only one reasonable conclusion: none of the Estonia's crewmembers remembered to switch the transmitters on before the ship sank.

 

[LondonJohn]

The point is, it was unnecessarily delayed. A weak signal was picked up half an hour beforehand. As Channel 16 is the international distress signal, having to send a Mayday by Channel 2182 instead is hardly satisfactory. The nearby ships themselves had to use hand held devices to ring up the Coast Guard's landline.

Maybe you need to learn more about this case.

Uhhhhhh..... what?

This, I'm afraid, only goes to highlight your ignorance about radio in general, and maritime radio in particular. (The other falsehoods in this post have been addressed and corrected elsewhere.)

 

[LondonJohn]

You need to learn more about radio.

VHF is short range communications, and CH16 (156.8 MHz) is the distress channel for that band.

MF is medium range communications, and 2182 kHz is the distress frequency for that band.

A ship that is out of range for VHF communications uses MF (or today of course satellite). VHF worked between the ships (short range).

ETA - the Captain is of course faster!

Exactly. It was no more or less appropriate to send a Mayday over MF than over VHF - and evidence suggests that, initially at least, the best approach for the Estonia had been to use the MF band.

 

[Andy_Ross]

Exactly. It was no more or less appropriate to send a Mayday over MF than over VHF - and evidence suggests that, initially at least, the best approach for the Estonia had been to use the MF band.

As for delay in reception, any transmission would not be picked up until someone was listening, that's why there are designated times for monitoring the distress channels.

 

[Here_to_learn]

Exactly. It was no more or less appropriate to send a Mayday over MF than over VHF - and evidence suggests that, initially at least, the best approach for the Estonia had been to use the MF band.

I think one advantage of starting with VHF is that those that respond will be the ones closest to you, and thereby probably is the best position to help you. But to reach the coast guard and get more resources the MF would help.

 

[Andy_Ross]

I think one advantage of starting with VHF is that those that respond will be the ones closest to you, and thereby probably is the best position to help you. But to reach the coast guard and get more resources the MF would help.

Those closer resources will also be monitoring the MF.
VHF will however reach smaller vessels and stations that aren't equipped with MF sets.

 

[Here_to_learn]

Those closer resources will also be monitoring the MF.
VHF will however reach smaller vessels and stations that aren't equipped with MF sets.

Yes, good point.

I'm not sure about the blackout on Estonia, what remained active. Did their MF set remain active or was that lost also? If all they had was handheld units, that would have been VHF units.

 

[Vixen]

If they were active they would be transmitting a distress signal.
They are not active until they are switched on when the ship sinks, either by hand or by immersion.

..or someone deactivated them. They were not found anywhere near the ship.

 

[Andy_Ross]

Yes, good point.

I'm not sure about the blackout on Estonia, what remained active. Did their MF set remain active or was that lost also? If all they had was handheld units, that would have been VHF units.

After power went I would think they only had battery powered handheld sets.

 

[Andy_Ross]

..or someone deactivated them. They were not found anywhere near the ship.

they were never activated. Once they had been activated and were free of their holders who would have been able to deactivate them?

they are designed to separate from the ship, that is the point of them.

 

[Jack by the hedge]

..or someone deactivated them.

After someone activated them of course.

Maybe more than once, like some kind of stage farce. One crewman activates them and then some Russian commando sees they're active and switches them off, then another crewman finds them off and switches them on again and so on.

The only way to tell for sure is to see if they have Russia's fingerprints all over them.

 

[LondonJohn]

..or someone deactivated them. They were not found anywhere near the ship.

What the heck do you mean by "deactivated them"?

Do you still not know how the EPIRBs on the Estonia operated? Even though it's been (patiently) explained to you multiple times by now?

Frankly, you'd be on (very, very slightly) firmer ground in your ludicrous conspiracy theory if instead you were claiming that - somehow - the crew on the Estonia had somehow been intentionally prevented from switching on the buoys' transmitters in the time between the realisation that the ship was going to sink...and the ship actually going down.

The truth, however, is almost certainly far less prosaic, and far more adherent to Occam's Razor: in the general panic during that 20-odd-minutes window that I outlined above, none of the crew actually remembered to turn on the EPIRB transmitters.