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

[Jack by the hedge]

why would Sweden cover it up

Begging the question.

 

[Vixen]

The Russians specifically warned Swedish intelligence not to use the Estonia for smuggling? Got a reference?

New Statesman ibid.

 

[Andy_Ross]

Ah, so now we are reluctantly squeezing it out of you: 40 miles = well within range of Utö Coast Guard, just 28 miles away and where military radar monitoring is located of all of the ships in the area, of which there were dozens.

That maximum range is for a large antenna placed high on a ship with a powerful radio transmitter.

Estonia was transmitting on handheld, battery powered devices, they have far less range.

Ships responding to the Mayday had no problem talking to each other to coordinate their response and rely the mayday.
That would all have been done on Channel 16

 

[Jack by the hedge]

Ah, so now we are reluctantly squeezing it out of you: 40 miles = well within range of Utö Coast Guard, just 28 miles away and where military radar monitoring is located of all of the ships in the area, of which there were dozens.

So was this weak VHF signal sent by something like a 25 watt transmitter with up to perhaps 40 miles range, or was it sent by a handheld radio?

 

[Disbelief]

That maximum range is for a large antenna placed high on a ship with a powerful radio transmitter.

Estonia was transmitting on handheld, battery powered devices, they have far less range.

Ships responding to the Mayday had no problem talking to each other to coordinate their response and rely the mayday.
That would all have been done on Channel 16

Weather also has an effect on the transmission, especially rain due to absorption and dispersion of the waves.

 

[Vixen]

Since you like wikipedia:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Channel_16_VHF

Channel 16 VHF (156.8 MHz) is a marine VHF radio frequency designated as an international distress frequency.

Now then, follow the link under "marine VHF":

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marine_VHF_radio

A marine VHF set is a combined transmitter and receiver and only operates on standard, international frequencies known as channels. Channel 16 (156.8 MHz) is the international calling and distress channel. Transmission power ranges between 1 and 25 watts, giving a maximum range of up to about 60 nautical miles (111 km) between aerials mounted on tall ships and hills, and 5 nautical miles (9 km; 6 mi) between aerials mounted on small boats at sea level.

ETA: that means the ships in that NATO training exercise that you have noted were only a few hundred miles away, could not have even heard Estonia's distress signal on Channel 16.

So now we have 60 nautical miles = 69 miles! Substantially up on Captain_Swoop's '40 miles maximum'.

Any advances on 69 miles?

 

[Andy_Ross]

Also a handheld has a power of around 5w.

 

[Vixen]

That maximum range is for a large antenna placed high on a ship with a powerful radio transmitter.

Estonia was transmitting on handheld, battery powered devices, they have far less range.

Ships responding to the Mayday had no problem talking to each other to coordinate their response and rely the mayday.
That would all have been done on Channel 16

If there was a Mayday half an hour earlier then the bridge controls would have been fully functional.

In any case, it is the opinion of Rear Admiral Iivonen that there was interference from a Russian military transmitter to Channel 16.

 

[Vixen]

If Russia deliberately sank a passenger ship of another nation in international waters and murdered many hundreds of people, what would Sweden be protecting itself from?

It would be an act of war as well as a major crime.

At last you are beginning to understand the enormity of this issue.

 

[Andy_Ross]

So was this weak VHF signal sent by something like a 25 watt transmitter with up to perhaps 40 miles range, or was it sent by a handheld radio?

I know that some of the small fishing boats out of Whitby can have problems making contact with the coastguard and Whitby harbourmaster when they are out more than 8 or 9 miles as they have their antenna on top of the low pilothouse. Sailing yachts are still getting a good signal with their antenna on top of the tall mast.

They all tend to use a small Garmin capable of 25w but the antenna is quite small with not a lot of gain compared to those a big trawler or ship can carry.

 

[Jack by the hedge]

New Statesman ibid.

I assume you mean this: https://www.newstatesman.com/uncategorized/2005/05/death-in-the-baltic-the-mi6-connection

Perhaps you could indicate which part of that article told you the Russians "had already sent a warning twice to MI6 and Sweden intelligence to cease smuggling FSU state secrets/space programs/military materiel using the Estonia public passenger ferry" because I don't see it there.

I do see that it says "Did the Russians find out about it and warn them to stop? We may never know". That really doesn't seem to support your claim, now does it?

 

[lobosrul5]

So now we have 60 nautical miles = 69 miles! Substantially up on Captain_Swoop's '40 miles maximum'.

Any advances on 69 miles?

I'm looking at a map and there is no part of Russia* that is even close to that distance from the Estonia, more like 150 miles? So how exactly were they blocking channel 16 in that area?

*that includes the exclave around Kaliningrad

ETA: another wiki article says VHF is pretty much limited to line of site, but that occasionally atmospheric refraction can extend its range to about 100 miles, but thats highly unreliable. So again, how does a Russian station block VHF traffic from over 150 miles away? Magic??

 

[Jack by the hedge]

I know that some of the small fishing boats out of Whitby can have problems making contact with the coastguard and Whitby harbourmaster when they are out more than 8 or 9 miles as they have their antenna on top of the low pilothouse. Sailing yachts are still getting a good signal with their antenna on top of the tall mast.

They all tend to use a small Garmin capable of 25w but the antenna is quite small with not a lot of gain compared to those a big trawler or ship can carry.

If it had been a fixed antenna, I also wonder what the ship's then degree of list would have done to its range.

 

[Andy_Ross]

So now we have 60 nautical miles = 69 miles! Substantially up on Captain_Swoop's '40 miles maximum'.

Any advances on 69 miles?

I gave you a link to a page that shows you how to calculate the range for a variety of circumstances.

It all depends on the height, orientation, size and gain of the antenna, the power of the set and the conditions.

60 miles is a theoretical maximum for two ships with perfect conditions and equipment.

When the distances involved get out beyond 30 nm or so, the VHF marine radio is no longer adequate even for large vessels with a tall transmitter and MF transmitters are needed.
For even longer ranges HF (High Frequency) sets are used, with the right conditions they can give worldwide communications. They are standard for 'blue water' vessels.

Estonia used handheld VHF because it's all that was available after the power went down.

 

[Andy_Ross]

If there was a Mayday half an hour earlier then the bridge controls would have been fully functional.

In any case, it is the opinion of Rear Admiral Iivonen that there was interference from a Russian military transmitter to Channel 16.

Who cares about his opinion of the 'interference' it would have had no effect on the Estonia. VHF is a short range system.

 

[Andy_Ross]

If it had been a fixed antenna, I also wonder what the ship's then degree of list would have done to its range.

It would have been cut quite considerably. One of the mistakes made by people not used to handheld VHF sets is to not hold them vertical. If you hold them to your ear at an angle like a mobile phone you cut the range quite a lot.

It can be an issue on a sailing yacht if they have any angle of heel, you can buy self leveling antenna to get round it.

 

[Mojo]

After power was lost only battery powered devices would have been available aboard the Estonia. That means hand held devices.

What about the landline?

 

[Vixen]

The Mystery of the EPIRB (buoys)

I've looked into this some more and have gleaned the following:

They had been recently serviced:

EPIRB buoys
The ESTONIA was equipped with two modern EPIRB buoys (Emergency Position Indicating Radio Beacons) of type Kannad 406 F.

The last check of the radio beacons was reported to have been made about one week prior to the disaster by the radio operator. The check confirmed that the EPIRBs were in full working order and it has to be assumed that both were left in "switched-on" condition after the test.

Nevertheless, no signals from the two buoys were received in the course of the rescue operation.

EFD

All the JAIC report says in Chapter 7:

7.3.4 EPIRB beacons

No signals from the ESTONIA`s EPIRBs were received.

That's it! No comment or expansion on how usual or unusual this is.

From Finnish Broadcasters YLE, 26.1.2020 (similar to BBC):

Functional EPIRB buoys could have contributed to more people surviving. The rescue ships had dared to keep a higher speed and arrived faster at the scene of the accident. The lifeguards could have previously been given a clear position.

The sea rescue centers in Sweden and Finland had immediately realized that the unthinkable had actually happened: that Estonia had indeed sunk without any organized evacuation.

But the strange thing is that the Estonian newspaper Postimees reported on October 8, 1994, that the first Finnish robot dives at the wreck showed that the emergency buoys had got stuck on the bridge and remained in their mounts.

The Commission gave high priority to the emergency buoys and Asser Koivisto valued their role. "This is the rescue system I trust the most," he told journalists Anders Jörle and Anders Hellberg, who published the book Disaster Course: Estonia's Road to Destruction (1997).

There, Koivisto says that the emergency buoys were sandy and really looked like they had floated ashore.

"But both transmitters were turned off," he says.

He also mentions rumors that the EPIRB buoys would never have been on board, but planted on the beach just to give the impression of being Estonia's.
"I do not believe in those speculations," Koivisto says in the book.

In the final report, the AIBN claims that the radio buoys were picked up near Dirhami on the north coast of Estonia as early as 2 October. But if so, why did the Estonians not tell the rest of the Accident Investigation Board about the matter until December, when the dives off Estonia had already ended?

The divers of the diving company Rockwater were evidently looking for the EPIRB buoys on Estonia's command bridge in December 1994. This can be heard in the video that the Accident Investigation Board (Otkes) keeps in Helsinki. The Accident Investigation Board's colorful Finnish chairman and spokesperson Kari Lehtola, who died in 2019, worked here.

YLE

Curiouser and curiouser.

 

[Vixen]

The plot (not that there was even a plot in that case) to shoot down MH17 was not cooked up in the Kremlin. The Ukrainian separatist rebels used Russian SAMs to shoot down the aircraft. That's the reason why Russia was (correctly) held to account. But Russia didn't supply those separatists with SAMs with the explicit or implicit understanding that they'd be used to shoot down civilian airliners.

Hope that clears up any confusion.

But it shows how loyal their ex-agents are.

 

[Vixen]

I'm looking at a map and there is no part of Russia* that is even close to that distance from the Estonia, more like 150 miles? So how exactly were they blocking channel 16 in that area?

*that includes the exclave around Kaliningrad

ETA: another wiki article says VHF is pretty much limited to line of site, but that occasionally atmospheric refraction can extend its range to about 100 miles, but thats highly unreliable. So again, how does a Russian station block VHF traffic from over 150 miles away? Magic??

Hoagland Island is former Finnish territory which the Soviet military took over after the Continuation War.

Gogland or Hogland (Russian: Гогланд, transliteration from original Swedish: Hogland; Finnish: Suursaari) is an island in the Gulf of Finland in the eastern Baltic Sea, about 180 km west from Saint Petersburg and 35 km from the coast of Finland (near Kotka). Hogland has an area of approximately 21 km2 (8.1 sq mi); its highest point is 173 m (568 ft). It belongs to Russia's Kingiseppsky District in the Leningrad Oblast.

Wiki


It seems to be quite high up.

I should imagine someone very high up in the Finnish Defence Forces (Iivonen) knew what he was talking about when he testified to the JAIC there was constant interference from a Russian transmitter from this military base. An American-Estonian turned Estonian minister, repeatedly demanded an explanation from Russia via diplomatic means but then had to just give up.