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

[Jack by the hedge]

Wrong! They should be routinely switched on at the start of the journey, not 'when the ship is sinking'.

No. You don't activate distress beacons every time you set sail. That's idiotic. Something tells me you fundamentally misunderstand what these devices are and what they are for.

 

[LondonJohn]

The website you unfairly brandish as 'discredited' states:

EDF

Which is a lot more information than the JAIC report gives.

Why did you stop the quote from EDF at that particular point, Vixen? Was it perchance because the very next part contained the factually-incorrect nonsense about the presumption that the inspectors left the transmitters switched on?

(I'll take "YES" for £500, please)

What, no mention of how they were washed up in Dirhami Port or how the Rockwater divers found they had discharged them successfully from their cages yet no sign of the buoys in the surrounding seas...? No mention of the type or make/ No mention of servicing or who was responsible for tuning it and switching it on?

Perhaps because this was - in the context of this specific accident - only of extremely limited relevance. The rescue authorities that night already knew precisely where the ship had sunk by the time it went down - ie even before immersion-sensor EPIRBs would have started transmitting in any case.

The only relevant takeaway was that this disaster happened to expose procedural dangers wrt manually-activated EPIRBs, and that's why the JAIC Report made the recommendation that manually-activated EPIRBs should be replaced by auto-activated ones as soon as possible. No further specifics were either required or warranted.

Of course you are happy to see this information suppressed. Mustn't upset your blind faith in 'the authorities' even though lots of little children died - not one single little kiddie over the age of twelve was rescued, and then, there was only one - mostly fit youngish guys and the crew (of 137 survivors 58 were crew). Even then the average age of a missing/drowned passenger was circa 45, male, father of young children - and all you are interested in is censoring anything that does not appear in the JAIC report and anyone speaking up for the victims is disreputable and their websites 'discredited' (...albeit only by London John on his keyboard).

[/QUOTE]


Oh dear. How demeaning.

 

[LondonJohn]

Wrong! They should be routinely switched on at the start of the journey, not 'when the ship is sinking'.

OK. I can only conclude that you're writing this stuff deliberately now.

Wow.

 

[Andy_Ross]

Nope. The Finnish word is 'viritys' from virittää = tune, tune up.

So maybe they needed to be tuned to 406khz?

Estonian hätäpoijuistaoli unohtunut viritys

Autolautta Estonian kaksi hätäpoijua eivät lähettäneet signaalia pelastajille, koska niitä ei ollut viritetty laivalla. Hätäpoijut pulpahtivat pinnalle asianmukaisesti laivan upotessa.

Turman kansainvälinen tutkimuskomissio on selvittänyt Vironrannikolle ajautuneiden hätäpoijujen toimintaa. Poijujen akut olivat täydessä varauksessa, mutta ne eivät voineet lähettää mitään virittämättöminä, kertoo komission jäsen Kari Lehtola.

Komissio päätti kaksipäiväisen kokoukseen perjantaina Helsingissä.

They are sealed units. There's nothing to be 'tuned up'

Even batteries have to be changed by sending to a service centre.

 

[Disbelief]

No, you're wrong. It's exactly the same information the JAIC gives. That text is a word-for-word copy and paste of section 3.4.4 of the JAIC report:



https://web.archive.org/web/2004062...nettomuustutkinta.fi/estonia/chapt03_3.html#1

Thanks for that info, I wondered where the model number came from. I'm still having no luck finding any technical information, possibly because it's no longer used.

 

[LondonJohn]

No. You don't activate distress beacons every time you set sail. That's idiotic. Something tells me you fundamentally misunderstand what these devices are and what they are for.

It's a shame that all of this hasn't yet been carefully explained in depth to Vixen already.

Oh. Wait.

 

[phiwum]

ISTM that if they were automatically sprung out of their casing whilst the ship was sinking you'd think the same mechanism would also switch them on. Hey ho.



Since nobody saw them bobbing about in the water then who knows how they ended washed up on a beach as found be a couple of fishermen...



According to committee notes of the JAIC:









So that all right then.



So this version has the buoys released OK - rather than caught up in the ship's structures and sunk, to be released later - yet no-one saw them bobbing about. Despite 97 vessels in the rescue parties and dozens of helicopters and aircraft all looking out for survivors in the sea in the aftermath.

I wonder if those on the scene were looking for people or small buoys.

Sent from my SM-G991U using Tapatalk

 

[Jack by the hedge]

It's a shame that all of this hasn't yet been carefully explained in depth to Vixen already.

Oh. Wait.

I wonder if Vixen activates her car alarm every time she sets off.

 

[Jack by the hedge]

Thanks for that info, I wondered where the model number came from. I'm still having no luck finding any technical information, possibly because it's no longer used.

I have a suspicion that since it's an obsolete model which is now withdrawn and dates from before manuals etc were routinely made available online, the info probably never got uploaded by the manufacturer. There must be something online, but finding it...

 

[Vixen]

No, because then they would be transmitting a distress signal and location from the start of the journey.

Obviously, switched on ready to react should a situation occur.

 

[Jack by the hedge]

Obviously, switched on ready to react should a situation occur.

If they were automatic models. Which they were not. How many times?

 

[Disbelief]

Obviously, switched on ready to react should a situation occur.

That is not how they work, as you've been told countless times. I even gave you a link to tell you this.

 

[JayUtah]

Obviously, switched on ready to react should a situation occur.

You really don't know how these devices work or how to operate them.

 

[LondonJohn]

Obviously, switched on ready to react should a situation occur.

No. That's not how these things work. As you've repeatedly been told.

That post about your car theft alarm is actually a useful illustration for you, with a little modification:

Imagine if you had in your car a device which sent a distress signal to your vehicle breakdown operator if your car broke down.

Now imagine there were two types of device. The newer type was plugged into your car's Electronic Control Unit, and would automatically switch on the distress-signal transmitter if it sensed that your car had broken down.

The older type was much less sophisticated. It required the driver to manually switch on the distress-signal transmitter once the driver realised that the car had broken down.


Now.... suppose your car was equipped with the older type of device.

What you're suggesting wrt the switching on of the EPIRBs on the Estonia is analogous with you getting into your car at the start of every journey and manually switching on your old-style distress-signal transmitter before you set off. Your vehicle breakdown operator starts to pick up your distress signal before you've even set off, and while your car is working perfectly normally. And your breakdown operator keeps receiving your distress signal throughout your whole journey.


(In fact, the EPIRB situation is even more stark than this, because whereas your car's distress-call transmitter would be powered by the car battery (which itself is kept constantly charged while you are driving)..... the EPIRB's transmitters would necessarily be powered by self-contained batteries within the buoy, and would simply run out of battery power very quickly.)

 

[LondonJohn]

I have a suspicion that since it's an obsolete model which is now withdrawn and dates from before manuals etc were routinely made available online, the info probably never got uploaded by the manufacturer. There must be something online, but finding it...

Unless the Swedish intelligence services have made sure that every single copy of the user/maintenance manuals for this model (along with every online facsimile of these manuals) has been destroyed.

It's wheels within wheels, maaaaan............................

 

[Disbelief]

I have a suspicion that since it's an obsolete model which is now withdrawn and dates from before manuals etc were routinely made available online, the info probably never got uploaded by the manufacturer. There must be something online, but finding it...

Yep, but I was hoping to find something. I've noticed that with many manuals people upload them, but this is probably not an item that most people would have had.

 

[Vixen]

406 MHz, not kHz. Tuning, in the way it's used in English, seems very unlikely to be what they meant. The devices only transmit on the emergency frequency and tuning the transmitter will not be a task for the user. In context, the description seems very clearly to be pointing out a failing; that the devices were not switched on before the ship went down. I have no idea what terms get used in Finnish to describe the act of making a radio begin to transmit, but it's pretty obvious that's what they mean.

In colloquial English we say "tuning in" to mean listening to some radio show, whether that means literally adjusting the frequency of the radio to receive the correct station or just switching the radio on.

Virittää is definitely the Finnish verb 'to tune'. Virta means wave or current. So there is a sense of tuning it or aligning it with something.

You wouldn't use that verb for 'setting [a clock]' asettaa or 'turn on the light' Laita valo päälle.

 

[LondonJohn]

Yep, but I was hoping to find something. I've noticed that with many manuals people upload them, but this is probably not an item that most people would have had.

I got given one of these very EPIRBs for Christmas a few years ago*, but I really didn't want it and it was just taking up space in my hallway, so I gave it (and its manual) away as a Birthday present to someone I didn't like very much.




* I didn't.

 

[Vixen]

Ugh not this old donkey again. It's just plain wrong. Even a conversation about last night's football result down the pub requires any participant in it to have a decent level of knowledge about the game and its outcome, if that participant is to contribute anything of any value to the conversation.

Likewise, an awful lot (probably most) of what you've written in this thread does not constitute a valuable contribution.

Absolute rubbish. If this was a discussion about, say the Hillsborough Disaster or the one at Bradford City, then of course you do not need a specialised knowledge of football to be allowed to discuss it. Nor would it be ipso facto 'conspiracy theory'.

 

[Vixen]

Perhaps. But it's entirely clear from the JAIC Report that these EPIRBs were of the "older" type, which needed to have their transmitters manually activated immediately prior to the ship sinking. Furthermore, the JAIC Report states clearly that a) no signal was ever located from the EPIRBs, and b) when they were recovered, they were found to be still switched off.

Vixen may entertain a grand conspiracy which includes the JAIC telling bold-faced lies about factual matters such as these. But I do not.

The JAIC should have taken the trouble to find out why they were not switched on, who would have been responsible and what was the normal procedure.

An awful lot of time was spent on the Mayday calls asking Estonia for her location.