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

[Vixen]

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.

No, they should be ready to activate their signals when there is sufficient water pressure t set them off.

In a emergency, evacuating passengers and helping them into life vests and onto life boats is of far more importance and priority than pissing about with minutiae.

 

[JayUtah]

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.

Can you find an example of an EPIRB that allows the user to set the broadcast frequency? I believe your etymology of the Finnish word. But to suggest that it means setting the frequency requires that to be possible for a user to do with the device in question. If there is no way for the user to set or adjust the frequency, then the word must mean something else in context.

 

[Jack by the hedge]

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.

Yeah, but in English you can "tune in" just by switching the radio on. It's not a question of what Finns don't use that term for. Again, the context makes it obvious what they mean.

 

[Vixen]

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)





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.

Oh dear. How demeaning.[/QUOTE]

What? I didn't stop any quote by EDF.

 

[Jack by the hedge]

No, they should be ready to activate their signals when there is sufficient water pressure t set them off.

Yes, if they were an automatic model. They were not.

They had to be switched on manually. How many times have you been told this now?

Such non-automatic float-free models are no longer allowed, at least in part due to this incident.

 

[Vixen]

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

My car is ready to send me an alarm if I forget to do up the seat belt, shut the door/boot properly, fail to release the handbrake in full, if I am over the white line, if I am too close to something in front it stops itself...

That is what the EPIRB should do, ready to activate when submerged with large quantities of water for any period of time. That is what I understood as being switched on, only signalling when conditions demand it, such as water pressure springing it out of its casing.

 

[Jack by the hedge]

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.

Until I told you a few hours ago you thought the JAIC didn't even know the model of EPIRB carried. I begin to suspect you are relying on secondhand sources for what the JAIC report says.

 

[Vixen]

Can you find an example of an EPIRB that allows the user to set the broadcast frequency? I believe your etymology of the Finnish word. But to suggest that it means setting the frequency requires that to be possible for a user to do with the device in question. If there is no way for the user to set or adjust the frequency, then the word must mean something else in context.

I think they just mean calibrate, which likely happens when you switch it on. In the same way your smart phone searches for a signal when you get off the plane in a foreign country.

 

[Jack by the hedge]

That is what the EPIRB should do, ready to activate when submerged with large quantities of water for any period of time...

You are kicking at an open door. But obviously it is the wrong door. Estonia did not carry automatically triggered EPIRBs despite what you reckon it ought to have done.

 

[Vixen]

Until I told you a few hours ago you thought the JAIC didn't even know the model of EPIRB carried. I begin to suspect you are relying on secondhand sources for what the JAIC report says.

I trust the Estonia Ferry Disaster page to quote the JAIC accurately, and we find that yay indeed, it does.

 

[Jack by the hedge]

I think they just mean calibrate, which likely happens when you switch it on. In the same way your smart phone searches for a signal when you get off the plane in a foreign country.

Whatever makes you happy. The user control would have been an On/Off switch. It was a sealed weatherproof unit and the user would have had no access to tinker with it in any way.

 

[Jack by the hedge]

I trust the Estonia Ferry Disaster page to quote the JAIC accurately, and we find that yay indeed, it does.

The point was that you didn't know they were quoting JAIC and crowed about their superior information.

 

[JayUtah]

I think they just mean calibrate, which likely happens when you switch it on. In the same way your smart phone searches for a signal when you get off the plane in a foreign country.

Is any of this something you actually know, or are you entirely speculating?

 

[GlennB]

No, they should be ready to activate their signals when there is sufficient water pressure t set them off.

And my old car should have had many safety features that exist on newer cars. But it was an old car, and didn't.

The nature of this model has now been explained to you a dozen times in just a few pages. Why are you persisting in either being wrong (at the start) or wishing things had been different (at this stage of the 'discussion') ?

 

[phiwum]

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

Oh? Reference that this is the proper procedure for emergency beacons?

Because of think that a normal passage isn't an emergency.

You do realize what the E stands for?

Sent from my SM-G991U using Tapatalk

 

[JayUtah]

Whatever makes you happy.

This may have some basis in fact. Older electronics have warmup periods during which they may operate out of spec. This is why older avionics, both military and civilian, have a STBY switch position, and why the rendezvous radar was left on during Apollo 11's landing, causing the infamous computer program alarms. It's conceivable that an older EPIRB would require several minutes after being powered on for its transmission signal to drift into the narrow band that's the actual distress frequency. It's 406 MHz, but with an associated bandwidth to allow for slightly out-of-tolerance transmitters.

However, unless the EPIRB in question has a separate standby mode -- which it appears it doesn't -- then the warmup period begins when the device begins transmitting.

 

[Jack by the hedge]

This may have some basis in fact. Older electronics have warmup periods during which they may operate out of spec. This is why older avionics, both military and civilian, have a STBY switch position, and why the rendezvous radar was left on during Apollo 11's landing, causing the infamous computer program alarms. It's conceivable that an older EPIRB would require several minutes after being powered on for its transmission signal to drift into the narrow band that's the actual distress frequency. It's 406 MHz, but with an associated bandwidth to allow for slightly out-of-tolerance transmitters.

However, unless the EPIRB in question has a separate standby mode -- which it appears it doesn't -- then the warmup period begins when the device begins transmitting.

A fair point. The device might have been sitting at some icy cold temperature and might need to run for some time before its transmitter will operate within specification. But again, the context in which the "tuning" term was used is plainly talking about a missed procedure which can realistically only have consisted of switching the device on.

 

[phiwum]

I trust the Estonia Ferry Disaster page to quote the JAIC accurately, and we find that yay indeed, it does.

We also found out that you didn't bother to check the JAIC report before claiming that they were negligent (or worse) for omitting information about the EPIRBs.

Shouldn't you feel ashamed about that?

Sent from my SM-G991U using Tapatalk

 

[Andy_Ross]

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

When they are switched on they start to transmit a distress signal.
They are not switched on until the ship is sinking.
Why do you keep making the same false statement?

 

[JayUtah]

A fair point. The device might have been sitting at some icy cold temperature and might need to run for some time before its transmitter will operate within specification. But again, the context in which the "tuning" term was used is plainly talking about a missed procedure which can realistically only have consisted of switching the device on.

I agree. If the device has nothing more than a battery-test button and an on-off switch, then the Finnish verb must refer to one of those operations, regardless of issues of etymology or translation.

In colloquial American technology jargon we have a verb "to frob" (or more fully, "to frobnicate"). Its meaning is fully contextual: it directs no action without its direct object. Hence it means, "Do, with the thing I'm about to name, that which is obvious to do once you hear what the thing is." If I say, "Frob the lightswitch on your way out," you would instinctively know I was asking you to do, because there are only so many things you can do with a lightswitch.