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

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Vixen said:
The Rockwater divers who were there on the Estonia wreck, confirm the EPIRB was hydrostatically operated.

Your assumption it was manual and someone forgot to turn it on, is just your guesswork.
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You are aware that 'release' is not a synonym for 'activation'?
 
Vixen said:
For the umpty-ninth time, they were not 'switched off'. They had never been 'switched on'. You cannot switch them off, if never switched on. The inspection the week before established they were in good working order. The Rockwater divers confirm the hydrostatic release capsule was empty. IOW they/it would have automatically floated to the surface to transmit a beam to the satellite system. The hydrostatic release system ensures the beacon buoys are automatically release on contact with ne to four metres of water. These can also be operated by switching the thing on manually by a button. Once switched on the signal is sent. There was never any signal sent, so was never switched on.

The JAIC only mentions the EPIRB on the following occasions. You are flat out lying when you claim they could only be switched on by a crew member who then had to throw it overboard rather than place it in a hydrostatic cage.



If the beacons were not activated, that simply means they were not programmed to the GDMSS which is hard to believe given they had been tested and inspected the week before. This involves green lights flashing for battery power, circuit connection and connectivity by the sound of a beep. Four green lights at the end means all is AOK.

See from 4:00" onwards.



The only conclusion is that they were removed manually from the ship. Had the EPIRB been released all right via the hydrostatic trigger but never floated to the surface to let off a signal, then it should surely have emitted a signal when it finally surfaced, so that is ruled out.
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This crap has got beyond tedious. Your semantic gotcha about "can't be switched off if it was never switched on" is baloney. Firstly because it's perfectly good English to say a device is switched off when the switch is in the off position, and that does not require the switch to have been in the on position at any time. Secondly, the periodic overhaul of these devices involves a test which requires them to be switched on.

The Rockwater divers found the buoys' containers empty. That is as expected.

The released buoys would have transmitted a signal if they had been switched on. They were not switched on. This condition was confirmed when they were found and recovered. This is not a mystery, nor is it significant to the sinking or rescue efforts.

I only ever said the buoys had to be switched on by a crewman to activate them. You are flat out lying when you claim I said they had to be thrown overboard to operate.

Not activated means not switched on and is not related to their programming.

Once again, you are confusing the switching on and off of EPIRBs with the automatic activation of automatic models. Those models do not have a switch which disables automatic activation. I defy you to show that they do.
 
Captain_Swoop said:
Just getting them wet wouldn't have activated them, the automatic function is activated by pressure usually between 1 and 4m, not just getting wet otherwise they would be going off all the time!
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Does this mean that if someone threw water-activated EPIRBs overboard, they could float for miles without activating? If so, my mistake. Thanks. :thumbsup:
 
Vixen said:
Erm, the EPIRB's were covered in sand.
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Source?

The EPIRB's were discovered 2 Oct 1994, yet the Rockwater divers 2 Dec 1994 were not informed.
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So what?

However, thanks to this glaring omission, we get confirmation from Rockwater's report that the EPIRB's were of the hydrostatically-operated type, as they were in um, a hydrostatic case, which only fits the standard hydrostatic model.
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FFS. Hydrostatic release is not the issue. Current float-free models are all automatically activated. Float-free manually activated models were still permitted in 1994.
 
Vixen said:
You will find a lot of nonsense on the internet about how the Estonia sank because of water on the car deck, when even the JAIC itself admits that this would not be enough to capsize the ship.

Yes, there are people devoid of critical ability who have assumed that because the EPIRB's did not emit a signal, 'someone forgot to turn them on'. However, if they were in the hydrostatically operated shell and had just been passed as AOK then they should have operated as soon as they were hydrostatically released and reached the surface.
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You really do have your fingers jammed metaphorically into your ears on this EPIRB thing, don't you?

Once again: these buoys were hydrostatically released. They were not hydrostatically switched on (in the sense of their transmitters being switched on). They needed to be manually switched on by a crewmember, at some point in time between a) the crew realising that the ship was bound to sink, and b) the ship actually sinking.

And you're totally misinterpreting the JAIC Report wrt the water coming through the damaged and compromised bow opening. Speaking to that point: do you really think that the official investigation would sabotage its own conclusions as to the cause of this disaster (ie that it was caused by the detatchment of the bow visor and the consequent significant damage to the bow ramp)?
 
Vixen said:
Let it sink in: Titanic for all of its splitting in two and its hull breached via damage from scraping the iceberg at its side took almost three hours to sink.
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Are you claiming the Titanic took three hours to sink after splitting in two? Obviously not.

Indeed the gashes opened into the Titanic were small compared to the opening of the damaged car deck ramp on the Estonia.
 
Stamuel said:
Let's take a look at part of what you quoted:


It sounds like the EPIRBs were found in the water, switched off, but in perfect working order. Therefore, they were not water activated.

Even if they were found on the beach and not the water (the wording suggests they were found in the water, but it is not completely unequivocal), obviously, they floated there in the water. After being in the water all that time, they were switched off and in perfect working order, and thus were not water activated.

So we have a bunch of references for the claim that they were only manually activated, and the circumstances of their discovery and subsequent inspection only fit if they were only manually activated.

What is the alternative? First, everyone is wrong and the EPIRBs were actually water activated, not manual-only. The conspirators removed them from the ship and got them to shore without them ever landing in the water, where they would have activated. I'm guessing they had to do this while the ship was docked, because removal at sea would have ended with the EPRIBs going down with the ship and activating in the water. Then they planted the stolen EPIRBs (or maybe replacements) on the shore somewhere, but the ones they planted worked fine. They didn't try to fake any kind of damage or malfunction to explain why they never activated and nobody received a signal from them.

Especially given that there is no benefit to the conspirators to remove the EPIRBs, I'd say this is another "suspicious anomaly" that is not suspicious, not anomalous and leads absolutely nowhere.
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Stamuel, Kari Lehtola, Head of the Finnish JAIC said the buoys had not been tuned. That is very different from not being turned on.

Estonia's emergency buoys were forgotten tuning

The two emergency buoys of the car ferry Estonia did not send a signal to the rescuers because they had not been tuned on board. Emergency buoys burst to the surface properly as the ship sank.

Turma's International Commission of Inquiry has investigated the activities of the emergency buoys that drifted off the Estonian coast. The buoys' batteries were fully charged, but they could not send anything untuned, says Commissioner Kari Lehtola.

The committee closed the two-day meeting on Friday in Helsinki.

The so-called EPIRB emergency buoys had been recently serviced and had been placed in place in accordance with the rules. However, during the installation phase, the activation of the buoys was forgotten: the protective cover must be opened and turned on the coupling head. In Estonia, the activation of the emergency buoy was one of the tasks of the radio electricians, of which there were two on board.

The investigation is still ongoing, but the Commission has consulted the radio electrician on the matter, said Asser Koivisto, the Commission's expert. The purpose of the emergency buoy is to send the location of the sunken ship and to tell the searchers the name of the ship. According to Koivisto's assessment
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Vixen said:
First contact was with Viking Mariella at 1:21:55

Ainsalu: Mayday Mayday Estonia please (unclear)

(This seems to indicate some impatience? Perhaps had called before?)
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What?

From "Mayday Mayday Estonia please (unclear)" you infer impatience and that there had been a previous call?

Boy, we've been wrong to question Vixen's reading comprehension. She comprehends all sorts of stuff I don't get from five little words. Impressive! Even Sherlock required at least some tobacco ash or a dog that didn't bark.
 
Vixen said:
The Rockwater divers who were there on the Estonia wreck, confirm the EPIRB was hydrostatically operated.

Your assumption it was manual and someone forgot to turn it on, is just your guesswork.
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Oh, for ****'s sake, a hydrostatic release mechanism doesn't tell you the EPIRBs were hydrostatically activated. It just tells you how they were released.

As far as whether it was manual or not, someone here claimed to have found a technical manual covering this model, though I don't think I've seen a link to it. Moreover, if the EPIRBs were found floating and were not transmitting despite being in good working order, that's pretty good evidence they were not a hydrostatically activated model, ain't it?
 
Vixen said:
Stop lying. The Herald of Free Enterpise only partially sank.

You are quite shameless.
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From the UK Govt Transport Secretary's statement to Parliament on the HOFE disaster and its investigation:

Fortunately, the vessel sank in shallow water.
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The Herald of Free Enterprise sank in less than two minutes.
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https://api.parliament.uk/historic-hansard/commons/1987/jul/24/herald-of-free-enterprise


Accusing me of "lying", huh? You were talking about "shameless" positions.....?
 
Vixen said:
So why did the Estonian government issue a diplomatic complaint to the Russians about this interference if it was not happening? Likewise, Rear Admiral Heimo confirmed continuous interference from a transmitter on a Russian military of Channel 16 for at least a month leading up to the 28 Sept 1994.
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I guess you missed this post (and probably several more earlier in this and the previous thread:

Here_to_learn said:
What you fail to understand is that there is no conflict between what the coastguard says and the facts on VHF radios that we share in this thread. The conflict is between your understanding of the two.

There may very well have been disturbances on CH16 from Hogland that interfered with coastguard VHF stations in the Helsinki area.

That same disturbance would not interfere with traffic between the ferries due to the distance between the Hogland transmitter and and position of the accident.
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And if that is not clear - disturbances from Hogland could of course also interfere with Estonian coastal radio stations.
 
Vixen said:
The Rockwater divers who were there on the Estonia wreck, confirm the EPIRB was hydrostatically operated.
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No. They did not report on any detail of the EPIRBs themselves except for their absence from their holders.

They did not find the EPIRBs because they were no longer there. How many more times are you going to get this wrong?
 
Here_to_learn said:
I guess you missed this post (and probably several more earlier in this and the previous thread:



And if that is not clear - disturbances from Hogland could of course also interfere with Estonian coastal radio stations.
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History suggests it's not that those posts were "missed" as such...... but rather that they simply went in through one orifice and out through another.
 
Jack by the hedge said:
No. They did not report on any detail of the EPIRBs themselves except for their absence from their holders.

They did not find the EPIRBs because they were no longer there. How many more times are you going to get this wrong?
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History suggests: ad infinitum.
 
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