Something to add to your fact file regarding GPS;
GPS receivers, note, RECEIVERS, tell you where YOU are. They don't tell someone else your location. They RECEIVE signals from geostationary satellites (3 or more) and by a process known as triangulation determine YOUR location. They do not TRANSMIT any information therefore they would not be any help in trying to find anything gone missing.
All modern aircraft do navigate using GPS units.
IF they carry a navigator, in an extreme emergency the possibility of using a sextant might come into play. Other navigational devices include now basically obsolete TACANs (Tactical Aid to Navigation) which were transmitters located in known locations shown on flight charts. They're the white buildings you sometimes still see that look like an ice cream cone stuck in the ground with the cone part pointing up. The signal transmitted from them is unique to each, so they can be identified. The receiver on board the aircraft calculates distance to or from them depending on location of the plane. You also wouldn't find many TACANs in the Indian Ocean.
c.a.
Originally Posted by Chainsaw Anthropologist
I'm sorry you lost me at "SEXtant".
Seriously, though. Google Location (a service I didn't knowingly agree to but found out I was registered on when my phone was stolen last year) pinpointed the exact location of my phone. If my little android could do that a year ago it was sending and receiving via gps without any direction on my part.
On another note, I was just being kind of a dick overall in this thread bc i think its stupid (i know i know, "shame on you, nurse" - now who's gonna spank me? Lol). Not diminishing the importance of a disappearing plane but discussing it in coed and letting one overzealous, toy plane wielding news outlet send macidiot1000 into Sue Grafton mode seemed fun to fcuk with after a lonnnnggggggg spring break with the offspring.
For someone so fcuking brilliant about comprehending and conveying the written word he let's himself get brainwashed pretty easily buy mainstream media and psychotic hookers. Either way. Carry on.
Interesting info on GPS though. This whole story is wild. Not because of the actual facts but because of what some of the major media outlets have done with it by weaving into a major motion mental picture for all its mass of followers. Next time the media claims to have no power over social and cultural climate I would emplor anyone to reflect back on the absurdity of this thread.
I smiled at a lady in a burqa at the grocery last week, she smiled back (well, i like to think she did). This was caught on Kroger security cameras. Turns out she has a distant cousin in Afghanistan who teaches at a progressive girls school funded by a special interest political group that opposes the Taliban. This group associated with known hindu homosexuals in Indonesia who shopped at the Gap in Bali along side some Sudanese royalty on vacation there at the time. Coincidentaly, on that same day at the Gap in Bali the neighbor of the copilot was seen buying a pair of shoes that look like the pair the shoebomber wore when arrested. Based on all this CNN is scheduled to announce my connection to the two "terrorist" pilots. Wtf??!!