Page 24 - Tpl News Today

Speck but might get another 10 days out of them. as the batteries die off the signal becomes weaker and you have to get closer to detect it so its a tradeoff. >> how about, colleen, i assume the depth of the water makes a difference. the deeper it is the farther away it is to send out the signal. how about the temperature of the water? does that make any difference at all in terms of battery life and in locating this? >> the batteries are designed to be in a wide range of temperatures. i dont th...

And it seems like we at least have a clearer picture of a possible departure time. its even a little bit later than we now thought. were now looking at a 6:00 p.m. local departure time at the earliest. just under seven hours from right now. we now know the specifics about the type of inspection that needs to happen. they have installed an a-frame on the ocean shield which you see behind me. we can zoom in to give you guys a better look as it sits here at fremantle naval base here in western aust...

This would fall under that category. what makes it special right now is the fact that it is equipped with this sophisticated u.s. navy technology, the pinger locator, which we can rely on for about a week and needs a more narrow search area to truly effectively search. the reason why they waited this long is they were hoping to have a more narrow area to look, some sort of wreckage to say okay, we found this here. lets look at the ocean currents. lets see if we can try to figure out where this o...

I dont mean to be pessimistic, but this is a monumental task. what he is talking about doing is just getting the tpl into the water and hoping that youre going to hear something. you have to get within one or two miles of the source to hear it. and you know the numbers. the search area is so big that its such a long shot anyway that i dont think a six-hour delay is going to make a difference. >> geoffrey thomas, i dont know if you were able to hear our correspondent there say there has been a si...

Going on? >> well, im not particularly upset by the delay right now, because frankly, i dont think we have a very good idea of where to send the ship. i dont mean to be pessimistic, but this is a monumental task. what he is talking about doing is just getting the tpl into the water and hoping that youre going to hear something. you have to get within one or two miles of the source to hear it. and you know the numbers. the search area is so big that its such a long shot anyway that i dont think a...

Ocean bed. and thats what the ph, the p-3s should be doing. it has been delayed, but the maritime surveillance is still going to be out there and still looking for the on top of the surface clues. >> colleen, i wonder if this delay really puts the crew under pressure, giving them about two days before they get out in the area where they think that, you know, they can reach the or hear the pinger before it dies. >> well, im sure theyre feeling the pressure. but the silver bullet comment is -- has...

We can zoom in to give you guys a better look as it sits here at fremantle naval base here in western australia. the a-frame on this boat is what is going to lower the towed tpl, the pinger locator and lower the underwater drone. both of these high-tech equipment that will search for debris and listen for the ping from the inflight data recorder. they need to in fact the a-frame. they have to make sure its weld properly to the deck so when they actually get on the indian ocean and drop this wimt...

This is australias largest naval base on their western coast. the reason were here is because were monitoring the movements here of ocean shield. you see it. you cant miss it, really, its bright red, docked here at the naval base. it arrived here over the weekend. crews have been very busy here. theyve been outfitting this ship with u.s. navy technology that we hope is going to really help in this search there is the tpl, that towed pinger locator. its basically a giant underwater microphone. yo...

Plane as part of this operation. the p-8. any other u.s. assets, ships deployed in the region right now to try to help? >> i think the big news for the u.s. navy and its support, were moving in two very advanced pieces of equipment. one is called a tpl, or a toad pinger located and another is called a blue fin. when we think we have a good point where we want to search, we will deploy those, once again, on an australian vessel under the lead through their coordination. but those pieces of equipm...

Anything, they pick up and go to the next. so they will be moving along in a very methodic pattern to try to eliminate where theyre not hearing sound. cross that out and go to the next area. and this is still a very time consuming process that will be hampered by weather. >> this it tpl, this is the pinkpink oiger locater, its listening for the ping to figure out what happened. but it can only move like 10, 15 square miles a day and were talking about an area that is like tens of thousands of na...