Page 8 - Pinger News Today : Breaking News, Live Updates & Top Stories | Vimarsana

>> reporter: the search for airasia flight 8501 narrowing. the hunt on for a tiny signal in a turbulent sea. minute pings from a device attached to the flight data recorder. >> a pinger has a specific pulse. it comes at a specific interval and it has specific frequency. >> correct. >> but it's still hard to find? >> yes. it is. >> reporter: forensic audio expert paul ginsburg simulated what a pinger would sound like undistorted and without by this competing sounds. [ pinging ] but, says ginsburg there is plenty of other things at the bottom of the sea. >> a school of fish swimming currents ech...

Teams that they find the tail of the plane, the black boxes, will that be the end of the search? >> oh no i mean they have to map the whole area and for forensic study just as everything they can possibly look around the area of the crash to put the pieces together. now, that being said there are tools that can be brought into play for these divers in low visibility. this sonar -- hand held sonar and pinger locators that the divers can take in the water and bring down we use them all the time on our robots and when we're trying to find assets for the military or contractors or that type of thi...

Former ntsb managing officer, good to see you again. we have got a black box here. it's orange. that's the way they are so they can be spotted in debris. but help us understand how they work and how this is fairly typical to the black box ses. >> it is orange. easy to identify. easy to find visually. you have got a pinger here on the one end. that will be activated as it hits the water you will have information coming from the actual black box telling you where you can locate that. most can often be a fairly large debris field. and you have data that come into this normally when it's operating...

It is going to have data from what the cockpit is saying what the people in the cockpit are saying to one another and to the ground. >> generally they have to be on top of these boxes in order to hear the pingers. the weather has been a big problem. but as we talk about these boxes in association with the tail wing generally, is there a likelihood or possibility that the pinger which is on the outside there could get damaged and perhaps they could never hear it?

This point. >> okay. there are at least two u.s. warships in that area. the "u.s.s. ft. worth" that just arrived. and you talk about the sonar capabilities. the sonar, we understand from which ship actually located four more items. how might the sonar help detect the black boxes? and would that typically be the way in which those black boxes are located? >> well typically, you don't use sonar to detect the black box, or the sonar or the ping from the black box should show up on the sonar record. so you'll see a line across the image that would indicate that the pinger is close by. then what yo...