Sonar technology used in the Malaysia Airlines flight 370 search

The Southern Indian Ocean is a little traveled location known for it's atrocious weather. The probable search area epitomizes the phrase "in the middle of nowhere" and it's hard to imagine a worse place to look for a missing aircraft.

If the Malaysia Airline's Boeing 777 is indeed at the current search location this will be the second deepest effort attempted to recover the flight, and cockpit voice data recorders on record. The deepest recovery to date was South African Airway's flight 295 cockpit voice recorder at a depth of 16,000 feet in 1988.

The second deepest to date is the 2009 Air France's flight 447 crash whose cockpit voice, and flight data recorders were brought to the surface from approximately 13,000 feet two years later. The underwater locating beacons had long failed before these two aircraft were found. The current Malaysia Airlines flight 370 search area is about 14,000 feet deep. 

Dukane Seacom DK-120 locator beacon

The Muskie effect, the putrefaction continues

I know it's not pretty but this is real life. More accurately the end of this boat's life. The stages are simple. Abandonment, denudation of the vessel's usable parts, organic and inorganic decay caused by both biological and chemical breakdown, followed later by maybe a wood chipper or some other form of size reduction technology. Hmmm, a tub grinder would provide some very dramatic film footage. Eventually in either scenario internment in the local landfill cemetery is a likely outcome.

The only remnants of this vessel's existence will be in a box of old yellowed registration and tax documents stored in the basement of some government building, and even these will finally join the boat in Davy Jones locker at some point in the future.

The enigma dash

This dash panel is a marvel of modern manufacturing technology. Computer aided design was used, precision machine tools milled the plastic injection machine's mold to high tolerances, a contractor assembled the panel and had it delivered pre-wired to the plant. A template had even been made to do the fiberglass cut out. Every detail was accounted for.... almost. This looks exactly like no one talked to anyone else while it was being designed and then installed in the boat. My problem is you can't get the freaking thing out of the dash!