What is a black box? A device capable of unraveling the mystery of General Bipin Rawat’s helicopter crash
The black box is an important electronic device, also known as a flight data recorder, that records 88 important flight parameters including speed, altitude, cockpit dialogue and barometric pressure.
A military helicopter crash near Kunoor in Tamil Nadu caused the sudden and untimely death of General Bipin Rawat, Chief of Staff of the Department of Defense (CDS), raising great questions about how the plane crashed. Indian Air Force officers are collecting all relevant data and data from the crash site to determine the cause of the crash, which has resulted in the deaths of several officers, including General Rawat. The
IAF’s technical team will focus on finding the black box, an important electronic device also known as a flight data logger. cockpit and air pressure. When a failure occurs, the black box is prioritized to determine the real cause of the failure. This is how the process works.
The Black Box is neither black nor box-shaped, but is actually a compressor-type device that is made in orange color to increase visibility. Experts disagree on how the nickname came about, but many historians attribute their invention to the 1950s Australian scientist David Warren. Black boxes are essential for all commercial aircraft and the military to maintain a prompt of cockpit sounds and data to help prevent future accidents. What’s inside the
black box? The
typical black box weighs about 4.5 kg and consists of 4 main parts. stainless steel or titanium. Inside the
is a nail-sized valuable writing chip on a printed circuit board. There are two recorders: the Cockpit Recorder (CVR) and the Flight Data Recorder (FDR) for
pilot voice or cockpit sounds. BEA released FDR photos taken from an Ethiopian aircraft, showing the critical chip case intact and a replacement landing gear broken.
What is the source of the recording?
The technician removes the protective material and carefully cleans the connections to avoid accidentally erasing data. You must download and copy the sound file or data file. The data itself means nothing in the first place. You need to decode it from the raw file before converting it to graphics. Researchers sometimes use “spectral analysis,” a method of studying sound that allows scientists to detect subtle alarms or the first momentary cracks of an explosion. How is
data processed?
You have a listening room, such as a recording room, with mixing and audio equipment connected to a screen displaying synchronized data. Four channels separate voices and ambient noise. Only the main investigator and a handful of people hear most tapes, which are then sealed. A technician will first prepare the recording to ensure it is intact. In France, Trauma counselling is available for staff hearing tapes.
When will the result come? Although
investigators prefer to work systematically, public and media pressure can be strong. Some researchers admit that depending on the damage to the box and the type of accident, the most general ideas can be obtained in a matter of days or hours. However, they emphasize that this is not always the case and the whole story is rarely the case. Interim reports are published more than a month after the blackbox is removed, but often very little in between. An in-depth investigation can take more than a year. The Lebanese investigation into the 2010 Ethiopian Airlines flight crash took two years.
Modern Black Box Models before the
were used to record on reels of wire, foil or magnetic tape, but newer versions use a computer chip housed inside a “crash-proof” container that can withstand 3,400 times the force of gravity. Following the 2014 crash and unresolved disappearance of the MH370 Malaysian Airlines, there has been a heated debate over whether black boxes should send real-time data back to Earth. This is costly and labor intensive.
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