New report states the alleged launch location south of Snizhne is impossible
Michael Kobs published a new report at June 22 about the alleged BUK missile smoke plume.
More details about the plume photo here.
Kobs states the speed of movement of the smoke plume does not match the wind speed at July 17.
He also states the black smoke cannot be a fire at the launch field. Other doubts are the fact that the plume remains visbible for 3 minutes.
Additionally, close to the alleged launch site a similar piece of land was on fire. Last but not least, Google Earth images in July 2014 show severall field burnt.
Insane propaganda.
NOTHING indicate that south of snizhne would be impossible.
All indicators point that south of snizhne is the most likely launch site.
BUK launch smoke might be fake, though.
Sotilaspassi: when you are calling mathematics and physics calculations “insane propaganda”, I don’t know what then sound proof will be in your eyes.
The Kobs report seems seriously flawed.
First a blunder: 14 m/s is NOT gale force, This is just a misreading of the table the same report includes. There you can see that 14 m/s is moderate BREEZE, and not a moderate gale!
It’s worse though, the stated evidence of the 4 m/s wind (light breeze) is not really usable since such number would be always averaged. What you need is the gust or peak numbers from a professional station. They can be easily around 14 m/s while hourly or 10 minute averages might be still listed as 4 m/s. Also 20/ms gusts could still be possible in theory, not that uncommon on a light breeze day.
http://www.differencebetween.net/science/nature/difference-between-gust-and-wind/
The report needs some serious fact checking before release, IMO.
Daniel: I agree there has to be done some factchecking/ crosscheck and use some more margins on the windspeed. I am doing my best to do the same investigation.
People on webtalk spent a lot of time establishing the wind strength. For example, the crowd established the wind at the crash site to be 11+-1 m/s (I took part in that attempt too, though can still misremember details). That day, AFAIK, the wind was pretty constant on a large area up-to Rostov, so this should be a good first guess for the wind at the the launch plume place.
By the way the DSB at one place made an (intentional) mistake of mixing up knots with meters per second. The incorrect wind value, for some reason, favors the story of Aleynikov photos’ exifs (that’s why I think it might be intentional).
Here is more on mixing up knots with m/s (in Russian)
http://mh17.webtalk.ru/viewtopic.php?id=369#p39408
These considerations are of no importance. Iits not about proving some windspeed. Kobs uses different windspeeds to calculate timelines. With those he shows a timeline based on smoke videos from the crashsite – genuine – and the two lanuch plume pictures are not consistently matched on one timeline.
The size of 90 meter of the plume near Snizhne looks in my opinion rather like something was burning there and produced white smoke rising into the air.
Micha, a couple of questions.
Do you want to share the excel file used to make this picture?
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/CmEEdL3WYAAVNaE.jpg:large
Did you calculate the wind speed of 11.6 m/s based on two time stamps from Aleynikov photos or you used a webtalk’s calculated speed?
I am asking because the community on webtalk got pretty much the same wind speed by analyzing a video.
The picture is quite telling, but, unfortunately, to a very very few people. It took me a couple of minutes to figure out the problem with the Aleynikov’s story that the graph reveals (haven’t read the pdf yet though). The graph demonstrates and connects the constraints between different events.
An interesting thought. The wind on the ground blew the trails kind of towards South. But we know that on the plane’s altitude of 10 km the wind was blowing almost in the opposite direction: roughly from South, based on the drift angle of the plane. It might not be paradoxical though if we knew more about the wind over height dependencies (e.g. the weather up there may be completely independent from the ground weather).
From p.34 of the DSB report (FL230 = 7 km):
“The winds at ground level were north or north-easterly and tended to gradually veer with altitude, eventually becoming south-westerly by about FL230. From this point, the winds increased in speed with
altitude towards the tropopause, indicated at being around FL400.”
Thanks. I indeed had a somewhat wrong wind direction understanding, which resulted in one incorrect statement on other website (corrected myself there now), but, fortunately, not here.
Reading Micha’s report now. The guy always seems to be quite meticulous.
Yes, the pdf makes a lot of sense. Great job. I haven’t verified any arithmetic calculation, but a mistake there is unlikely.
The work, however, suffers from the same problem that the hole density argument. General and even a more advanced public will not get a clue of what the argument is about.
I am not following all the happenings around Micha’s work, but I predict that there has not been an effective defense mounted by the Belingcat team, because the argument is solid. Those guys will likely just stay away from discussing, just like they do with the hole density count argument.
Finally, this is what I believe has happened. Aleynikov heard the moment the plane fell. He went away and photographed the black smoke (some people suggested that he was prepared as he likely used a tripod). He might have thought that black plume could have something to do with the boom. He or his friends (or even SBU) then photoshoped the white trail onto the two pictures, which quickly went public.
The same day or the next day, pro-Kiev supporters (or even Aleynikov friends) decided to reinforce the evidence. On a map, they drew a line through the dark smoke and found a place on a field to burn. They equipped themselves with a liter or so of petrol and went to the place, empty of people, and ignited it. Afterwards they hinted the reporters where to look. They did not know that the Buk crew would not park the vehicle there, they did not know about the complicated constraints to do with the wind speed exposed here by Micha, which the burnt field place had violated.
Quick summary of why other than south from Snizhne launch positions are impossible.