From the TV screens, when the next plane crash occurs, we often hear about the search for the black box. Have you ever wondered why it is called that? The paradox is that this is not a box at all, and it is not black at all … In fact, this device is called a flight recorder.
What does a flight recorder look like?
Let's see what kind of appearance it has. The flight recorder, as a rule, has a bright orange or red color. He also does not look like a box at all. Since it usually has a round or oval shape. "Why?" - you ask. The explanation is simple. When the plane crashes, round-shaped bodies will better withstand external influences. By the way, the bright colors make it easier to find after a plane crash.
In the language of professional aviators, a black box is called an emergency registration system for flight parameters. And in abbreviated form - just ARPP.
Flight recorder device
The recorder itself is a simple device. It contains many sensors, drives, signal processing units. Microchips and controllers are not very different from those in our laptops. But the so-called flash memory is used in recorders recently. Many aircraft currently flying are equipped with older models. In them, recording takes place on magnetic tape, as in old tape recorders, or on wire. Of course, the wire is much stronger than the tape, and therefore more reliable.
To better protect all of these parts, they are placed in a completely sealed enclosure. It is made of titanium or high-strength steel. Inside is a serious layer of thermal insulation. There are special standards that flight recorders must comply with, because the data will be stored under conditions of great overload, in fire and in water. It is not known where the device may be after a plane crash, and therefore must withstand absolutely all tests.
How are recorders looking?
Indeed, how to find a flight recorder in water? After all, it can be a small lake, and the sea, and even the ocean. It turns out that black boxes are equipped with special ultrasonic beacons that turn on when they come in contact with water. The beacon emits a signal at a frequency of 37, 500 Hz. When these sounds are direction finding, it is no longer difficult to detect the box itself. Divers or special robots raise it from the water when the depth is very large.
As for searches on earth, it is even easier. Knowing the crash site of the airliner, recorders search nearby, inspecting the area around.
History tour
Who do you think invented the first recorder? It is believed that such a device was invented by David Warren, an Australian scientist. In 1953, the first passenger jet Comet-1 crashed. No one survived in this plane crash, and there were no witnesses to the tragedy, which means that there was no need to talk about the reasons for the crash. David worked on the team that investigated the fall. He came up with the idea that they could be very helpful in recording the talks of the pilots, as well as the readings of the instruments at the time of the fall. Then it would be possible to establish the causes of the crash of the liner.
In 1957, David, together with his colleagues in Melbourne, in the aeronautics laboratory, created a black box model. The device recorded all the necessary information and the conversations of the pilots for four hours in a row. A year later, the scientist went to England to further improve his brainchild. The new invention was placed in a shockproof and fireproof box. He began to be actively sold to many countries of the world.
In 1960, a plane crash in Queensland occurred in Australia. After it, the country's government ordered all airlines to install recorders on board. In fact, Australia was the first country in the world to issue such a law.
Currently, the flight recorder is a must-have device on any aircraft. It helps to establish the causes of disasters and prevent new tragedies.
And the device itself received the name "black box" because its very first instances were forbidden to be serviced by technical workers. Its internal structure and principle of operation were strictly classified. And this was done by the airlines to ensure maximum objectivity of the investigation of air crashes. This is the story of the first recorders.
Modern recorders
Modern flight recorders are already more advanced and very different from their ancestors. Inside them are protected on-board drives (ZBN). As a rule, now two such ZBNs are put on airliners, one of which records flight parameters, and the second - all crew negotiations. But there are other options. On some airliners, data can be recorded on two and three ZBN. This is done for reinsurance. In the event that one is destroyed, the other will surely survive.
In order to protect data during a crash, the hollow parts of the black box are filled with a special powder that withstands the combustion temperature of jet fuel. Thanks to him, the temperature inside the recorder does not rise more than one hundred and sixty degrees. This allows you to save all the information inside. As for military aircraft, they are no different from civilian aircraft. True, they still record parameters regarding the work with weapons.
Where are the flight recorders on the plane?
Black boxes are found in airplanes usually in the rear of the fuselage. According to statistics, it is this area that is least affected by accidents, because the main blow usually falls on the bow. As we have already said, there are several recorders on board airliners. It so happened in aviation that all systems are reserved. So it is more likely that at least one of the black boxes will survive, and the information from the flight recorders will be decrypted.
Types of flight recorders
By the way, this equipment also differs in the way of recording information, which allows to obtain more accurate results. There are two flight recorders, more precisely, of their types: speech and parametric. What are their features and differences?
Recording a flight recorder of the first type (speech) saves not only the conversations of crew members and controllers, but also all the ambient sounds over the past two hours. As for parametric, they write data from different sensors. All parameters are fixed several times per second, with rapid changes, the frequency of recording information increases, and the time varies from seventeen to twenty-five hours. So, the recording of the flight recorder will cover the duration of any flight.
Parametric and speech devices can be combined into one, but in any case, all entries are made in time. Parametric devices record not all flight data, but only those that can be useful in investigating an accident.
Complete information about everything that happens on board the aircraft is written by operational devices. It is their data that is used to analyze the behavior of pilots, repair the liner and maintenance. They are not protected by anything, and therefore decoding of flight recorders of this type is impossible.
What data is recorded by flight recorders
Black boxes record many parameters, among which are:
- technical: hydraulic pressure, engine speed, fuel pressure, temperature, etc.;
- actions of crew members: extension and cleaning of takeoff and landing mechanisms, rejection of governing bodies;
- navigation data: flight altitude, speed, passing lighthouses, etc.
How to interpret black box data?
The media always report that the data of the black box of the liner will be decrypted. Is it really so? Deciphering flight recorders is the same myth as the fact that the boxes are black.
We want to note that the information is not subjected to any encryption. This word is even inappropriate here. Journalists, for example, listening to a voice recorder, write a text. And the commission, consisting of experts, reads the information from the medium that has the aircraft's flight recorder, processes it and writes the report in a convenient form for analysis. There is no decryption in this process. Moreover, taking data is not difficult. You can find out what flight recorders say at any airport. Information protection from strangers is not provided. Probably this is not necessary.
In general, the aircraft’s flight recorder is intended primarily to establish the causes of the crash in order to prevent similar situations in the future. Therefore, specialized protection is not needed. If for some reason they want to hide or be silent about the true facts (possibly for political reasons), then you can always refer to great damage and the inability to read the data of the flight recorders.
Is it always possible to get information?
By the way, statistics indicate that damage to devices occurs quite often. This is approximately every third accident. However, information can still be restored.
Individual fragments of the tape are glued together, then a special composition is applied, and new contacts are soldered to the surviving parts of the microcircuits to connect them to the reader. Of course, the process is not easy, everything is done in special laboratories and sometimes takes quite a lot of time, but still nothing is impossible.
Prospects for the development of recorders
In the modern world, more and more new and stringent requirements are imposed on recorders. So, they have a lot to develop. The immediate prospect is to produce video recordings from different points outside and inside the airliner. Experts argue that this can help move to a new level of equipment so that the instruments in the cockpit are not arrow-shaped, but in the form of a display. Since the old boxes have the property, so to speak, to freeze during the accident at the latest readings, it makes sense to replace them with screens that will not behave like that. However, at the present time, along with monitors, they still use pointer devices, in case of failure.
In general, it is difficult to imagine that until recently, all aircraft were built and made flights without black boxes. In the Great Patriotic War, only the first aircraft appeared, on which several parameters were recorded. Active distribution of recorders started only in the early sixties (both in our and foreign aviation). In the USSR, they began to seriously deal with this issue since 1970. The fact is that at that time it was already forbidden to make international flights without the presence of black boxes.
