Airborne recorder: where is it, what does it look like, why is it needed?

From the TV screens, when the next plane crash occurs, we often hear about looking for a black box. Have you ever wondered, why is it 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 an airborne recorder.

What does an airborne recorder look like?

Let's see what kind of appearance it has. The airborne recorder, as a rule, has a bright orange or red coloring. On the box he, too, is completely different. Since it usually has a round or oval shape. "Why?" - you ask. The explanation is simple. When the airplane falls, round-shaped bodies will better resist external influences. By the way, the bright coloring facilitates his search after the plane crash.

In the language of professional aviators, a black box is called an emergency flight parameter recording system. And abbreviated - just SARPP.

Flight recorder device

The self-recorder is a simple device. It collected a lot of sensors, drives, signal processing units. The chips and controllers are not very different from those that are in our laptops. But the so-called flash memory is used in recorders recently. A lot of aircraft flying now are equipped with still old models. In them, recording takes place on a magnetic tape, as in old tape recorders, or on a wire. Of course, the wire is much stronger than the tape, and therefore more reliable.

To better protect all these parts, they are placed in a completely sealed enclosure. It is made of titanium or high-strength steel. Inside there is a serious layer of thermal insulation. There are special standards that airborne recorders must meet, because the data will be preserved in conditions of large overloads, in fire and in water. It is not known, where the device may be after a plane crash, and therefore must withstand all the tests.

How do recorders look?

Indeed, how to find an airborne recorder in the water? After all, it can be a small lake, and the sea, and even the ocean. It turns out that the black boxes are equipped with special ultrasonic beacons, which are switched on at the moment of contact with water. The beacon emits a signal at a frequency of 37 500 Hz. When these sounds are detected, it is no longer difficult to detect the box itself. From the water it is raised by divers or special robots, when the depth turns out to be very large.

As for searches on the ground, it's even easier. Knowing the crash site of the airliner, the samplers are looking around, inspecting the territory around.

Excursion to the history

What do you think, and who invented the first recorder? It is believed that a similar device was invented by David Warren, an Australian scientist. In 1953 the first passenger jet "Kometa-1" crashed. In this plane crash, no one survived, and there were no witnesses to the tragedy, which means that the reasons for the crash were not discussed. David worked in a team that investigated the fall. He came up with the idea that they could very much help the recording of the pilot's talks, 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, along with his colleagues, in Melbourne, in the Aeronautics Laboratory, created a black box model. The device recorded all the necessary information and conversations of the pilots for four hours in a row. A year later the scientist went to England to further improve his offspring. The new invention was placed in a shockproof and fireproof box. He began to actively sell to many countries in the world.

In 1960, in Australia, there was a plane crash in Queensland. After it, the government of the country ordered all airlines to install onboard the samplers. In fact, Australia was the first country in the world to issue such a law.

At present, the airborne recorder is a compulsory device on any airplane. It helps to identify the causes of disasters and prevent new possible tragedies.

And the name "black box" device was received because the very first copies of it were forbidden to serve technical workers. Its internal structure and principle of operation were strictly classified. And this was done by airlines to ensure maximum objectivity in the investigation of air crashes. This is the history of the first recorders.

Modern recorders

Modern on-board recorders are already more advanced and very different from their ancestors. Inside of them there are protected onboard storage tanks (ZBN). As a rule, now two such ZBNs are put on airliners, one of which records the flight parameters, and the second one - all the negotiations of the crew. But there are other options. On some airliners, data can be recorded for both two and three ZBNs. This is done for reinsurance. In the event that one is destroyed, then the other will necessarily survive.

In order to protect the data in case of a catastrophe, the hollow parts of the black box are filled with a special powder that can withstand the temperature of the burning of aviation kerosene. 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 civil aircraft. True, they still record parameters regarding the work with weapons.

Where are the flight recorders on the plane?

Black boxes are in aircraft usually in the tail of the fuselage. According to statistics, it is this area that is least affected by damage in case of accidents, as the main blow usually falls on the nose. As we have already said, there are several recorders onboard the airliners. So it was 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 deciphered.

Types of flight recorders

By the way, this equipment differs also by the method of recording information, which allows obtaining more accurate results. Airborne recorders, more precisely, their species, two: speech and parametric. What are their features and differences?

Recording the flight recorder of the first type (voice) saves not only the conversations of crew members and dispatchers, but also all surrounding sounds during the last two hours. As for the parametric, they write data from different sensors. All parameters are fixed several times per second, with fast changes, the frequency of information recording 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 records are made in time. Parametric devices record not all flight data, but only those that can be useful in investigating an accident.

Full information about everything that is happening on the plane is written by operational equipment. It is their data 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 kind is impossible.

What data is recorded by flight recorders

Black boxes record many parameters, among which one can distinguish:

• Technical: hydraulic pressure, engine speed, fuel pressure, temperature, etc .;
• The actions of the crew: the extension and cleaning of the landing gear, the deviation of controls;
• Navigation data: altitude of flight, speed, passing of lighthouses, etc.

How to interpret black box data?

In the mass media, it is always reported that the data of the black box of the liner will be decoded. And is it really so? The decoding of 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. Journalists, for example, listening to the recorder, write a text. A commission consisting of experts, reads information from a carrier that has an aircraft airborne recorder, processes it, and writes a report in a convenient form for analysis. In this process, there is no decryption. Moreover, it is not difficult to remove the data. You can find out about what the flight recorders say at any airport. Protection of information from outsiders is not provided. Probably, this is not necessary.

In general, the aircraft airborne recorder is intended primarily to establish the causes of the air crash, in order to prevent further similar situations. Therefore, specialized protection is not needed. If for some reason they want to hide or omit the true facts (perhaps for political reasons), then one can always refer to the large damages 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, the information can still be restored.

Separate fragments of the tape are glued together, then a special compound 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, it's all done in special laboratories and takes sometimes a lot of time, but still nothing is impossible.

Prospects for the development of recorders

In the modern world, the recorders are subjected to increasingly new and stringent requirements. So, they have much to develop. The immediate prospect is to produce video from various points outside the airliner and inside it. Experts say that this can help to move to a new level of equipment, so that the instruments in the cockpit of the pilot were not pointer, but in the form of a display. Since the old boxes have the property, so to say, to freeze during the accident on the last readings, it makes sense to replace them with screens that will not behave this way. However, at the present time, along with monitors, they still use arrow devices, in case they fail.

In general, it is difficult to imagine that until quite recently all the planes were built and made flights without black boxes. In the Great Patriotic War, only the first aircraft appeared, on which several parameters were registered. Active distribution of recorders started only in the early sixties (both in our and foreign aviation). In the USSR, this issue has been seriously taken up since the 1970s. The fact is that at that time it was already forbidden to make international flights without the presence of black boxes.

Instead of an afterword

In our article, we tried to talk about the mysterious "black box". In the modern world, an airborne recorder is an integral part of aviation. It is already difficult to imagine that you can somehow do without it. The fact is that it is needed not only to investigate tragedies, but primarily to ensure that every lesson is learned from each air crash, and further all necessary measures were taken to prevent possible crashes. Incidentally, investigation materials are often used in simulator centers, so to speak, as a simulation of real situations for pilots, because the more experience in emergency situations the crew has, the more likely they are to help them in real flight. Of course, not everything depends on people, technical failures are not theirs, but the extra experience, as they say, never hurts.