[NLRS] Aircraft scatter & WSPR tracking of the missing Malaysian airliner

[Paul Husby]

I first read about this in the weekly FlightAware newsletter a few 
months ago (check it out, most weeks there is something interesting).  
Those of us on the higher bands have at least occasionally observed 
aircraft scatter bringing a signal out of the noise for maybe long 
enough to complete a contact.  I had no idea there was data going back 
to the time MH370 went missing eight years ago to possibly track its 
path, but that is apparently the case.

This article shows how WSPR was used to get a preliminary path:
https://www.airlineratings.com/news/mh370-set-off-radio-tripwires-confirming-location-says-new-report/

Apparently this fellow Richard Godfrey has processed a lot more data to 
be able to plot a detailed flight path that includes unexpected turns 
and a loop.  (There is a neat little demo video of aircraft scatter with 
a plane crossing the path to an FM station on 94.2 MHz.)  The detailed 
path can be seen in this new story on 60 Minutes Australia:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jq-d4Kl8Xh4&ab_channel=60MinutesAustralia

It's all possible in this case because there is so little aircraft 
activity over the Indian Ocean;  at the time, there was only one other 
plane in the region.  That plane was of course on a known flight path, 
so it is easily filtered out and what remains would seem to be the 
missing airliner.  Quite fascinating!

73
Paul W0UC