Reply #27: projection much?

[OnTheOtherHand]

My baseline is that I'm not sure what really happened with flight 175...

You're not? You at least seem to be fairly sure what didn't really happen with flight 175, and you have discounted a great deal of eyewitness and video evidence in forming your opinion.

I "find a way to discredit" your arguments not because of my assumptions, but because your arguments are weak. If that timestamp demonstrates that UA175 was aloft at 9:23, you should have had better evidence of that fact years ago.

In terms of the MFR, the timestamps of the 9:23 message are not shown or discussed; it's not clear that they even realize that the 9:23 message has a received time. What do they even need to scrub here?

Seriously?!

I grant that "it's not clear" exactly what they realize -- and that is much more your problem than mine. However, they explicitly discuss the timestamps (at least, I think that's the premise of your argument), and they explicitly discuss the 9:23 message. If you don't think they realize that the 9:23 message has a timestamp, how do you think they know that any of the others do? Maybe Ballinger is talking about something else entirely?!

Note-- what do you think the second time is for, if not showing receipt? Why would an ACARS message show the time the message hit the ground station? Presumably this is instantaneous.

It looks to me as if United generated free-text messages that included times and senders, and then the log generated a timestamp. When the log generates a timestamp is a matter of conjecture, but saying that it must be when the plane received the message is not on. Especially because....

how could the time at which the plane received the message be logged on the ground?
Presumably some kind of ping-back signal. This is not so hard to assume, given other types of modern communications.

True that. So, on that theory, presumably the time would be when the ground network received the ping-back, yes?

See, at this point I'm not convinced that you really believe that the timestamp shows when the plane received the message, never mind that I should believe it. It might be when the ground network receives the message, when it first sends the message, when it receives the (hypothesized) ping-back, or who knows what-all else.

As far as Ballinger, there is no reason to discount his knowledge of ACARS.

I haven't discounted his knowledge of ACARS; I've tried to delineate its likely extent. Your failure to address my arguments is noted.

(As far as the 50 feet point, clearly that was just to note the difference in width between the tower and the 767 wingspan...

No, it isn't clear at all. What's clear is that there was more than 50 feet leeway. At a 38-degree angle, you're off by at least 30 feet. At any rate, most of the plane appears to have hit right of center.

As for the bank, isn't that sort of what one would expect if the pilot noticed he was right of center and tried to correct? Believe it or not, in my experience most people who look at the damage profile don't say to themselves, "Wow, that was amazingly precise flying" -- perhaps because it doesn't appear to have been amazingly precise flying.

But why do I think that if Ballinger said directly "that timestamp meant that UA175 must have received the 9:23 message", you would say he was full of shit and find ways to discredit him???? Or that we would just simply never hear about this?

Well, that's an interesting question, and invites some personal speculation that I will try to eschew.

I don't even know what the last part of this means. If you had credible evidence that the timestamp proves that UA175 was still in the air, how would it be in my power that "we would just simply never hear about this"?

Keep in mind, Ballinger retired right after 9/11. Perhaps he was just too stressed after what happened, or maybe he knew something was up and was forced into retirement. Who knows what he really knows or thinks?

"Who knows what he really knows or thinks?" Dude, this is the guy whose paraphrased comments from 2004 you're relying on. Wouldn't it be fair to say, then, that in your view Ballinger is only credible if and when (in your view) he impeaches the "official story," not when he supports it?