The Other Ship

[scherrer-txt]

Related to The Other Ship -- since @maro95-web you have the VesselFinder AIS subscription, which goes 90 days back, I think it's the perfect time to revive this part of the research.

I will try to figure out the exact model of The Drone, then calculate the possible ship size. Since we know the exact time, got some good candidates for the date¹, and we know the approximate direction the ship was heading in, it's should be possible to find it.

Will check in later with more info.

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¹: I should probably also cross-reference the weather data and satellite images to narrow down the dates -- though I want to be careful not to prune too aggressively, since eliminating a date based on incomplete information could mean discarding the right one. Ideally multiple independent lines of evidence would converge on the same date, rather than any single filter eliminating it.

[maro95-web]

The thing about this subscription is that it's very limited in it's capabilities. When viewing the map it shows real time vessel locations all the time. And I can only select one vessel at a time and see it's track going back 90 days. And it's a daily subscription, so it expires today. The monthly is like $100. Once we have more information I'm willing to get it or a daily again which is like $15.
There is no way to see what ships were on our expected drop places since the map always shows the positions of all vessels in real time.
It's kind of like a needle in a haystack situation.
First we need to know the approximate dimensions of the other ship with like a ±10m accuracy and it's exact vessel type. Only then can we filter out enough ships and see where and if they were in the vicinity of our expected drop places on our expected dates. And it's still going to be a rigorous process.
And we have a limited 90 day window to do so at least on this VesselFinder platform.
Other websites like MarineTraffic offer a 5 year tracking period with more tracking tools and services but it's only available for industrial teams and governments.

[AnorakUnbound]

Related to The Other Ship -- since @maro95-web you have the VesselFinder AIS subscription, which goes 90 days back, I think it's the perfect time to revive this part of the research.

I will try to figure out the exact model of The Drone, then calculate the possible ship size. Since we know the exact time, got some good candidates for the date¹, and we know the approximate direction the ship was heading in, it's should be possible to find it.

Will check in later with more info.

---

¹: I should probably also cross-reference the weather data and satellite images to narrow down the dates -- though I want to be careful not to prune too aggressively, since eliminating a date based on incomplete information could mean discarding the right one. Ideally multiple independent lines of evidence would converge on the same date, rather than any single filter eliminating it.

Since it might be difficult to assess the actual Drone model, is there a way to calculate a size based on the possible FOV? I.e. if the FOV is somewhere between X and Y, then size should be between Z and W?

[scherrer-txt]

The approx. FOV is 70-80° (since there is virtually no lens distortion on the image; the left and rightmost points of the horizon are almost perfectly level), so maybe just going for some sort of a middle ground (75°) and proceeding from there could be an option. Complication is, the calculated size needs to be somewhat accurate for the AIS search to yield useful data -- we might be looking for a 60 m ship or 110 m ship. Both could have tens or hundreds of candidates on any given day.