"Michael Henry" wrote in message
...
I was reading this article about a Russian air crash - here is an
excerpt...

Russian investigators have discovered that the cockpit-voice
recorder from the crashed Itek Air Boeing 737-200 contains no
trace of the ill-fated jet's final flight.

...

MAK adds that the quality of the flight-data recorder information
is "unsatisfactory" because of partial thermal damage to its
magnetic tape, caused by the intense fire which followed the crash.

Which made me think: magnetic tape?! Surely we've come far enough that we
can be using solid-state storage in flight data recorders?

Does anyone know why FDRs would still be using what, to me, is archaic
technology?

This occasionally happens, even though the FDR and CVR have considerable
thermal inertia and are located in a part of the plane that is least
frequently affected by both fire and mechanical damage. Also, the prose
above suggests that there was some data recovered from the cocpit voice
recorder and "some data" is probably more than they would have gotten from
solid state memory.

All the same, there has been a move from magnetic tape and metal foil to
solid state memory in the 20+ years that I have been out of that industry.
However, IMHO, that has been a case of obtaining more detailed data and
information (most of the time) and greatly reduced maintenance cost (the
frequent replacement of tapes and foils was shop maintenance) and accepting
far less robust media in order to accomplish those goals.

Personally, I can see more than one side of the arguments leading to these
changes and I have mixed feelings regarding the wisdom of same.

Peter