Okay, here’s a simple question for you. If the plane was to ping at exactly 8:11 and the satellite picked up the ping at 8:11 + x seconds, could a genius like you determine how far away from the satellite the ping occurred (without needing a vhf signal and four receivers).
I don’t know if that’s how they determined distance. I do know that they claimed to be able to determine distance, however, and did so as indicated by the arc.
Here’s a question for you: What exactly do you thing the arcs mean then?
You’re way off in space on this.
There is no way that the sat can accurately determine a time differential in the plane’s vhf signal. What do you think would sync them? VHF is not even capable of high data accuracy because the frequency is too low for that.
You do not know what you are spewing. A telecom sat cannot determine an accurate range for a received signal by any means.