Chinook - Still Hitting Back 3 (Merged)

[walter kennedy]

OmegaV6
Pls refer post #3463 – still don’t give a damn?
Not worth contemplating that deliberate turn that got them into trouble?
Can you not see the implications of the course setting matching the a/c track on that last leg?
Let me describe a very simple process:
Let us say you have a nav mode selected that is giving you a bearing on your #1 pointer on your HSI;
If at some point you want to go straight to it you turn your course selector knob until your course pointer is pointing at the #1 bearing pointer – while you turn in that direction;
If you have done this quickly enough, the CDI will not be much displaced from the centre of line of the course pointer;
A little bit of manoeuvring so your CDI is in line with your course pointer and you are going straight for that waypoint or ground navaid.
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How does this fit with what is known about this crash?
They had been going along 027 mag for 40 miles with a valid waypoint (A) still directly ahead;
It would have been normal for the nhp to have had his HSI set up for this and the hp’s CDI slaved to this (and on such a long leg, the hp may also have had 027 set on his course selector);
At less than a mile from the crash site – with waypoint A still directly ahead – waypoint A is dumped on the SuperTANS;
The a/c turns 8 deg right onto 035 mag which it maintains right up to the last seconds before impact when a sudden evasive manoeuvre was initiated – and 035 was found set on the hp’s HSI course selector;
Does this not suggest that the hp was referring to another navaid?
Something that disagreed with the SuperTANS?
Some point reference that was intrinsically accurate that helo pilots would trust?
Flt Lt Tapper had reservations about the accuracy of the SuperTANS, especially after a water crossing, and perhaps would not have been surprised at a discrepancy of ½ a mile or so – hence if opting for a local point reference would it not make sense to move on from waypoint A in the nav computer to avoid confusion?;
The only candidate I can think of is a PRC112 that should have been at the LZ (for which waypoint A was an obvious inner marker) but may have been ½ mile or so up the hill – it would have given accurate range to the LZ had it been in the right position;
Given that they had started to slow down, a baro alt was set to give zero on the ground at the elevation of that LZ (QF whatever), and a RADALT warning was set at min consistent with an imminent landing in poor conditions – and that Chinooks had landed there before, and that that was what some local authority figures thought they were going to do this time – it rather looks like they were heading in there but the local aid was out of position by accident or design;
Even their tactical call sign was consistent with an exercise of this kind – in fact, everything that is known about this crash fits this scenario.
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Don’t tell me this is fantasy – and it has not been working through this analysis on this forum has delayed the objective for 13 ½ years.
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SFFP/MasterofNone
Still no constructive technical feedback from you good people? Come on! - how did data get from ARS6 to HSI in the later HC2 Chinooks? Too much to ask?
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JP
One thing I think I have contributed here is local knowledge of the weather conditions (numerous earlier posts) - they were not in IMC, they were below local orographic cloud and approaching fog that was right on the slopes. I have always maintained that they had, in the absence of visual clues, been misled as to their range to go.
A/c do crash by flying into terrain while in (perhaps marginal) VFR conditions when that terrain is featureless - eg was it a Chinook in the Falklands hit a ridge simply because of visual judgement of how far away it was? - more recently, a US Chinook in Afghanistan, the tail end of a few of them, hit a sand dune because the terrain was "featureless" (clear night but dark so using NVG). These examples in situations where they were just making their way along VFR style - imagine going to a specific spot in such conditions but with an instrument that you had faith in telling you that you had 1/2 a mile further to go to the obstacle - very easy to come unstuck?