Thanks FGD.
I acknowledge the similarities. But I don’t see too much precision in stuff like:
“I have assumed a distance of”,
“could be explained by”
“Another possible explanation”
“The biggest unknown”
“could have been closer”
All of your assumptions and reasoning may be reasonable. But they may also be wrong in fact.
The difference between our approaches is that all of your assumptions and reasoning are in one direction, to make the two incidents as similar as possible and thereby to ‘prove’ the two incidents had the same cause. My (and I suspect OA’s and others’) approach is to ask: What if your assumptions, possible explanations and known unknowns turned out to show substantial differences between the two incidents? Frankly, the latter approach is the one that ATSB should take, rather than jump to a conclusion then find as much stuff to support that conclusion, even if it means making assumptions that may be invalid and positing explanations that could be wrong.
I apologise if you’ve already answered these questions, but what is your theory as to who set the trim to full NL, when and why? I realise that these questions are irrelevant for those who consider there is only one hole in the Swiss cheese in this tragedy, but they are not irrelevant to others. You’ve said you don’t believe that the pilot set the rudder trim to full NL during pre-flight checks then failed to set it correctly due to distraction. If you are correct, it inexorably follows...