Originally Posted by
Traffic_Is_Er_Was
I understand, however the departing chopper is tracking directly away from its helipad more or less to impact. The arriving helo would have to be at the point of impact for the departing helo to be still in line with the helipad from his point of view. In that case, the climbing helo would be nose on. The geometry of the videos doesn't work for me. You extrapolate the dotted bearing lines in the above back and as per the diagrams, they don't go back to the same place.
You make a good point that -XKQ remains roughly in line with its departure pad as seen in video from -XH9 so should appear head on to it. I tried to estimate the flightpaths from the various videos and photos, short of using some sort of triangulation. I didn't succeed. Below is what was shown in the media and my own attempts before conceding I should await the ATSB report:
Roughly estimated paths from one perspective (unsure which pad was planned to be used by -XH9:
and estimated from another perspective:
and then an attempt to estimate path from directly above:
