Pulse1
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It is rather you who is “at it again” pursuing a “game” of “… challenging any attempt to fix any basic parameters of this flight ….” as I phrased it in my last post – an appeal to deaf ears again.
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As to the final “flare” or evasive manoeuvre, you wrote << I seem to remember one expert saying that the rudder position was most unusual and quite difficult to achieve in practise.>>; I also recall this from the transcript of one of the inquiries – and I also recall an experienced Chinook pilot expressing puzzlement at that statement; this has surely been discussed at length before – I gave a couple of references to its being a correct procedure in a large twin rotor to slow down rapidly (yawing broadside to use the large fuselage to brake) and it appeals to one’s common sense – why don’t you canvass the views of several experienced Chinook pilots and post them here? That way, another point of contention could be clearly settled.
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If you reconstruct the flight from the available data (as Boeing’s Mr. Mitchel did) incorporating the demanded steer to the right after waypoint change and this final flare, you get a remarkably simple picture of the a/c having maintained a cruise speed for most of the trip and a path that had not deviated significantly – any difficulty with control or speed would have had to have miraculously got it back on track and on time! – unless you are saying that any control problem prevented them from doing anything between that right turn demand just after waypoint change and the final 4 seconds when the flare was commenced – let us think about this:
The actual geographical position of waypoint A was right on the coast and the change of waypoint on the SuperTANS was already very close in;
Assuming that they had no control emergency at waypoint change they would surely not have made that subsequent steer demand to the right if they knew how close in they actually were – nevertheless, this leaves a very small window in time for controls to jam and yet release in time for that final flare;
As has been said by others on this thread, this helicopter would have required continuous control input in all axes just to fly it level in the leg up to this point – it was not as though the controls were just left in a trimmed state hands off – and so the odds of a control jam occurring in just this part of the flight are very small.
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I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again – the only logical explanation for that steer demand to the right after waypoint change (so close in) was that they were lining up on something – something that misled them as to how close in they were.