Arkroyal
Regarding several points you made in your post #2623:
<< The aircraft was flying legally in VMC and obeying VFR until… >> agreed.
.
<< Why it then went into IMC and crashed, we also don't know. >>
BUT we can assume from their actions that they did not intend entering IMC when they did – their final flare was clearly a manouevre to slow down while turning away and gaining height in response to an emergency – and the timing of the start of this manouevre would seem to coincide with when they could have seen the land beneath them, the RADALT warning sounding, and their entry into the mist – if they were intending entering the mist and knew of their position with respect to the land, why the panic?
They were taken by surprise by their proximity – they were not expecting to have got there at that time. The big question is what made them so sure that they had some way to go in those conditions.
.
<< The lighthouse keeper, whatever his quals, was driving down the hill in cloud, so has no idea how far below his position it extended.>>
The lighthouse keeper I spoke to at the site (in what I believe to have been near identical conditions) seemed confident that a starting point for the mist part way up the slope (clear at the shoreline and a bit beyond) was typical and common – and so, I expect that an accurate description of the local conditions that day could have been got with either the right questions asked of the right person or someone having the wit to move down the slope to the shoreline and looking back – as I did when I was there – too easy. Did the Sea King pilot not come in on their approach heading to get an idea what the ZD576 crew saw? – no one thought of doing this basic exercise?
While you gave Cazatou a hard time for pointing out that not all potential witnesses had been questioned in this regard, I put it to you all that not enough was done that could have been done had the will been there to reconstruct the flight in detail.
.
<<. At no stage during the planning or execution of this task is it likely that overflight of the W/P (lighthouse) or the land mass was contemplated.>>
Are you still maintaining that the waypoint was the lighthouse and not the landing pad? Anyway, indeed we do not know for sure – all I know is that it was common practice to do so at that location.
.
<<Why the aircraft entered a 'cruise climb', deviated to the right slightly, and flew into the mull WILL NEVER BE KNOWN TO THE STANDARD OF PROOF REQUIRED>>
BUT cruise climb would have been selected deliberately and the steer demand to the right was deliberate (see Boeing’s “Analysis of Available Data” – section 4.3 ” This turn should not be considered as being the consequence of allowing the flight path to drift, as there was a clear aircraft heading change made, and the heading change was into the wind, rather than with the wind, which would have been more likely if the turn was purely due to drift. Consequently, the real issue that should be addressed with respect to the aircraft horizontal flight path is why this right turn was made.”) and as such are important clues as to what were their intentions – and I cannot understand why you would want to devalue their significance. Neither of these actions fits with the description of a VFR approach to a waypoint that you have given.
It is of interest that the author of the Boeing document (to which I referred above) went on to speculate as to the reason for that turn to the right; he suggested a possible reason was the intention to use the MAC TACAN subsequently in an IMC flight because of its approximate bearing and that the a/c’s TACAN CU was set accordingly. The relevance of this is that a highly qualified analyst at Boeing thought that there had to be a reason for this deliberate manouevre and to him a beacon seemed a possibility.
My view is that they thought they were ˝ - 1 mile further out and that their cruise climb would have got them to an altitude where they could have gotten a range from the MAC TACAN when they were near to waypoint A (for a second opinion, if you like) – there is only one candidate for a beacon which they could have worked with at their low altitude at the critical stage of their approach and which could have misled them as to their range to go that would have been regarded with such confidence as to override their other estimates and I believe that that was a PRC112 that was supposed to have been at the landing pad but which may have been further up the slope for whatever reason.