Sorry Whirls, your mistaken here, Steve never had a CPL, he only had 96 hours total time when he died. Mostly on Enstroms I believe, not on R44's.
IIRC, when he had that fatefull day, the weather was grim enough for the RAF to bin a 2 ship low flying sortie in the area, and a Chinook also did a dog leg West to avoid it. When he entered the IMC, the data recovered from the GPS stated it went from good to dead in about 60 seconds. They think he entered IMC, and tried to do a 180 turn away from it (as taught on the PPL course) and thats where he got bitten.
Bloody sad.