Cazatou
The witnesses you refer to were either in the mist or, if high enough, in the solid orographic cloud.
Approaching the landmass in the conditions that I have laboured to describe previously. there would have been streaking mist following the slope up to the start of the orographic cloud.
One witness at the site I have spoken to, who was in a position of authority and also a local, described clear patches with bright sunlight on the lower slopes - he was familiar with the phenomenon of the layer of mist that I have described.
They would not have been in it until the last moment.
They would have been able to identify the slope - with the odd blotchy ground texture sporadically visible - from a long way off provided that they were beneath the orohraphic cloud, which at the time, as best I can derive from the various accounts, started about 8-900ft.
Their problem would have been that they could not have visually estimated their range from it to any degree of accuracy (no detail, texture, or familiar objects) and so would not have been able to question any other source of local information that they may have been referring too.
For reasons I have already given, the course change to the right was significant and deliberate.
Their power setting was such that there was obviously no intention to overfly the Mull (low and matched and which had already resulted in a slowing down of 20kts air speed) - and why would they when the Mull is after all just an isolated low hill of limited extent which was not in their way to the next waypoint and would have required only a small turn to the left to avoid.
One of the proponents for a control jam had to concede at one of the inquiries that the odds of a control jam affecting two axes that cleared itself in the last moments was billions to one - let us forget this nonsense.
And that suggested engine runaway? (for which there is no evidence) - the immediate action for such being an increase in collective which could have incresed their height (to keep the RPM down) - if such had occurred after waypoint change at their altitude, would it not have been the hand of God that could have saved them?
On their deliberate course was the previously used landing area that I have described previously; they had settings consistent with a landing or low pass at the altitude of that area.
You would not go in there without a local reference - why not discuss candidates for such a reference?