Walter
Enough, I think I have done my best to throw some light on this tragedy - it would have been nice to have had a bit more constructive feedback - I believe that there is enough evidence that something else was going on but without help from people like yourselves it is impossible to determine what it was with sufficient credibility to get political support for action.
You have come up with some remarkable suggestions over the years that we have been having this debate. Between us, we fellow-posters have done our best to be patient and to explain in layman's terms where we are able. However, whatever the cause of this accident (and we'll never know what it was) our campaign is merely trying to demonstrate that it is not possible to affirm "beyond any doubt whatsoever" that the pilots were negligent, that the 2 Air-ranking reviewing-officers were wrong to reach this conclusion and that the 2 pilots concerned should have the finding of Gross Negligence (tantamount to Manslaughter) removed and their names cleared.
I am sure that you are a very intelligent person, who would love, like us all, to be able to come up with the vital piece of evidence that would exonerate our departed colleagues. However, this is not going to happen. So that I cannot be accused of ignoring your thoughts, I shall provide as much 'constructive feedback as I can muster:
the driver was on 027m, and must have turned the Horizontal Situation Indicator course selector (not the heading bug) - the course selector that your track bars work off when you're referring to a radio navaid or STANS waypoint - a whole 8 degrees
There is no 'must have' here. A pilot flying towards the end of the Mull has most probably selected it as an unmistakable feature with vertical extent, which he could probably see from 30 miles away and would therefore have no need of the course track bars.
setting the heading bug will give a recommended angle of bank on the right instrument (AI?)
Even if it does (and I haven't flown the Chinook either, but I doubt it) there would be no need to refer to a recommended bank angle for a turn of this small magnitude. I doubt very much that the pilots would even have intended to roll out on a new heading as their next task would have been to follow the coast by visual reference, until reaching their next easily-identifiable waypoint.
suppose the altimeter settings didn't matter either
I guess you're making this remark somewhat facetiously but, actually, in the big scheme of things they didn't. If flying VFR, the altitude reference would be the Radalt and even that would not be followed exactly.
intentionally misguiding other readers of this thread
You must have the Conspiracy Bug real bad!!
Oh, and I suppose waypoint A was after all just a sloppy effort for the lighthouse
As I've hinted above, yes it probably was if the intention was to locate the end of the Mull then fly up the coast, which appears to have been their intention.
And I suppose the locals were mistaken about Chinooks landing near waypoint A
No, they may be right about Chinooks having landed there in the past, but that simply isn't relevant. There's no evidence that there was ever any intention of landing there during this flight that was intended to ferry passengers from Aldergrove to Inverness, without stopping on the Mull to pick up or drop off anybody.
there is enough evidence that something else was going on
No there isn't. Your thoughts have received plenty of attention in the past and nobody, as far as I'm aware, has leant any support for your (occasionally wild) theories, such as a 3rd party luring ZD576 to its doom on the hillside, in much the same way as mermaids are supposed to have done to sailors.
I should have thought that many of the negative comments posted on this site in response to your (sometimes wild) theories, however well-intentioned, would have left you feeling too embarrassed to post further. I know that, if it was me, I would feel pretty embarrassed to read that several of our most ardent campaigners had gone so far as to block my comments from appearing on their screens. But I am a tolerant soul and your skin is obviously far thicker than mine, as you continue to post from your position of relative ignorance. I have therefore taken the trouble to answer your comments. Thank you for your thoughts, but please keep them to yourself until after the Gross Negligence finding has been removed.