Chinook - Still Hitting Back 3 (Merged)

[walter kennedy]

BUT we now know that deliberate and planned actions were taking place at the position of waypoint change, actions that were not consistent with any kind of control emergency – and that position was so close in that, in the prevailing conditions, they would indeed have been at fault had there not been a reason for those actions. If you really want to clear their names, you have to uncover what it was that they were doing there.
To re-cap: re recent posts (including annotated maps), it is clear that the navigator in the left hand seat had set up a course 028 on his HoSI which together with the selection of waypoint B on the STANS indicated that they intended to go to the track H-B (as explained previously) after they had done whatever at the Mull. Let us now consider the handling pilot's HoSI: the position of waypoint change was exactly on the 027 radial from Aldergrove VOR extrapolated to way point A and it seems reasonable to assume (as Boeing's dist/time analysis has it), to have held this track over the long leg across the Antrim Hills and the sea and with geographic features on the distant Mull a little foggy, that the handling pilot would certainly have had 027 set on his course selector – this of course would have given him a nice track bar to stick to while the STANS still had waypoint A selected, which was up to the position of waypoint change.
After this point, one would assume that the HP would have reset his course selector to a meaningful heading or just left it on 027 if he had not needed it – he had obviously twiddled it off 027 at that point – it was found on 035 – was 035 in any way meaningful? Let's consider this:
If you inspect the area on a nice clear day, with a compass and allowing for the different magnetic variation from back in 1994, it is apparent that 035 would have been the optimum approach to that LZ, following the short straight line of rocky shore and being along the long axis of that LZ, an obvious line to take to it;
035 from the position of waypoint change passes within 10s of yards of the crash site – and these 10s of yards can be attributed to the start of a slew to the left which was apparently initiated in the last few seconds – so that last leg from the position of waypoint change to the crash site (about a mile) was 035, as set on the HP's HoSI course selector. This required a turn of 8 degrees at the position of waypoint change which is at odds with the map produced at one of the inquiries (see post #3094, page 155) where the MOD had unforgiveably misplaced the position of waypoint change so as to give the impression of the a/c going straight in – eliminating from consideration by those at the inquiry this all important turn.
If you add that the setting on the HP's baro alt subscale would have been appropriate for a QFE at the elevation of that LZ and that one of the RADALT alarms was set appropriately for an imminent landing in marginal conditions, then it rather looks like they were intending landing at that LZ.
Problem is, if they had been confident of the STANS range and bearing to waypoint A at the position that they changed from it they would have known that they were too close at that speed to turn towards the LZ – and the LZ was not on a bearing of 035 at the position of waypoint change – they had turned too soon for it. So in the absence of considering any other influences at this point, we have it that they got close to the Mull, set up the STANS for when they eventually left the area, ignored their proximity to the ground that the STANS had given them warning of, and turned in set up to land at the LZ – but for their speed too close and not lined up with it. Sounds suicidal? - there is an explanation for it:
In the typical conditions that were prevailing in the late afternoon of that day, the shoreline should have been visible at the position of waypoint change but the ground beyond it? – well, imagine a sodden DPM smock in front of a fire with steam billowing off it and you are a fly trying to land gracefully on it and you might get the scene – they were not intending to go over the fug, they were not tying to go through the fug, they were trying to land at a spot at the base of the fug but it would have been fugging difficult to judge their distance off visually if doing a fast approach – they would surely not have had anything visual clearly enough to have dismissed the STANS data! They simply had to have been getting some other information that they would have trusted to be intrinsically accurate and yet which misled them – what and how?
Suppose, with a PRC112 in hand, instead of being at the LZ you were here:
http://i229.photobucket.com/albums/e...d/DSCF0391.jpg

(That's the LZ down below, the “green triangle”.)
The a/c crossed this point and crashed behind/right further up the slope – the geometry fits if you plot this posn, accounting for ½ mile out in range and turning in too soon.
Suppose you are enjoying being a ********, talking to the HP on the UHF guard frequency (as such sets cater for and which the HP has been said to have had his intercom switched to) perhaps saying that the ground is clear at the LZ and you should see me, etc – then you consider 20 tons at 150 kts is heading for you – no worries, already thought of that, look at this video clip:
DSCF0398.flv video by grauniad - Photobucket

Didn't take long ambling backwards, did it? - just a few seconds for an athletic young man in a hurry. What a perfect bunker – here's a pic with the exposure better:
http://i229.photobucket.com/albums/e...d/DSCF0395.jpg
An oaf like me could hop down easily onto a roomy platform – the knotted rope was for getting to a further deep level to have a look around just in case there was some interesting rubbish.
You don't have to get into this conspiracy stuff – just consider that with the settings found and the planning done (eg manually input waypoints) it looks like they had a LL VFR route planned “handrailing” along Jura but which Flt Lt Tapper amended to include an excursion to the Mull – he had told the other officers who had done much of the routine planning for the sortie that he and his crew had planned “intensively” for this sortie when he pushed for his crew to do it. You don't just do uneccessary excursions at your own whim, especially with those passengers on board, so someone must have approved this higher up. Surely a new inquiry is justified addressing this planning aspect that is so obvious now but has been witheld from previous inquiries? A couple of experienced pilots, when looking at the available data from this perspective, should be able to recognise this and advise the Mull group technically. What have you got to lose?