There seems to be a bit of a Cool Kat ambience on this thread saying that - of course it was LTE - and I note that the famous OZ Army paper on either LTE or VRS of the tail rotor surfaced on the ATSB report. WHICH IMHO did NOT quantify either one or the other. That is a bit slack.
But there seems to be a certain smugness about the outcome as reported.
Even though I have a fairly strong feeling that it was statements on this thread which injected a certain amount of enthusiasm to ATSB to get off their butt and go look, so to speak.
Now, for the sake of newbies, and many others who do not usually delve into low level maneuvres reading these columns, it may be best if it was quantified.
There is no doubt that the hapless driver may have invoked the wrath of the VRS on his T/R given the data as presented. BUT, that is no reason to crash a perfectly serviceable helicopter, even from as low as fifty feet above the terrain when it is induced.
One also needs to be careful in examining the stated wind flow ( which from experience I can say is the usual doctor around those parts) but with the surface interference of yon great hill may have been somewhat changed?
I certainly challenged the author of the OZ Paper many years ago to demonstrate to me this massive nightmare inducing phobia - LTE - as reported in his paper, just after he had published it. Result, no show.
For his benefit I have been able to induce such circumstance a bare handful of times of many years trying, so it can be done, by god. That's for sure, but I never crashed a machine doing it, Eh.
However before I go further into the analysis which I will not tonight, let me just portray one fact from the investigation. "there was a sudden yaw to the right"
For everyone's sake and opportunity to contradict it, I will say that a "sudden yaw" can only emanate from one of two causes.
1) T/R drive from the engine has gone AWOL
2) VRS of the T/R.
Overpitching, will initially only produce a slowly increasing yaw. Agreed?
Cheers tet