Tec
I was not referring to the hypothetical turn that was said at the inquiries should have been made to avoid the high ground I was referring to the turn that analysis has them having actually made at or near the position where they changed the waypoint in the STANS. The track from NI to the position of waypoint change was 027 mag and the track from this position to the crash site was 035 mag which was found on the HP's course selector.
Tec&Chug
Either the pilot or an AFCS is continuously moving the controls to keep these (unstable) things straight and level I would be surprised if a Chinook would have maintained a straight track over the distance of the last leg with even one control jammed as I would be surprised if the pilot had not waggled controls any which way if he detected a jam which would have caused a/c attitude changes and perhaps a change of power too.
Cows
<<Walter, fantasy is believing that some for of covert demonstration went tragically wrong with the whole event being conveniently (and very securely?) covered-up.
>>
As briefly as I can: they were set up to approach a known LZ in conditions that would only have allowed such with a local reference, hence the demo theory of the particular equipment I have mentioned previously;
they managed to keep from more than one inquiry and from the general public the very existence of this equipment in HC2 Chinooks all these years, did they not?;
many would agree that it was folly to put the whole team on one helicopter in the first place and the consequences of the crash were so severe for the security forces that I'll bet the MOD and RAF would cover it up when you add to this the prospect of possible civil unrest if there was any public perception of foul play I think that you will see that it could have been more important to cover this up than, say, the lie about WMD in Iraq;
the only part of what I think about this crash that I accept may be fantasy is the view that the exercise may have been set up to remove an obstacle to the peace process if a new and more enlightened inquiry exposed such an exercise, then exposing who put it together and executed it would be a step towards determining whether anything wilful happened.
Robin
Do the chartwork properly I checked out Mitchel's (of Boeing) analysis years ago and have been recommending that anyone interested in this case use it as a framework for their own efforts it is the only decent effort I have come across which is surprising given that the alleged pilot error implied their being unaware of how close in they were, one would have expected an official version whereas all we got was the fudged track presented by one of the AVMs at the HOL inquiry you don't have to use it as gospel, but it is a useful example to follow when working it out for yourself.
<<... but we know that a few seconds later there was a significant GPS offset error of hundreds of metres
>> - are you getting confused with the difference between the GPS and Doppler position data at impact? They could not have been getting processed (range/bearing info) of any use to them after waypoint change (because they had changed the waypoint to one 80+ miles away) and I do not see them being able to work out were they were precisely using the raw GPS position and a chart that close in at that speed so after waypoint change the GPS performance would have been irrelevant besides, Flt Lt Tapper would not have regarded the SuperTANS as reliably accurate enough to have got that close in in those conditions with only it anyway.
<<... (hence the heading of 018 degrees to steer to waypoint 'A' ), which is another 200 feet at least at this range ,>> - I think you'll find it was waypoint B in the part of that report you must be using, 80 + miles away when you go back to checking it, I think you will find that 018 was true and the mag equivalent of 025 doesn't immediately make sense I have an explanation but am not very confident in it and would be interested in what you think of the anomaly.
I hope you have not been put up to this distraction -if you are genuine, pls check your work a bit more before posting some points have been covered long ago on this thread and there is a thread search function that can help you get through all the waffle.