Emergency Power......
dalek , chinook240 , etc......
..from reading the words of the AAIB I now realise that there is a little more to the story......
..when full emergency power is demanded , the PTIT (power turbine inlet temperature) increases due to the extra fuel being burnt etc...
....when it reaches a set temperature limit , a five second timer is started ...
...after the five seconds have elapsed and the temp. is still high , a dolls eye indicator is actuated on the panel .......
The AAIB do not regard these as reliable indications as they can easily be
jarred in a crash and changed or reset .
..at the same time it is arranged that an electro-mechanical counter will be incremented...........
......but the crash aircraft had one of the older counters which only count in whole minutes....(newer units count in seconds)........
......so emergency power could have been used for up to 59 seconds without changing the counter( if the counter had just passed the point where it was incremented due to a previous event . The numbers are recorded at maintenance time . )
So they could well have established full emergency power in the last 30 seconds of the flight without leaving any recorded evidence of its usage...
...which leads me to my next point .................
..if they did hit the ground almost immediately after crossing the coast as I have previously suggested , and one or both rear undercarriage units were then jammed in the compressed position.........or the rear undercarriage proximity sensors themselves were damaged directly to show that the aircraft was on the ground , it could have limited the control action available to them .......
..normally control function of the DASH actuator is limited to 50% whilst on the ground .....The cyclic stick only has 2 inches of rear movement instead of the more normal 4 inches (and one inch left or right ) ..........
(I realise that the AFCS's may ignore the undercarriage sensor/'s due to high airspeed......???????????.......).
...the normal collective/thrust range may have still been available to them ......but would it have increased forward speed more than rate of climb if they were restricted in the rearward range of cyclic stick.....??????.....so that they were limited to cruise ROC and could not climb out of trouble.....??????..
rgds Robin.....