James, my experience of landing using goosenecks is also very limited but in essence the system relies on the fact that the human eye is not very sensitive to a single dim light but can pick out a line of dim lights much more easily. I was surprised how effective they can be in good night weather conditions.
However they do rely entirely on being in the right place on the approach to be able to see and use them - as indeed do all night landing aids. And that of course is the whole point of the standard circuit - to orientate the aircraft in terms of heading, speed, configuration and height to the landing runway.
Your Stirling appears to have been in the right place in the circuit but (obviously) ultimately not the correct altitude. This could be because the pilot was unable to achieve or maintain that altitude, or mislead into flying at the wrong altitude, or temporarily unaware of his altitude.
We don't know your background or why you have this interest, but you have as you say put a lot of work into this project. Do you have any flying experience at all? If not, are you in a position to go down to the local flying club and ask to experience half an hour's worth of circuits to help you understand why so much emphasis is (still) placed on circuits in flying training? A circuit is still a circuit no matter how sophisticated or unsophisticated the aids used in constructing it and landing from it.