My apologies Dawny et al.
Put it up in a rush yesterday and omitted the following:-
There are some significant differences and inconsistencies between the pilots statements and witness reports which leave a lot of questions unanswered by the ATSB report.
I believe (happy to corrected) that the tip tanks were full which, if I remember correctly is a big no no for the type of airwork exercise they were going to do. (AFM anyone ?). This was not mentioned by the ATSB report.
Had the training pilot had been influenced by the current 'fad' for absolute compliance with 'black letter' law enforced by local FOI ?. Remember this was a training exercise, the aim is to get the student to perform the drills correctly, manage the flight path and land, repeat as needed until the lesson is learnt. Way back when, I remember that when the aircraft was gear up and accelerating the instructor would simulate the failure and, away we'd go; piece of cake. But this notion of a 'dead cut', low and slow gives me the heebies. The ATSB report does not provide information on the how, where and when of this incident.
The changes made to the company operation manual are interesting in that they reflect a couple of poorly thought out statements, and reflect the current mania in the Sydney basin for enforcing a 'dead cut'; or, if that freaks you out, using a 'simulator'. The simulator notion alone is worth some discussion, do they mean a simulator or a procedures trainer?. I mean it adds a whole new dimension to the 'value' of the training and it's legal validity if the 'sim' is 'generic'.
For my dollar, the ATSB have skimmed over the surface of this report in a slip shod manner and the case needs to be examined in depth. As stated previously, we keep killing folks. I would like to know exactly what happened at Camden and more importantly the underlying forces which lined up the holes in this particular bit of Cheese.