Hueyracer
Quote:
If i canīt find good reference, i ask the guys on the ground to drop something (like a heavy rucksack) that will do the job....even a smoke grenade does two jobs: Showing me exactly where the wind is coming from (in these conditions, even 1 kt wind can make the difference-if it is coming from the front, or from the back), and it burns a nice, dark hole in the snow...
Absobleedin correct! Spot on. If you cannot land safely without a reference make one. They could have used a marshaller or a toolbox or anything that will not blow away. We used to do a low pass and chuck out someone elses bergen if all else failed.
Puma number two made all the classic errors.
With the greatest of respect to the two posters, surely you are talking about landing on a featureless surface with no visual references on it? In whiteout/brownout you can't see the surface. The US Military currently loses about $100 million per year in brownout accidents in Afghanistan and is spending millions in research at NASA Ames and other institutions to find solutions (as are defence manufacturers such as BAe.)
Clearly there were flaws in the planning and execution of this evolution - not least trying to park too closely!- but I'm pretty sure 'chucking a rucksack out' would not have helped much!