Fatter Gator, if I have been instrumental in your abrupt departure then please stick around and take me to task. I can assure you that all I want is to see the airworthiness that operated on my behalf and of which I was blissfully unaware be there for those who do Military Aviation today. Why else would I be forever chuntering on about it? Self aggrandisement? A bit difficult being, as you say, that I post anonymously. On the other hand if you support Military Air Safety then stick around and post accordingly.
This isn't an entertainment, it's supposed to be an exchange between aviation professionals. Now we can all slip below the high bar that infers, self most definitely included, but if our intentions are honourable and we are not being two faced then we can all gain from the process, whether we be pro or con. The problem about announcing one's departure is that it can follow the Law of Diminishing Returns as one comes and goes...
Which Law brings us of course back to you Tourist. I'm confused as to why the previous practice of switching off fwd Anti-Collision lights in the conditions that pertained at the time of the accident somehow means that switching off the later fwd HISLs was not a factor in the mid air collision of the two i/b o/b Seakings? I know that the BoI said they were not, but that trial was then the only formal one to date, ie no such trials had been carried out on the Mk7 previously. Even your can-do civvies would have trialled them, having 'glued' them on, wouldn't they?
Now I am an old retired fixed wing truckie, with very few rotary hours and they all pax, but isn't the whole raison d'etre of such devices to avoid collisions (there's a clue there somewhere in the name)? So with both aircraft having switched off said devices it follows that the risk of collision is increased doesn't it, yet the BoI finds that it wasn't and indeed that the HISLs had no bearing on it. Can you see the difficulty here? Operator illegally fits HISLs, 7 killed and two a/c lost in a mid-air, operator investigates accident, operator finds HISLs not to be a factor. Perhaps they weren't, but that is why the civvies have a regulator and an investigator separate and independent of the operators and of each other. That is all I ask for, all we ask for. Is it really so much?