Folks,
See today's Australian for a column by Steve Creedy, reporting Greg Vaughan on the record about the details of the rotor repair --- it is as I stated in my original post.
And yet, in the matter of the most recent action against Richard by CASA it was claimed in the AAT (see previous posts) that there was extensive blade damage --- which was simply not true.
This could be described as standard CASA tactics in the AAT, dredge up a list of allegations, but not the outcomes of those allegations. Commonly, lists of RCAs are trotted out, but never the resolution of the RCAs.
As for the rest of the complaints dealt with in the AAT appeal, most were subjective, "flew too close" etc., it now seems that you can have your license suspended on subjective third party opinions on "airmanship".
The only "fact" was that he had a line strike, to suggest that continuing flight for a few hundred meters amounted to "continuing flight" is highly subjective, it looks to me more like an immediate landing, followed by moving the aircraft several hundred more meters to a safer patch of ground.
Mick,
There had been filming at Breeza and around the general area in the days before, but there was no film crew on this flight.
As to the cause of the loss, I have not made any comment, I do not have an opinion, because I have no facts, on which to base an opinion.