Originally Posted by
jimf671
We know what their heading was in the last seconds but their path across the ground may have brought them along the edge of the light's red sector.
So what would they have seen and what would they have taken from that? Every 500m at 80 knots they should see a flash of white or red. Was the cloud base really 300 to 400 feet or was it below 282 feet?
The surface wind was 220deg/20kt and they were heading 122deg/80kt i.e. almost all right crosswind which explains the track shown in fig 6 of about 110deg. The transcript notes the pilot saying "groundspeed gonna start increasing", I wouldn't have thought by much as it's almost all crosswind.
The aftercast says 300' cloud base, and their baro altimeter was indicating 300'. So they would have been just in/out of the bottom of it at 200' radalt with mostly downward visibility. But I would have thought at that short range, even if the light was 80' deep in cloud, the white light of the lighthouse would have lit them up like a christmas tree at least once before they finally saw the rock maybe a second or 2 before impact (they were on the seaward white side of the lighthouse).
I'm surprised the pilot said nothing in the last 14 seconds of the recording, 9 seconds of which was post impact. I suspect the "we're gone" comment from the co-pilot came about one second after they hit the rock, which were the last words recorded from any crew member.