My point was that, as with BoIs, the Coroner can only work with the evidence placed before him. And that is DV's point. MoD have a nasty habit of destroying or withholding evidence; or just denying it exists in the first place.

However, in the case I mentioned, the Coroner acted appallingly towards the families, one father in particular. He was a "temp", necessary because of the sheer number of inquests. He did not have a stenographer, due to financial cutbacks, so had to take all the notes himself in longhand. As a result, the proceedings were disjointed and shambolic.

He would not allow questions relating to the three main contributory factors noted by the BoI. He refused to reconcile vastly different witness statements. Time after time he put up with witnesses refusing to answer the question, or offering a wholly unrelated reply.

Most witnesses were patently unsuitable for the questions, and he constantly said "We'll get back to that later" or "Write to me with the answer". Not once did he ever return to get the answer, and both MoD and Coroner's Office confirm that no submissions with the answers were made after the inquest.

Justice was not seen to be done. What was discussed at the 3.5 day inquest could have been finished in a day. Contrast this with Ft Lt Cunningham's inquest, planned to last 3 weeks.

Mr Walker did a fine job on Nimrod. The Government's response? Set up a Committee to look at how to curb his enthusiasm for the truth. A lesser known fact.... The MP representing the family (above) and who had asked Minister some leading questions (MoD actually told the truth in one reply, but this merely exposed the fact they had lied to the original investigators) was placed on this committee, meaning he was not permitted to ask any further questions on related matters. A very effective gag, and stopped awkward questions in their tracks. The more I look at this case, the more it looks far worse than any other.

Clicker

Seeing as successful Tornado CWS flight trials were concluded in 1997, it would have been much better to have installed a CWS during the GR1 upgrade to GR4.

Which avionic upgrade are you talking about?

DV

DV,

I'm presumed that there was an upgrade from the GR1 to GR4 as Mode S was fitted.

I'm not in the service so just my assumption that a chance may have gone begging.

I understand that Bond Helicopters have fitted Honeywell TCAS II to their Super Puma helicopters. It took them six months including flight trials and certification etc. MoD plan on installing Honeywell TCAS II to the Tornado GR4 aircraft, and so far it has taken them six years.

http://aerospace.honeywell.com/~/med...Bond_TCAS.ashx

As a retired aircraft engineer who has been involved in engineering new fits and and carrying out flight trials testing I believe that the Bond time frame is the more realistic, if there is the will.

DV

I wonder if this event features in the SI,

Tornado collision: Warning system was ?cancelled? - The Scotsman


DV

I'm completely confused as to what the MAA does. The Red Arrows thread is a litany of incompetence and failure to act. They seem to have no power over the procurers in DE&S or operators. Yet the last SDSR was delayed by them insisting on some elements of the Nimrod review being funded. BZ. Which only shows someone thought it a good idea not to fund them, which is pretty frightening. :( They need to be "open and honest".

DV you are correct but TCAS 2 is only fitted to the L2 variant.

Has MOD gone completely mad?

So we have two Tornadoes closing around 14nms/min at 500ft, and one gets "climb, climb now", and the other poor sod gets "descend, descend now". This is the very reason why AAIB advised in 1994 that TCAS was unsuitable because "It resolves conflictions by advising manoeuvers in the vertical plane and this would be inappropriate at low level"

So we have waited 20 years for MOD to select a piece of equipment that they were advised against using in 1994.

DV

Given the rate that a Tornado can climb at low level, does it matter if the other cannot descend much?

Come on then DV, propose a better solution. Years were wasted trying to develop a gold-plated bespoke CWS for fast jets.

Just because the AAIB wrote something doesn't make it gospel, especially not when it's 20 years old. Anyone familiar with TCAS II knows that 'Descend' instructions are inhibited below 1000 feet as measured on the radar altimeter, so the lower aircraft in a proximity situation will only receive the advisory call "Traffic, traffic". This will cue the pilots' eyes immediately to the TCAS display, where they will see a plan view showing where to look out for the offending aircraft and hopefully allow them to duck under it.

Meanwhile the higher aircraft will get a "Climb, climb" resolution advisory, because these are not inhibited by low heights. So by following the instructions, the collision will be broken, even if both aircraft are hoofing around at 100 feet. TCAS II is a cooperative system, so if both aircraft are at exactly the same altitude, the system will still make a decision to tell one of the aircraft to climb.

Of course the problem of confliction with non-transponding aircraft will continue post installation of TCAS II. Have you got any bright ideas of how to deal with that, DV? Perhaps Tornado should be fitted with FLARM? There's a nice spot for a COTS unit on the glareshield, it should block the view out of the windscreen nicely.... get in touch with the PT, I'm sure they'd appreciate your guidance.

MOD accepted this advice at the time and funded a CWS programme for fast jets.

I understand that flight trials were concluded in 1997 for a fast jet system. MOD decided at that time to procure the CWS with a planned in service date of 2004; hence the statement in the 1998 SDR.

DV

Easy Street


All this TCAS stuff is long after my time, so a genuine question - one that arose during the Mull of Kintyre debate.


Taken literally, that could mean you have a rock face 1000' in front of you, with your huff and puff altimeter saying, say, 3000'. In other words, most Radar Altimeters measure the RANGE to the nearest fixed object within the beam pattern. The word "altimeter" can be misleading. So, for example, when the Chinook hit the hill at (800'?), the RadAlt indicated zero, or as near as dammit. Have I got this wrong? I remember this on MoK because the various reports seemed at times to confuse barometric with radar. (I've deliberately not mentioned Radio Altimeters!) Thanks.

tuc,

You have got me doubting whether I should have said 'radar' or 'radio' altimeter, so I shall stick to 'radalt'!

I don't know what beamwidth a rotary-wing aircraft's radalt would typically have, but the scenario you describe would certainly be possible with the radalts fitted to fast jets. The beamwidth of older ones was about 90° to ensure that they stayed locked on at moderate bank and pitch angles, and they returned the "height" reading from the shortest range return. This was noticeable when flying parallel to vertical cliff walls, when it was possible to get a return from the side at small bank angles. To address your specific scenario, someone flying into a hillside in level flight would see constant barometric altitude, while the radalt progressively decreased to zero.

There are some newfangled 'covert' radalts, designed to be better in tight EMCON. Whether these have a narrow beamwidth, electronically steered to the vertical axis, I know not. If they did, it might be possible to fly into a vertical cliff wall while getting a height reading from the valley floor.

Back on topic, TCAS II believes whatever radalt input it gets when deciding whether to screen out "descend" instructions. They didn't account for covert radalts or valley flying when drawing up the spec! The cooperative decision on vertical deconfliction is taken with reference to barometric altitude at 1013.2hPa, as fed to the transponder, so there should be no chance of undulating terrain compromising the integrity of the instructions (only exception being where the 'low' aircraft is forced to climb by terrain, in which case the 'high' aircraft should get an 'increase climb' instruction). It's worth remembering also that GPWS warnings have primacy over TCAS instructions, even in civvie airliner land; rest assured that system designers had actually considered the possibility that vertically-based deconfliction instructions near the ground might carry their own risks...

TCAS II is not ideal for fast jets but it is better than nothing, which following the failure of the bespoke programme (which I had always understood to be much later than 1997; I thought 2004...) was the only alternative. Even in situations where its deconfliction instructions are inhibited, it will cue aircrew to look in the right place when squawking traffic approaches. It probably would have saved 3 lives in 2012. Let's see what the SI has to say over MoD taking 10 years to actually get round to fitting it.....

Thanks Easy Street. Far more up to date than me. Always ask someone who knows!

It is documented that the initial trials were commenced in 1994, and concluded in 1997. MoD then decided to procure the system with an in sevice date of 2004. This "bespoke" system was persued because of the percieved problems with TCAS, as I indicated in my ealier post. It now seems that we are back to the 1994 position.

The whole thing was summed up by the DG MAA in 2010 when he reported "Incremental mitigation of this chronic risk, which has a high 'societal concern' factor, has suffered protracted delays over successive PRs since the 1998 SDR.

I am not against the TCAS system, it is just that if it is OK to install it now, why not 20 years ago; the basic system has not changed that much.

Let's see if the SI contains this information.

DV

No need to wait for the SI on that one. This was merely another symptom of the illness diagnosed by Bernard Gray before he became CDM, namely the institutionalised gold-plating of requirements, under-estimation of technical risk as a means of securing funding when pursuing novel programmes, and a systematic refusal to contemplate the off-the-shelf 80% solution. TCAS was only adopted when there was literally no other option - and judging by the time taken to get it into service, I wouldn't be surprised to see evidence of a rear-guard action by the gold-platers....

Maybe a few areas of misunderstanding about radalt. I was about to try to explain in my own words, but then found the following. Sorry, I have no idea what language this was written in, but it explains some very important priciples about radalt and what it actually measures - notwithstanding East Street points about beamwith.

It's not just a simple measurement of distance from Tx/Rx to the nearest object.

It is the dim and distant past but I do not recall TCAS trials in the mid 90s but do remember GPWS being trialled, I think on the SAOEU GR1 at Boscombe. It was being aligned with a Laser IN competition to replace the old mechanical system.

TART Report
 

Does anyone have a copy of the Tornado Airworthiness Review Teams (TART) report, dated circa 1996? MoD appears to have lost all their copies.

Please PM me if you have.

DV

I note that over the past couple of months Angus Robertson has made several attempts to obtain a copy of the SI report into the Tornado collision over the Moray Firth; they are listed below along with the repy from MoD. Each reply gets more and more unbelievable with the latest being a flat refusal to comply with their own JSP. What are they afraid of? If this had been a collision between a Tornado and a civil aircraft the AAIB/Ministry of Transport would have published their report as soon as it was completed; well in advance of an Inquest or FAI. It seems that MoD are so unsure of their own investigation that they are only prepared to offer their SI reports for public scrutiny after the case has been closed.

http://www.theyworkforyou.com/wrans/?id=2013-12-03c.179565.h&s=date%3A20131203+column%3A639+section%3Awrans

http://www.theyworkforyou.com/wrans/?id=2014-03-19a.191597.h&s=%28section%3Awrans%29+speaker%3A11189#g191597 .

http://www.theyworkforyou.com/wrans/?id=2014-04-03a.194550.h&s=%28section%3Awrans%29+speaker%3A11189#g194550 .q0

DV