Michael Summers

The reply to my post reference the Radar Plot at Craven.

At the time the aircraft disappeared it was not radar identified. The aircraft was observed 36 - 40nm North of Singleton on the Mount Sandon - Singleton track at time 0928. Given the comments from the controllers it is evident that there was no accurate position on the aircraft or an accurate heading able to be determined. The Radar diagram on the website I believe is completely mis-leading. It has the aircraft identified at the position above but then it has it heading east to the final position, number 2 on the plot. From what I can determine from the transcript, after it was first identified and lost on the screen, it was not identified again. This is evident by the fact that at 0936 the controllers are asking him to squark ident. He says" were squarking 3000 with ident..." and the comments "we're looking for you". in other words they had no data indicating where the aircraft went after they first identified it north of Singleton and it is still not on the screen. Also the fact it wasn't able to be identified by the Williamtown Radar head at the time it disappeared was because it was below the line of sight of the Radar due to the terrain around the Barrington tops area and because the aircraft was so far to the North West. My belief is that after it was first identified at 0928 it continued on roughly the same heading it was on from Craven (approx 315 degrees magnetic), taking it even further away from Radar coverage, ending up flying the route I posted on my previous blog. If it indeed was where the final indication is on the drawing, at 5000 feet, it would have been well and truly inside radar coverage and they would have seen an exact position where it went in. The final plotted position on the radar plot is less than 40nm from Williamtown. A radar would certainly be able to detect an aircraft above 5000 feet at this range. Also the controllers only suggested he "....head east toward the coast, toward Wlliamtown". They had no idea where he was heading, this was just a suggested course of action. In summary I believe the radar drawing is unreliable.

I have also attached the missing page of the transcript, page 2 as it doesn't show up on the website.

cheers,

Michael