That is correct, sir.

I will advise my friend to send this array to a pro. I did not change a singe bit on it, so there is about the same chance to recover data than before my intervention.

Still, it besets me, as I am passionate about almost every IT branch, including DR (definitely not a pro, though) and I really enjoy learning and doing this stuff. I recovered TBs of data during las few years, but this is my first time with RAID / Mac OS and this is way harder task than a single Windows partition...

A week ago I didn't know anything about HFS+ file system and knowledge about sectors and hex was forgotten... Week later I think I'm at technician level again that's still long hard road before professional, not to mention expert level.... I will probably play some more with discs, finding beginning/ending pattern, but eventually I will give up and return drives.

Thank you all for valuable tips and support.

Right
There are ways to find that out.