RP,
At the time of the last QFE/QNH debate I was firmly on the side of the QFE advocates as I had never operated outside the UK. However we now operate all our front line ac types all round the world (often at high elev). Would it not be wise to bite the bullet and change to the system that everyone else uses? A brand new student who has never seen QFE would just accept that the airfield is 200ft amsl and that the circuit is flown at 1200' QNH. How do other air forces cope? It may be easier to use QFE to teach aerodrome procedures in the flatlands of Lincs but that comes at the expense of terrain and altitude awareness. I accept your example, but the same student has to be capable of PFL'ing into a field on the Regional QNH. Would he not be more terrain aware if the false principle that altimeter always reads zero on the ground had not been introduced from trip 1?
At multi-engine OCU level I have seen poor SA from students who are not used to operating on QNH. Nearly every training approach they make will be on QFE at an RAF airfield and most of their for-real approaches will be on QNH at a civil airport or foreign military base. Additionally as more civil charter aircaft use our bases we are faced with mixed QFE/QNH ops - which is not ideal.
I believe that we should be making it as easy as possible to operate safely when everything else is strange and consequently we are doing ourselves a disservice by persisting with this eccentric and anachronistic practice.
I think that most ME types woyuld prefer to have one procedure (which would have to be QNH) and I would be interested to hear if the views of FJ/RW folks have swung towards QNH now that they are operating in "stranger" areas more regularly?
Interesting debate though
