Aah! but with the loadies back in the cabin, who in the cockpit would have bothered scrambling the SSR transponder dials if they had come into trouble so quickly with a judgment of distance error? 7760 would have been difficult to get to from 7000 even if you spent all day throwing beanbags at such a piece of kit - the switches ain't easy to knock accidentally. Could it have actually been set before they got into trouble?
Nah! – someone would have mentioned it … surely.
How about a hypothetical? At the time, trying out a new navaid would normally have been done by a Flightchecker (BD) and so not a usual op flight task and so probably no specific SSR code on the books – so what code do you grab if an op a/c is the first one that can take the onboard gear and an opportunity for a test presents itself?