Arkroyal
In response to another quote “There was no distress call or attempt to squawk "EMERGENCY"; either of which would have alerted SARSAT.”
You wrote
<<> It would appear that the time scale would have precluded this. Yes, just my opinion.>>
I agree, the maximum time they had to react to a problem (waypoint change to impact) would surely not have been sufficient in view of the predicament they would have been in (being so close to danger whatever the problem) for them to attend to such. Indeed, I believe it is the recommendation in sudden emergencies not to attempt to change SSR code as such an action may cause ATC to lose contact (if there was any in the first place) and if they had attempted such the resulting confusion as to what code was set in this incident is an example of why this should not be done!
Which only leaves it that the SSR code found set got there by impact or was an unusual code set for a special task.
For the former, think of the selector switch type and that one wheel had to have been moved 2 places, another 1 – both in the middle, yet the other two (outers) had to be undisturbed – get hold of a gash unit and use a variety of “soft objects”, etc sort of like the “mythbusters” TV team do.
Only one possibility left really.