Brian
I did appreciate you asking those questions for me but I am surprised that you think them a red herring – 7760 was found set and could have been or still could be a clue as to their actions.
This is a piece of real evidence as opposed to searching for, say, hypothetical control system defects that has taken so much of your time and effort and for which there is no evidence whatsover in this crash – that activity is a red herring if ever there was one.
Remember that it would have been improbable that, by the nature of the selector switches, impact could have got them there from an assumed start of 7000; further, that it would have been bad practice (as recommended and also from a common sense perspective) for the crew to have been bothering to change such a setting in their location and in an immediate emergency.
There was no technical reason why the secondary radar at Lowther Hill would not have had consistent returns from their transponder for most of their sea crossing (and therefore got their SSR code) – indeed, there was a witness to the replay of the recordings whose description of a straight line track implied multiple returns over a significant time.
How would those official answers look if the radar recording turned up, or someone came forward (hint, if you are reading this) as a witness to the replay of that recording, confirming that 7760 had been used?
It would surely then be viewed as very pertinent to have got those answers previously.
Oh, and I think JP's point about letting us all see the essential info that you were presenting is valid.