ALT Setting procedures
Help, tell me I'm not going senile.
Have recently started a new job in another country and the Company SOP's tell us to reset to area QNH at 1000ft below intended cruise altitude. All our op's are conducted below Transition (DHC-6) and we normally level off at about 8 or 10,000 at about 15 or 20 dme. I recently had on 3 days running, Radar question the integrety of our transponder then asked us to switch it to mode A. They even gave us the Terminal QNH but my training Capt (young upstart) refused to change back as it was Company SOP's to change already (to area QNH). Difference on the days mentioned was either 5 or 6 mb's.
It's my understanding that if you are in a TMA or control zone then you set the QNH as advertised on the ATIS or as informed by ATC. Area QNH is exactly that...Area QNH as against Terminal QNH.
Can anyone point me to an ICAO reference that I can refer to and quote to our FOM so as to get this sorted out. I'm unable to find anything in writing myself. Because FOM couldn't find anything in our AIP then he said SOP's remain unless I can show him an alternative, In the mean time, our engineering dept is running out of Transponders to replace the ones being written up!!!