Originally Posted by PJ
Its all been said before but QNH references your altitude with respect to surrounding terrain (not just height above the airfield reference point or runway threshold) and also the base of any controlled airspace above. Both of these things are very useful to know. The only time I used QFE I think was going to Northolt and also when I converted my FAA licence back in the UK and I think it was all part of making the IR test awkward. QFE/ airfield QNH / regional QNH/ standard1013- with all sorts of different transitions to boot, changing the settings every 5 minutes it seemed and that idiotic practice of setting the altimeters to completely different settings at various times in the flight. So, with two altimeters in a spamcan if one is faulty how can you tell a fault even exists? but then of course without a third standby how would you tell which one? The jet aircraft I flew all had 3 pressure alts and nearly all had rad alt so QFE was totally redundant, it told us nothing, in fact using it would limit our "altitude awareness". Don't supa-dupa military aircraft have rad alt's?
What a load of tosh!
Are you seriously suggesting rad alt is used for anything other than low flying (ie NOT in a radar or visual circuit)? What exactly do you fly?
As for the rest....ill-informed and incorrect.
Please.....if you don't like it, don't fly it. The rest of us are happy (clearly in our ignorance) and have managed to amass 000's of hours in fast & pointy things (without the assistance of anyone else for many), rotary jobbies and big fat slow things (yes, like the stuff you fly?).
QNH may well work for you and that's great but please don't stick your nose in where you clearly don't understand the job we do and the methods we use.
Even more bored now and banging out of this thread!
