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Thread: Qfe Procedure
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Old 15th June 2003 | 14:24
  #9 (permalink)  
LEM
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Joined: May 2003
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From: The Roman Empire
Interesting, I thought QFE had been banned almost everywhere some years ago.
It seems I was wrong.
I used QFE years ago, I remember everybody liked it, of course it gives instinctive HAT indications... and transitioning to QNH seemed to be quite difficult.
Today, using QFE would be almost unthinkable to me, for three (good) reasons:

1) there's an implicit and serious risk (which could be fatal) in such a practice: you have to calculate your QFE by substracting tot hectopascals from QNH.
If you make a mistake in calculating it, how can you have a good glide check? are you sure you are going to decide, at the minima, before hitting the ground?

We used to seek some confirmation from the radioaltimeter, setting DH on it, but that was not good practice, since radioalt is allowed only for Cat II&III.

2) As already noted, you can't use QFE on elevated airfields, because of the lack of subscale...

3)Today everybody works with FMS's, and I think all FMS's altitudes are QNH and can't be turned into QFE.

That said, it's interesting to hear that I might be required to use it again, if I had to fly to the East....
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