Why do the RAF still use QFE?
 

Just pondering the thought. Why do RAF pilots still use QFE? As a civvy pilot, I use QNH all the time, everywhere... except RAF bases. Just wondering why.

We went round this buoy many times and in 1990 Lady Lucinda Buck's lover decreed that we went to QNH. At great expense, and contrary to all advice at the time, we went to QNH. After the Daily Mirror expose the first thing that was done was to revert at great expense to QFE.

The RAF does use QNH at many airfields such as Kandahar and Nairobi.

Dah!! 'Cos it tells you how high you are above the point you intend to land at??? Without having to do any mental gymnastics???????

Go to any shop and watch today's teenager giving you change - do they do mental arithmetic, or do they look at the screen to decide how much money to give back to you?? And who provides today's pilots?? Mr QNH, or Mr Let's Keep It Simple???

And anyway - the Americans work on QNH, so that's as good a reason as any for using QFE!!

:yuk:

stops you flying into the ground ?

No brainer - most people would like to see zero on the altimeter as the wheels touch the ground not some mystical height you have to think about............:ok:

KISS:)

From what I was told, only this week, commercial pilots use QNH for procedural approaches, whilst the military are on QFE. In GA pilots may opt for either.

<<but in Commercial Aviation they use QFE for instrument approaches. (I may be out of date on this).>>

Unless things have changed since I retired 7 years ago, just about all airlines use QNH. The last ones to use QFE thar I recall were Aer Lingus and one or two east European companies, but they had changed by the time I left. Someone more up-to-date will no doubt comment.

HD, I will accept that as my info pre-dates your retirement.

That Sir Peter temporarily got the RAF to use QNH and the RAF then rebelled is not in doubt. Perhaps one of the few cases where we actually changed back.

The only real value of QFE, that I can see, is to make a circuit look pretty on the altimeter. Downwind at 1000' and final at 500' for example.

I don't ever recall looking at the altimeter as I touchdown (if you really needed to know your ht a rad-alt would be better)

On instrument approach it matters not, as long as you know which datum is set and then fly to the appropriate minima.

QNH (or RPS) much better for terrain clearance and stopping you from entering controller airspace from below.

QFE may help for elementary/basic cct trg, but for anything else, I'd go with QNH.

We used QFE at Lands End (yes it is a civvy airport) till our club folded there this year. Or was that just to make it easy for us studes, as implied by Paul Chocks?

I think the rules changed last year didn't they? All aircraft preparing for take off are given QFE unless QNH is requested.

The only organisation in the UK that would appear to routinely use QFE is the RAF (plus, I assume, the RN and AAC?), although I don't know what the formerly shiny fleet at Brize and the Truckies at Lyneham use.

All datums at significant civil aerodromes are based on QNH and I know of no airline or AOC operator (UK or otherwise) which uses anything other than QNH for visual or instrument approach work. All the charts published (Jepp, Aerad etc) use QNH with heights referred to threshold/aerodrome elevation in brackets (presumably for the RAF). For Nairobi and other similarly elevated aerodromes, I seem to recall that QNE was the most used practice given the limitations of altimeters.

Given that, in a relatively short flight outside controlled airspace, a relatively inexperienced or student pilot, not to mention those of greater experience, can be instructed to fly on 3 or more potentially widely spaced pressure settings QNH, Regional Pressure Setting, QFE, Standard (1013.2) if feeling brave, perhaps another RPS and another aerodrome QNH, the potential for confusion and misreading/mis-setting altimeters with all these changes of setting is, I would suggest, greatly increased.

In these days of constantly updated information are RPS really relevant? These would appear to date from the days of the Shackleton and Dakota when pilots were out of communication for prolonged periods and needed a FORECAST RPS for the areas in which they were operating.

Is QFE really necessary? Even for a Surveillance Radar Approach the controller passing an advisory altitude based on QNH is giving the pilot a figure to which he/she may adjust rate of descent. At Decision Altitude/Minimum Descent Altitude the pilot will take an appropriate action on the basis of that altitude. Seeing zero on the altimeter at the threshold is an irrelevance, as at the threshold it may need to read 50ft or so.

Let's just have QNH and Standard and be done with it. And whilst we're about it let's have a standard transition altitude. Howzabout 10,000ft. So that'll knock it down to a very few pressure setting changes for those unpressurised aircraft operating outside CAS and below 10,000ft.

Standing by for incomers..........

With you all the way Octavian, thanks for saving me writing similar

Interesting responses (and so many, in so short a time!). Seems to me that the arguments for using QFE are:

- to fly a circuit you don't have to add 1000ft to the aerodrome elevation
- to fly an approach you don't have to get into the mindset that the hard stuff isn't going to be where the height pointy thing says "0".

Given that I'm no mental arithmetic genius and that I can still do both of the above, I'm guessing that the guys and girls who are far brighter than I and lucky enough to be flying some of the finest flying machinery known to mankind can probably also do the same.

There is only one occasion where I can think that having QFE set is actually more sensible than having QNH, and that is when you're flying a PAR. Other than that, I see no reason why everyone shouldn't have QNH set all the time (when they're below transition).

FWIW, I'm totally with Octavian. Simplify the whole darn shebang, so that everyone in uncontrolled airspace is flying on the most accurate QNH available (RPS? WTF?). From the geezer in the microlight at a private strip, to the guy in the Typhoon transiting to the exercise areas, to airliners entering the shark infested custard between airway and (for instance) Teesside/Plymouth/Doncaster's zones. Everyone uses QNH below 10,000ft: *highly* sensible. In fact: let's have a Europe-wide altimeter policy, where everyone below the highest terrain (Mont Blanc, 15,781ft) uses QNH: round it up and let's call it 18,000ft... which, funnily enough, would bring Europe into line with the USA.

So, Octavian, I'm with you on this one. I wonder how many other folks are?

What about an LZ, say in an op area, with no ATC? Throw in marginal conditions.
Which would be best?

Walter

Ha Ha - you have said it matey!!:ok:

WX Man

I'm not. QFE is only use in the circuit area/instrument approack. When the wizzy FJ is zipping around at low level it does use QNH, in this case the regional pressure setting. I for one prefer to land at 0 feet, and when I am landing somewhere else a lot higher I will treat it with the caution that it deserves.

Why should the RAF change? It works for us, if you don't like it, don't fly into RAF airfields.:hmm:

And that surely is the best argument for not doing it!;)

Roland makes a valid point. It is much easier (and safer) to always see the same numbers whichever airfield you are using. Your 400' point is always your 400' point and not some random figure you've calculated after 8 hours sausage side! I'm with the KISS brigade.

Slightly off thread but do they still use inches over the other side of the pond? I seem to remember that when the RAF bought the Phantom they spent about a trillion pounds fitting them with Rolls Royce engines and various other mods but balked at twopence halfpenny per aircraft to alter the altimeter scales to millibars, requiring every ATC for years to come to pass altimeter settings to Phantoms in inches. Great fun in tankers (using millibars) with a pair of them in tow.

Octavian,
Simple. Just put in a "Request for Change"......:E
We all know what will happen. A "Hissy Fit" from Ops, then quietly filed in File 13 [the LATU box]

Odd. All over the world, civil and military pilots takeoff and land on QNH. Private as well as professional pilots. In all kinds of weather. So is using QNH dangerous ?

As someone who used to fly very regualrly into RAF bases as a civ flight.

It really doesn't matter a toss.

QFE/QNH all RAF pilots can operate on QNH and all civi pilots can operate on QFE its not a bloody problem.

If it means that the boy's in theater can get even 1 minute extra on the phone or one of the most piddly little bits of kit which makes life more comfy don't change a bloody thing.

The very small amount of ball ache involved is worth it compared to spending a sodding fortune changing everything.

I do wonder how many of the civi pilots with very strong views on the subject have had to operate day in and day out using the system. It really doesn't matter.

Well said. It really isn't that important so why change it...and it works.

I have - like many of you - used both as a military pilot.

In the UK where even the highest airfields are probably less than 600 feet above MSL, you probably won't mind winding the altimeter from 1013 to 993mb (at worst).

However, if you wanted to fly into - say - Black Rock airfield in the States, you might not enjoy the wrist and finger ache you would get changing from 1013 to 798mb.

Then just imagine going into San Rafael Airport in Peru, where you would need to set 532mb. Anybody know an altimeter that goes that low???

Horses for courses methinks.

Why do RAF pilots use QFE?

Well yeh! but no but yeh! because they can!

Simples!

:ugh:

Altimeter Settings
 

Quite right Wholigan.

There is another, easier option for high level airfields, request QNE. QNE is your altimeter reading with 1013.2 set. Thus ATC would give you the number of feet you would see on your altimeter on the ground at the airfield datum with 1013.2 set in your subscale. I had to use that at Entebbe when the QNH was outside the range of my altimeter.

Neppie
:eek:

QFE or QNH both make some sort of sense - either Oft or the airfield elevation on touchdown. QNE gives you reference to neither very well and is a pointless throwback to the era of limited mechanical altimeters.

I suppose it makes sense if you are still operating really antique equipment AND operating out of Bogota. QFE makes more sense for a largely UK based operator but makes little sense to a largely worldwide operator. If the likes of BA and Virgin and the rest of the airline world use QNH it is not for a whim. Terrain awareness and IAS/TAS issues at hot and high airfields tend to push you towards QNH for safety reasons. QFE is fine for a parochial, inwards looking, UK centric operation.

Is this one of those Pprune threads that gets revisited when there's not much else to discuss? Seems to read that way.

At great risk of repeating previous posters, it really is a case of being able to use either, as is appropriate for the situation. I remember a lecture about flexibilty in air ops...................

I always thought that QNH with ApproacH and QFE with TowEr was the best compromise.

I was instructing at a UAS when we changed from QFE to QNH. Not too difficult until one (very good) student was given an EFATO. She called that she was above the turnback min height and started a turnback only to have the QFI take control and climb away. Brought up on QFE she'd reverted to habit - only the aerodrome elevation was nearly 400 ft and she was much lower than she thought.

The QNH experiment didn't last that long - but it wasn't Learning Command who insisted we went back to QFE, it was the fast-jet pointy-heads.

Why does the RAF use QFE? For the same reason mutts lick their nuts - because they can!

Walter, you didn't offer an answer and no one else has.

RAD ALT.

If there is no one there to measure the pressure then you have to set your own.

If the LZ is on high terrain in a plain then again you need visual or rad alt.

Pontious

Well I will!

Picture flying in a helicopter into a LZ at night in the mountains of Norway to an approach aid consisting of five torches for the use of laid by the MAOT. On the approach the Rad Alt is useless as it is reading under the aircraft and wizzing up and down as you pass over the terrain. What would you like to see on your Bar Alt as you approach the T?

I like to see it winding down to zero not some height above sea level that I have to remember. It's hard enough flying the aircraft especially if the wind is up your chuff and bouncy, it's snowing and you are not allowed to use landing lights. Oh - and you are about to get whiteout in the dark!!

Airfields are a totally different ball game for people with less flying ability!:)

Ducking and running now.................:ok:

[B]Tankertrashnav[B]

I started flying in Phantoms in 1970. All of the aircraft that I subsequently flew in (including some of the prototypes) had altimeters calibrated in millibars.

bast0n, fair dink, except you need a guy on the ground with an anemometer. How do the SAR crews operate?

SAR, overwater; set Baralt to Radalt.

Pontious

Very carefully! :ok:

They also have the ability to use their landing and floodlights and nowadays have NVG and probably FLIR for all I know. They also tend to operate in an area that they get to know very well.

In my days in SAR, Whirlwind and Wessex we were even more careful/stupid!:)

PS. I think you meant altimeter?

Doh! too early, too much vin, I meant barometer.

PS, we did the same, set altimeter to rad alt on the Nimrod so effectively we were on local QNH in an area or Force QNH is operating with other forces.

Pontious

I like the idea of a barometer - sitting there in the cold with this big mahogany banjo shaped thing - tapping the glass and watching the needle jerk to Fair!!:ok:

and reading off the arrow pointing to inches. Actually mine say 1007.2 towards Fair.

To be fair it is cool and sunny.

I think we are on the same hill - VFR is best.

And of course rotary radalts have been known to tell you how far above the underslung load you are....:eek:

P3 - there's no explanation for the use of QFE under those circumstances.

We (I'm a controller) should be expected to be able to work out the difference between RPS/SAS and QFE without being so lazy as to stick everything on one pressure. The only thing I can think of at that kind of distance was proximity to the unit's terrain safe level, which is based on QFE. Still no excuse though. Unless it's a local procedure of some kind, I can't speak for every unit of course. If anything it's easier to have non overhead transiting traffic on RPS/SAS because everything out and about would be using that pressure rather than a specific unit's QFE anyway. Circuit traffic and inbound traffic - QFE. Everything else - be flexible, from my point of view.