I’ve searched the bulletin board to no avail so…
When starting a quick flight on the runway with engines running it would be nice to have the barometer auto-set to whatever the METAR in use at that location is. Saves having to remember to press button “B” to set it.
Only an idea…
Good idea. And we are stuck with QNH (sea level pressure) and not QFE (reads zero on that airfield) because the USA uses that system.
Also if you use a mouse on the Kollsman knob to adjust it the thing seems to work the wrong way. Unless memory fails me turning it clockwise should make it read lower and vice versa.
B key does just fine…IRL we need to set airport elevation or listen to ATIS/ASOS
Yes in the States.
In Britain we set the altimeter to read zero at the field (QFE not QNH) and if travelling elsewhere/flying aound for a long time we get an update to QFE from ATC before the circuit.
And its in millibars not inches of mercury
Wait, they treat the whole country as if it’s at sea level? What happens on cross-country flights in the highlands?
To me that sounds quite weird. As long as you stay in the circuit, I SUPPOSE it is OK, but outside the circuit I would consider that an unnecessary source of possible conflict. From a quick review on the internet it seems that this is to a certain extent a holdover from the past and that current wisdom in the UK also favours QNH.
FWIW I did all my IRL flying many years ago in South Africa and there is was - like apparently most places in the world - QNH only.
And BTW the SI unit of measure for pressure is hectopascal (hPa). Even though it is essentially the same thing, I believe the term millibar is no longer officially correct.
Well of course not. If you measure from sea-level then mountains are marked with heights and terrain clearance can be added on top. So once airborne from a field (reading zero) and on a cross country we set a regional QNH via the various radar controllers. That may drift because of changing weather. But when either returning home or landing elsewhere we get the QFE from the ATC at wherever it is.
Avoids having to remember field elevation and subtract while in a circuit.
See my other answer. And yes - hpa and Mb but we weren’t being pedantic.
It’s not “of course not.” You said something that is new to me that I’m genuinely curious about. We simply can’t do that here in the States, due to terrain and obstacle clearance, especially out west. Heck, I don’t even know if I could set QFE at, say, Leadville, CO at almost 10,000’ MSL - I don’t think it’s physically possible in most altimeters.
But there are also a lot of traffic considerations, a LOT of airports (many of which do not report an altimeter setting, and VFR traffic doesn’t have to talk to ATC at all, anyway.
So I’m legit marveling at how that works, and it sounds like it comes mostly down to positive ATC control and fairly homogenous airport elevations.