Fellsteruk wrote:So where I fly the transition altitude is 6,000ft so if I want to fly up, say 8,000 ft, I could stay on local QNH or RPG then no consideration on the way down through the layer to go onto QNH.
You would rarely fly in the days where flight levels and altitudes differ by +/-500ft or +/-1000ft if you are rated to “fly in the layers”, as far as terrain awareness is involved it’s best to stay on QNH !
Unless you are in the hands of ATC in controlled airspace, I suggest you always fly on aerodrome QNH
- TA: is shown on airports IFR plates it goes from 3kft to 6kft depending in UK
- TL: is calculated by ATC and you may hear it in nearby ATIS (you can calculate one for yourself in Golf)
None of this is PIC business it’s all done by ATC for you when flying in controlled airspace but if you feel uncontrolled flight is boring you can swap STD/QNH/QFE/RPS anytime you wish? bear in mind the biggest risk out there is CFIA: controlled flight into airspace (not traffic collision or terrain accident), so sticking to one single altimeter setting like QNH and not fiddling with altimeter would allow you to keep the licence for another two years, you can read FL on your GTX transponder, it is shown near the squawk code…
The semi-circular rule allow some sort of traffic separation in Golf but it’s too ideal for UK airspace and terrain, things are too crampy, sparse and constrained already and altimetery procedures already sucks