I hate being "Metricated!....

[PhantomTweak]

To my mind, it seems like a cross between Jack and the Beanstalk and It's the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown!...

I traded in our car, Dad, but all I got was some rocks!

And they're not even "magic"rocks!

A thing I do find interesting though, is that we have such a horrible track record with Mars Landers, including one I know of for sure was lost due to a mistaken conversion between American and Metric units of measure during a coroborative venture between the EU and Americans, causing a bad entry angle to the atmosphere, such as it is. For the life of me, as an aside, I can not understand how they can call it RE-entry to Mars' atmosphere, when whatever it is never left Mars in the first place...
Then again, I can't figure how they can say that Mars has no atmosphere to speak of because it has no magnetic field, and yet Venus hasn't one either, and it's atmosphere is 900 times denser than ours. Or how can the Holtzmann contraction apply to material on final approach to a black hole, and yet the material enters said hole. Seems to me that as the material gets closer and closer and goes faster and faster it seems to go slower and slower, relative to the rest of the Universe, until, at 0.99999999999 (etc) C, it would appear to have stopped. Yet it doesn't. It just keeps going...
By the by, why the huge flap over changing everything to metric, except time? No one ever proposes a day of 10 hours, 100 minutes each etc etc...
Anyhow, may you all have great days at reasonable speeds!
Pat☺

[expat]

Let me know when you land 12 men on the moon using the metric system.

Just remind me what system the US military uses...........ah yes, klicks and meters............lol

Matt

[OldAirmail]

Well, one thing that all you silly feriners cant do, even with your metric system, is to make a flight simulater as good as Microsoft Flight!




Oh, boy. Are we in trouble!

[Hawkeye07]

Let me know when you land 12 men on the moon using the metric system.
Just remind me what system the US military uses...........ah yes, klicks and meters............lol

Matt

Just the "Dirt Dogs" Matt. The aviation types still use feet (as in Altitude) and miles as in "your Bogey is at your 4 O'clock at 3 miles, weapons clear."

I just thought of another one for you. How do you measure the weight of an aircraft's fuel load or max gross for that matter? Kilograms or Pounds?

[PhantomTweak]

oooooo! OOOOOOO! I know! I know!!
Pick me Teacher, ME!!

[H]

No one ever proposes a day of 10 hours, 100 minutes each etc etc...

Not really, a day being one rotation of the Earth, and making an hour (or whatever one wishes to name the replacement) 1.2 times longer provides 20 divisions per day.
However, in the story I wrote (many, many, many moons ago), in which I converted the campsites of our camping club into city-states, I provided a language, an alphabet (that was from actual code alphabets we made) and the year divisions were changed; rather than months, the year consisted of fifurs equalling 1/5th of a year each. As with February, an extra day would be added to the last fifur every 4th year).

[expat]

Let me know when you land 12 men on the moon using the metric system.
Just remind me what system the US military uses...........ah yes, klicks and meters............lol

Matt

Just the "Dirt Dogs" Matt. The aviation types still use feet (as in Altitude) and miles as in "your Bogey is at your 4 O'clock at 3 miles, weapons clear."

I just thought of another one for you. How do you measure the weight of an aircraft's fuel load or max gross for that matter? Kilograms or Pounds?

When I wore a blue suit, it was measured in pounds. In civilian aviation this side of the world, well Europe, it is kilograms, but oddly, hight is still in feet....
In fact we have a bit of a mishmash.

Fuel in kilograms
Aircraft weight in Kilograms.
Loading of cargo in Kilograms in Europe, aircraft from the the US use pounds
Loading of cargo in the US in pounds, aircraft from Europe use kilograms
Hight in feet
Runway length in metres
Aircraft damage in inches or millimetres
Speed in knots of course, about the only aviation standard we have across the world (I think..... )
I work on Russian aircraft from time to time, they have a metres on the clock and a crib sheet in the cockpit to convert them to feet.
I work on Russian registered Western aircraft that have feet on the clock and a crib sheet to convert then to metres.
Airbus use PSI, KG/Cm² and Bar during maintenance and:
Boeing PSI and Bar
We have UTC, but some places have summertime and some do not.
Some states use summertime and neighbour don't.
European aircraft arrive in the US with KG on the clock and have to fuel in Pounds.
American aircraft arrive in Europe with Pounds on the clock and have to fuel in kilograms.
American Aircraft that are normally built in Pounds on the clock get pin programming for European customers to indicate Kilograms and then fly routes to the USA to confuse the crap out of the refuelling guys.
The French try and only speak French in the air and not English.
The Russians (from my experience) can't speak English in the air.

This list could be endless and the cockup factor is potentially huge (and has caused accidents already in the past) but one pilot that commits suicide trying to bring aviation to its knees is and that is the only thing that interests the masses and the press. What an odd world we live in.....

However, where it is really important, be have standardised. Standard toilet connection for ground servicing and a standard two pin plug so that the vacuum cleaner for cleaning crew works and we do not need an adaptor like when we go on holiday and want to shave or dry our hair Not forgetting standard ground power and standard refuelling. So in a nut shell, we have standardised everything that is ground based, but left everything else all over the place.......

Matt

[Hawkeye07]

Matt Sez: "The cockup factor is potentially huge" From the list you put together, which I believe took quite a bit of thoughtful analysis, I'm amazed
we haven't lost more aircraft than we have. I remember years ago a Canadian passenger flight made an emergency landing because it ran out of fuel
because the flight crew and the refueling crew used different "gallons" for their calculations, 4 quart vs 5 quart.

[expat]

Matt Sez: "The cockup factor is potentially huge" From the list you put together, which I believe took quite a bit of thoughtful analysis, I'm amazed
we haven't lost more aircraft than we have. I remember years ago a Canadian passenger flight made an emergency landing because it ran out of fuel
because the flight crew and the refueling crew used different "gallons" for their calculations, 4 quart vs 5 quart.

If memory serves, this has happened a couple of times.........?

Matt

[WPadgett]

Many years ago there was a big push to have the United States go metric. National Geographic Magazine was pushing hard with the magazine using metric with Imperial in parenthesis which is probably still the case.

In one issue of National Geographic Magazine, their president was having an important meeting at his house. He discussed it at length in the beginning pages of that month's issue. He then gave directions to the meeting location - all in miles and tenths - no metric. Apparently he wanted people to find his place.

With that, I rest my case against metric.

CP ASMEL Instruments