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| why is the US not Metric |
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| KL27x:
^Well, no nation has metricated (as in changed to metric) their commercial air flight levels. There are some countries which had flight levels and altimeters in meters from the start. No country has switched from imperial to metric, here, although many have gone the other direction (largely after the war, I suppose). Most recently Russia, a few years back. (Cruising altitudes, anyhow; they switch to metric below like 8000 feet or something). |
| Cubdriver:
--- Quote from: bsfeechannel on February 13, 2020, 12:51:08 am --- --- Quote from: xrunner on February 12, 2020, 01:07:20 am ---Must be an embarrassment to admit his location. :-// --- End quote --- Not the least bit. I live in the world. And the world is metric. I'm really grateful that I am not forced to use any incoherent, cumbersome, obsolete, nonsensical, outdated, clumsy, crippled, lame, ill-contrived, quirky, elephantine, inelegant, graceless, ungainly, unwieldy, clunky, maladroit, bumbling, gawky, loutish, oaf, uncoordinated, uncouth, rustic, boorish, provincial, parochial, splay, lumpish, klutzy, incongruous, disparate, bizarre, erratic, haphazard, disjointed, rambling, antiquated, archaic, outmoded, bygone, kaput, moldy, moth-eaten, old-fashioned, totaled, sunk, floored, overthrown, bewildered, fusty, antediluvian, behindhand system of units. And I pray every day for those who are not so lucky as I am. --- End quote --- You pray for us uneducated heathens who use imperial units. Well bless your heart. That's comforting to hear, and will let me sleep more soundly tonight. -Pat |
| KL27x:
^That's a bit disrepectful. You have to admit, logic is implacable! Look at all that logic. That doesn't sound like a nerotic teenage girl acting out, at all. :-// |
| SkyMaster:
--- Quote from: Tepe on February 12, 2020, 09:27:51 pm --- --- Quote from: forrestc on February 12, 2020, 05:13:49 pm ---The one major area where pretty much every country in the world has not metricated is aircraft flight levels. --- End quote --- Note the altimeter in this Saab J35 Draken ("Höjd m"): --- End quote --- Except for some communist countries, nobody in the world is using meter as an altitude unit in aviation. :) |
| DBecker:
--- Quote from: bsfeechannel on February 13, 2020, 01:18:50 am --- --- Quote from: DBecker on February 12, 2020, 09:36:39 pm ---Wait... is that compass in degrees? Not radians? Surely that has been changed to the proper SI unit of radians by now. We wouldn't want pilots using flight levels in 100 foot intervals and headings in degrees in the metric-only sections of the world. ("They'll take my degrees only when they pry my compass from my cold dead hands.") --- End quote --- Radians were considered supplementary SI units until 1995. After that, they were grouped as derived units. And the degree is a non SI unit officially accepted for the use with SI units. --- End quote --- Degrees are all the things you claim are bad about other non-SI units. They are certainly completely arbitrary. But they are commonly used because they are convenient, far more so than radians, and so entrenched that it would be very difficult to re-train everyone to use a different unit. "Officially Accepted" means that pragmatic reasons over-rides the purity of the religion. Well, the rest of the world is also metric-except-were-pragmatism-makes-sense, just with different trade-offs. |
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