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why is the US not Metric
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Black Phoenix:

--- Quote from: bsfeechannel on October 28, 2019, 11:51:57 pm ---
But in countries where metric is already the "customary" system, when addressing the passengers, the pilot converts the altitude to meters, because no one has absolutely any clue what 27.000 feet means.

That goes for seat screens: speeds in kilometers per hour and altitude in meters.

--- End quote ---

Then I must feel unlucky. All the long flights I've made, except the the screens that are as you said, the pilot always told on the PA the altitude in feet and the speed on kts.
bsfeechannel:

--- Quote from: Black Phoenix on October 29, 2019, 01:57:39 am ---
--- Quote from: bsfeechannel on October 28, 2019, 11:51:57 pm ---
But in countries where metric is already the "customary" system, when addressing the passengers, the pilot converts the altitude to meters, because no one has absolutely any clue what 27.000 feet means.

That goes for seat screens: speeds in kilometers per hour and altitude in meters.

--- End quote ---

Then I must feel unlucky. All the long flights I've made, except the the screens that are as you said, the pilot always told on the PA the altitude in feet and the speed on kts.

--- End quote ---

Well, maybe you're really out of luck, because some pilots actually say the altitude in feet and speed in knots but they immediately "translate" it to what people are familiar with. Your mileage, oops, kilometrage may vary, of course.
vk6zgo:

--- Quote from: james_s on October 29, 2019, 12:47:07 am ---I'm surprised people wouldn't have a rough idea of what feet is. For all the crap Americans get for supposedly not knowing other units, I think most of us have a pretty good idea of what a meter is. It's close enough to say it's about 3 feet.

--- End quote ---

it's a bit more------- 3.2808 ft, in fact.

For "rough working", I just remember that a ft is "near as dammit" to 30 cm, or as the Metrication Board insisted when we changed over in the '70s ---------300mm.

They hated cm, "because it wasn't an SI unit" & didn't like measurements in metres much, "because people might  have trouble with the decimal points".

The upshot of this was, if I wanted to buy a length of timber 1.5m long, it was marked 1500mm, & sold as such.
I would then pay for it in money which used a decimal point all the time! :palm:
 
james_s:

--- Quote from: bsfeechannel on October 29, 2019, 01:51:58 am ---
--- Quote from: james_s on October 29, 2019, 12:47:07 am ---I'm surprised people wouldn't have a rough idea of what feet is. For all the crap Americans get for supposedly not knowing other units, I think most of us have a pretty good idea of what a meter is. It's close enough to say it's about 3 feet.

--- End quote ---

This is because distances and lengths are consistently measured in meters all around the world. And people actually use these units for everything. Trying to memorize how many feet are in a meter is absolutely useless. Nothing is measured in that unit in those countries.

--- End quote ---

Well, except for altitude, so anyone who has ever been on an airliner has probably heard feet, and then there's the speed in Knots, that's even more esoteric than feet or miles. The only reason I even vaguely know what a knot is, is because my dad had a sailboat when I was a kid. Thankfully these days I can pull the tiny supercomputer out of my pocket and convert just about any unit to just about any other unit in a few seconds.
VK3DRB:

--- Quote from: tooki on October 27, 2019, 05:48:42 pm ---
--- Quote from: VK3DRB on October 27, 2019, 12:50:26 am ---Besides the Altium grid lines "standard" being a dog's breakfast, many Chinese PCB manufacturers only specify their capability dimensions in imperial measurements (eg: minimum track width 7mils, rather than 0.18mm). This is only to appease US engineers who cannot fathom (sorry, 1.8288m) the metric system |O (Just kidding, sort of!).

--- End quote ---
I assure you, it's nothing but smug US haters telling you that Americans can't understand metric. It's been taught in schools for 50+ years now, and American engineers are absolutely, definitely, 100% going to be able to handle millimeters just fine.

--- End quote ---

Loosen up. Read: I was joking!

Most engineers experienced in PCBA design can convert between imperial and metric in their head. But there are many adults in the Australia who don't know what an inch is, and Americans who don't know what a centimetre is... so much for education.

But for engineers knowing both systems or converting both systems is absolutely no help when some engineers use metric for their schematic grid spacing and symbol library pin spacing and others use imperial. It is a debacle, because libraries cannot be mixed without some tedious work and branches in version control. As we are realising, "One country, two systems" does not work.

Maybe Altium can provide an easy-to-use schematic library pin spacing/pin length conversion tool in a future release.
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