Phil Matheson wrote: > Please do not take this personally > But WHY does the USA still use mph. In aviation
I'm a MPH guy. I went that way because, as Larry said, we all grew up with just about everything in the US being based on MPH, particularly the thing we do most, driving. It just doesn't make sense to me to use an ASI that's in Knots, when I'd have to do this mental rough calculation to convert to MPH, just to figure out how long it's going to take for me to get there, whether I have enough fuel for that amount of time, etc. I realize that now GPS's and other glass panel stuff does all that for us now, but it didn't back when I built my plane. Also, I spend a lot of time talking to other folks (friends and co-workers) about my flying, and I don't feel the need to talk in the "foreign language" of knots to them. I'm fine with mph, and the only time I have to deal with knots is when I do flight planning on a site that insists on using knots.
Now if we want to talk the metric system, I am 1000% IN! It's so simple and makes so much sense, and conversions are so dirt simple that even I can do them in my head! We were headed that way in the US with the Metric Conversion Act of 1975....even had kph on the car speedometers and new km "mile markers" on the Interstates, but there was a very negative response that eventually killed it in the early 80's. What a crying shame that we are still screwing around with these ridiculous tape measures that are marked in 1/32" increments. It's insanity. That's why I use metric tape measures, scales, or calipers, when I want to measure something with real accuracy.
We haven't talked about "slugs" yet....if you want to see my brain explode.....
Mark Langford [email protected] http://www.n56ml.com _______________________________________________ Search the KRnet Archives at https://www.mail-archive.com/[email protected]/. Please see LIST RULES and KRnet info at http://www.krnet.org/info.html. see http://list.krnet.org/mailman/listinfo/krnet_list.krnet.org to change options. To UNsubscribe from KRnet, send a message to [email protected]
