His reply and my response... Keep in mind that two key QST staffers are cc'ed on this.
Jim -------- Original Message -------- Subject: Re: Improper unit symbols Date: Mon, 19 Aug 2013 10:12:20 -0500 From: James <[email protected]> To:... CC: ... Dear Bob, Thank you for your very prompt reply. Yes, I should have said milliwatt rather than millivolt. I appreciate the correction. Unfortunately, your view of the matter is similar to that of many of our fellow citizens. The metrication program you speak of, launched in 1975, is a program that calls on the citizens to metricate themselves and their country. It is and always has been a bottom-up program rather than a top-down program. The program continues. The hold-up in some areas is that too many folks want to be the last ones to make the change so they are waiting on everyone else to go first. The government took steps to metricate itself in 1988. Unfortunately, in some areas, uncooperative bureaucrats have stalled that effort, too. Yet, progress is being made. All states but one now allow metric-only labeling on packaging of items under state-level control, for example; this step started in 2000. An effort to revise the dual labeling provision (intended to be a temporary education aid) of the Fair Packaging and Labeling Act is in the wings, held up only by a few lobbyists. When it goes into effect this will do the same thing for labeling items under federal control. Under federal oversight, state departments of transportation were moving toward metrication until Sen. Hollings, under the influence of lobbyists, led his committee in deleting a key due date for that transition. What is needed is for those in positions of education -- and here I include ARRL -- to help Americans make the transition. ARRL helped people make the transition from vacuum tubes to solid state, from analog to digital, and so forth. It can and should do the same thing for metric usage. Do you not find it silly to measure the beams for a 10 meter Yagi in terms of feet and inches? Every hardware store sells at least some measuring tapes that include metric scales. Again, metrication of the US is a voluntary program. If we want to see who is delaying that process, we have only to look into our mirrors -- or our technical magazines -- for the answer. 73, Jim, WE4SI On 2013-08-18 22:14, Bob... wrote:
I will concede the microbars vs micropascals argument. I still measure my sugar in cups and teaspoons and tablespoons until such time that the US completes the conversion to the Metric System we professed to be "imminently" doing in my childhood in the 1970s. It's easy for me to forget the currently accepted names for scientific measurements since I am out in the field most of the time, and not immersed in them to the depth that you are, so instead I use the names I grew up with. Fortunately I am not quite old enough to still be using cycles per second. However, when I refer to a level of 0 dBm, I refer to a level of 1 milliWatt, not 1 milliVolt. Similarly, when I speak of 0 dBf, I refer to a level of 1 femtoWatt. Hence 10 dBf would be 10 femtoWatts. At the time in history that I spoke of, it was in common use as a measurement or RF power, or more precisely a measure or receiver sensitivity since it was such a small unit of measure. Last I knew, the RF world was still using dBm to refer to discrete signal levels, ( such as +30 dBm to refer to a level of 1 Watt ) and changes of level were still expressed in dB. If not, please correct me. Thank you for your positive comments and corrections on my inaccuracies. Very Best 73, Bob...
