There would be no confusion if everybody used inches....

hat, coat, door.....

I'm late to this party - but recently most of my flying is done from Sywell. I've never heard such muppetry by passing aircraft on the radio as I have there.

People constantly stepping on eachother/talking utter nonsense. I appreciate some of these must be students but their instructors need to nip that in the bud. If they're at the point where they are navigating then they've probably got about 20 hours or so at least. Enough to know not to step on people. Or maybe I'm being too hard I don't know.

In an industry where confusion can and is a killer of vast numbers of people, I am utterly boggle smoggled that there are so many variables. We have, litres, US gallons, Imp gallons, pounds, kilogrammes, knots, miles, kilometres, feet, metres, millibars/hectothingies, inches hg, and we wonder why things go wrong now and again.

Yup. Heard at Cambridge many years ago, as US reg a/c pops out of cloud a long way off and very low, something along the lines of:
"Cambridge confirm altimeter 29.92 inches."
"Negative, it is 992 mb."

Crash one, I could not agree more - if only more countries would come into line with the UK..........

Glider pilots manage both extremes in the use of radio.
Our club managed 78 aerotows (224 movements) and 87 winch launches (174 movements) last saturday all controlled by one chap on the ground with a handheld radio.
However if you listen on 130.4 on a good soaring day ?!?

An aerotow departure is two movements? But they are tied together with string...

Aerotow:-
glider and tug taking off together = 1 movement
Tug landing = 1 movement
glider landing = 1 movement

I'm with you there, Bob! ;)


MJ:ok:

That about sums it up - I'll comment on poor RT by stating that I refuse to use the correct terminology.

What for is the first Niner good? Niner Six does it all.

negative, keep that rubbish away :) you shoud switch to decimals and metrics..




coeexistence of all these different gallons and miles is clear example how it doesn't work. :)

Braincells needed for remembering 1 inch is 12 foods which is 36 yards and one mile is 1760 yards or whatever can be used for something much more useful :) :)

As an example of how different units can confuse, anyone remember the "Gimli glider" Canadian Flight 143?

As for the repeated word "Hectopascals" by some ATSU's I would also appreciate the current viscosity in Pascal seconds if available just to confirm the density and drag around the ATZ

The language of aviation RT is English.:ugh::ugh:

Ah, so the glider actually gets back then...

It has to come back to earth in some fashion :E I suppose you would call that a movement :ok: What goes up has to come down

Pace

[QUOTE]
The language of aviation RT is English.:ugh::ugh:
[\QUOTE]


so what? :) this doesn't imply units must be from UK.
or US? consumtion numbers in plane I fly are in US gallons because it is US plane. I am glad I didn't need to refuel it in UK using UK gallons....


see the point? it is pretty cool we are using same language, so it makes a sense to use same units too. (and metrics system conversion is multiply or divide by 10, 7years old can do it with no brain usage, you can't say this for miles and feets...)

Unfortunately, that is the sort of abbreviation which led to the Cambridge misunderstanding.
In the US, Altimeter 29.96 inches was abbreviated to 996. Works fine - so long as we all use inches. Guy comes to Europe and hears 996 - must be 29.96 - obvious innit?

Another gotcha: "Climb to 2000 feet . . "
Yes, of course it would be expressed as FL220 (even in the US with the TA at 18000) but that's why ATC SHOULD say "Climb 2000 feet . . "

Or better still, 'climb to altitude 2000ft'.

Yes Crash but with a full blown Paddy accent for some words, I hear the local ATC lady saying "QFE one zero one TRREEE" the first part with a Scottish accent, the "3" part like she's just got off the boat from Donegal. Interestingly they seemed to have dropped using "niner" for 9.

In the end it's all good with no confusion or problem being understood.

chevvron & LookingForAJob, Absolutely :ok:

Bas - also ex ATCO RAF

Absolutely Piperboy, but this is what I was referring to:confused:

"Fife radio runway two fife, wun zero zero fife?"

UK metric system:

1 furlong = 10 chains
1 acre = 1 furlong x 1 chain

I remember when we finally got rid of the rod, pole and perch - which were 1/4 of a chain! So a furlong was 40 chains or 220 yards.

At RAFC Cranwell, our USAF War Studies instructor gave us the speed of the SR-71 in British Units...furlongs per fortnight....:\

In the MKS system, fuel consumption should technically be cubic metres per metre - i.e. square metres. The continentals use litres per 100 km as even they would find square metres rather odd.

Back to RT - I always described 'to' and 'for' (or were they 'two' and 'four') as the 'Dangerous Dative'. The US-style clearance 'climb / maintain four thousand' was better than 'climb four thousand' as it was unambiguous.

Oh - and the UK 'cran'? That was defined as 37.5 gallons of fresh herring!

What the firkin cubit is that about:ok:?

I thought a cran was four baskets, each which had to have a ministry brand.
At school, I had no problems with poundals, pounds force, pounds, slugs, etc. After 25+ years on SI units, I bought a bargain textbook on fishing boat stability, using Imperial units. I quickly gave up.

While we are on the subject and surrounded by experts. Serious question, what is the difference/conversion factor, Horse power to Brake horse power. I think we now only use Brake horse power but the "brake" part seems to be omitted.?

Or you could express fuel consumption in Standard Wire Gauge.

Which makes sense - think of the vehicle moving along slurping up a cylinder of that thickness of fuel.

I was lucky enough to score a type rating on a L 29 Delphin jet trainer. I described the max chat low level fuel burn by saying the airplane drank a North American standard beer glass filled with Jet A every second

:ooh::{

BPF,

I didn't get a type-rating but enough time in a Vampire to appreciate the wallet-emptying fuel consumption.

In English beer-drinking units, we are talking 1/2 pint per second or 30 pints per minute. :eek:

The Vampire's owner said the DH Goblin was aptly named, as it gobbled fuel!

"negative, keep that rubbish away :) you shoud switch to decimals and metrics.."

Surely Hectopascals is metric?

Recently watched 'Jet!' on BBC4.
Ex Lightning jock nodded towards parked English Electric Fizzgo and remarked: "I could empty that in fifteen minutes."

One of my life regrets is not taking up the standing invitation to go over to Colt for a ride in the two-seater :{

Almost, but not quite. It's based on a scale of 10.1325 Pa. The early scientists (including Blaise Pascal, who developed an early barometer) did pretty well in determining the 'standard atmosphere' but got it a bit wrong. No-one has seen fit to change it since.

I think the 'inches of Mercury' approach is just as valid, the big danger is having 2 systems so open to confusion in common use.

TOO