Welcome! Hectopascal
 

It must have taken some late nights, but the CAA have today issued a statement that as of November this year in the UK we must all drop "millibars" and instead use "hectopascals". All METARS & TAFS & RT will have to comply.

When I first encountered hectopascal in was in Eire. And the controllers there make it sound like Hector Pascal. So maybe we should have a Hector Pascal Day to celebrate a complete waste of time.

The figures don't change one digit - just the description.

Aren't there more pressing issues for the CAA to sort out in our industry? Or have they really just become a toy remotely controlled from Euroland?

Answer, yes!

The lunatics really are in charge of the asylum now!

The Indians use hectopascals. ATC transmissions from the Air India Express Mangalore accident investigation report has snippets.

(1 hPa = 100 Pascals = 1 mb.) hectopascal are increasingly being used, especially on the Continent and France, in particular. After all, Pascal was a Frenchman! :{

Won't this only matter to the colonials:

set to 992

set 2992

?

Five months retired I can't actually remember if people said "millibars" or just the numbers.

Iain

Ooooh! Lucky for me that I have learned both Millibars and Hectopascals in my flyin' studies! Yaahoo!:)

The French revenge: they never forgave the English for creating the Greenwich Meridian :p

Australia mandated the use of Monsieur Pascal under International Agreement way back, either the late 80's or early 90's. Still a PITA, but it's much along the lines of the Prime Minister of the day lecturing the great unwashed as to how to pronounce 'kilometre'.

No-one took any notice :ok:

Iain, take heart, they've thought of everything. Over 1000 millibars, oops I mean hectopascals, you only get the numbers, under you get the numbers plus the "hectopascals". hPa pretty common around the world, and the newer EFIS aircraft can be set to whatever you want.

Been tried before
 

There used to be a PINK AIC

Which said "as of 14th November 1989" (or 1988 I think) "All pressure settings will be in Hectopascals"

But nobody read it....


At least hPa have 'meaning', enabling pilots to understand that Standard Pressure is 101,325 Newtons/Square Meter

Since the strength of Earth gravity is about 10 Newtons per Kilogram you can see that Standard Pressure is like having 10,000 Kilos per Square Meter .... or 10Tons per Square Meter.

1hPa = 10Kilos per Square Meter (approximately)



Link: www.caa.co.uk/docs/33/IN201143.pdf

Bloody french, first they got the ****s with GMT and made us all use UTC now this, what next?

I think the Brits should stick with a truly British unit of measurement, like the Americans, and stay with inches of mercury. None of that silly metric stuff, why make things simple? Pints, gills, rods, etc are the way to go, make everyone use a calculator or honed memory. :}

How about p.s.i?

1013.25 millibars = 14.695948804 p.s.i. - easy.

Just need to make that little window in the altimeter a bit longer....

AnFI - but a meter is a device you use to measure something with, whereas a metre is a unit of measure;)

...not sure what you would measure with a square meter....people in suits perhaps?

You'd measure how boring people are :p

I think this will be a major step forward in flight safety. Thank goodness our regulators take the time and effort to improve our operating procedures and terminology.
https://lh4.googleusercontent.com/-C...NxYO6M/pie.jpg

A frog under pressure