Posts by macninja

It's been 230 years since British pirates robbed the US of the metric system

Re: Don't forget

After over two-decades living outside the US I have to say, that I still am not used to how the dates are written in the rest of the world. When sorting columns I generally want things broken down by month and having the day first means that I have to do extra steps to get things in the order I need. I'd be interested to hear why the day should be in the first position and not the month and why the US does it one way and everyone else does it differently. If I were to hazard a guess, I'd think it has something to do with ledger books and sorting.

The ISO standard is Year-month-day which I think makes sense so if we're voting, I'd go for that.

The muddle of measures in aviation

In the UK, general aviation uses a mishmash of weights and measures so we pilots get pretty good at doing conversions on the fly (pun intended).

Runways distances and cloud-clearance are in metres

Altitudes are in feet

Distances are in nautical miles

Airspeed and wind speeds are in knots

Fuel quantity can be in either litres, US gallons, UK gallons, kilograms or pounds

Aircraft weight and balance can be calculated and/or listed in pounds or kilos

Temperatures are in centigrade

Atmospheric pressure is in hectopascals

Manifold pressure is in inches of mercury

I also fly in the US which is pretty consistent in their use of the Imperial system in aviation. About the only place you really see SI units in US general aviation are in Terminal Area Forecasts, which will display temperatures in C and pressures in hectopascals (alongside inches of mercury).