Phil,
After WWII, all the US manufacturers tried to market private aircraft as
"an extra car, only faster". If you have a look at, say, a Cessna 172, you
will notice that all accessories like door handles, windows retainers,
etc. are car stuff from the 1950's, and this is not by chance! Aircraft
had to look as familiar as possible to the average driver. American people
relate to mph better, so they started making dual dials (because any
serious navigation demands kts, they could not get rid of kts).
Trouble with a dual dial is when you have huge markings in mph and small
markings in kts, it's kind of difficult to work with kts.
I have a dual dial, so although I hate working with mph, I use them for
speed control... but not for navigation.
Another thing I hate about it is the setting window, which is graduated in
inches of mercury, when no control tower will give you anything else than
milibars. So, I have a to stick conversion table on my instrument panel.
I guess one day I will bite the bullet and buy another one.
Russian aircraft are a lot of fun. The Russians comply with the
International Standard System (SI), so absolutely everything is metric.
Speeds are in kilometers per hour, altitudes in meters (with altimeter
setting in kpa), pressures in KPa, and so on.
While flying a Russian built aircraft, I once made a very bad mistake on
approach, having established my descent rate at 500 per minute. On short
final, I finally realized that that was awfully wrong. I had forgotten the
dial was in METERS per minute, so the descent rate was about 1500' per
minute! The aircraft probably still remembers the bounce that followed!
Serge Vidal
KR2 "Kilimanjaro Cloud"
Paris, France
"Phillip Matheson" <mathe...@dodo.com.au>
Envoyé par : krnet-boun...@mylist.net
2005-05-13 01:39
Veuillez répondre à KRnet
Remis le : 2005-05-13 01:40
Pour : "KRnet" <kr...@mylist.net>
cc : (ccc : Serge VIDAL/DNSA/SAGEM)
Objet : Re: KR> KR speeds MPH ?
I have asked this before, and still not sure as to why in the US you use
MPH.
Are all ASI's in the US calibrated in MPH, or you convert from knots.
I know the conversion is not difficult, but why?.
For some reason I thought all aircraft use Knots as the ASI calibration??
Just a question.
Phillip Matheson
mathe...@dodo.com.au
Australia
VH PKR
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