The change to universal use of GPS instruments in planes would at last allow us to revert to the pre-WWII situation in flight! And goodbye to the awful inHg as well!! Booting ifp from the airspace of metric countries and then everywhere else will be the final nail in its coffin. I will be as important as the French law of 1837 was. And the BWMA can start thinking about disbandment. The 'invasion' in our airspace in 1945 was a massive set back for the metric system and could have killed it altogether. And I have always wondered, how close have we been to that end between 1945 and 1960, as there was significant backsliding in France in that era?
Han ----- Original Message ----- From: "Ma Be" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: "U.S. Metric Association" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Sent: Monday, 2002-07-22 20:52 Subject: [USMA:21340] Re: Flight levels > On Sat, 20 Jul 2002 11:06:29 > Gene Mechtly wrote: > ... > >Air-pressure altimeters will soon be replaced entirely by GPS devices even in small private aircraft at very low cost. Vertical separation of corridors does not have to depend on altitude for safety. > > > Indeed! I'm really looking forward to the day when these instruments will be "standard" in all aircraft! And, hopefully, these will NOT carry the hideous "option" for the nautical mile crap! :-( > > >I would like to see proposals from Baron and Marcus (and from any other experienced pilots) on their recommendations for altitudes and bearings for a new set of corridors, optimized in rounded m and km, of course, with *no* consideration of present corridors in feet and kilofeet. > > > Thanks, Gene, for the opportunity you're giving us, pilots, to have some say on the issue. > > While I haven't thought about this thoroughly yet, please find here enclosed some sparse ideas for a few things. > > Bearings: > > I'd use 00-09 for the first quadrant (the fundamental unit to use here would be the grade/gon), 10-19, for the second, 20-29, for the third, and 30-39 for the fourth. The first number would indicate the quadrant in question, evidently, 0 for NE, 1 for SE, 2 for SW and 3 for NW. Easy, to the point. This bearing would be placed in all airports runways and would replace the current 00-35 ones. > > Amateur navigational charts would be produced with the new spherical cartographic system based on gons to the centigon accuracy (0.01). > > Altitude flight levels would still use the convenient "halves", i.e. 000-199, 200-399 gons. > > Altitude separations would be in 250 m increments or 500 m (the former definitely around busier air traffic areas). After 5000 m we'd use the 1013.5 hPa air pressure setting (as opposed to 18000 ft). Separations would be every 500 m upwards of that. > > There would obviously be more "rules" to define, but I'd have to go back to my manuals and all to try to come up with the equivalent metric ones. However, one alternative to this tedious job would simply be for us to adopt either the already-in-use Chinese or Russian model and make it official everywhere else. > > >If there is agreement, we might want to promote them to world aviation authorities as a new standard, say, for 2005 implementation. > >... > Indeed. But, perhaps the more sensible thing to do, again I repeat, would be for us to simply look at the present metric flight rules options and request that one of them be adopted by everyone. > > Marcus
