ARMv8.1?

How much does a cubic yard of

Getting on for 3/4 of ton. +- a bit

How many teaspoons in a quarter cup?

That's not imperial

The short answer is 'depends on the cup

There sis no standard on 'cooking' measurements because there is no requirement for precision.

Fine.

So what is a spark plug gap in mm?

Same here.

Right. The point with the altimeter scale is moot, as current IFR aircraft are quickly having glass cockpits with band-style altimeter and airspeed indicators.

There's one unit of measurement that is not an integral divisor of most of the others, which is the LINK in the surveyor's chain at 7.92 inches.

A CHAIN at 22 yards is so-called because that's the length of the surveyor's chain, divided into 100 links of 7.92 inches.

A quarter of a chain, at 16 1/2 feet is a PERCH, and the surveyor had a foldable stick for this purpose, and so the perch became known by its tool, the ROD or POLE.

Rod, pole or perch; so beloved on the back of those old red exercise books!

Nope. Run a 3kW heater for a prolonged period and feel how warm the pins get, then do the same for other types, and feel how hot they get (best have some burn treatment handy).

Those blanking plugs are a danger in themselves and should be outlawed. The 'earth' pin easily breaks off in the socket, then leaving live and neutral exposed. A properly made socket has springs and shutters that are quite adequate for dealing with fingers small enough to investigate them.

That would be because it's a requirement to fit a plug

What have any of these got to do with *Base 12* ?

So you can't figure that in your head easily?

Is "getting on" a technical term?

A pint's a pound the world around (unless you are Imperial). So a pint is 16 ounces, a cup is half that or 8 ounces. A teaspoon is 3 to a tablespoon which is two to an ounce and Bob's your uncle, a quarter cup is 2 * 2 * 3 or a dozen teaspoons! I thought you liked dozens?

Total BS.

Ha! Depends on the plug doesn't it?

The last holdout in electronics seems to be PCB trace measurements. We like simple numbers like 6/6 design rules for 0.006 inch trace and space. But we are getting into fractions of a thou these days. I see recommended BGA layouts with 2.5 thou traces (0.0635 mm), so for me it's metric all the way down! The only concern is that PCB fab houses often express their design rules in English units which are a tiny skosh larger than the rounded metric. So 0.1 mm clearance is certainly close enough to 4 mil (3.937007874016) that it should suffice in all cases, but will be rejected by the automatic rule checking at a PCB house if the rules are in English units. It's time to give up English units.

I know when I was scuba diving some years ago, computers were new and not to be trusted. Even if you were using a computer the dive table went with you so you could salvage your dive and ascend safely if the computer went bust. I feel the same way about depending on electronics when flying. They are great when working, but the brain needs to be able to error check them and to take over if the instruments aren't working right.

I believe there have been a number of significant air accidents when the navigation devices were not set up correctly or failed. I recall a sailing accident that cost several lives when the GPS constellation was in a very poor configuration giving a very high error, on the order of a tenth mile or so. The ship hit the rocks and the obstinate captain who wouldn't listen to the warnings of those who saw the rocks was killed along with some others.

Exactly!

Maybe ICAO left that one up to individual countries. Runway visual range (RVR) is measured in feet here (up to 6000), with rough conversions to statute miles as required, e.g. an RVR of 2400 feet corresponds to a visibility of 1/2sm, etc.

Same here.

Yes, just aviation so far. I can't remember exactly when - it was probably about 10 years ago when I started noticing that the weather reports coming across the border no longer had Fahrenheit in them.

And I don't know whether an STC even exists to let you replace your airspeed indicator with one calibrated in knots. I started looking into it once, but quickly retreated. At least most such indicators have an inner scale in knots, which comes in handy for navigation - but all the numbers in the POH are in miles per hour, so you're stuck there.

Inches of mercury over here. One slight compensation is that one inch of mercury equals about 1000 feet at lower altitudes, which is a handy rule of thumb.

Shortly after that incident a cartoon appeared showing a refueling tech kneeling on the wing of an airliner with a ruler and calling out to the passengers inside: "How many feet in a liter?"

Not quite moot, unless you have an upscale aircraft or are willing to fork out a 5-digit sum to upgrade. There are thousands of small aircraft with mechanical altimeters whose owners won't upgrade without a fight. Mode C transponders digitize altitude in hundreds of feet; all hardware and procedures in the entire North American ATC system are hard-wired into feet. I shudder to think of the nightmare it would be to cut over.

The terms I've heard are _de jure_ vs. _de facto_.

Otherwise, we have to wait for several years until one standard finally wins out, e.g. VHS over Beta.

I know that it's a requirement. What surprises me is that it has been a requirement for so long.

Maybe they could pass a law that says you have to supply a mains cable

which had failed and it came with a cable that is 75cms long. It has a plug fitted. But hardly any bloody cable!

It's about time. I wish I had some reason to believe this would change for the country as a whole in the near future, but I don't see it. Right now we are stepping backwards in many ways. I guess that is what you do when facing a wolf.

Sure: that is why there's still a legal requirement to carry paper maps.

Speaking entirely for myself, I use a mechanical altimeter, ASI, compass and an electrically driven turn&bank instrument. I have two varios, both electronic. The main one is moderately complex, having different operating modes for climbing in a thermal and cruising between them and can calculate arrival heights, etc. if connected to a GPS (its not currently connected). The other vario is just that (shows instant ROC) and has a backup battery, good for over 12 hours, in case the main glider batteries should fail. Last but not least, is the electronic navigation system which runs on a PNA with a built-in GPS and pressure sensor. This photo should give you an idea of what it can do:

IOW, I have enough non-electric kit to navigate home if the batteries fail plus a vario that will continue to function without the main battery so I should be able to find the thermals to get home as well

Oh yes, I also carry FLARM and an airband radio, though these both depend on the main batteries. And in any case, I always have the option of landing in a field since gliders are fairly easy to land in anything flat, grassy and more than 250m long.

Doesn't everyone just put a power strip behind/below the TV to keep the cables tidy?

Doesn't that depend on what's listed as essential equipment in the POH?

However, from what I've seen in the chatter on red.aviation.soaring I'm certain you're right in thinking that you've got to have mph. The FAA seems a lot more draconian over that sort of thing than out CAA.

Wondered about that, and whether that would be different at Internationa| Airports in the USA. I'd have a hard time with that, since my altimeter uses millibars and even my local controlled airfield's tower asks for "your height with 1016 set" if that's his reading when I talk to him as I'm passing by.

I know there are other things I'd expect to differ too, e.g. almost all non-US airliners will be doing Mode S with 1090ES extended squitters and I wouldn't expect any of them to have UAT systems fitted.

:-)

Same over here -just that none that I've looked at had ASIs in mph, but I suspect that has a lot to do with British naval history and their role in pioneering navigation methods. The oldest I've had hands on was a De Havilland Tiger Moth (FF2 basic trainer) and that for sure was using knots and feet. It was nicer to fly than I'd been led to expect but the vis was terrible with those wings in the way. But then again that wasn't surprising: my Libelle has unobstructed 360 degree vision.

I don't think it ever will change in aviation for just the reasons you give. Euro/Russian/Chinese military aircraft are fully metric (MKS units) and so are most gliders in Europe, but everything else follows ICAO conventions and uses nautical miles, bars, knots and feet.

However, flying with a metric panel is surprisingly easy: I've done it in Austria and Germany. In the same type of plane the ASI needle points in the same direction and the coloured segments and yellow pips are in the same place - only the numbers the needle points to differ. Similarly, it was easy enough to mentally convert height. The only one that did fool me was the vario because 2 knots (200 fpm) is only 1 m/s, so I kept underestimating sink and flying too slowly through it because the calibration marks are the same: in the UK they are marked 0-10 knots while the Germans put 0-5 m/s against exactly the same marks.

In fact, I find it harder to fly a familiar glider type in the US because your ASIs are upside down.