Metrication Canada; How is it working?

[On Guard for Thee]

Yes and I started by drawing a line from A to B and measuring the angle and distance, applying drift etc etc.I love not having to do all that with a gps, but I'm glad I know how to do it. If I have to.Especially if there's a puff of smoke and the gps goes dead!

[Bryan]

Still, does a 32.2 degree day convey the same sense of heat as the old fashioned "90 degree day?"

Any number in Fahrenheit has literally no meaning to most Canadians. 32C? That's hot! 90F? it's just a number, I have no idea if that's very hot or not without looking it up.

[On Guard for Thee]

Any number in Fahrenheit has literally no meaning to most Canadians. 32C? That's hot! 90F? it's just a number, I have no idea if that's very hot or not without looking it up.

It depends how old you are I guess. I grew up with temp in f and inches yards statute miles etc. Now I'm quite happy with c, metres, kilometres, nautical miles. I must admit, I still need to work on how many grams of sliced smoked ham I need for a proper sandwich.

[Wilber]

Yes and I started by drawing a line from A to B and measuring the angle and distance, applying drift etc etc.I love not having to do all that with a gps, but I'm glad I know how to do it. If I have to.Especially if there's a puff of smoke and the gps goes dead!

Good old vector triangles. Wonder if they still teach them. That's how I started as well and then you graduated to the E6B which seamed like magic. I still have one of them and couple of CR's kicking around somewhere.

GPS is amazing. When we were just using INS, aircraft on the same tracks over the ocean would be anywhere from dead on to up to a mile apart. With GPS it is like they are all traveling on the same rail. It's made instrument approaches possible to runways that never were before. I see Westjet using the GPS approach to RWY 25 here in Abbotsford all the time. For decades there was only the ILS to RWY 07 which made arrivals from the east a pain.

Charts are still used although many companies are using iPads to replace them in some applications at least. They are still the same old Jep charts though. Never used one but nicer than having to pack around heavy manuals with charts and approach plates as well as not having to spend hours every month doing amendments. Downsides would be you can't mount an iPad on the control wheel or make notes on it so I don't know. Don't know how you would use a protractor and rule on one if you wanted to lay something out on your own.

Reliance on magic is a two edged sword. For 25 years the emphasis in aviation was on learning the new technology and using it as much as possible. Lately, incident investigations are looking at reliance on technology as resulting in degraded flying skills and recommending that pilots due more basic flying to keep them up. Same could probably be said for navigation skills. There has to be a balance somewhere.

[Wilber]

Apologies, I didn't mean to give that impression.

My apology as well. I missed the preceding post that indicated you were a pilot as well. Of course you knew.

[PIK]

Any number in Fahrenheit has literally no meaning to most Canadians. 32C? That's hot! 90F? it's just a number, I have no idea if that's very hot or not without looking it up.

Wrong, I work with industry and overall, imperial is still used by many. Blue prints in imperial or chanegd over. You do not purchase rope or chain in metric, and the 2x4 is not 50x100. We did not need to switch.

[Black Dog]

Scientists and drug dealers alike use metric, so that should tell you everything you need to know about its superiority as a system.

[Wilber]

Wrong, I work with industry and overall, imperial is still used by many. Blue prints in imperial or chanegd over. You do not purchase rope or chain in metric, and the 2x4 is not 50x100. We did not need to switch.

Only because our major market is still the US. Even they have changed in areas where they have had to in order to compete internationaly. North American vehicles have been using metric hardware and tire sizes for years.

[On Guard for Thee]

Good old vector triangles. Wonder if they still teach them. That's how I started as well and then you graduated to the E6B which seamed like magic. I still have one of them and couple of CR's kicking around somewhere.

GPS is amazing. When we were just using INS, aircraft on the same tracks over the ocean would be anywhere from dead on to up to a mile apart. With GPS it is like they are all traveling on the same rail. It's made instrument approaches possible to runways that never were before. I see Westjet using the GPS approach to RWY 25 here in Abbotsford all the time. For decades there was only the ILS to RWY 07 which made arrivals from the east a pain.

Charts are still used although many companies are using iPads to replace them in some applications at least. They are still the same old Jep charts though. Never used one but nicer than having to pack around heavy manuals with charts and approach plates as well as not having to spend hours every month doing amendments. Downsides would be you can't mount an iPad on the control wheel or make notes on it so I don't know. Don't know how you would use a protractor and rule on one if you wanted to lay something out on your own.

Reliance on magic is a two edged sword. For 25 years the emphasis in aviation was on learning the new technology and using it as much as possible. Lately, incident investigations are looking at reliance on technology as resulting in degraded flying skills and recommending that pilots due more basic flying to keep them up. Same could probably be said for navigation skills. There has to be a balance somewhere.

A couple of things come to mind with regard to how too much reliance on the "magic" can bite you. As you point out GPS puts you on a rail more or less and I have heard there have been increases in the VFR world near misses or acttal collisions simply because noone is looking out the window and maybe not following east/west altitude rules. Also, that Asiana flight that was too low arriving in SFO and knocked the tail off on a dam. Apparently the rwy they were using had no ILS and no VASIS. Now I don't mean to brag, but I reckon I could setup an approach in the clear wx they had by once again, simply looking out the window and applying some numbers, you know, speed, descent rate, flap setings. Isn't that how we all learned in the first place?

[Wilber]

Looks like there were four pilots but none of them were flying the airplane. That's what happens when you stick 3 captains together and only one poor first officer. I'm not familiar with the 777 auto throttle but they were obviously relying on it to maintain speed but no one was monitoring speed and they almost stalled the aircraft before reacting. Not only slow but low as well. Pretty basic stuff. The GS was out on that runway, don't know about the localizer but there is a PAPI so they did have some slope guidance.

Don't know how familiar you are with SFO but its location and layout make for some pretty interesting arrival scenarios.

[On Guard for Thee]

Ok, well the reporting I heard shortly after (and we all know how that get's screwed up) indicated they had no electronic or visial aids working on that runway at the time so they were flying a strictly visual approach. That should be easy enough to verify. It seems also there was a known CRM problem with some of the crews. You may recall back in the day there was that old adage about what are the 3 things you say to a co-pilot "gear up, flaps up, shut up". Sounds like there could have been an element of that. Haven't heard where the NTSB is but I reckon they will figure it out.

[-TSS-]

I can't believe this thread I started two years ago has still some recent posts.

However, I still haven't received a satisfactory answer what 0 degrees fahrenheit means. It must mean something as it obviously is the basis of the whole scale.

[On Guard for Thee]

I can't believe this thread I started two years ago has still some recent posts.

However, I still haven't received a satisfactory answer what 0 degrees fahrenheit means. It must mean something as it obviously is the basis of the whole scale.

It's the lowest temperature you can reproducibly cool brine.

[Peter F]

I can't believe this thread I started two years ago has still some recent posts.

However, I still haven't received a satisfactory answer what 0 degrees fahrenheit means. It must mean something as it obviously is the basis of the whole scale.

I was taught that Mr Fahrenheit first made the thermometer then put in water to measure the temperature at which water freezes. It froze at the 32 degree mark.

But I see on wiki that they agree with OnGuardForThee. 0 being the brine thing and 100 F being body core temperature (close enough for 17twenty-something anyways.

Edited February 23, 2014 by Peter F

[jbg]

I can't believe this thread I started two years ago has still some recent posts.

I plead guilty. I posted something elsewhere referring to 40 kms as "40 Trudeau Units" and someone posted a link to the thread. And it was off to the races on the "necro-ing" of the thread.

However, I still haven't received a satisfactory answer what 0 degrees fahrenheit means. It must mean something as it obviously is the basis of the whole scale.

I was taught that Mr Fahrenheit first made the thermometer then put in water to measure the temperature at which water freezes. It froze at the 32 degree mark.

But I see on wiki that they agree with OnGuardForThee. 0 being the brine thing and 100 F being body core temperature (close enough for 17twenty-something anyways.

I was taught that either Mr. Fahrenheit or one of the other originators picked the low temperature on a particularly cold day in Poland, and for 100 a particularly hot day, and 32 was 32/100 of the way up the scale. It is an arbitrary system and my defense of it is that it has been in use for a long time and people are used to it. Edited February 23, 2014 by jbg

[jacee]

I plead guilty. I posted something elsewhere referring to 40 kms as "40 Trudeau Units" and someone posted a link to the thread. And it was off to the races on the "necro-ing" of the thread.

I was taught that either Mr. Fahrenheit or one of the other originators picked the low temperature on a particularly cold day in Poland, and for 100 a particularly hot day, and 32 was 32/100 of the way up the scale. It is an arbitrary system and my defense of it is that it has been in use for a long time and people are used to it.

People can change, and have in Canada.