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Paul,
I'm with you. I'm calibrated in MPH
(statute)
However, a little background.
One nautical mile is exactly one minute mark on the
vertical scale of a marine (or aviation) chart.
This doesn't work with the horizontal scales as
they shrink towards the poles.
Having this simple measure so readily available,
the early navigators fell into using Knots.
It still is very useful when using
charts.
Mark Ravinski
----- Original Message -----
Sent: Tuesday, May 30, 2006 7:13 AM
Subject: [LML] knots to you
Hi, Dom! My car's speedo is in mph and so is my ASI. I
use rulers with feet and inches; they are the measures that make the most
sense to my mind. Those I can picture, with the others I have to make a mental
conversion into the ones I know. I think it was totally stupid to start using
knots for measuring speed. It had nothing to do with what people in this
country used on a day-to-day basis. Our vehicles we use for our transportation
are in mph or kph; if it exists, I've never seen a car speedo calibrated in
knots! The planes I started on were in my old comfortable mph. I know the
conversions to knots, ft/sec, km, cm, mm, hp, torque, BTU, joules,
rad/sec, UTC, UT1, sidereal rate, F number, etc, etc, etc! But when I fly, I
want to concentrate on the familiar, not "Let's see, 1.151 statute
miles/nautical mile." If you're trained on nautical miles per hour, and that's
what you are comfortable with, then by all means use it. But since we have so
many different measuring systems in use around the world, it seems to me it
would behoove anyone who wants to progress in aeronautical knowledge to become
familiar with the conversion factors.
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