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Why degrees Celsius?

N941WR

N941WR

Legacy Member
In another thread question why NM vs MPH IronFlight wrote:
Ironflight said:
Ahhh...the eternal question!

As a trained Aeronautical Engineer, it was beaten in to me that the REAL aviation world always does things in knots, and my papers would be failed if i used any other units...

As a Commercial and Instrument Pilot, I have been trained to do everything in knots, because that is what the ATC world uses.

In the Flight operations world in which I live, we do everything in knots because that is the engineering standard (see first bullet above...)

Many people like to use mph because the numbers are bigger....;):D
(sells more airplanes because they seem faster - same reason that $9.95 is better than $10 if you're selling somethign...)
Click to expand...
My question is why when you listen to the current weather they give everything in imperial units (Feet, miles, etc.) except the temperature, which they give in degress Celsius. Why is that?
 
Being (originally) from the UK this makes perfect sense :)

If you're in Russia you'll hear everything in metric.

The odditity in the US (not sure if its used elsewhere) is barometric pressure is in inches of mercury not millibars, but I'm sure I'll get used to it eventually :)
 
degrees C

Probably no good reason, other that its just the standard that has been selected.

The only negative I can see is that degrees C provides a little less resolution when measuring the temperature.

CDE
 
Its just a small start to try to get you guys to catch up with most of the rest of the planet.:rolleyes:

Fin
9A
Australia (metric)
 
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I'm guessing it has to do with ICAO standards... Just be glad you aren't speaking French when you fly. :))


Btw, I'm with Paul on the "knots" thing--60:1 rule? Anybody? Bueller?

Joe
 
Many people like to use mph because the numbers are bigger....
Click to expand...

By that logic they should be using km/hr, like we use on the roads in Canada. Those numbers are about twice as large as knots! I like telling people my plane will cruise at over 200 km/hr ;) Highway speed limits here are half that.
 
Try being an engineer

Almost every metric unit makes SOOO much more sense than the old imperial style.

Besides a unit volume of water at room temperatur is equivilent to one unit of mass.

I.e 1 Kg of water is 1 Litre...Now almost everything is a multiple of 1000 in almost anything you do..Except pressure...1 atmosphere is 1.01*10^5 bar...

Frank
 
Dude! push the power up...

prkaye said:
By that logic they should be using km/hr, like we use on the roads in Canada. Those numbers are about twice as large as knots! I like telling people my plane will cruise at over 200 km/hr ;) Highway speed limits here are half that.
Click to expand...

It's not "twice as large" it is close to 1.6 times statute miles. So if your RV9 cruises at 200 KPH, you are only going a little over 124 statute MPH or 108 knots. Tell 'em 300, it is only a little exaggeration :rolleyes:

John Clark
Happily cruising around at 325 :eek:
RV8 N18U "Sunshine"
KSBA
 
N941WR said:
In another thread question why NM vs MPH IronFlight wrote:

My question is why when you listen to the current weather they give everything in imperial units (Feet, miles, etc.) except the temperature, which they give in degress Celsius. Why is that?
Click to expand...

Good question. I have no idea. I thought the U.S. won that war. :D
 
I use MPH and I use Degrees F. I use these standards not because MPH looks faster then Knots but because I can relate to them, I know what a mile is and how fast 200mph is, it is just what we grew up using for speed and distance in the USA. As for temp, F is the standard I grew up using and so I use it, when I get it in C I have to convert it to F so I know how hot it is. C & K are Greek to me!
 
hectopascals

rjt194 said:
Being (originally) from the UK this makes perfect sense :)

If you're in Russia you'll hear everything in metric.

The odditity in the US (not sure if its used elsewhere) is barometric pressure is in inches of mercury not millibars, but I'm sure I'll get used to it eventually :)
Click to expand...

I believe that the official ICAO (one of the few functioning parts of the UN btw) measure of air pressure is the hectopascal and that the UK has a waiver to use millibars and the USA a waiver to use inHg. Mind you 1 mbar = 1 hPa which makes that conversion easy :)

Jim Sharkey
 
My Rant

I am a mechanical engineer, former designer of solid fuel fired power plants, both waste to energy, and fossil fuel fired. I have been part owner of a joint venture between a US, German, and Swedish firmsand was fortunate enought to have worked all over the world, using both systems. And the statement that the metric system is easier or makes more sense is just plain false, and drives me crAAAAZY. It is foisted on us by an acedemic system based on tenure and not competence.

Both systems have thier strengths and drawbacks in certain situations. The only thing that is truly easier in the metric system from an engineering standpoint is length. Unless, of course you need to divide the length by 3. i.e. 10m/3 is 3.333333333333 ... Divide 10 feet by 3 and you get 40 inches, a nice round number. :D

And then, now that you got me started, a 10" sch 40 is a 250 DN pipe in the metric system. It is actually 10.75 OD and approximately 10 in I D, but 273 mm OD. And someone payed someone a lot of money to develop a parellel standard in the metric system that is identical in every way to the long standing british system. You can order it either way, but you still get a 10" sch 40 pipe.

And what about wire sizes? AWG No. 2, or 32 mm^2? neither means much to me. I still have to look up how many amps each will carry.

And once you get weight involved, the acceleration of gravity is 32.2 ft/s^2 or 9.81 m/s^2... How much does your airplane weight in Newtons? It's mass is not the same number like it is in US units! I could go on and on, but you get the point. :confused:

And then there is the little matter of metric vs SAE fasteners. I was once asked, when working an oil refinery in California why we didn't replace all the fasteners in the place with a standard metric bolts, studs, nuts, etc. I had to explain, that, well when the refinery was built, there was no metric standard fasteners. And that since that refinery, alone, would cost about $2.5 billion to build in today's dollars, and there are probably something close to a million fasteners there. Oh, and by the way, many of those have to have custom torquing procedures because they are handling things like 2500 psi hydrogen, and, by the way, what do you really want to pay for a gallon of gas? :rolleyes:

What were we talking about?

Oh. The one thing that does make some sense is nautical miles, since it actually relates to something on the ground, the distance between the equator and the pole, divided by 60 degrees, divided by 60 minutes, and actually appears on the vertical longitude lines on the maps we use. :cool:

Now why we divided an hour and a direction by 60 or 360, I have no idea.:p
 
OK Old Guys....rememebr back before the "METAR" we had the good old "Sequence Report"...and the temps, if I recall correctly, were in degrees F! And you drew a little circle for "clear", a Circle with a single vertical line for "scattered", two vertical lines in the circle for broken, and if it was Overcast, you put an "X" in it. Simple...and I still do it that way today when I get a verbal brieifing....which is pretty rare...

Paul
 
Brent-

why I can't answer, but the aformentioned 60:1 rule sure likes the relationship between degrees, minutes, radials, nm and knots...not to mention 300, 600, 900 rpm descent rates AND 3 degree glideslopes. Did I
mention nm per minute? If this hotels IP server wasn't acting up, I'd explain, but it just took 5 minutes to type this on my iPhone!

Joe
 
Paul-

call me crazy, but I just write C, F, S, B, or O

but I do remember those, and 43 is not old! You should see some of the fossils in the left seat these days. :)

J
 
Almost every metric unit makes SOOO much more sense than the old imperial style.
Click to expand...

That's why we Canadians, like scientists, use metric units!

Although, building the RV has devolved me, and now I think in fractions of an inch. At least the fractions all have power-of-2 denominators (i.e. 1/8, 1/16, 1/32, etc)... for a computer scientist that actually makes more sense than metric fractions with powers-of-10 in the denominator.
 
Back to the original question, yes, it was all decreed to be the new standard a few years back by the International Civil Aviation Organization. I'm forever grateful that they also decided that English was the official language of ATC, though they seem to want us to say "tree" now when we mean the number "three" (roger, switching one tree tree decimal six).
I've often wondered why we in the US went along with the METAR/TAF system, all in the spirit of compromise, I guess.


Doug
Seattle area
-4, wings
 
I'm with Brent on this one

Both systems are based upon arbitrary relationships, and being fluent in both, I can assure you that neither system is fundamentally easier or better than the other.

Ever wonder where the meter comes from? How about the Celsius scale? How about seconds? Both systems rely on arbitrarily assigned fundamentals.

As an engineer, I have lots of options in both systems. I use what makes sense for the situation, which usually only has to do with the "customer" of my work, and not the calculations involved. Machinists? Inches and 1/1000's of an inch. Medical device design? Millimeters typically. Carpenters? Feet, inches and fractions (btw, a very convenient thing about the typical fractions we use is that one's eye can really split things into two equal lengths well - 1/2, then 1/2 of 1/2 or 1/4, etc.).

If converting to metric is so important, why does Europe or most of it still use English units in their pipe threads (or at least did when I lived there)? Rip out the plumbing! Lug nut threads on foreign cars? Lots of entertainment can be had in this topic.
 
seward747 said:
Back to the original question, yes, it was all decreed to be the new standard a few years back by the International Civil Aviation Organization. I'm forever grateful that they also decided that English was the official language of ATC, though they seem to want us to say "tree" now when we mean the number "three" (roger, switching one tree tree decimal six).
I've often wondered why we in the US went along with the METAR/TAF system, all in the spirit of compromise, I guess.


Doug
Seattle area
-4, wings
Click to expand...

English is the official language but most reluctantly. French controllers speak French to Air France crews in their air space (at least they did years ago). A most common reply by Americans was "...standby, I will call you back" when a heavily accented clearance was something like ..."cleared to !@#$%^&*()". Usually, someone on the crew had heard it before and it was acknowledged when agreed upon what it meant.

Once, coming out of Libya (when Pan Am and TWA were the only means of transport for American oil workers before they were kicked out by Kadafi), a VOR along the coast simple stopped transmitting. I advised the controller the VOR had failed. He replied in fairly clear English, "Roger, I just shut it down". We had a distinct impression he did not like us, good English or not, he probably was educated in the US. With that we proceeded VFR along the coast to the point where we thought it was time to cross the water to Spain. All flights into Libya were turn-arounds in those days, they would not permit the crew to get off the airplane. Strange situation, we were buying their oil for big bucks and they did not like us. The world was as crazy then as it is now.

Celsius vrs Fahrenheit? It's really not important as long as a crew knows the difference. Sometimes such anomalies can lead to trouble, like the time a 767 was fueled in liters and the crew thought it was gallons or pounds or some such mix up. That was the one where the 76 became a glider.

ICAO standards are intended to smooth out such misunderstandings when traveling around the planet. For the most part they do. That's why we use celsius. At least we did not have learn kilometers in place of knots or feet. German airplanes in WWII flew in a world of meters and kilometers. But of course they lost the war so that's why they agreed to English, knots and feet. But they won with celsius. :)
 
After thinking about this a bit, I've decided I don't want to have such arbitrary units forced upon me. Therefore...

1. My altimeter shall be marked in fathoms.
2. My airspeed shall be calibrated in furlongs per fortnight.
3. I shall expect pressure settings to be read to me in atmospheres.

Who's with me?
 
ChiefPilot said:
After thinking about this a bit, I've decided I don't want to have such arbitrary units forced upon me. Therefore...

1. My altimeter shall be marked in fathoms.
2. My airspeed shall be calibrated in furlongs per fortnight.
3. I shall expect pressure settings to be read to me in atmospheres.

Who's with me?
Click to expand...

I think I wish I were in Hawaii, scuba diving!
About 90 feet below the surface should do!! Just under 3 atmospheres I think.
 
Celsius made easy...

Or in my case, Celsius for Dummies.

Funny thread (meant in a good way). I was told once (and I don't necessarily concur) that the US has the best money system (due to the decimal system, not for any other intrinsic value ;)) and the worst measuring system in the world (due to the absence of the decimal system). I agree there are pros and cons to all (I can split things in two more easily, as the earlier poster mentioned! Cutting them in two, well, that's another story! :rolleyes:)

At work, we convert C (from a METAR or ATIS) to F twice per leg, so we can make departure and arrival PAs to the pax that they will understand (get a lot of funny looks if I announce that it's 37 in Las Vegas in the summer...ooops, meant 100!)

There are some memory aids in the scale itself, so thought I'd pass them on to the bubbas here (and perhaps they are already well known, but what the hey. They are not exact, but close enough!):

We all know 15 = 59 (standard day stuff)

There are a couple flip-flops that are easy to recall:
16 = 61
28 = 82

And a couple easy gouges:
0 = 32
10 = 50
24 = 75
37 = 100

From any of those six gouge points above, if you're close, just add/subtract 2F for each 1C (12C = 50+4, etc).

If you go into the minus, all bets are off...do the Navy thing (cheat :)) and pull out the conversion card!

Good rules of thumb for C:

In the 10s, and its cool to cold
In the 20's, and its mild...pretty nice
In the 30's, and its hot
In the low 40's, and its Phoenix
In the high 40's, and you're fighting a war far away (and thanks for your service!)

For those unafraid of math in public or math under pressure, the quickie formula is:
(C x 2) - 10% + 32
25 x 2 = 50 - 5 = 45 + 32 = 77

So easy, even a cave-man can do it! (Or a Navy guy! ;))

Cheers,
Bob

PS: I was told in high school that we'd be converted to metric by the time I graduated (1975). Hmmm...I think it got shelved by consumer advocacy groups, concerned with rip-offs during the conversion...especially in gas ($0.39 per gallon = what per liter?!...if we only could be dealing with cents per gallon now, I'd happily make the switch!) :)
 
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Of course most of us have heard of the multi-hundred-million dollar space failures because someone put something on the plans in inches and the builder built it in centimeters... The real need is a COMMON measuring system so such things don't happen. Sure, there will be things like the oil refinery that require old hardware etc. but if everyone started using the same system now, we would probably eliminate a lot of these issues in 25 years or so. Certainly makes sense to me. The Canadians changed over in 1967, and one doesn't (often) hear complaints from them about the issues with the metric system (the US tried this at the same time - remember all those highway signs with 161 km/100 miles etc. - and a bunch of stick-in-the-muds squelched it pretty quickly).

By the way, my local AWOS reports temperatures in F.

And there is a rationale for the meter:

The French Academy of Science decided to figure out the distance of an imaginary line that began at the North Pole, ended at the equator (AKA a quadrant) and ran through Paris. They would then divide this line into exactly ten million identical pieces. The length of one of these pieces would be the base unit for the new system of measurement.

Nowadays, it's defined in terms of wavelengths of light.

So much for my rant for the other side....

greg
 
Some quick answers.......

John Clark said:
It's not "twice as large" it is close to 1.6 times statute miles. So if your RV9 cruises at 200 KPH, you are only going a little over 124 statute MPH or 108 knots. Tell 'em 300, it is only a little exaggeration :rolleyes:
Click to expand...

John, what he meant was that knots is approx. twice as large as km/h and he is right! 1 NM = 1,852 km. I also tell people that my plane will fly 300 km/h when it is finished, because that is what they (non-pilots) can relate to. (I hope that "Bob's" speed mods will even get it bit over 300 km/hr):cool:

N999BT said:
AND... we log time in 10ths of hours!:mad:
Click to expand...

The hobs meters in the spam cans of our club are in hours and minutes, so I log minutes. At the end of the page, add all the minutes together and devide by 60, to get hours!

AlexPeterson said:
Ever wonder where the meter comes from? How about the Celsius scale? How about seconds? Both systems rely on arbitrarily assigned fundamentals.
Click to expand...

0 ?C = freezing point of water, 100 ?C = boiling point of water, simple!
If you like we can all switch to ?K (Kelvin) ;)

rvmills said:
Or in my case, Celsius for Dummies.
There are some memory aids in the scale itself, so thought I'd pass them on to the bubbas here (and perhaps they are already well known, but what the hey. They are not exact, but close enough!):
Click to expand...

To be exact:
?F ==> ?C : Multiply by 1,8 and add 32
?C ==> ?F : Subtract 32 and devide by 1,8


BTW who is this Roger, that you are all talking about? :rolleyes:

Regards, Tonny.
 
We don neeed no steenking standards

When I worked on the T-45 Goshawk program, a British design partially built and final assembly completed in St. Louis, we workers had to shift mental gears. This was reinforced with banners draped from the ceiling "THINK METRIC." Even nutplates, with their metric based hole spacing made the hardware not interchangeable with nutplates most of us are familiar with. Just a few feet away across the aisle, the American designed F/A-18 Hornet line was humming along quite happily thanks in part to its MEASURE of success, the decimal system.

If some governing body had the power to really impose a one world standard and that measuring standard not based upon American sensibilities, I'm sure the general reaction here at home will be met by the usual outrage and another record surge in gun sales. :D

Since when have all people everywhere universally agreed upon anything? Why Celsius? Why not? If we don't like it, rest assured somebody else loves it. Now, can we all just get along? :)
 
ChiefPilot said:
After thinking about this a bit, I've decided I don't want to have such arbitrary units forced upon me. Therefore...

1. My altimeter shall be marked in fathoms.
2. My airspeed shall be calibrated in furlongs per fortnight.
3. I shall expect pressure settings to be read to me in atmospheres.

Who's with me?
Click to expand...

I'm in, as long as we can use the cubit somewhere. ;)
 
Knots origin

I seem to recall that the use of knots came from the fact that a nautical mile is equal to a minute of latitude, so traveling at 1 kt it would take an hour to travel 1 minute of Lat if the course was along a meridian (ie line of longitude).
 
Auburntsts said:
I seem to recall that the use of knots came from the fact that a nautical mile is equal to a minute of latitude, so traveling at 1 kt it would take an hour to travel 1 minute of Lat if the course was along a meridian (ie line of longitude).
Click to expand...
I seem to recall the term "knots" came about by sailors counting a series of equally spaced knots on a rope that was running through their fingers as it trailed behind the ship. The time for any given number of knots to be counted determined the speed of the vessel.
 
Numb bers

ChiefPilot said:
2. My airspeed shall be calibrated in furlongs per fortnight.
Click to expand...

For those that care.
For an 180 hp RV7 (from the mother ship web site data):

Vso= 137,088 F/F (Furlongs/Fortnight)

75% cruise = 537600 F/F

Top speed = 564480 F/F

And I totally agree that the US measurement system is bad because I only get 16 oz in a US pint of beer instead of a proper 20 oz. :D
 
rzbill said:
For those that care.
For an 180 hp RV7 (from the mother ship web site data):

Vso= 137,088 F/F (Furlongs/Fortnight)

75% cruise = 537600 F/F

Top speed = 564480 F/F

And I totally agree that the US measurement system is bad because I only get 16 oz in a US pint of beer instead of a proper 20 oz. :D
Click to expand...


Awesome! If you dig telling folks your speed in MPH instead of kts now, you'll LOVE furlongs/fortnight.

Q: "How fast does it go?"
A: "In excess of 564,000!"

:D
 
sometimes it does really matter

Twelve kilometres above the Manitoba countryside, the unthinkable happens: a brand new Air Canada Boeing 767 runs out of fuel. The 120-tonne, $40-million plane becomes a glider, dropping at over 600 metres per minute with no hope of reaching Winnipeg. Amazingly, the powerless plane makes a successful emergency landing at an abandoned airbase in Gimli, Man. A week later, Air Canada reveals how the newest plane in their fleet could simply run out of gas.
'Gimli Glider' lands without fuel

? The plane began to run out of gas near Red Lake, Ont., 225 kilometres from Gimli, Man.
? Air Canada flight 143 was saved by a series of lucky breaks. The pilot, Capt. Robert Pearson, was an experienced glider pilot (he co-owned a Blanik L-13 sailplane). First Officer Maurice Quintal had once been stationed at the Royal Canadian Air Force base at Gimli and was familiar with the landing strips.

? The problem was caused by confusion over metric conversion. The Boeing 767 was the first metric plane to fly in Canada. The Fuel Quantity Information System computer on flight 143 was malfunctioning, so ground crew in Montreal loaded the fuel manually using calculations involving the specific gravity of jet fuel. But the factor they used was 1.77 pounds/litre, not the all-metric .8 kg/litre required for the new 767. The plane had half the fuel it needed to reach Edmonton.

? Without hydraulic pressure, the nose landing gear of the plane could not be fully lowered, and the nose of the 767 slammed into the ground, shooting out sparks as it dragged along the tarmac.
? The Gimli base had no control tower or fire trucks, and was being used as a racetrack. It had been divided into various courses, including a drag strip with a steel guardrail down the middle.

? July 23, 1983, was "Family Day" for the Winnipeg Sports Car Club. The Gimli base was full of families and campers, and the runway was being used for go-cart races. Spectators and racers had to scatter as the giant plane touched down.
? After the landing, a fire in the nose of the plane was extinguished by go-cart racers with hand-held fire extinguishers.

? The only injuries were to passengers who exited by the plane's rear emergency slide. Because the nose landing gear was not extended, the tail of the plane ended up three storeys in the air.
? The aircraft was fixed at Gimli and flown to Winnipeg for full repairs. It was later put back into regular service. Flight crews nicknamed the plane the 'Gimli Glider.'

? After the landing, the pilot and co-pilot of Air Canada flight 143 were praised for saving the lives of the 61 passengers on board. But on Oct. 4, 1983, Air Canada disciplined them for allowing the near-tragedy to happen. The pilot was demoted for six months, the co-pilot was suspended for two weeks and three ground workers were also suspended. A 1985 Transport Canada report blamed errors and insufficient training and safety procedures.

? Many residents of Gimli credit the incident with putting their town on the map. On July 1, 1986, Pearson, Quintal and the plane's flight attendants were given a place of honour in Gimli's Canada Day parade for making Gimli the site of Air Canada's most famous unscheduled stop.
'Gimli Glider' lands without fuel

Bill Brooks
Ottawa, Canada
 
dual units

An airport bud is hosting an 18 year exchange student from France. She holds a pilot certificate with a glider-only rating. She tells us the rate-of-climb in gliders is indicated in meters per minute, but it's feet per minute in airplanes. Not a burden for ATC folk as they don't work gliders but it's gotta be tough for pilots who fly both categories of aircraft.
 
May the force be with you

HEY DOUG, DOES THIS THING DO SUBSCRIPTS?

lbf (pounds force) and lbm (pounds mass) aren't the same, IIRC.

32 ft/s^2 x poundsmass = poundsforce

9.81 m/s^2 x grams = Newtons

I have to admit that we laughed at having two different things with the same names in the imperial system.

I grew up, as far as I have so far anyway, learning both systems, and got to listen to a lifetime supply of folks complaining about the metric transition.

Like everything else, one seems most comfortable with

.
.
.
.
.
.
what they're already comfortable with and have used.

Odd that this is surprising.
-----------------------------------
I go back and forth a lot, including knots and nm (which make life with maps easy). Use whatever makes the math easier. And you learn to never assume the units.

AT -40 degrees, F and C meet. While it may be argued that there is no F in Cold, there is a C. Below zero is ice, above is not. Don't need to remember that it's 32F to freeze, but I do.
Water boils nominally at 212 F or 100C

Sea level = 101.325 kPa, 14.96 psi, about 30 ft of water head, about 30 inches of mercury - just rolls off the tongue, doesn't it?

I don't bother with volumes, just cube the lengths. 25.4mm per inch.
You can amuse yourself for a while on the highway with that, or remember 0.6/1.6 to go from km to miles or miles to km.

BTU/Horsepower/Joules/Watts aren't as easy. Well Joules and Watts are :)

However, there doesn't appear to be an SI equivalent for YMMV.
 
Its a variometer and -

Steve said:
An airport bud is hosting an 18 year exchange student from France. She holds a pilot certificate with a glider-only rating. She tells us the rate-of-climb in gliders is indicated in meters per minute, but it's feet per minute in airplanes. Not a burden for ATC folk as they don't work gliders but it's gotta be tough for pilots who fly both categories of aircraft.
Click to expand...

US glider's variometers are marked in knots up or down. Strange thing is a 4 knot climb = 400 ft per min. 8 knot is 800 etc. Easy as pie:D
 
C-GRVT said:
Twelve kilometres above the Manitoba countryside, the unthinkable happens: a brand new Air Canada Boeing 767 runs out of fuel. The 120-tonne, $40-million plane becomes a glider, dropping at over 600 metres per minute with no hope of reaching Winnipeg. Amazingly, the powerless plane makes a successful emergency landing at an abandoned airbase in Gimli, Man. A week later, Air Canada reveals how the newest plane in their fleet could simply run out of gas.
'Gimli Glider' lands without fuel

? The plane began to run out of gas near Red Lake, Ont., 225 kilometres from Gimli, Man.
? Air Canada flight 143 was saved by a series of lucky breaks. The pilot, Capt. Robert Pearson, was an experienced glider pilot (he co-owned a Blanik L-13 sailplane). First Officer Maurice Quintal had once been stationed at the Royal Canadian Air Force base at Gimli and was familiar with the landing strips.

? The problem was caused by confusion over metric conversion. The Boeing 767 was the first metric plane to fly in Canada. The Fuel Quantity Information System computer on flight 143 was malfunctioning, so ground crew in Montreal loaded the fuel manually using calculations involving the specific gravity of jet fuel. But the factor they used was 1.77 pounds/litre, not the all-metric .8 kg/litre required for the new 767. The plane had half the fuel it needed to reach Edmonton.

? Without hydraulic pressure, the nose landing gear of the plane could not be fully lowered, and the nose of the 767 slammed into the ground, shooting out sparks as it dragged along the tarmac.
? The Gimli base had no control tower or fire trucks, and was being used as a racetrack. It had been divided into various courses, including a drag strip with a steel guardrail down the middle.

? July 23, 1983, was "Family Day" for the Winnipeg Sports Car Club. The Gimli base was full of families and campers, and the runway was being used for go-cart races. Spectators and racers had to scatter as the giant plane touched down.
? After the landing, a fire in the nose of the plane was extinguished by go-cart racers with hand-held fire extinguishers.

? The only injuries were to passengers who exited by the plane's rear emergency slide. Because the nose landing gear was not extended, the tail of the plane ended up three storeys in the air.
? The aircraft was fixed at Gimli and flown to Winnipeg for full repairs. It was later put back into regular service. Flight crews nicknamed the plane the 'Gimli Glider.'

? After the landing, the pilot and co-pilot of Air Canada flight 143 were praised for saving the lives of the 61 passengers on board. But on Oct. 4, 1983, Air Canada disciplined them for allowing the near-tragedy to happen. The pilot was demoted for six months, the co-pilot was suspended for two weeks and three ground workers were also suspended. A 1985 Transport Canada report blamed errors and insufficient training and safety procedures.

? Many residents of Gimli credit the incident with putting their town on the map. On July 1, 1986, Pearson, Quintal and the plane's flight attendants were given a place of honour in Gimli's Canada Day parade for making Gimli the site of Air Canada's most famous unscheduled stop.
'Gimli Glider' lands without fuel

Bill Brooks
Ottawa, Canada
Click to expand...

My memory of the book Freefall about the incident was that with the nose gear collapsed, some of the egress slides didn't reach the ground, and caused some injuries.

Good use of the fence posts to slow down, too, IIRC.
 
Give me the 10mm wrench

I don't know about all of the above but....

I know I would rather have metric wrenches as standard....

At my advanced age I need reading glasses, up closer reading glasses and really up close reading glasses to work on my airplane depending on what I am doing. It sure would be nice to limit the choices.

Give me the 10mm wrench instead. Trying to find the 13/64ths wrench or the 37/64 socket makes me crazy....or crazy'er.... I am building an airplane in my garage.
 
metric history

1975 - Remember when Jimmy Carter was going to make us all go metric? (I think Canada jumped on the jimmy bandwagon at around the same time, eh?)

1982 - Remember when Ronald Reagan saved America from the metric system? Canadian kids grew up knowing Celsius. American kids grew up knowing Fahrenheits, heck that can't be an American word, can it?!

I loved Ronnie, and with apologies to all you old dogs, I think he made a mistake. The metric system sure seems better to me. But then I am an Electrical Engineer. The IEEE mandated the use of the metric system starting back in the mid 90's. The ASME? No way Jose. Horsepowers and BTUS to the death!

I am kinda glad to report that my engine is 180 horses instead of watts.

I think I'll go read up on priming, tipups, and taildragging.
 
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