SR-71 blackbird cockpit

[StrandedonEarth]

Hmmph. And I only just realized that this thread was necroed after nearly four years. Ah well, it's worthy of revival.

[YNM]

1 hour ago, XB-70A said:

About the distance it is still a bit "floating", despite all the forms and declarations made by the guys at Cologne. There is still some exceptions a bit everywhere, sometime I was wondering if it was not like some kind of a small revenge against the use of the imperial system units, while most of the European countries were using the metric system in aviation before the Second World War.

Interesting...

AFAIK the use of metric systems in aviation to the most extreme could be seen in ex-Soviet and associated countries - they even used metres for height or something. In China this is still in use.

 

For the rest of the topic, I believe there should be a good measure on how things are carried. Larger aircraft have somewhat easier lives as the FMS can be directed to be self-adjusting based on one or two limits; smaller aircraft usually have some predefined settings, though obviously sometimes things deviate or so.

 

At least the Kmh airspeed shows it differently than kts ones (zero on bottom) 

[qzgy]

2 hours ago, XB-70A said:

But honestly, I remember when I started to fly at 14 I was so proud of using the imperial system. As a kid who grew up in a total metric system I felt like it was making you different... and now, more than ten years later I don't know what I would give for them to stop using this system in aviation and switch to the metric one... Please dear controllers and traffic agents, no more in-flight conversion!  Sometimes I was feeling like the guys from the ATC were just some torturers who liked to ask us for wacky information requesting miles-to nm conversion for the DME, or mph to knots while we were flying in aircraft with old ASI, or the best: what is the time you are expecting to reach this point at this altitude while you're descending at this number of feet-per-minute, while travelling in mph, and the distance you are covering is in nm...

Huh. That seems like a really crazy thing to do

On another note, for someone who is interested in learning to fly, how would you recomend starting?