On Sep 14, 10:42 pm, Marc Ramsey wrote:
....
So, the question still remains, why did the US gliding community make a
relatively quick shift from MPH and FPM to knots, when just about
everything else happens so slowly?

Marc

The entire US light plane community did it, not just gliding. And the
only real difference was the airspeed indicator. A vario marked in
100's of feet/min can be read as knots, they could have been changed
just by re-painting the face plate :-)

Why it was done is something that I am not sure about, but probably
the FAA pushed aircraft manufacturers to standardize on knots. FAA
regulations all reference knots, not mph.

Todd Smith
3S