Funny to get exactly the reactions one could foresee. OK, I admit I
don't have much hope of getting the ISU units accepted in aviation, but
the "nautical mile/minute of latitude" story has been dealt with long
ago, shortly after the French Revolution. There still are French (I'm
Belgian, please don't mix us up) survey maps with longitude and
latitude in grades, not degrees (400 grades = 360 degrees). You then
have: 1 hundredth of a grade = 1 kilometre (UK) / kilometer (USA). Just
as efficient (or inefficient), and decimal, but it hasn’t been able to
replace the 360 degree system, not even in the ISU. Oh, by the way,
this geodetic system uses the Paris meridian as zero, not the Greenwich
one.
why have horizontal speed in km/h and vertical speed in meters/sec? To
me, this is odd. If the units were the same, you could simply divide
one into the other and get the L/D
Odd, yes, but I’m not really in favour of calculating the L/D by
dividing indicated speed by sink anyhow: the value will vary wildly in
a relatively short time, and wind can play havoc with this kind of
calculation.


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stephanevdv
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