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Why Does Aviation Use Nautical Miles?
Apart from pilots and sea captains, most of us use either the Imperial or the metric system when calculating how far we need to get to where we are going. However, aviation navigation has adopted the ways of its marine counterpart, as it also travels across distances great enough to cross several latitudal lines. Not to mention to save air traffic control a great deal of potential confusion when communicating with international pilots. (simpleflying.com) Más...Sort type: [Top] [Newest]
Nautical miles still makes more sense than any imperial measurement. Feel sorry that the US is still 1 of the 3 countries using a system that makes no sense at all. Even the inventors of the system switched to Metric. My guess is that Von Braun did not use the Imperial system :)
I used to use MPH in my Champ to make it go faster and KTS in big airplanes just because..
https://aerosavvy.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/08/an05_cons.pdf
Link displays the International Civil Aviation Organization document “Units of Measurement to be Used in Air and Ground Operations”. Its specified standard units are all metric. Nautical miles, feet, and knots listed as “alternative units permitted for temporary use”, but no termination dates have yet been established for use of these.
Carefully meter any study of this dense and lengthy document lest you be tied up in knots.
Link displays the International Civil Aviation Organization document “Units of Measurement to be Used in Air and Ground Operations”. Its specified standard units are all metric. Nautical miles, feet, and knots listed as “alternative units permitted for temporary use”, but no termination dates have yet been established for use of these.
Carefully meter any study of this dense and lengthy document lest you be tied up in knots.
It would have been cool if they chose fathoms to measure altitude. According to wiki, fathoms have never been recognized as an International Standard unit. Debate rages (as if) as to whether a fathom was equal to the height of the average man or the length of a mans outstretched hands. Length varied as did the size of humans. People didn't have access to the nutrition we have today and thus they were smaller hundreds of years ago. Another possibility is to define a fathom as a thousandth of a nautical mile. Now we are getting somewhere.
I believe a fathom is approx. 6ft?
Try looking up furlong, too. What did you find?!
Try looking up furlong, too. What did you find?!
I miss the old days when measurements were based on things like the Kings stride and his far a horse could pull a plow befor needing a rest. All these new tangled ideas are just too hard to grasp...
Hardly new, my friend! The knot as in nautical mile per hour has been around for a few centuries now.
Talking about horses, how about hands?
Talking about horses, how about hands?
My post was in jest to point out how times and cultures have changed. Hands, inches, feet...etc were all based on dimensions if the human body. But since my hand is likely a different size then yours there needed to be a standard. Romans used the emperor, later fudal times would use the king but both of those systems fell apart when a ruler died and the new ruler had differant dimensions. Knots themselves came from knots in a rope tied to a log that was tossed out and then after a measured time the number of knots was used to estimate speed and then transferred to the map to estimated position. Times change and in the future they will continue to change and the knot might give way to something else.
Maybe, maybe not.
The knot has been around for the past 500 years or so? Slow moving, huh?
just like one nautical mile per hour!.....
The knot has been around for the past 500 years or so? Slow moving, huh?
just like one nautical mile per hour!.....