Two-tap sinks look stupid today to anybody with money, but this is an old historical thing. Single taps are c. 10x cheaper than decent quality mixer taps. You have to remember that Britain was very poor post-WW2. The first two houses my parents bought post-1969 had outdoor toilets (as well as indoor ones), lead pipes, and lead-sheathed mains wiring. Now, of course, German bathroom stuff owns the market but not everybody wants to spend £100-200 on a ceramic mixer tap, or £10k-20k on a German bathroom.
The switches on the mains sockets enable the applicance to be isolated, for safety. I find them very useful.
Yes the pins on a UK 13A plug are good for ~ 100A but the socket contacts aren't. It's a stupid design done in early 1960s and it has remained.
Well, it's better than the US idea of plugs with weedy poor fitting pins that wobble and arc in the socket!
That's the old thing of American products typically being 'just good enough' and thereby spreading the most benefit to the most people. In doing so it also makes the manufacturer the most money - and then he can buy Peter's fancy German stuff if he likes :-)
Concorde versus 747, EASA maintenance versus blue collar certified aircraft ownership etc.
Another historical reason is US copper mines made 110 VAC power practical.
Back to the topic, can anyone point me to an area of the UK VFR chart which is confusing as to the airspace class and the vertical and lateral extents of it?
Peter, I am not sure if it's quite what you are looking for, but on the UK CAA VFR 500k chart, try looking at the airspace around Belfast city. It might not be to the same extent as some of the LTMA areas but It's pretty confusing with many polygons and vertical limits changing around the place.
Hello!
Back to the topic, can anyone point me to an area of the UK VFR chart which is confusing as to the airspace class and the vertical and lateral extents of it?
I did a very quick search on google for such a chart (as I never had a UK VFR chart myself) and as an example will look at this bit here:
Suppose I come flying from France or Belgium at 2000ft from the lower right hand corner of this map (near to where the "Varne" Lightship - or whatever else that might be - is shown) and want to fly to Eastchurch in the upper left hand corner. Being quite familiar with VFR charts, I think I more or less get the overall picture. Continuing to fly in a straight line at 2000ft all the way to my destination should be OK in terms of obstacle clearance and airspace structure.
BUT: Suppose some low cloud ahead forces me to deviate to the north initially and the trouble begins...
Flying inbound to DVR VOR I encounter a purple hatched circle labelled "Swingate/1.0". No idea what that might be or what it's vertical extension is. So better not track towards DVR, but fly around that circle first. Deviating to the left I am faced with a blue circle with a "G" inside, labelled "WALDERSHARE Pk". Again, no idea what that might be, good or bad?, better fly around it. To the west, the clouds get thinner, so I contiune west until I meet a black dashed line with a crown symbol near the village of Wye. What on earth might that be now? The border of the kingdom? Am I allowed to cross that? Better not, so let's fly northbound parallel to the "crown line" for a while. Suddenly, there is a blue circle around a "+" sign ahead labelled "VRP A2 JUNC". Obviously a visual reporting point. But belonging to which airport? Manston maybe, but does it have a control zone? (Otherwise, why would a VRP be required?) There is a purple shaded dotted circle around Manston, labelled "178 Manston", but without reading the explanations, I can not tell what kind of airspace that is and what vertical extension it has. But at least there is a frequency to be found "EGMH LARS 126.35" where I could make a fool of myself asking stupid questions!
But now, onward to my destination: Boldly, I cross the "crown line" nortwestbound and try to call Eastchurch for information and joining instructions. Not as easy as it seems, there is no frequency printed on the chart. So with my knees, I hold the yoke and browse through my airfield guide (the one from 2005 that my fying buddy borrowed me for the trip). No reply of course, either the information in my guide is outdated or the airfield is closed (of course I did not "book in" over the phone because I'm not used to that - is not required elsewhere in the world). So divert. But where to? For my little Seminole I need 600m of paved runway. No way to tell from this map which one of these airfields has what kind of runway. No frequencies printed anywhere for asking silly questions.
So this was just a very brief list of oddities that a continetal European (familiar with VFR charts of France, Germany, BeNeLux, Italy, Switzerland, Austria, ...) might encounter on a 15 minute venture into British airspace ;-) More to come when I find the next piece of that chart closer to London where it starts to get really interesting!
What I find funny is the existence of a "Worthing CTA" while I can not discern a "Worthing Aerodrome" ... ?
@max: while you have a couple of points, there is no need to exaggerate. For one thing, a circle with a G inside is a glider field, on BE charts also. Some of these perform winch launches up to 1500 AGL or so, staying clear either laterally or vertically is a good idea!
...there is no need to exaggerate.
I was not completely seroius about everything :-)
Here is a snippet from a German VFR chart for comparison. Glider fields have a little glider symbol on them, because not in evey (ICAO) language the word for glider starts with a "G".
Well, I suppose the next step is to replace the textual "München" with pictograms for dirndl and/or mugs of beer? Sausage for Frankfurt, diamond for Idar-Oberstein &c &c?
Ok, managed to get an image of the airspace around Belfast that I was referring to earlier. Again, maybe it is just me that finds it confusing but it's still a mess regardless.
what_next,
All your post highlights is that ICAO charts are not sufficiently standardised for international flying. That is why the Jeppesen VFR charts were great, unfortunately they are gone now as paper charts, and I don't know if the electronic replacements are up to scratch.
All bits you mention are simply answered by a look at the chart legend. The crown, by the way, is a little crown painted on the side of the hill, the line is a line of contstant variation (isogonal) which is also in the German charts, if you pick the right area.
Thankfully, a lot of standardisation happened - for example, the German charts replaced the different coloured lines for class E TMA boundaries (which did not mention their altitudes other than in the legend) with the standard colours and clear labelling, but they still use the strange bat symbol in a circle you tell us are gliding sites ;-).
Now Pirho's example is really what is making things complex and confusing - very complicated airspace design, together with less-than-clear charting. From the above, would you instantly realize that you can happily fly overhead Belfast City at, say, 2,500ft? No chance! While this is probably the worst, there are many areas where the airspace is complex, and that the chart includes all airspace up to FL195 does not help - Germany's cut-off at FL100 and France's at FL115 declutter things in some areas. Also, the UK char depiction of class E airspace is non-standard and not helpful.
