Quote from: D1042 Western Princess on July 01, 2015, 12:22:55 PM

Quote from: MalcolmAL on July 01, 2015, 11:33:25 AM

Quote from: Only Me on July 01, 2015, 11:15:01 AM
I use the rule

I cant resist :-
I was wondering how long before someone brought their slide-rule to the party
computers, bah! who needs 'em

"roughly" and a decimal place, I luv it 

Time for anuther cuppa >>

  I totally agree Malcolm. Next we'll be having someone work it out to the 0.0000001% of accuracy!
OK, I exaggerate but it does seem to be, in the immortal words of "Monty Python", "All getting a bit silly" now.

On the other hand, what is life without a bit of light relief? 

which is why I asked, somewhere in this tangled web we have wove, if I needed to round it to 1 deciplace, may have been on my original speedo page, no one answered tho' !

Quote from: MalcolmAL on July 01, 2015, 04:51:16 PM


On the other hand a PicAxe could be used

  I agree - I've sometimes felt like taking a pickaxe to my computer too. 

Interesting varying methods. I think I'll just measure round my oval in mm, convert that to miles, and time the locos round the loop with a stop watch with various speed settings on the controller.

Should be able to work out speeds in miles per hour.

There's quite a lot of variation in the locos I have. The Pannier tank is very low geared. I think 90 on the gaugemaster would be a similar real life speed for the tank. The Drummond M7 goes like a greyhound. 90 on the controller for that looks like over 200 in real life. That's my perception. I'll let you know the actual figures for all my locos.

Quote from: Firefox on November 24, 2015, 11:04:14 PM
Interesting varying methods. I think I'll just measure round my oval in mm, convert that to miles, and time the locos round the loop with a stop watch with various speed settings on the controller.

Should be able to work out speeds in miles per hour.

There's quite a lot of variation in the locos I have. The Pannier tank is very low geared. I think 90 on the gaugemaster would be a similar real life speed for the tank. The Drummond M7 goes like a greyhound. 90 on the controller for that looks like over 200 in real life. That's my perception. I'll let you know the actual figures for all my locos.

OK, work in mm, then convert if you like 'difficult', but why not just go for simple and use REAL measures? Feet and inches? Much more simple: 9 feet = 1/4 mile, 36 feet = 1 mile (OK, not exact, but near enough for 'realistic speeds') so if one circuit is (say) 18 feet and a train completes one circuit in (say) 30 seconds it will be travelling at 60 MPH.
Simple.

I'm a chartered engineer and we work in mm and m all the time. We don't use feet and inches so what comes natural to some is different for others. At the final step I convert to mph as that's a unit everyone is familiar with. I'd say use what works for you - at the end of the day we only want to know how far to turn the knob to get a realistic speed. There's loads of ways to get to the answer, it doesn't really matter how

Oh dear! not again! Imperial  vs Metric....   

LOL, is that a big debate here!?

I'm happy with whatever works for the individual, but I always found it strange that scales were often expressed in units like 2mm to the foot, 4mm to the foot etc. Seems quite a strange practice 

Oh yeah old debate... I had a hard time trying to explain that 5% is not metric nor imperial... is a PROPORTION.
I don't want to open another can of worms though...

That's why I prefer a statement of scale like 1 : 150 or 1:75. Works for whatever unit you want to use