Steve offers:
"It boggles my mind why we risk confusion and even talk about "percent
grades".
Isn't that why virtually every high-school graduate took geometry so we
would
have a better way to describe an angle ?"
----------------------------
It might be because a simple rise/run rather than degrees can often be more
directly usable in the field; for example, carpenters doing framing, who
have traditionally used a framing square, would probably walk off the
jobsite if they had to convert an "8 in 12" roof pitch into 33.6 degrees.
Yeah, I know: there are lots of carpenter's caculators out there, but in a
race, I'll bet on the experienced framer who really knows how to use all the
scales on the square. I wouldn't be surprised if road builders (if not also
the civil engineers who design them) find height/length to be more directly
useful in laying out grades in the field using surveyer's levels and rods.
Doesn't Rohn specify anchor placement using heights and lengths rather than
degrees? Much easier to lay out, I'll bet.
We often find complex impedance notation more useful than polar notation;
e.g.: Z = 50 +j0 vs. Z = 50 ohms at zero degrees.
Framing squares, by the way, are really clever tools. Here's a link to a
wikipedia article:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steel_square
73,
Chuck, N4NM
_______________________________________________
_______________________________________________
TowerTalk mailing list
TowerTalk@contesting.com
http://lists.contesting.com/mailman/listinfo/towertalk
|