People make posts along the line of "My SAC rate is .33" everyone would seem to know what they ment due to the fact that a SAC rate of .33psi would be outrageous.
If someone just posted "My SAC rate with a PST E130cf tank is 29", others thinking that SAC is cf/m would think that they just left off the decimal and think that it was .29 cf/m when the poster may have well ment 29psi/m or about 1cfm. Likewise, someone who means CFM and forgets a decimal may post "I tool around the lake in double 104's and measured my SAC rate at 33" and someone using SAC as PSI/min would think that the fellow could very well do with some exersise.
When Canada was switching from Imperial to Metric and had gotten delivery of a new jet, the fuel load was specified numericaly for gallons, the ground crew filled it to the correct numerical value, but in liters and the flight crew double checked the numerical value and assumed gallons. The plane ran out of fuel and had to do an emergency landing. Heck, look at the poor NASA Mars mission... Feet/Yards/Meters? No big deal, only cost of a couple of hundred million (dollars not euros/pounds or other units of currency). Utilizing different units of measure when exchanging critical make or break information is not nit-picky by a long shot. In general, if something is specified in one unit of measure and people start substituting another unit of measure, as they say, whatever can go wrong will go wrong.
In this specific case, it is a little nit-picky in that when using SAC rate/RMV for dive planning, you should be using your own numbers, so you know what your unit of measure is. While there may be some confusion every now and then as to exchanging rates for conversational purposes with others, it shouldn't be life threatening.
If I had jumped on people for using SAC instead of SGC for nitrox/trimix then THAT would definately be beyond nit-picky.
If someone just posted "My SAC rate with a PST E130cf tank is 29", others thinking that SAC is cf/m would think that they just left off the decimal and think that it was .29 cf/m when the poster may have well ment 29psi/m or about 1cfm. Likewise, someone who means CFM and forgets a decimal may post "I tool around the lake in double 104's and measured my SAC rate at 33" and someone using SAC as PSI/min would think that the fellow could very well do with some exersise.
When Canada was switching from Imperial to Metric and had gotten delivery of a new jet, the fuel load was specified numericaly for gallons, the ground crew filled it to the correct numerical value, but in liters and the flight crew double checked the numerical value and assumed gallons. The plane ran out of fuel and had to do an emergency landing. Heck, look at the poor NASA Mars mission... Feet/Yards/Meters? No big deal, only cost of a couple of hundred million (dollars not euros/pounds or other units of currency). Utilizing different units of measure when exchanging critical make or break information is not nit-picky by a long shot. In general, if something is specified in one unit of measure and people start substituting another unit of measure, as they say, whatever can go wrong will go wrong.
In this specific case, it is a little nit-picky in that when using SAC rate/RMV for dive planning, you should be using your own numbers, so you know what your unit of measure is. While there may be some confusion every now and then as to exchanging rates for conversational purposes with others, it shouldn't be life threatening.
If I had jumped on people for using SAC instead of SGC for nitrox/trimix then THAT would definately be beyond nit-picky.
