Easiest way find percentage of a hill?

[trex]

give us the name of the hill you want to know, we can then compare various methods - we'll see which one is best.

 

[oigoi]

I find it easier to understand the older method, e.g. 1 in 8 every eight feet I go along I'm going up 1 foot. If I see a percentage have to think about how many times that number goes into a hundred and convert it to the old style.

 

[D C]

I think I'll stick to the old fashioned cyclist marking.

E - easy
H - hard
FH - flippin hard

That's pretty much my personal classification except FH stands for something else!
Dave.

 

[Mrke]

give us the name of the hill you want to know, we can then compare various methods - we'll see which one is best.

There are two roads that I am interested in if possible?

1) Pound Lane
2) Gorse Hill Road

both in BH15

 

[flecc]

I don't know why we had to change from the old fashioned 1 in 10, 1 in 8 method to percentages anyway. When you saw a sign with Steep Hill 1 in 6 it meant a lot more to most people than the equivalent 16.5% rounded off.

Yes, very true, but as I observed earlier, percentages do enable a single number rather than the cumbersome 1 in X expression.

However, there's no law on what we use in such as this website for example, so each to their own. Personally I've found percentages just a matter of getting accustomed to using them and they have as much or more realistic meaning to me as any other method. A bit like the way we got used to the metric system from the early 1970s.
.

 

[flecc]

Degrees, minutes and seconds are more commonly used for navigational purposes.

Just as much with angles and slopes though as a quick web search showed on this link

Of course if the metric system had been even more daft with 1000 degrees in a circle, we could have used degrees meaningfully to express hill steepness!
.

 

[trex]

There are two roads that I am interested in if possible?

1) Pound Lane
2) Gorse Hill Road

both in BH15

Pound Lane: BH15 3PS 6% gradient at its steepest bit
Gorse Hill Road: BH15 3QH 6.3% gradient at its steepest bit

Both averages about 4% overall.

How far are they off?

 

[JohnCade]

I'm fine with kilos and litres and am sometimes surprised when young supermarket assistants don't really know what I mean when I ask for a half kilo of cheese or something. But temperature units don't mean as much to me in Celsius as in Fahrenheit.

Of course if the metric system had even more daft with 1000 degrees in a circle, we could have used degrees meaningfully to express hill steepness!
.

I don't like the modern way of using kilometres to measure large distances across the earth though. The only measurement which really relates directly to the earth's size is a nautical mile and that's a much better unit. One nautical mile at the equator being one minute of one degree of longitude of course.

 

[grldtnr]

Degrees, minutes and seconds are more commonly used for navigational purposes.

I think I'll stick to the old fashioned cyclist marking.

E - easy
H - hard
FH - flippin hard

That's the one I use the most!

 

[flecc]

I'm fine with kilos and litres and am sometimes surprised when young supermarket assistants don't really know what I mean when I ask for a half kilo of cheese or something. But temperature units don't mean as much to me in Celsius as in Fahrenheit.

I don't like the modern way of using kilometres to measure large distances across the earth though. The only measurement which really relates directly to the earth's size is a nautical mile and that's a much better unit. One nautical mile at the equator being one minute of one degree of longitude of course.

The kilos and litres examples illustrate what I meant about only needing familiarity to accept percentages for hills.

I fully agree about kilometres though, and that is just one of the questionable suitabilities of parts of the metric system for common use. Hence my expression in the reply to SRS "if the metric system had been even more daft".
.

 

[Mrke]

Pound Lane: BH15 3PS 6% gradient at its steepest bit
Gorse Hill Road: BH15 3QH 6.3% gradient at its steepest bit

Both averages about 4% overall.

How far are they off?

Thanks trex,
Sorry I've no idea how far they are off, but to get a figure for a couple of hills local to me gives a much better understanding of what the written percentage figure on the forum actually means in physical angle.

 

[Deleted member 4366]

Percentage for hills is also misleading and confusing because 100% is only 45 degrees, so you can get 110% inclines. I bet most laymen would think that a 100% incline is a brick wall.

Get the phone ap. Stick phone on your bike, and you'll soon get to recognise the steepness of hills by relating the readings to the hills you encounter. The phone's sensors are very accurate. No need for a spirit level.

 

[flecc]

Percentage for hills is also misleading and confusing because 100% is only 45 degrees, so you can get 110% inclines.

Can't let you get away with that.

Who ever rides or drives up steeper than 1 in 1, apart from a few extreme off-road maniacs just before disaster strikes!

As for such as phone apps and other handlebar methods, the readouts can easily be up to 20% out. Probably good enough for many of course, but then one might just as well use The SRS method since one's view of hills to climb is so personal.
.

 

[Deleted member 4366]

As for such as phone apps and other handlebar methods, the readouts can easily be up to 20% out.

Says the man that doesn't even own a smartphone. Which ones can be up to 20% out? My Samsung Galaxy certainly isn't. Apparently, it's accurate to 1/10 of a degree.

 

[neptune]

Here is a classic example of a silly measuring system. In Electronics, the unit of capacitance is the Farad. In most circuits, the largest capacitor probably has a value measured in microfarads or thousandths of a Farad. More common are smaller capacitors measured in Nano farads And Picofarads. A high voltage capacitor with a capacitance of one Farad would need a large van to move it around. The situation is similar to having the cubic mile as the standard measure for milk or beer.

 

[flecc]

Says the man that doesn't even own a smartphone. Which ones can be up to 20% out? My Samsung Galaxy certainly isn't. Apparently, it's accurate to 1/10 of a degree.

Really! How? What is it measuring?
.

 

[EddiePJ]

Says the man that doesn't even own a smartphone. Which ones can be up to 20% out? My Samsung Galaxy certainly isn't. Apparently, it's accurate to 1/10 of a degree.

I had someone try and pull me on a roof that I had cut and pitched a few days ago. I had cut and pitched it at 42.5 degree using my square, and then in front of the person questioning it, I offered to lay my smart phone on it to check.
As soon as I said it, I thought oh s**t what have I just said, but laid the phone on several different common rafters, and each one came out bang on 42.5. I got to say that I was pretty relieved.

Good job that they didn't notice that I had cut one of the hip boards short and had had to pack it out.

 

[Jimod]

The situation is similar to having the cubic mile as the standard measure for milk or beer.

I know someone who would think a cubic mile of beer was a good night out.

I have a VDO cycle computer on my Typhoon which gives an indication of gradient. I never thought it was very accurate so ended up relying on the E: H: FH and FT scale myself.
FT is what we say when we decide against doing something.

 

[Deleted member 4366]

Really! How? What is it measuring?
.

The Samsung Galaxy uses the LSM330DLC gyro sensor. It plots a point on 3D axes with a maximum of over 1000 points in each direction, so it has a resolution in each direction of over 2000 on each of the three axes. It then mathematically converts those three coordinates into an angle relative to each axis.

I read that it's a 16 bit device, but I don't know how that relates to angles.

You need to get modern and forget your dinosaur methods.

 

[Alan Quay]

Here is a classic example of a silly measuring system. In Electronics, the unit of capacitance is the Farad. In most circuits, the largest capacitor probably has a value measured in microfarads or thousandths of a Farad. More common are smaller capacitors measured in Nano farads And Picofarads. A high voltage capacitor with a capacitance of one Farad would need a large van to move it around. The situation is similar to having the cubic mile as the standard measure for milk or beer.

It's not as silly as you would think. It's all part of the brilliant metric system, where all units relate to each other, and have a defined base unit.

The farad is the amount of capacitance required to hold one coulomb of energy with a 1 volt PD.

Similarly:
1 calorie is the amount of energy required to raise 1g of water by 1 degC
And:
1 m3 of water is 1000l and weighs 1 metric tonne.

In spite of it being French, I can't help but love the metric system.