How do I convert UK Nautical Miles to Kilometers?
A UK nautical mile is 6,080 feet, which is 1.853184 kilometers. It is based on one minute of latitude along any meridian, a length that shifts slightly with the shape of the Earth.
Multiply by 1.853184 – 100 UK nautical miles is 185.3184 kilometers. Using 1.852 instead gives 185.2, which is only about 0.06% out.
What is a UK Nautical Mile?
The UK nautical mile was based on one minute of latitude, ie 1/60th of a degree. The Earth is not a perfect sphere, so a minute of latitude varies slightly with latitude, which is why a fixed length had to be chosen.
The UK nautical mile, also called the Admiralty mile, was fixed at 6,080 feet, which is 1,853.184 meters. That is 1.184 meters longer than the international nautical mile of 1,852 meters (6,076.11549 feet), which the UK adopted in 1970.
What is a kilometer?
A kilometer is 1,000 meters, or about 0.621 miles. 'Kilo' is the Greek-derived prefix for a thousand. It is the unit for road distances nearly everywhere except the US and UK, which still use miles.
A kilometer is about 3,281 feet or 39,370 inches. At a walking pace of 5km/h it takes about 12 minutes to cover.
Going from kilometers to meters just means moving the decimal point three places. A mile has to be broken into 1,760 yards or 5,280 feet first, and neither of those is a round number of anything.