3 ms·
It’s super helpful and intuitive when you’re flying. Took me a while to get the compass visualized in my head but now if I’m making a visual approach and they g
by mmaunder 4y ago
It’s super helpful and intuitive when you’re flying. Took me a while to get the compass visualized in my head but now if I’m making a visual approach and they give me a runway I can look at my current magnetic heading on my heading indicator - which you periodically sync to your magnetic compass - and know exactly what direction relative to my current heading I’ll be landing. So that’s the fundamental reason why most things flight related are magnetic except rare items like winds aloft reports. Wind direction reports at the field? Magnetic, so that you know how many degrees off the wind is from your landing direction and can do a bit of mental math to get the crosswind component. If you’ve just taken off ATC may say fly runway heading - again an easy one using your heading indicator which is synced to your magnetic compass.
As a side note, modern avionics like G1000 auto sync your heading indicator to magnetic. So if we started flying with electronic avionics that are auto synced and have a database of magnetic variation around the world, then it’s feasible to always show true on the heading indicator and have runways and everything else be true bearings. But that’s not the case and I still fly some of the many steam dial planes out there as do others, so we’re stuck with magnetic runways and magnetic everything else used in real-time flight and situational awareness for pilots.