MarkerInbound:
Exactly! Maybe this topic is trivial to others, but for some reason I, and many of my pilot friends (even some instructors I talked to), were not aware of the error made by flying VOR radials not read from the VOR rose. Finally no excuses any more for being off track.
Thanks for your help in understanding this subtlety!
englishal:
Again I agree with your two methods a) and b) and most of what you wrote.
As for making a problem out of nothing:
If (say, in PPL ground school, or the real world
, you'd plot the magnetic track off by three degrees out of sloppiness, then this would be (considered) bad airmanship.
Now, if you do VOR navigation and you mix'n match your methods a) and b) for the lack of better knowledge, as did I before (i.e., fly a VOR radial measured with a protractor, converted from true to magnetic), then you'd have exactly the same situation: You'll be flying off course by several degrees, since the radial you measured is not the radial you drew on the chart.
So while I agree that it's not a big deal but merely a noteworthy peculiarity, I can't see why this easily avoidable systematic inaccuracy is a non-issue at all.
Blue skies,
Lindbergh