SEP & north pole

[IO540]

Probably a software bug on the 90N boundary or whatever. Similar bugs were found in later years in navigation software, and in GPSs, when crossing 180 longitude and other stuff like that. These obvious borderline cases are the first thing which a competent programmer would test

[Jan Olieslagers]

Agreed to that - but it took a trip (driving) into Little Brittany to discover a stupid bug in my homebrew GPS-software, regarding Western longitudes. A comprehensive set of test data, acting as a proxy for the GPS-receiver, would be the obvious remedy, of course. It didn't seem worthwhile when I wrote the code, though, and even less now when it is mostly a good excuse for another trip westbound.

PS sorry for nitpicking but you know it CAN be important in software development: 90°N is not a boundary, it is a limit, and a hard limit at that. 90°S is only marginally softer...

[Deeday]

Originally Posted by vee-tail-1

the boy scouts taught me to point the hour hand of my watch at the Sun and read off North at 12 o clock. Four faces looked at me and someone said pi*** off eng!

To be fair to them, it would not have worked (perhaps they were Scout leaders? )
The method is to point the hour hand at the Sun, take the smallest angle between the hand and the 12 o'clock line, take half of that angle (i.e. the bisector), and that will roughly indicate South (in the Northern hemisphere). If you are standing right at the North Pole, the direction found will show where the Greenwich meridian lies.

The idea is that the Sun goes around the horizon in 24 hours (albeit not visible all the time), while the hour hand goes around the face at twice the speed, in 12 hours, so you have to take only half of the angle swept by the hand.

[24Carrot]

As Deeday says:How to Find True North Without a Compass - wikiHow

Not much good at the pole though, as local time and North/South are all a bit fuzzy. Wouldn't the Sun point at the noon meridian though? Eg if it is noon in Newfoundland, keeping the Sun on your left takes you to Alaska?

[vee-tail-1]

24Carrot That's the way we did it if my memory is right. The F/O checked from the astro tables and UST for a meridian with the sun o/h (its local noon) and then calculated a relative bearing from the sun to give a safe heading. We would have been in the ckacky if it had one of those days when the high alt haze produces a bright glare with no visible position for the sun.

[digits_]

At the pole

And as it usually goes these days, the best way to answer a question, is to find the answer yourself.

So that's why.... on the 17th of july 2011, at 15.20 GMT, a little Cessna 172 took of from Eureka (Canada), and set course North. After 6 hours of flying, at 21.25 GMT, this little Cessna was over the geographic North Pole, all alone, in a vast white emptyness.



6 hours later, the little Cessna made a safe landing back in Eureka.


Many thanks to a lot of pprune members for their support on this trip. A full report with lots of pictures will be available in a few weeks.

[Katamarino]

Look SoCal, at the troll.

[IO540]

Absolutely amazing photo

[dublinpilot]

Thanks for the photo! I've always assumed that the north pole would be covered in solid ice. Interesting to see that there is some standing water there! Thanks

[Tim Dawson]

Amazing photo! It's hard to tell the scale of the ice we can see, what altitude were you at approximately when you took that?

[digits_]

Picture was taken around 100 ft

So there were a lot of small cracks and small lakes. I think the plane would just fit in one of the small lakes.

[Justiciar]

It would be useful to hear from you with your experiences of the flight, preparation you did, cost etc.

[MichaelJP59]

Amazing photo, an inspiration to all of us, looking forward to the trip report. Also I love the way you did it and came back to the forum to report without any intervening banter.

[Genghis the Engineer]

I would love to see that report once you write it - partly for professional reasons: I'm working on how to put a research aeroplane over the pole at the moment.

One question - "officially" GPS is untrustworthy up there, and there are clearly few other navaids available. Presumably you did have GPS in the aircraft - did you have any issues with it? Was anything else usefully available to you?

Oh yes, and very well done, and that's a stunning photograph

G

[digits_]

I already sent Genghis a PM, but perhaps it might be useful for anyone els as well.

The GPS just works up there at the pole, the problem only starts when you want it to calculate a track. I had 3 GPS on board: a fixed one mounted in the panel, calculating my track, a portable aviation one, and my cellphone gps. The one in the panel crashed when I flew over the pole. After half an hour heading south, it started working again. The portable aviation one was just displaying my position, and kept woring the entire time, albeit with quite a bit of variation in the coordinates once around the pole: going from 20°W to 80°W and back 50°W etc. Which is of course a relatively small error if you are flying at 89° 59' N.

[IO540]

What happens if you load three waypoints into a GPS; one say 100nm one side of the pole, one at the pole, and one 100nm the other side of the pole (i.e. a great circle route joining the three points).

Any GPS which doesn't handle that is simply crap.

How do airliners navigate across the poles? All the modern ones use GPS for corrections to their INS so this issue must have been solved a long time ago.

Obviously, you can't fly a magnetic heading But magnetic headings don't work in lots of places, which are nowhere near the poles.

I have never done this but would imagine that one needs to fly a true heading.

[david viewing]

digits:

Warmest congratulations and sincere respects. Until reading your post tonight I was thinking that your plan sounded slightly far fetched. I am so very glad to be put right, as doubtless some of the other grumpy old women on here also are, by your outstanding achievement.

It's also slightly annoying to me personally since I'm sitting up here in Finland basking in the glow of achievement for having reached Kiruna, 68 deg North. You have let the air out of my sails! (Presumably the same air, since we may have shared the same soArctic high pressure.)

It appears we may need an AFISO at the pole next year to handle all the GA traffic that will follow, Lindburgh like, in your foot steps. Very well done!

David

[digits_]

@IO540: Once you are in the vicinity of the magnetic pole (i think it was around 60°N), you can see on your charts that everything is referenced to true north. Also on the IFR chart it says that all VOR/heading/airways are refererenced to true north once above a certain boundary. So the compass was hanging there as cockpit decoration. A variation of 90° was the most I saw, after that it just stopped working.


@david: Isn't Kiruna located in Sweden instead of Finland ? I've been there once (before i had my flying license) and it's truely a magic place. Looks a lot like Canada. If you're still there, you should take the train ride to Norway, you literally see the scenery change every 10 minutes.

[digits_]

Hi all,

as promised, albeit extremely late, I put a full report of the adventure online:

Fly The Impossible | North Pole Trip 2011

A short movie can be seen here:

I hope you enjoy it.

Kind regards,
Digits

[Katamarino]

Exceptional.