Will Degrees Magnetic be eliminated eventually?
 

Not sure if this is the right forum, but I'm a newb and this is training related.

Reading in my textbooks, I found out that all GPS/Satellite Navigation is in deg True. Even though currently most charts are in Magnetic, it says eventually Magnetic will likely be eliminated as all air-navigation slowly switches over to satellite navigation/GPS.

Is this true? Is radio-navigation going to eventually go away? And GPS will be it?

Is the trusty ol' compass due to be retired? I was kinda sad reading that, thinking I won't get as much use out of all the radio and chart reading I'm learning about.

Anyway, thanks for any comments!

You need to keep reading thru the books some more, you will find far too many things need degrees magnetic, the list is way way way too long to even consider discussing it ( but dont worry someone here will! )

Just wait till the 'magnetic flip' occurs, that should put a spanner in the works! Apparently its overdue too.

Possible the compass could retire in some places

comment deleted following concern expressed by another poster .. related to the other deletions
:rolleyes:

I hope to hell not, because then I can't set the gyrocompass and
I'd get lost:ouch:

Hey Brit (I assume you're a Brit), you want to take a dig at my Country?
 

EGGW Mag var?
 

Can anyone clear up a specific enquiry about the mag' var' for EGGW.
The current mag' var' is 2 degrees West, with true rwy headings of 074 & 274.
So why do the latest Jeppesen charts show the magnetic rwy headings as 077 & 257?:hmm:

a couple of comments deleted following another poster's registering concern about them ... related to the earlier deletions

Now, back to an interesting question.

The magnetic pole, being a moveable feast, was something that was a gift to early navigators. Early being up until...about now. Of course we need to be independent of any single electronic system. We were going that way with INS, but the computer power was not really up to the mark then.

Now, we have the ability to measure light in a closed system, down to molecular levels, and we can certainly sum the output of such systems. The relativistic algorithms woven into the sat-nav signals, are proof of our mastery of this science. We know where we are in our orbit round our sun, almost down to the last perturbational tremor.

With what we have now, we are ready to navigate by such enclosed internal and quite independent systems...it really is time that we weaned ourselves away from electronically fragile orbiting clocks, let alone the wandering boiling mass in the centre of our planet.

That's a hell of a bend.

Whatever happened to this thread? Sort of went a bit screwy for some reason!

Before your degrees magnetic get made redundant, I think they will get metricated first. Stuff this 90 degrees to a right angle! For a start 'right' is unfair to angles that may be challenged by being a bit 'wrong', and 90 degrees, so in the cause of equality it will henceforth be known as a 'lesser wrong' angle. And there'll be 100 degrees in 'em instead of 90. Then we'll get rid of magnetic altogether, but probably before then, a meteor or bird flu or volcano or magnetic field flip disrupting the Gulf Stream will get us all and there'll be nobody to receive all those signals from Galileo or GS sats.

If you think this is stupid, it makes as much sense as some of the comments in this thread!

I think you (or possibly the textbook's authors) are missing the point. In the sat-nav future, once you have a system that tells you where you are and knows where you need to be, the arbitrary zero reference of your direction measure is irrelevant. An autopilot will fly from A to B just as well on magnetic or true, measured in degrees, grades or radians. The concept of flying a particular published track or heading loses its relevance, because you're always flying to an endpoint, regardless of the direction that happens to be.

In the mean time, we might as well pick the easiest/cheapest possibility as the zero reference for purposes like ATC telling you which direction to point your aircraft. That easiest/cheapest possibility probably remains magnetic north.

100° to a slightly less wrong angle? Someone already invented it, and it's called gradians.

But if you're going to optimise the direction system for computers' benefit, I dare say you'd use radians. And there are 1.5707963267948966192313216916398 of those in a slightly less wrong angle, but your computer finds that a more convenient number than 100.

Pi divided by two if you're wondering... :confused:

So, what is "Left hand down a bit," in gradians?

Thanks for your response
 

Aviation should be our uniting blood.
Take care ......:O