hi I agree that the Mag Track is important. Although you fly compass headings but in order to calculate those you need the magnetic headings first of all.

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Galaxy Tab Plus 7 inch, NavsGo GO7100 as of March11

I think the problem is that when training for your PPL you are taught - draw the line on the chart (True Brg), apply wind correction (True Brg), apply mag variation/compass deviation to get Mag Heading and that's what you fly.

Once you start flying, all that goes out of the window and most pilots fly using some form of radio navigation, be that VORs, NDBs or most usually now GPS. For all of these the standard convention is to fly Mag not True so it's the Mag Track between beacons/waypoints that you need. We're lucky in the UK, our magnetic variation is in the low single digits, typically around 3-5 degrees so the difference between True and Mag is not that great. There are places where it's well over 30 degrees different and they still use Mag Tracks for Nav.





neutron

Are you saying that on all the handheld VFR GPS units that our customers are using, the track being displayed is magnetic and they are not just outputting the true track as received directly from the GPS chipset?

I would guess that the answer to that question is yes. Certainly my aviation GPSs, both fitted and portable  use Mag as default.

Perhaps it would be useful to ask the question on the Flyer forum?





neutron

I'd say it would certainly be useful

Hi Tim,



I would certainly utilise a magnetic track column in the PLOG because although I am a VFR pilot, I often navigate through use of VORs especially around the London area. The magnetic track (radial) to or from VORs would be useful in order to tune the VOR radial and provide a backup to my GPS device running SkyDemon. At the moment when navigating through use of VORs, I either have to manually apply the magnetic variation to the true track or produce a PLOG with no wind.



Regards,



Richard Avery

We've added mag track as an option (off by default) in the PLOG ready for the forthcoming beta release of the 1.4 version. We will await feedback on it and hopefully those who have requested it will find it useful!

A further example of the need for Mag Track - 

Quadrantal Rule - cruisings levels are selected in accordance with the Mag Track, these levels are mandatory for IFR but highly recommended for VFR. To select an appropiate level at the planning stage, the Mag Track also needs to be listed under leg properties and appear at the bottom of the screen if a leg is highlighted.





neutron

Here's me two-pennyworth for what thats worth.

1. I am a VFR flyer use map, compass & hand held GPS 296 & Skydemon. No radio navigation equipment.

2. I am certain the GPS is NOT showing magnetic track. I frequently see a major difference in the GPS readout and the compass (I have 2 one of which is digital and has the appropriate magnetic sensors).

3. While I have never used Mag Track for anything (except during TopNav pre-flight planning using VORs), I can accept that others may well need them. I assume they will not use the inflight verison of SD. Also I notice that both Navbox and PocketFMS both ouput Mag Track in their logs  .. PFMS at least is much used by GA crowd.

4. There is no doubt that there is room to include this on the log printout.

David

Pink Leader

You can be pretty sure that your Garmin GPS is displaying Mag Track. The give-away is the small 'M' appended to the heading figure. If you force the GPS into true mode the heading will be appended with a 'T'.





neutron