NavList:
A Community Devoted to the Preservation and Practice of Celestial Navigation and Other Methods of Traditional Wayfinding
Re: Newbie - Variation Question
From: Andrew Denman
Date: 2002 Feb 12, 05:04 +1000
From: Andrew Denman
Date: 2002 Feb 12, 05:04 +1000
Pierre, Thanks for the reply but I am still a little confused. Even if the French way is to add the negative easterly variation, shouldn't the resultant magnetic heading be the same as the non French way? In my case, my compass was reading 305 magnetic, variation is 11 degrees East at my location. Before adjustment for local magnetic variation, the GPS was giving me a course relative to true north of 316 degrees true. When I put in the local variation, rather than the GPS displaying a magnetic course of 305, it added the 11 degrees easterly variation to give a magnetic course of 327 degrees magnetic. It would appear that the unit treats the Easterly variation as positive. When I input the variation as 11 degrees West, the unit subtracted the variation to give me a magnetic course of 305 degrees, same as the compass. My other fixed GPS (Garmin) subtracts the Easterly variation to agree with the compass. Any other clarification would be appreciated. Regards, Andrew Denman