North Pole moving towards Russia?

Looks like it's really picked up speed in the last few decades:

http://www.ngdc.noaa.gov/geomag/GeomagneticPoles.shtml

Loyal

DON;T LET THAT BOTHER YOU THE WHOLE EARTH HAS MOVED, THEY AREN'T SAYING NOTHIN--TED

I wonder how long they will keep the naming convention for runways. They are named for their magnetic azimuth. So a runway with a 50-230 azimuth will have a large 5 on the southwest end and a 23 on the north end. And it will be named runway 5-23. When the local airport would ask, we would realign their compass rose with the new magnetic information. They haven't called in sometime so maybe that went out with GPS. I read that the magnetic north pole was accelerating its movement. Well, it is getting close to 2012.

We just changed Runway 12/30 at Colorado Springs Municipal Airport to Runway 13/31.

Do pilots still navigate with a compass?

I'm not a pilot, but as far as I know, they do. At least, VOR stations still broadcast magnetic bearings, and you would still have a compass in the cockpit giving you the plane's heading based on magnetic bearings. I know GPS is coming into play more and more, but the old IFR procedures are still in use. And air traffic control is still done via radar.

The basic direction equipment in planes is unchanged in MANY years-the compass. Newer panels (almost all) have a gyroscopic instrument called a heading indicator or directional gyro (one of three gyro instruments in a typical plane). However, these are NOT north seeking gyros, they are "free". So, to display correct heading, they must be aligned with something else, which is the old fashioned magnetic compass. Because the gyro drifts over time, they must be periodically aligned with the compass. I check the DG about every 15 minutes when I fly, and make adjustments if needed. Some DG's drift more than others, some are more stable.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heading_indicator

The entire airspace system is designed around magnetic headings rather than true headings as a GPS would give. So, it is not an easy switch. Maybe someday when all air navigation is done by GPS we may use true azimuths, but that is a LONG way off. Aviation is very slow to change. Many people will buy new instruments (GPS for example), but there are still pilots flying around with no GPS, no radios, no transponder (in uncontrolled airspace, of course). Personally, I would not want to fly without at least a radio and a VOR. In fact, I always carry a handheld radio/VOR just in case, as well as a handheld GPS.

I have experienced a total electrical failure in flight in a small plane, I was sitting in the right seat, it was a little scary.

I should add that using a compass alone is difficult, as it is affected by accelerations, like when turning, or ascending and descending. The DG, on the other hand, is not.

Near as I can tell when I take the plane home from Denver the pilots fly along the highway. 😉

Hmmmmm....

Earth-crust Displacement Theory, formulated by Professor Charles Hapgood, and supported by Albert Einstein.

A detailed exposition of the theory can be found in Rand and Rose Flem-Ath's When the Sky Fell (Published by Stoddard, Canada, 1995). I will be starting on this book shortly now that I've just finished Fingerprints of the Gods by Graham Hancock, 1993.

Fingerprints is a great read for any surveyor as the first part goes into ancient cartography and works his way through ancient monuments and their geologic alignments. At the end of the book he makes a case for the displacement to be happening now.

TDD just may be right......Hmmmmmmmmmmmm.........

Earth-crust Displacement Theory, formulated by Professor Charles Hapgood, and supported by Albert Einstein.

That ECD theory falls apart on many levels, and is in no way supported by observations. In fact, observations directly contradict it. It seems to have mainly been invented as a way to explain the disappearance of Atlantis.

Not sure why Einstein wrote the forward to his book. But even in his chosen field of expertise, Physics, Einstein was only human. He never could accept Quantum Mechanics as viable science.

Although I suppose ECD is easier to believe than Global Warming... 🙂

there are black boxes 1/4 to 1/2 mile perpendicular to the flight path of every flight route this keeps the plane on the intended heading a light comes on and the navigator knows to turn the flying over to the pilot and contact the tower usually 50 miles out--tdd

i had surveyed some of these locations for the military way back they calibrate their positions and bombsights---tdd