"Icebound" wrote in message
ble.rogers.com...

Well, yes and no. They mean the same thing, of course... but they are not
really "used interchangeably".


Well, how can they mean the same thing if one of them "is not a real
direction"?



Direction 000 in a METAR is used to represent calm wind, not North wind.

I have never seen "00" painted on a runway.

Computer routines for calculating direction will often expect input and
normalize results into the 1-360 range, not 0-359.

Very rarely do you hear "... heading is 000" as opposed to "... heading is
360"


You'll find more compasses with 0 for north than with 360.