Why The Hell... (random rant)

EridanMan wrote:
Are VOR's all MH based?

I was flightplanning the other day (I must be one of the few poor
souls left who flight-plans by hand... I guess I just haven't been
flying long enough to get sick of it yet, I consider my flight
planning to be 'part of the experience') And I got to thinking-

Why in gods name are VOR's Mag heading based?

It's a nuisance for maintenance, but it frees
the pilot from calculating the variation at
the operative time. Just to off-load the pilot.

I know, ideally, that means that you can sync your DG and your VOR
indicator to fly to a waypoint... except that most VOR's around here
have long since fallen behind Magnetic drift... so - now, not only do
you have to flightplan in True Heading, convert to Mag Heading to get
your vectors, THEN you have to get the corrective factor for each of
the VOR's your using for navigation and note that as well? huh?

If they are off the mag variation, it is
mis-maintenance, and the VOR should be
marked defective or taken off-line.

--

Tauno Voipio, avionics engineer, CPL(A)
tauno voipio (at) iki fi