North Pole question

[ACWild]

When flying from the North Pole, what heading do you take to get to Greenwich, England? (or anywhere else, for that matter).

 

[skeezer]

I assume you mean from the magnetic north pole what heading do you take?

From the real north pole you should be able to determine a heading, but from the magnetic north anywhere you go would be south. Argh, thinking about that is making my brain hurt.

Skeezer

 

[ksu_aviator]

Let me take a stab at this just for fun, I don't really know the right answer.

I'm assuming that from the true north pole you can find a magnetic heading to go just about anywhere.

As for from the magnetic north pole, you can find a true heading to go on.

Great Questoin though, hope someone knows the right answer

 

[ksu_aviator]

You know the AVATAR makes the question just that much better...

 

[banned username 2]

You are pretty much right, anything above I think it is 70°N (I might be off on this number) you fly everything in True North, not Magnetic...

I've only been to 68°N so don't know 100% for sure...

 

[firstthird]

grid nav

I was there once and we went south. True south. And after about 20 miles looked down, checked what line of longitude we were on (somewhere heading towards Russia) took a right 90 for a few minutes, then when we hit the longitude that runs throught Andoya, Norway, took a left 90 and were on our way. We had intertials and GPS.

The correct way to do it is using Grid Nav. Our navigator hadn't brushed up on it and truthfully, us pilots barely know what to call it much less do it. I imagine in a plane without a navigator the pilots would have to get more up to speed.

If you look at a chart of the polar regions there are blue (I think) squares on there that are superimposed over the normal latitude and longitude lines. By going to a special function of your inertials, you can basically fool your intertials into giving you steering based on those blue lines (the grid) and you fly around using N,E,S, and W directions that related to the blue grid squares rather than the global N,E,S,W directions.

I don't know if the guys going North Amercia to Europe do grid nav or not, seems like if you are going straight shot it wouldn't be worth the trouble, especially with GPS. Military uses it for doing things like tracking a submarine up there. If you have to fly all around and accurately be able to come back to a position you need some kind of work around and Grid Nav is it.

 

[Buschpilot]

Thank you Firstthird!

I spent the better part of a year in middle Alaska asking what a Grid Nav is. Not one person I met knew.

Maybe I DO need to get out more, huh?

 

[TriStar_drvr]

The answer is a true heading of 180 with the autopilot coupled to the INS. However just for kicks, if you wanted to fly from true north pole to the magnetic north pole you'd fly a magnetic heading of 360, because the magnetic variation along this line is 180 degrees.

 

[ksu_aviator]

I'm dizzy!

 

[ACWild]

Thanks All,
I was having consciousness trouble during a long range nav class and vaguely remember hearing the instructor talk about the ins being prone to errors in the North Pole. I guess I'll just avoid trips that go that way.