On Thu, 3 Sep 1998 Shaun.Hendricks@bergenbrunswig.com wrote:
> There's ziltch in the owners manual that I can find (already tried) unless
> they hid it someplace stupid. It's not in the "Consoles/Controls" section
> where I would think it should be...
>
> Shaun
> Tustin, CA
>
> ----original message-----
> If you hold down both buttons for reset while it's still
> > in compass/temp mode it reads "VAR 8" on the display and you can
> adjust it
> > between 1 and 14. Anyone know what this adjustment is for?
>
> There should be information regarding your location and the variance
> zone in your owners manual.
>
> Dennis
>
I'm surprised that there's nothing in your owner's manual; I'm
almost positive there was something in my '96 manual. If you're
flipping through the book, look for a map of North America with
curved lines drawn on it.
As someone already mentioned, variation is used to correct your
compass heading to correspond to the "true" headings. The
magnetic north pole is not located at the geographic north pole. You
want north on your compass to point towards geographic north pole,
so you have to add in a correction factor.
Where I live (Western New York), magnetic variation is anywhere
from 8 degrees west to 11 degrees west. For variations to the west,
you add the variation to your compass heading to get the true
heading, for east variation, you subtract.
If you can't find it in your owner's manual, you can find the
variation by stopping by the local airport and asking someone. Most
pilots will know the local variation off the top of their head, or
if not they can easily look on a sectional to find out.
That may or may not work, I'm not sure... I don't remember if
North America is all 1 to 14 degrees west variation or not. If
not, then CC must just have made something up on their own. I
suspect its the former though. Heck, if you set it to 7, the most
you'll ever be off is 7 degrees, so that's not too bad. I think
the resolution of the compass is only 45 degrees anyway. (unless
it does stuff like SSW, NNE, etc, then its 22.5 degrees)
-Jon-
.--- stei0302@cs.fredonia.edu ----------------------------------------.
| Jon Steiger * AOPA, DoD, EAA, MP Race Team, NMA, SPA, USUA * RP-SEL |
| '96 Dodge Dakota v8 SLT CC (14.80@92.97), '96 Kolb FireFly 447 |
`--------------------------- http://www.cs.fredonia.edu/~stei0302/ ---'
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