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Do i need a compass?

why cant you taxi on a specific gps heading, accounting for magnetic deviation, and swing your compass like that? really seems more accurate than trying to lign up your airframe up on a compass rose.
It’s just not the official way. There is a small issue that you do need to taxi some distance in a straight line to give the gps a chance to figure out the ground track. And then be able to stop and park for a bit while you twiddle the adjustment screws. IMHO this should work okay.
 
It’s just not the official way. There is a small issue that you do need to taxi some distance in a straight line to give the gps a chance to figure out the ground track. And then be able to stop and park for a bit while you twiddle the adjustment screws. IMHO this should work okay.
And when stopped, you need the GPS course to stay steady, but there's no guarantee it will...it depends on the Kalman filter used. The computed GPS position, which is all that GPS "knows" (well, that and time), moves around (everything else is computed from that...velocity, heading, etc.). But without knowing the details of the Kalman filter, you don't know how heading is computed and estimated.
 
Okay, trivia time:

Suppose I have a VOR on my field. I taxi around until my perfect accuracy SL30 nav says I'm on the 270 radial from that VOR. I can see the VOR, so I turn the plane to point the nose right at it, and swing the compass to 090. What's wrong?
 
The airport diagram tells you the actual heading of the runway and also the local deviation. In a pinch you can use that for a compass rose in two opposite directions.
 
So, here is my challenge with magnetic compass: Environment! Any suggestions? The over 50-100 degree deviation isn't consistent on all headings.

View attachment 123193
Wrap it with nickel sheet metal. Worked for me. I used to have an old navaid autopilot right underneath my compass. My compass would only swing 270° no matter what. Wrapped the navaid in nickel sheet metal and I had a perfect compass swing.

Edit… you’d actually want to wrap the metal things around the compass, not the compass.
 
Not enough information to know how you compensated for the offset between the aircraft VOR antenna position and the axis of aircraft rotation.

We'd need to know the distance of the aircraft from the VOR, and that offset, to know if it introduces a significant error.
This is a trivia question! Assume you know you’re right on the radial, you made a zero distance turn to point directly at the station. What is still wrong?
 
Okay, trivia time:

Suppose I have a VOR on my field. I taxi around until my perfect accuracy SL30 nav says I'm on the 270 radial from that VOR. I can see the VOR, so I turn the plane to point the nose right at it, and swing the compass to 090. What's wrong?
Two words: VOR and declination.

Heaven only knows the last time that VOR was aligned. It can easily have been 30+ years for many VORs.
 
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