World Wide Guide to FS Scenery Design | Utilities | Special Task Utilities


Magnetic - reports the magnetic variation

Magnetic is yet another special-task utility. It's purpose? Well, just specify any geographic location on the earth and Magnetic will tell you what magnetic variation Flight Simulator will use at that spot.

Magnetic variation, or "mag var", is the number of degrees between true geographic north and the magnetic north pole. In the illustration at right, there is a positive magnetic variation of several degrees, since the magnetic north pole in this case lies to the west of true north.

In scenery design, the Magnetic utility could be useful if you know the magnetic heading (compass reading) of a runway and need to calculate the true heading. To do that, you need to know the magnetic variation for that location.

Or, you might be entering information to create a VOR. When supplying the magnetic variation for the VOR, you should list the actual figure used by FS for that location, rather than the real-world value. This will ensure that the NAV instruments will provide accurate readings during flight.

You might find it interesting to learn that the magnetic variation readings are stored in Section 18 of MAGDEC.BGL, one of the default scenery files provided with FS5.1. 

Documentation:  Good.
Author: Stefan 'Doe' Dobereiner of Munich, Germany
Distribution: Freeware, for non-commercial use only.
Version: 2.0
Date of main program file: 31 January 1996
Size of compressed file: 19 KB


MAGNETI2.ZIP


Last updated 8 June 1996 by Gene Kraybill. All rights reserved.