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Magnetic Variation / Declination


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Question for any ATC types:

Do you know how often you update your airports magnetic variation for the purpose of publishing the wind direction?

When we use a METAR that has the winds in true we generally use the magnetic variation that has been published on an airport diagram to compute the magnetic wind. Often times the publications use very outdated magnetic variations.

Obviously this isn't an operational issue as the ATIS and tower always give the winds in magnetic (sorry I don't fly near the North Pole anymore). I'm just trying to generate the most accurate magnetic information possible.

Has anyone tried using NOAA's World Magnetic Model? Do the airports use that model to generate their data or is it actually measured?

AeroWeather Pro for the iPhone recently added a crosswind function that uses the runway heading and True Wind direction from the METAR. I'm trying to help the author generate the best magnetic wind information possible. If we had access to all the runways true alignments then this would obviously not be an issue.

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