NavCanada is outlining changes to the way they publish and calculate the magnetic variation in AIC 12/08.
In a nutshell: they are going to calculate the variation every year, on July 1st. Something I’ve been doing at World Flight Planner for the past 3 years. NavCanada will be using the same IGRF model that the flight planning website uses. So this is welcome news and further validates how I do things at WFP :)
Variation will not be calculated for northern domestic airspace and in the southern domestic airspace the variation will be accurate to +/- 2°. The exception being VORs which will be accurate to +/- 3°. The rate of change and the year the variation is calculated will not be located on charts as the value will be updated on every new chart publication.
With this change, some other items are also being updated:
- The OCC (Obstacle Clearance Circle) found in the CFS and aerodrome sketches will only contain one area. This means that OCCs that depicted different altitudes in different quadrants will no longer exist. In addition the magnetic north arrow disappears.
- Bearings to nearest navaids for a particular aerodrome in the CFS will no longer be included.
The changes wont be complete in all publications until mid 2015.
On a separate note, I’ve been busy with non flying responsibilities lately. It’s a shame since the weather in Ontario has been beautiful the past 3 weeks. My goal of flying more often this year still stands, so I will try my best to put in more hours this summer.
I’ve also been working hard on the latest version of World Flight Planner that Doug and I plan on releasing in the next month or so. If you’re interested in what’s coming in the next version, check out the blog post.
