I'm not sure you see this very often, but after the Grants Pass airport had its runway repaved this weekend, the runway numbers went from good ol' 12-30 to 13-31.

The magnetic north pole, or deviation in this region, or something has permanently changed enough that the runway headings get new numbers.

Ever seen that before?

As a NOTAM's guru, this is very common worldwide. I saw that Grants Pass NOTAM not to long ago.

Yes Zane..the exact same thing happened here at SNY in August of '07. Left on runway 30 and returned to land on 31....thought the stripers had made a mistake. I guess the earth turned on it's axis over a period of 13 days.
HC

if you guys will look at your charts, especially marine charts, you will find that there is a notation that there is an annual correction of so many minutes per year, more in different longitudes than others. so every 10-20-30 years there are corrections in magnetic direction, not true, only magnetic.

Oh...and here I thought it was a global warming thing...
Not too many marine charts for the panhandle of Nebraska.

hicountry wrote:Yes Zane..the exact same thing happened here at SNY in August of '07. Left on runway 30 and returned to land on 31....thought the stripers had made a mistake. I guess the earth turned on it's axis over a period of 13 days.
HC

Did you say strippers

Pretty sure that Corning CA (0O4) got new numbers when they pushed the runway 900' north a year or two back......funny thing is that the mag heading per Airnav says it should still be 16-34 (163 degrees) instead of the 17-35 they changed it to.

Flynengr

It's happening all over. Reckon we'll all have to reswing our compasses before long.

Zane wrote:I'm not sure you see this very often, but after the Grants Pass airport had its runway repaved this weekend, the runway numbers went from good ol' 12-30 to 13-31.

The magnetic north pole, or deviation in this region, or something has permanently changed enough that the runway headings get new numbers.

Ever seen that before?

Are you asking if we've seen the numbers update or the new about the pole shift?

The magnetic pole shifts about a degree (from our perspective) every 10 years. Eventually magnetic and true will appear aligned for a period of time.
Every few thousand (give or take 10,000) years or so, the polarity switches too. That's going to screw someone (or something) up one of these days.

The Toledo (TDO) airport numbers are 1 degree off of what the AFD lists. That's how the locals know who's a tourist, I think.

yeah, I'm still getting used to Merrill being 7-25 instead of 6-24. It's been that way for a few years now, but I know what runway I passed my checkrides and solo'ed on - and it's still strange to call it something else when coming in tired after a long day.

Actually, Runway numbers are rounded off to the nearest ten degrees. So, a runway with a magnetic heading of 244, for example, would in fact be NUMBERED 24. Gradually, the MAGNETIC north pole is drifting, and if it drifts far enough, the same runway now points to 246 and therefore becomes Runway 25. Often, the change isn't actually made till the runway needs to be repainted or is repaved.

But, this is why some runways change and others don't. The others are still rounded off to the original number, ie: 241 drifts to 243. Still runway 24.

In fact, most of us won't even notice the difference in our magnetic compasses......

MTV

I hate 13/31 runways. I get the numbers backwards when I see them upside down.

When I soloed back in the mid 60's, the agonic line, the line of zero degrees magnetic variation ran through our airport at Valparaiso in northern Indiana. Now, it's way over near Cedar Rapids, Iowa.

I must be getting really old.

YB

32-14 at Rio Vista just recently changed to 33-15.

Still trying to get used to 33-15 at S43.

The N and S magnetic poles have flipped many times over the history of the earth. Image what this will do to our flying.

So mine is now 17R I guess.

Tim

I still have my first Seattle sectional from July 1984 (it has my first dual and solo cross country routes marked ) The deviation here in Ellensburg, WA was 20-1/2 degrees east. My current sectional (oops, June 2010, I need a new one) it is 17-1/2 degrees.

My Silva ranger compass still has it set at 20-1/2, I better change that.

Check this article out.
http://science.nasa.gov/science-news/sc ... eticfield/

Also pretty interesting.
http://www.geo-orbit.org/sizepgs/magmapsp.html




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