Magnetic Pole Shift Affects Tampa Airport

RFSSystems writes "I thought this was an amazing and rather rare phenomenon and wanted to share. 'The airport has closed its primary runway until Jan. 13 to repaint the numeric designators at each end and change taxiway signage to account for the shift in location of the Earth's magnetic north pole.' It appears that the shifting poles have begun to affect air travel in a somewhat modest way. Could this also be the explanation for the falling/dead birds this week?" I hope the gradualists are right, but scenarios for rapid magnetic pole shift are fun to think about.

Comments

Happens all the time

[Anonymous Coward]

The airport I work at has a second set of signage from when the gradual shift occurs in cycles, making for a 10 degree change in the direction of the runway. Ie, here it will be runway 10-28 becoming runway 09-27. Has nothing to do with birds, happens every decade or so. Ten years after that, itll be back to what it is now.

Re:Happens all the time

[nedlohs]

because measuring "true" cardinal directions is so simple, compared with measuring magnetic north.

Oh wait...

Re:Happens all the time

[WuphonsReach]

I am astounded they would be orienting runways according to the magnetic poles and not the "true" cardinal directions.

Maybe because a magnetic compass will (almost) always work when the more advanced instruments don't?

How do you propose that pilots figure out what the "true" cardinal direction is as they approach the airport? While working through their landing checklist, monitoring other air traffic, weather, and everything else that has to happen before the wheels touch down?

I guarantee they don't have time to do a star-sighting.

Re:Happens all the time

[BobMcD]

Note that this is only true from the human's perspective. From the Earth's, it has actually traveled all the way to the other side and back, many times over.

Re:Happens all the time

[natehoy]

Both.

The regulations are there for a very good reason. Every airplane needs a magnetic compass on board, because in all the years of using magnetic compasses, they aren't known for running out of batteries or needing to be rebooted at a critical moment or failing because a programmer fucked up and you just crossed time zones. Electronics can easily accommodate using mag north, magnetics cannot as easily accommodate using true north. So we use the system the simplest system can accommodate easily, and the more complex systems that are MORE than capable of adjusting for it do so.

Hobbyist planes are where professional pilots learn to fly, and most of them start out using a magnetic compass as their primary directional instrument (or at least use that as input to set a a directional gyroscope that's easier to read). That way, when the pro pilot is up there and the instrument panel suddenly goes dead in a puff of smoke, there's no reason to write off the lives of the passengers on board. The pilot knows where he's going, and this is due in part to the simple instruments that are on board, and in part to the fact that he's prepared in case this happens.

You learn to fly using shit that don't break, then you get to play with the fancy doodads later, but you never forget how to use the shit that don't break. People's lives depend on that.

Re:Happens all the time

[Stuarticus]

You must work for apple.

Not rare at all

[Urban Garlic]

Changing magnetic deviation due to movement of the magnetic pole goes on all the time. Runways are numbered according to their magnetic heading, plus or minus five degrees, and they have to keep them up to date, is all.

Two seconds of googling found this comment thread discussing a different runway-renumbering from July of 2009.

Obviously not enough airplane geeks around here...

Re:Not rare at all

[TheCRAIGGERS]

How am I supposed to panic uncontrollably when level-headed people like you are around?

Seriously speaking, thank you (and people like you) for being around.

Re:Not rare at all

[digitig]

Runways are numbered according to their magnetic heading, plus or minus five degrees

Plus an alphabetic suffix such as "L" or "R" in the case of parallel runways.

Re:Not rare at all

[trollertron3000]

I'm a private pilot here in Tampa and I can actually see the runways from my parking garage here south of TIA (actually KTPA). They teach you this during your private pilot's course so it's known to all pilots that deviations occur and poles shift. Magnetic deviation is accounted for in your training and you use other tools to compensate.

In fact when I fly along I'll use a chart of known magnetic deviations in the area I am flying to find true north. I also have two instruments I can use - a heading indicator and an actual magnetic compass. We set the heading indicator, a gyroscopic-based instrument, using the compass while flying straight or on the ground. This will need to be adjusted as we fly along typically, it "creeps". We use the heading indicator over a magnetic compass because trying to fly accurately with a compass is like trying to balance a unicycle. it's not easy and you chase the dial. We also use GPS but the ultimate navigation instrument for a VFR pilot like myself is a set of eyeballs, we use dead reckoning using navigation landmarks noted on charts or known to us.

The pilots flying into KTPA will most likely be commercial pilots flying an instrument landing approach. This will not effect them much at all but the runway needed to be shut down so it could be repainted and fit into the FAA regulations. It's as simple as that.

Not sure why I added all that. Probably because no one else did.

Difficult to change, but not that rare.

[Xocet_00]

The movements of magnetic north have, on many prior occasions, caused airports to have to redesignate their runways. Since it requires updating of all the charts that aircraft are required to carry (not to mention signage on the ground), it's often deferred as long as possible. Tampa doing this isn't really that significant, although I admit that it's kind of neat in a visual-manifestation-of-invisible-phenomenon kind of way.

Wikipedia subsection on the subject.

Re:Difficult to change, but not that rare.

[$RANDOMLUSER]

Here's a really cool animated gif from Wikipedia, showing the magnetic declination changing over time.

Re:Difficult to change, but not that rare.

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

You do have to pity the chaps responsible for repainting the runways of aircraft carriers whenever their orientation relative to the earth's magnetic field changes...

Re:Difficult to change, but not that rare.

[Orion2]

Changes to stuff like this are introduced on a cycle once every 28 days - called an "AIRAC cycle". The AIRAC is synchronized all over the world, so all the systems, charts and the like on the ground and in aircraft can be updated accordingly. Obviously there is some lead time ahead to allow for publication, distribution and update of the information and depending systems.

Imagine if it was only once a year - every change affecting more than one airspace user or aviation service provider in the world would have to be introduced together. This would in consequence mean that you could only open a new runway, introduce a departure procedure or many more things on that date.

On top of this there's a notification scheme for distributing info like non-functioning equipment, temporarily closed runways (for which you don't change maps forth and back), procedures to adhere, info about an airshow and the like. This is called a NOTAM - short for NOtice To AirMen.

Actually somewhat common

[ASimPerson]

This has happened before, and it'll happen again.

Airport runway numbers are based off their magnetic headings with the last zero removed. So a runway that runs due south/north is 18/36 (i.e., it faces 180 degrees south and 360 degrees north - 0 isn't used). A runway that runs due east/west is 9/27. And so on. When there are parallel runways facing the same direction, the L, C, and R designations are used. A pair for parallel east/west runways are 9R/27L and 9L/27R.

So as the pole drifts this sometimes causes runways to have be renumbered. One previous example is Reagan-National airport in Washington, D.C., where runways 1/19 and 4/22 were originally 18/36 and 3/21.

Re:Actually somewhat common

[wondafucka]

This has happened before, and it'll happen again.

So say we all.

Magnetic/Spin Axis Confusion

[Elder Entropist]

Your "rapid magnetic pole shift" link is to an article about the (fairly ridiculous) rapid shift of the axis of rotation of the planet rather than the magnetic pole. The two really should not be confused.

Birds

[rewt66]

The birds got confused by the discrepancy between runway numbers and magnetic north, couldn't figure out where to land, ran out of fuel, and crashed?

Re:Hollywood knows what to do

[Idarubicin]

"Nuke-lee-ar" is still three syllables. You don't say "new-clear", do you?

Sure you do! At the heart of every atom, you find its newklus.

Re:For the airplane geeks...

[kaleth]

Because not every plane has a GPS or INS. (Certified) GPS equipment is still new and expensive for airplanes. INS is very large and heavy, and only used on large commercial jets.

And perhaps most importantly, a compass always works. If everything else fails, you still have that as a backup.

Re:For the airplane geeks...

[Martin Blank]

The compass requires no electrical power.

I fly a Cessna 172S equipped with a Garmin G1000. It's a glass cockpit that makes life much, much easier, but I still have a few analog instruments: compass, attitude indicator, airspeed indicator, and altimeter. All of them function on principles in place on aircraft for many decades now, and provide a layer of reliability in case just about everything goes wrong. I can lose the entire electrical system and still be able to fly to the best landing site available, because the compass is based on the Earth's magnetic field, the attitude indicator is based on a vacuum-driven gyro (the vacuum pump is mechanical and run by the engine), the altimeter is based on the static air pressure, and the airspeed indicator is based on both the pitot tube and the static air pressure. (The engine spark is provided by magnetos that will keep providing spark as long as the engine is turning - no battery required.)

There are complications when flying at night, but that's why I carry a hand-held navcom radio and a couple of flashlights with me in my flight bag.

Re:I wonder

[Machtyn]

Are you pondering what I'm pondering?

Why, yes, Brain! I do think it is a bad idea to eat tater tots that were saved in my pocket from this afternoon's lunch!

Re:For the airplane geeks...

[spaceyhackerlady]

Because they offer the best bang for the buck. Because pilots are trained to use them. Because they work. Because aviation is totally anal about "if it ain't broke, don't fix it". This is A Good Thing.

I'm learning to fly in Piper Cherokees, and I have a magnetic compass and gyroscopic heading indicator at my disposal. Both are accurate, but both have idiosyncrasies.

The magnetic compass is subject to errors when accelerating or decelerating on east/west courses. It also misbehaves when turning to/from north or south. The heading indicator slowly drifts as Earth rotates underneath it. On long flights you have to periodically re-set the heading indicator.

The pre-takeoff checklist includes setting the heading indicator to the magnetic compass, and verifying that both read correctly when you pull on to the runway. In the future Runway 01 (13 degrees) will become Runway 36 or Runway 02.

...laura

Much Ado About Nothing

[element-o.p.]

I learned to fly at Elmendorf AFB, in Anchorage, Alaska back in the early '90s. When I first started flying at the Elmendorf Aero Club, the main runway was runway 05. A few years later, it was redesignated runway 06. Merrill Field, a civilian airport just a couple of miles away, also had to change the primary designation from 06 to 07 at about the same time.

The magnetic poles shift with time, eventually by a significant factor. Since runways are designated by magnetic heading (for example, Elmendorf's runway 06 means the runway is pointed roughly to 60 degrees, and Anchorage International Airport's runway 14 is pointed roughly to 140 degrees), every so often airport management has to redesignate the runways to match the approximate magnetic heading with which the runways are aligned. It's no big deal, and has been happening for as long as there have been runways. All of the speculation at the end of TFS about "...shifting poles finally starting to affect air travel..." and "falling birds" is alarmist nonsense.

Re:I wonder

[icebike]

Sorry. But that is nonsense.

There are rednecks and fireworks everywhere in the USA on new years eve. Yet the massive bird death was strictly local.

The noise excuse is simply silly. It is not possible to create enough noise with a few big fireworks (or full sticks of dynamite) to kill bird over a 4 square mile area.

Can't be done, and if it could every city an town in the US would be littered with birds.

The most rational explanation is a large flock of birds, from somewhere possibly quite distant, were sucked aloft by a small un-noticed rural tornado or violent updraft and simply froze to death, and thawed upon landing.

Occam's razor applies to acts of nature.

Re:For the airplane geeks...

[trollertron3000]

Yup. The compass is one of the few instruments required in every aircraft in the US. Give me a tachometer, a compass, and an altimeter and I can navigate an airplane across the US.

GPS just recently came into the cockpit and the devices are expensive. People should realize that these are aviation instruments, so they need to be certified and are in turn expensive.

INS isn't in every aircraft simply because not every aircraft needs to be instrument-rated. Some people, like myself currently, only fly in VFR conditions. Removing these expensive instruments saves money, as you said.

Want to see a pilot bitch? Tell him he needs to buy something. For a great example of this search Google for the term "ADB-S requirement" and see the pilots moan about this new requirement. I should know, I'm one of them :D

Re:For the airplane geeks...

[rjstanford]

Huh, I have a military fighter aircraft grade INS with a 2 hour battery backup packed into a 3U rackmount box right next to me that indicates it weighs 17lbs. Yea, it was expensive (low 5-figures). So are aircraft.

Many aircraft cost in the mid-to-high 5-figures. Adding 10-20% to a private plane's cost, or double that if you want redundancy, seems excessive when the only benefit is some geek's sense of correctness. Adding 6U worth of rack equipment isn't exactly easy either - space can be quite tight up there as it is.

True North

[dogsbreath]

I'm Canadian you insensitve clod. We use True North (coincidentally Strong and Free) for runway designations and thus are immune to drifting runway numbers. Let's hope desperately that the Earth's spin axis doesn't start moving!

Strangely... as the years go by, I AM feeling a growing desire to learn the Cyrillic alphabet.

Re:True North

[Russ1642]

You only do that way, way up north where compasses aren't reliable. The runways in Canada use magnetic numbers just like everyplace else. At the Edmonton City Centre airport there's a pub located at the end of runway 30. The pub is named Runway 29, but they didn't want to change their name when the magnetic pole moved and the runway was renumbered.

Re:I wonder

[Chyeld]

http://io9.com/5725175/why-are-thousands-of-dead-birds-suddenly-falling-from-the-sky

They say it better than I could:

One thing to remember is what day and time the incident occurred: near midnight on New Year's Eve. Plenty of people mark the beginning of the new year with fireworks, and it's possible these celebrations caused this nasty accident. Arkansas Game and Fish Commission spokesman Keith Stephens says the commission currently favors this theory, as fireworks that were shot off in just the right area near the birds when they were roosting could have scared them, creating a traumatic stress event.

Why are thousands of dead birds suddenly falling from the sky?

Obviously, birds don't usually fall from the sky when fireworks are shot off, so what would have happened here? We do know that birds tend to be more highly concentrated in rural areas, meaning one big fireworks blast in just the wrong area would have terrified thousands of birds all at once.

This would have happened at night, when birds are roosting on the ground - and if this did indeed happen when the birds were asleep, experts say the trauma would have been enough to kill them, as the terrified birds frantically flew into each other in the heavy night fog. Witnesses have since come forward to say they saw a person setting off industrial-grade fireworks near the roosting area, which would seem to back up that theory.