[zimmerdylan]

This post does not exactly have anything to do with X-plane but does anyone know if those recent earthquakes have had any effect on Magnetic North and declination. I saw on the news that they changed the earth's axis tilt. I guess I should know this as I use a compass pretty much all the time. But I have been working with GPS lately. I know that it should have a small effect on GPS coordinates. Not enough to really matter to me as I only have to be 2 or 3 meters accurate. WAAS is usually that close anyway and I'm hearing that the effects of the earth's tilt after the quakes are only a couple of CM. Last I checked I had my Brunten compass declination set at 10.3 degrees here in the Tucson Basin.
Hmm.....I'm going to have to check into this.

[MikeMc]

"Could have changed the tilt" is more accurate. However is it really a big deal? The magnetic north pole moves dozens of miles every day in some sort of loop. Also it has been moving about 25 miles per year and has moved 500+ miles in the last 150 years. To answer your original question, I don't know, but just added what I thought might be helpful.

(numbers from memory so they might not be exact)

[Bamboo Cougar]

A couple of centimeters change does not translate into meaningful deviation in flyable areas.
Now, no sayin' what the deal will be if the 2012'ers are right
Then, heading will be bearing, and vice versa (stop... you're crackin' me up)
bc

[MikeMc]

You know what's going to happen when the world ends in 2012? The same thing that happened when the world ended in 2000.

[Black Phoenix]

Magnetic field is defined by Earth core rotation, and surface only has static effect on it; earthquakes should probably cause temporary changes (because iron in Earth core might magnetise under pressure and friction), but I think it's gonna be neither too noticable, nor will last long (eventually it should return to it's original state?). Would be interested if there's any information on that.

[zimmerdylan]

Black Phoenix, on 09 March 2010 - 06:54 AM, said:

Magnetic field is defined by Earth core rotation, and surface only has static effect on it; earthquakes should probably cause temporary changes (because iron in Earth core might magnetise under pressure and friction), but I think it's gonna be neither too noticable, nor will last long (eventually it should return to it's original state?). Would be interested if there's any information on that.

It changes noticably from year to year. If you do a lot of land navigation with means other than satalite based recievers (compasses), you have to be mindful and adjust your equipment accordingly. The USGS usually has all of the declination numbers on hand at their web site. It has changed about a degree in the last year. This could mean several hundreds of meters to a person who has to locate their position using distant landmarks.
I went to the USGS site and it is currently 10.41 degrees in my area. It was 10.30 a few months ago so I am guessing that it did move slightly but not really enough to make a huge difference in manual land navigation.
As for the world ending in 2012. I gots my Bible, my guns, and my years supply of food right next to my generator in my underground bunker. Oh yeah....and a copy of X-plane for those long long nights underground, waiting for the rest of the human race to die off.
I'm so glad I'm not crazy.