West isn’t always best.

One of the things you rapidly learn as a PPL wannabe, and that comes as a shock to many people, is that there are in fact two Norths you need to know about.

And in true aviation style some things use one and some the other.

The two in question are Magnetic North and True North. I’ll leave you to read about what the difference is.

Depending on where you are in the world you have to apply a correction factor, it’s called the variation.  You get your variation off the chart, reading off what is called an isogonal line. Here at City it is 11 degrees west.  Once you’ve come to terms with the fact that there are two Norths, the next thing you learn is an irritating little rhyme in order to remember if you add or subtract your variation from True North.

East is Least, West is Best.

In other words if the variation is East then you subtract, West then you add.

But let me tell you West isn’t always best.

Not when it is later in the afternoon and you are trying to land on a west facing runway.

Then you get a very irritating strobe effect of the low in the sky sun filtering through the spinning prop. It is almost nauseating.  It is bad enough that the surface of the runway becomes almost impossible to see, leading to a firmer-than-you’d-like landing because you are basically guessing where the runway actually starts.

In hind sight I probably should have sucked up the strongish crosswind and requested 33 instead.