From Surf Wiki (app.surf) — the open knowledge base

Course (navigation)

Cardinal direction for steering

Instruments used to plot a course on a nautical chart.

In navigation, the course of a watercraft or aircraft is the cardinal direction in which the craft is to be steered. The course is to be distinguished from the heading, which is the direction where the watercraft's bow or the aircraft's nose is pointed. The path that a vessel follows is called a track or, in the case of aircraft, ground track (also known as course made good or course over the ground). The intended track is a route.

Discussion

For ships and aircraft, routes are typically straight-line segments between waypoints. A navigator determines the bearing (the compass direction from the craft's current position) of the next waypoint. Because water currents or wind can cause a craft to drift off course, a navigator sets a course to steer that compensates for drift. The helmsman or pilot points the craft on a heading that corresponds to the course to steer. If the predicted drift is correct, then the craft's track will correspond to the planned course to the next waypoint. Course directions are specified in degrees from north, either true or magnetic. In aviation, north is usually expressed as 360°. Navigators used ordinal directions, instead of compass degrees, e.g. "northeast" instead of 45° until the mid-20th century when the use of degrees became prevalent.

Heading and track (A to B)<br>

1 – True North

2 – Heading, the direction the vessel is "pointing towards"

3 – Magnetic north, which differs from true north by the magnetic variation.

4 – Compass north, including a two-part error; the magnetic variation (6) and the ship's own magnetic field (5)

5 – Magnetic deviation, caused by vessel's magnetic field.

6 – Magnetic variation, caused by variations in Earth's magnetic field.

7 – Compass heading or compass course, before correction for magnetic deviation or magnetic variation.

8 – Magnetic heading, the compass heading corrected for magnetic deviation but not magnetic variation; thus, the heading reliative to magnetic north.

9, 10 – Effects of crosswind and tidal current, causing the vessel's track to differ from its heading.

A, B – Vessel's track.]]

References

{{Cite PHAK. (2016)
Michael Nolan. (2010). "Fundamentals of Air Traffic Control". Cengage Learning.
(1999). "The Annapolis Book of Seamanship: Third Edition: Completely Revised, Expanded and Updated". Simon and Schuster.

Info: Wikipedia Source

This article was imported from Wikipedia and is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Content has been adapted to SurfDoc format. Original contributors can be found on the article history page.

aircraft-instruments marine-navigation tracking air-navigation

Want to explore this topic further?

Ask Mako anything about Course (navigation) — get instant answers, deeper analysis, and related topics.

Research with Mako

Free with your Surf account

Content sourced from Wikipedia, available under CC BY-SA 4.0.

This content may have been generated or modified by AI. CloudSurf Software LLC is not responsible for the accuracy, completeness, or reliability of AI-generated content. Always verify important information from primary sources.

Report