Declination

When I was a young'un, as a Boy Scout, learning how to read a map and use a compass, we had to learn about magnetic declination.  The compass did not point to true north, it pointed to magnetic north, which in central Louisiana was about 6 degrees east of magnetic north.

 As a young Army officer several years later, this was important  Land navigation was all about map and compass. The first thing we checked on the bottom of the map was the declination diagram, which showed the difference between the actual north pole, and some spot in Canada where your compass was pointing.

For no particular reason, I decided to check the local declination and found that it is zero degrees.  Magnetic north is moving, and will sometime in the future, be somewhere in Putin's Siberia.

Of course, no one uses map and compass today.  Today, it's all about GPS navigation, but I find it strangely interesting that the magnetic pole is moving, and has been for some time.

One of the things I learned as a young Armor officer is that a compass will not work in a tank.  Too much steel around you.  All land nav in a tank was terrain association.  I was thrilled when the Army put GPS sensors in the M60A3 series.