Micromouse wrote:You find yourself off your track.
How to correct depends on a few things, IMO.
- How do you know (ie, do you know exactly where you are now)?
- How much off track are you?
- How far is it till your next waypoint?
- How obvious are your waypoints, and how far away would you expect to see them?
For instance, back in the day when I had actual map reading skills, I would usually pick waypoints that were quite large and obvious, to make it easy to see them when approaching them.
It would then be obvious whether I was off track (eg wrong side of the town) as I approached. So I'd tend to recapture the track straightaway, and then make an appropriate heading change for the next waypoint.
Presumably you've been taught the 1 in 60 rule approach for calculating drift angle, and also the correction angle required to get back on track some multiple or fraction of the distance gone since the last one?
I always found that to be more trouble than it was worth, not least because it assumes extremely accurate maintenance of heading to be meaningful. Sometimes even DI precession errors can be bigger than unforecast wind drift, which makes the whole thing an exercise in futility, especially if the compass is bouncing around when you set the thing in the first place.
It also assumes the ability to know accurately how far off track you are. Two miles rather than one mile will double the calculated drift and correction angles.
I usually aimed to see any error appoaching a waypoint, get back on track by the time I got there, and then make a 5 or 10 degree heading change to compensate for the next one. If it needs much less than that, then your waypoints are probably too far apart.
I suspect for the test they'll expect some kind of 1-in-60-based correction, so do whatever seems easiest.
For a really gross error, such as setting the DI 30 degrees wrong and flying that for 10 mins, you'll be getting close to being lost, so forget any correction b0llocks and get to any large, clearly identifiable landmark so that you know exactly where you are before doing anything else.