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beam direction

You can look up the magnetic declination for your area on this map. as you can see the difference between true north and magnetic north is not all that great for most of the USA.


us_mag_declination.gif
 
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Go outside on a clear night. Find the North Star (Polaris). Stand next to your tower and determine how far the antenna is from pointing in that azimuthal direction. If you have an assistant, have him turn the antenna slowly until the boom is lined up with Polaris.

Now you can adjust the control to indicate that it is pointing true north, within a few degrees. GPS precision not needed.
 
Getting ready to put up a Sirio 27-4, I have been thinking of which way to point to get England and Europe. I have been looking at the standard flat world maps my whole life, this is a real eye opener.

Mercator Projection

GIS favors the Winkel Triple last I knew.

It’s a PC thing. The majority of the world is in the north. Population, Economy, Routes. Mercator still easiest to read.

Africa, in relative size, is the big change. Wow!

.
 
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Wow, that gives a whole new perspective for sure.
Just get yourself a 16" globe - using a 14"+ piece of string and push pin, install pin at your location. Now move string to anyplace in the world on the shortest path and Whola!16 in. globe.JPG
Now you can also see the rest of the world.
This is my heading to Thailand from my location in Washington.

Over the years lots of guys use to ask me what was my beam heading (degrees) to certain parts of the world, my reply was; I don't know and still don't as of today!
I am just a 11 meter guy...........
 
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I got the Sirio beam up finally. Stuck it on a 16 foot pole in the back yard just to goof around with it. Found this site to figure out the magnetic declination for my location. Put your zip code in the location and it figures out the longitude and latitude.

Shadetree, You dont need to use Declination... Heres a map centered on your state that shows where to point for any place.. Its close to poster size so you can print it at walmart and hang it in the shack... or just keep it on the desktop..
 

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