I flew the Skyline 7 departure today out of Oakland and noticed a discrepency between the published vor radial intercepts and the actual ones in the sim.To elaborate:In this departure, you leave runway 29 in Oakland, fly runway heading and then start a gradual turn to the left, intercepting the 135 radial off of the PYE VOR. You fly that radial until you intercept the Woodside 180 radial which is the PESCA interchange then turn left to join the 116 radial out of Woodside which you can take as far as Avenal VOR.Here's the problem, in the sim, the 135 radial does not align with the fms waypoints like PORTE - or the intersection with OSI. It is about three degrees off.Similar story with the OSI radial. You are supposed to turn at the PORTE intersection and join the 116 radial which will take you directly to AVE. However, you have to dial in 119 on the radios to get a radial which aligns up with Avenal.I have updated the overall magnetic variation file, as well as the magnetic variation of the VORS etc, in the BGL files using tools at the HSS Software site but nothing is getting those radials to line up with the FMS intersections and waypoints or those published on SID, STAR and Enroute charts.Is this fixable? Otherwise those cool green dashed lines on the map display are a little less useful.Thanks!Colin WareSeatte.Also, I've noticed that the physical locations of the nav aids do not match the ones on the Navigraph charts.Colin

Colin, this is pretty common in MSFS. Although VOR magnetic variations are not changed very often by the FAA they do in fact get occasionally changed. I can find fixes all over the country that are not on the radial defined in the FAA database. Too bad they made it so hard to keep this stuff current. Most enroute facilites are coded into the scenery bgl files, and have nothing to do with the magvar file. Years ago, I used to play with the scenery bgls, and found that for some reason the enroute navaids are not easily changed. I don't recall exactly how that is explained but the SDK has that answer as I recall.Also, most fixes rarely lie directly on the radial that is shown on the charts although the difference is usually small (less than a whole degree) but this isn't the problem you are seeing.

In the virtual world, we have a major confounding factor. Depending on what simulator you are using, the MagVar of the navaids in the sim may be significantly out of tune with the RW, and any of the current day maps and charts (and Navigraph data) you are using! Although magnetic variation changes continually and gradually, the standards are only changed once in every 5 years. FS9 is ten years out, FSX is five years out. (both are somewhat fixable with a cool tweak to some of the BGLs). If you find that the radials from one VOR to the next don't match up in FS at the changeover point, that is one of the major reasons.Also, there is a difference between VOR radials and GPS tracks. The first is a rhumb line (loxodrome) which is a course that has the same angle of intersection with each line of longitude, the other is an arc of a great circle route (orthodrome). A rhumb line, if continually extended will always spiral in to one of the poles. In marked contrast, a great circle route will eventually rejoin itself, after a complete revolution.Over short distances (such as relating to your quesiton) there is no significant difference, but over 100nm there is a measurable deviation in terms of aviation -- but not enough to put you out of an airway, or cause other nav issues. So even with perfectly tuned radio equipment, flying a radial accurately will put you into a slightly different location, than flying a GPS track.One other interesting factoid is that mapped airway radials are changed from time to time. This not only reflects changing magnetic variation, but also takes into account errors/changes in the VOR broadcast either due to equipment limitations, local geography, or a VOR recalibration. The GPS of course ignores all that, and gives you the true geometric course.There is a cool new tool that will allow you to update the magnetic variation lat/long table BGL to the 2010 values (industry updates these every 5 years), all you have to do is swap in one file, of course backing up the original. It also provides some other utilities to scrub various BGLs of mag data that is kept independent of the mag var BGL.Here is the page, it is in English:Flight Simulator NavaidsThere is also a method to change all the navaid embedded data, which is somewhat problematic, as mentioned above. I did the simple change above, but not the latter.Did I mention BACKUPS?? YMMV. * Orest

Would this by any chance help?http://forum.avsim.net/topic/336155-magnetic-variation-updates-for-fs9-and-fsx/

Thanks all for the replies. As noted in my original post, I've installed the base magdek file as noted in the pinned topic. I've also played around with the other tools at length inlcuding adding the new nav data files. Still no joy. Still three degrees out.Was hoping there was an easy fix. Reading through the related posts, it seems not. I'm going to have to try eznav to update the vors on the Skyline departure and see if that helps.Can anyone tell me which scenery folder has Northern California? Would like to start there.Thanks.

In my opinion, this problem is related to the magnetic variation calibration of the used navaidsTo explain a bit more in detailThe POINT REYES (PYE) VORTAC is still calibrated with a E17° variation (1969). True track between PYE and PORTE is 152°, so magnetic track as depicted on the chart is indeed 135°. AFAIK, navaid recalibration is technically a time consuming (and probably costly) process so it is not performed on a regular basis. The navaids update AND utility I provided for updating navaids database and correcting magnetic variation inside BGL files are based on the current magnetic variation (2010; E14.5° for PYE); of course, they can hardly take into account the individual recalibration processes that are done from time to time. So, obtaining an effective 135° track between PYE and PORTE require that:- you ensure coordinates of both PYE and PORTE are exact (PYE N38° 04' 47.1 W122°52'04.2); at least it's ok for PYE in the updated database- you keep a E17° calibrated magnetic variation for PYE (using the necessary editing tools) Hope it will helpHervé