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Whats the difference between heading and course?


112th_Rossi

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Heading is the direction of the nose (where the aircraft is pointed), and course is a direction.

 

Example: You are flying through a hill, but this hill is irregular, you need to avoid the mountains, so you need to go to the right and left constatly, but you are following a course, which is 150° for example, you course will be always the same, but your heading not.

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Think of course as an invisible straight path or road in the sky that your aircraft needs to follow to get to a destination be it a way point, TACAN station, VOR beacon, etc. If you go into the mission editor and plan a simple route, each leg would be the course you have to follow between waypoints.

 

Heading is simply the direction your airplane is pointing.

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Heading is where the nose is pointed. Course is the direction the aircraft is actually moving over the ground. In a zero wind condition, the two are typically the same. The stronger the crosswind, the more heading and course will differ.

 

As an example:

 

To fly a north (360 degrees) course at 100 knots with a wind out of the east at 15 knots will require the aircraft to maintain a heading of 009 degrees. Course = 360 degrees, heading = 009 degrees.

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I have a question regarding this subject as well. I've always wondered what the heading bug dial and indicator are used for. I'm very familiar with the course dial, deviation needle and all of that. Someone explained it to me years ago but I don't really remember.

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The heading bug is just a place holder on the HSI, a movable reference point. It has no function other than as a marker.

 

The course needle affects how the course deviation needle, and ILS needle behave, and should be set to coincide with the runway bearing for landings, or the radial/course you wish to fly along.

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Yeah, I looked it up after I posted. The best explanation I found was if you've just flown past one steerpoint and you want to have a quick visual reference to the direction you'll be turning at your next steerpoint, you set the heading bug for that next heading. It seems like an unnecessary redundancy but I guess it must have been used a lot in the past to end up a standard part of the HSI.

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Before HUD displays with TVVs etc. it was the best option to fly straight in heavy crosswind.

Search for E6B with Google and what you use it for.

Heading bug is just a convenient marker for where you should point the nose to fly in the right direction.

Shagrat

 

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I think there's some ambiguity here with the word "course". It could refer to the course you're actually flying (determined by cross-wind, etc.) or it could mean your desired course. Since the OP was talking about the HSI, I assume he wanted to know about desired course which is what I was referring to in my above posts.

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when i was doing flight training, i used the header bug to mark which direction the wind was coming from after i listed to the weather report. helped to visualize how to approach maneuvers and also which runway was active on uncontrolled fields. could probably do the same in DCS

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