Welcome back, in this short video I'm going

to go through how to calculate a Gyro or Magnetic

Compass error using the Sun.
At sea you should be regularly checking the
Gyro and Magnetic Compass error, one of the
many ways of doing this is by using a celestial
object.
In this example we’re going to calculate
the ships Gyro and Magnetic Compass error
in a single calculation. I’m making some
assumptions, mainly that you’re taking the
bearing of the celestial object using a Gyro
repeater to calculate the Gyro error first
and then comparing the Gyro and Magnetic compass
to check the Deviation on the Magnetic compass.
The reason for this is that it’s the most
common way of checking the compass error on
merchant ships.
Before we start our calculations we need to
take our bearing of the Sun, we also need
to note down the exact time we have done this
which we’ll convert to Universal Time Coordinated
or UTC and the vessels position at that time.
We’re also going to note down the vessels
heading as shown on the ships Gyro and Magnetic
Compasses.
For our calculation we’re using the Sun,
it’s the 10th of April 2016 the time is
22:20:00 UTC. The ships heading was 132 degrees
by Gyro compass and 145½ degrees by Magnetic
compass. We’re in a position 25 degrees
50.6 North and 066 degrees 08.6 West and our
observed bearing of the Sun was 277 degrees.
Throughout this example I am going to use
a Pro Forma I created years ago as a cadet
which you can download from my website and
I’ll put the link in the video description
below.
Now we have to pull out our Nautical Almanac
and turn to the appropriate daily page. As
we’re doing our calculation for the 10th
of April we find it’s page in the Almanac.
On the right hand page we see the Sun column
which lists the Greenwich Hour Angle labelled
GHA and the Declination labeled DEC for each
hour of the day referenced to Universal Time.
Before we go any further we’ll start filling
in the details on our pro forma. The celestial
body is the Sun, it’s the 10th of April
2016 and the time is 22:20:00. The ships
Gyro heading was 132, and the Magnetic heading 145½. We can also put in the ships position.
Going back to the almanac, we can find the
2200 hour and note down the Greenwich Hour
Angle GHA which in this case is 149 degrees 43.8 minutes and Declination North 8 degrees 21.9 minutes.
We also note that the Declination
between 2200 and 2300 is increasing. If we
look at the bottom of the Sun column we see
there is a value for d. This is the d correction,
we can note this down on our pro forma as
0.9.
Now we turn to the yellow coloured pages in
the Nautical Almanac, which are titled Increments
and Corrections - they’re located near the
back of the 2016 Admiralty Nautical Almanac
and these provide the corrections we need
to make because our calculation is not being
done exactly on the hour.
First we find the 20 minute page and then
from the table we read off the correction
for the Sun at 00 seconds in this case 5 degrees
00.0 minutes and we enter this into the Increment
box, labelled INC on our pro forma. We also
look at the column labeled v/d correction
and find 0.9, we then enter its value 0.3
in the Cd box on the right of the pro forma.
Because the Declination between 2200 and 2300
on the 10th of April is increasing we have
to add our d correction, we can do this now
and we get a Declination of North 8 degrees
22.2 minutes.
As we’re not calculating a star, planet
or the Moon we can ignore the SHA and Cv boxes
on the pro forma.
We now add the Increment to the GHA value
and enter that in the second GHA box. Which
gives us 154 degrees 43.8 minutes. This is
the actual value of Greenwich Hour Angle for
the Sun if we were on the prime meridian at
22:20:00 UTC. As we’re not on the prime
meridian we have to correct for our current
longitude. In this case we add the longitude,
which because it’s West we consider to be
negative, so we do 154 degrees 43.8 minutes
plus negative 66 degrees 08.6 minutes which
gives us a Local Hour Angle (LHA) of 88 degrees
35.2 minutes.
We can now use the LHA, Declination and Latitude
to calculate the Azimuth (or true bearing)
of the Sun.
There are different methods of doing this
such as the A,B,C method or using Norries
Tables however I find the formula included
on the Pro Forma the easiest as you can simply
enter the entire thing in one go into a scientific
calculator.
You’ll notice that for this formula if the
Latitude is North, we treat it as a positive
value and if it was South we treat it as a
negative value. We do the same with the Declination.
When we type this into our calculator it gives
us the answer of: -83.06.
We convert this to a Quadrantal using the
little table on the right. As our LHA is between
0 and 180 and our Azimuth is negative we name
it North 83.06 West, which we then convert
to a true bearing As it’s the North West
quadrant we subtract it from 360, giving us
a true bearing of 276.9 degrees.
Now we can work out our Gyro error. Earlier
we said we had taken the bearing of the Sun
and it was 277 degrees, we calculated that
the true bearing of the Sun was 276.9 degrees
so we enter these into the appropriate box
on our pro forma.
When we subtract the Gyro bearing from the
true bearing we get -0.1 degrees. In the UK
we refer to the Gyro error as being High or Low,
Negative is considered High so we can say
the error is 0.1 degrees High (In some countries
this would be referred to as 0.1 degrees West).
Now we can work out our Magnetic Compass Error
and Deviation. Remember we noted the ships
Gyro and Magnetic compass heading at the time
of taking the gyro error. Now we work out
the ships True Heading. So we take the ships
Gyro Heading and add or subtract the gyro
error, in this case -0.1 which gives us a
True Heading of 131.9 degrees.
Now we know the magnetic heading was 145½
degrees, so we can subtract this from our
true heading which gives us an error of -13.6,
as its negative we consider it as being 13.6
West.
The variation we obtain from the nautical
chart or ECDIS for the ships position - which
in this case is 13.7 West, as it’s West
we consider it as a negative so we do -13.6
minus -13.7 which gives us 0.1 degrees, as
its positive we say it’s East, so the Magnetic
Compass Deviation on our current heading is
0.1 degrees East.
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