Heading Indicator (Compass) woes

[WarHorse47]

Well, I guess there is a first time for everything.

I have a new computer running Windows 8, and have reinstalled FS 2004. All is well, except now I noticed that my headings are off by 20 degrees on my compasses, autopilots, etc.

Believe it or not, this has been a trying journey up to this post. I'm not going to bore you with the details, but will mentioned that the OS was (or appears) to have been toasted by a virus two days ago so everything got a full reinstall. I have a full copy of all my folders on an external drive and, as I've done in the past, copied them over a fresh FS9 install. A couple aircraft and utilities were reinstalled to register them on the computer, and everything works fine... except for the compass headings.

I've verified this with a couple aircraft, and started the sim with a fresh FS9.cfg file so I suspect that something else got corrupted. But not sure what.

Any ideas on what to look for? Would this be a *.dll or something else since its affecting the compass headings in all the aircraft I load.

Thanks in advance. I sure need to help on this one as I am not looking forward to a complete reinstall. Yuck.

--WH

[lliaghll]

Unfortunately, I can't add much except commiseration. I've had this happen to me twice. I solved it,after some random flailing around, by removing scenery until the problem went away. I don't know exactly why that solved it. I added the scenery back after the problem was "solved" and the headings stayed correct. It hasn't occured since. Maybe someone else knows why... I hope.

[Navtech]

I suggest
In
C:\Documents and Settings\yourname\Application Data\Microsoft\FS9\facilities
Save first (just in case) and delete the files in this directory
Relaunch FS2004
Check if good and save again as your default flight (if any!)
This seems had worked for me ...
Note:
The path can be different for your OS (it's in the same place as FS9.cfg)

[srgalahad]

There may be a number of possible causes but the only one I have encountered ( and solved) was due to a scenery file that had an incorrect magnetic Variation set in it. For some reason, flights near the offending critter, or started near it, or from it would then cause heading indicators to read incorrectly. Sometimes it was instantaneous, sometimes the heading indicator would "creep" out of the correct orientation. I was fortunate that I had only installed and used one scenery addon just before the problem developed so it was easier to check and correct (removal) - it was an aircraft carrier in the Atlantic and the Mag. Var. was set to 0*. Navtech's suggestion may work. If not you might have to consider reinstalling the addon sceneries bit by bit instead of 'massively' and checking each as you go. That way you can identify be elimination ( or is it addition?) - if/when the problem occurs it would be from the last bit installed.

[Terry]

I have run into this occasionaly and it turned out to be an error in the saved flight I was loading. I created a new flight using the default Cessna at the same airport and all was well.

[Motormouse]

I've had this before, as mentioned above caused by a afcad with wrong mag variance.
Easiest way is to isolate by halves, ie uncheck half of add-on scenery, see if problem still there, etc, etc

Ttfn

Pete