North up or Track up?

TheTraveler said:
I spent most of my time in the engine room, but did a good bit of coffee drinking up in the pilothouse. Had a Captain once who was anal about stuff, charts and nav screens included. Had a real temper, too.

One fold in a chart and the Mates got an earful. If he happened to wander into the pilothouse and any of the nav screens were not on North Up, things would start to fly.
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Not me, whomever has the watch is free to set the equipment how it suits them best. I can still walk into the wheel house and know exactly what I'm looking at. When I come on watch it takes me a couple minutes to get my settings back. I am more critical as to how people tune the radar than to how they orient the display.
 
garyb said:
Enroute - track up
Approach - north up

Why does this thread keep popping up every 4 months? The replies never change. :ohsnap:
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After nearly a decade of activity, if questions were not be recycled and only one thread per subject could exist, the only activity would be in Spin Zone.
 
Track up if I know where I am, so I can compare what I'm seeing outside with what's on the GPS for situational awareness.

North up if I'm lost and I need to compare where I am on the GPS with a map or other navigational aid. :redface:
 
My impression is that most of us fly both north up and track up, maybe with some preference for one or the other, but we all use both.
North up is a way to place yourself in perspective to the rest of the world. Track up places the rest of the world in perspective to yourself. Which one is more important at the time?
Following the paper sectional was always a north up activity to me. I was trained to read maps in the infantry and north up is where my comfort zone is. That's where my situational awareness in regard to the rest of the world feels best.
Navigating by VOR, ADF or HSI on steam gauges feels more or less like track up, that is, one is adjusting track by adjusting heading by reference to a bearing. That's where my situational awareness in relation to my destination feels best.
It may be that most of us have always used a combination and the discussion is moot. Hopefully, all of us are able to use each to the best effect in any situation we find ourselves in.
 
If I fly track up my initial position report is always 10 miles SOUTH of the field.
 
deltafox said:
If I fly track up my initial position report is always 10 miles SOUTH of the field.
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LOL.

This is primarily why I use north up. For me it's easiest to ascertain my position related to other airports or landmarks.

To me track up makes no sense. I don't need to have the map match what I see out the window, the little airplane on the map tells me if that lake is straight ahead, left or right of the nose.

Now instrument flight I can see how track up would be more useful.
 
My SA must be better than average.
I prefer North up.
 
At least in the Garmin GTN (and I assume other navigation devices) you can set the scale at which the display will auto-flip between the two modes. The idea being that for larger scale display, you'd want to see where you are "on an atlas" (i.e. North Up), while on smaller scale you'd want to see where you going relative to features outside the windows (i.e. Track Up).
 
430 in the panel is always Track Up.

VFR and enroute I will have Foreflight Track Up. Once on the approach, I switch Foreflight to North Up. I tend to zoom in and out on the geo-referenced approach plate, and unless I am heading north, it is hard for me to read the approach info on the plate. I brief the approach in sections (too many years of hand flying in IMC) and tend to double check the minimums as I am on each segment of the approach.

It's kind of funny, in 20 years of flying I have always used Track Up (I would keep the sectionals oriented track up) it has only been since geo-referenced plates have come out that I have even started using North up.
 
garyb said:
Enroute - track up
Approach - north up

Why does this thread keep popping up every 4 months? The replies never change. :ohsnap:
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Track up.

North up is only a feature for sadists.
 
North Up is what I use and the reason is because I'm the BPITW. You Track Up pilots should be ashamed...seek help.
 
Seanaldinho said:
Wow, Im kinda surprised by how many track up people there are.

Im definitely a north up guy.
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And that's perfectly fine for you. Just remember if you get into instructing that not all your students think the same way you do, and they may do better with a different choice.
 
roncachamp said:
North up. I spent thirty years looking at radar scopes that were north up, that's what I'm used to.
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B-52 navigators are the same. Fightergators like me have a different experience. Maybe BILTZ can tell us what Bone OSO's do. In any event, as I said originally, it doesn't matter which you do as long as your brain computes it properly with the least effort. If you have trouble with one, try the other. If you have trouble with both, well...choose one and work with it until your brain understands it.
 
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Ron Levy said:
And that's perfectly fine for you. Just remember if you get into instructing that not all your students think the same way you do, and they may do better with a different choice.
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Oh absolutely, to each their own. Its just something I had never considered and thought most people would use north up. I guess Im lucky Im a north up guy since radar scopes are set up that way.
 
Seanaldinho said:
I guess Im lucky Im a north up guy since radar scopes are set up that way.
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Not the ones I've ever flown with, including the nav/attack and TF radars in the A-6/RF-4/F-111 and the on-board weather radar in a variety of civilian aircraft.
 
I find tracking up to be extremely disorienting. I always keep ForeFlight on North up so I can properly read the chart and orient myself. Aircraft GPS on Track up is fine.
 
I like random direction up.
I can't find a decent flight app that supports that mode, though.
So I lock the orientation on the iPad to landscape mode, flip it upside down and view it via a mirror.
The way a REAL pilot should use these toys.
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Jim Logajan said:
I like random direction up.
I can't find a decent flight app that supports that mode, though.
So I lock the orientation on the iPad to landscape mode, flip it upside down and view it via a mirror.
The way a REAL pilot should use these toys.
attachment.php
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Is that so you can read it while drunk on the floor of a fun-house mirror maze?

Edit: Very neat looking, BTW!
 
Guess I will submit my vote...

North up ALWAYS.
 
Seanaldinho said:
Oh absolutely, to each their own. Its just something I had never considered and thought most people would use north up. I guess Im lucky Im a north up guy since radar scopes are set up that way.
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I haven't seen a radar that would North up that did not have a heading up mode, but I guaranty you there are more radar sets out there that will only do heading up with no facility at all to do North up. A stand alone radar is incapable of doing North up, it requires a heading input.
 
Jim Logajan said:
I like random direction up.
I can't find a decent flight app that supports that mode, though.
So I lock the orientation on the iPad to landscape mode, flip it upside down and view it via a mirror.
The way a REAL pilot should use these toys.
attachment.php
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lol, nice.:goofy:
 
I think when radar was brought up, ATC was implied:

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When dealing with multiple aircraft, OF COURSE North Up is the reasonable way to go, with the possible exception of dedicated ASR or PAR scopes.
 
FastEddieB said:
I think when radar was brought up, ATC was implied:

Enrt74.jpg


When dealing with multiple aircraft, OF COURSE North Up is the reasonable way to go, with the possible exception of dedicated ASR or PAR scopes.
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Way more pilots look at boat radars than ATC radars, and every aircraft radar I have ever seen displays heads up. ATC radar is likely the smallest sampling of radar in existence.
 
Henning said:
I haven't seen a radar that would North up that did not have a heading up mode, but I guaranty you there are more radar sets out there that will only do heading up with no facility at all to do North up. A stand alone radar is incapable of doing North up, it requires a heading input.
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You'll see some if you ever visit an ATC facility.
 
I go both ways LOL

Enroute - NORTH UP. Like the way the world looks like a map that I can recognise

Approach - TRACK UP. Don't care what the world looks like. Better for SA on Approach.
 
Henning said:
Way more pilots look at boat radars than ATC radars, and every aircraft radar I have ever seen displays heads up. ATC radar is likely the smallest sampling of radar in existence.
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Lots of aircraft radar displays show north up. While the guys in the pointy end prefer track up, the guys in the back tend to use north up.
 
North up. When you get vectored all over the place on IFR, I feel one can lose situational awareness with Track up. We turn and fly to headings in IFR so North up makes sense to me. Also, the map constantly rotating with Track up is distracting. There is less interpretation with North up, looking at the map you know exactly where you are with respect to waypoints/fixes/VORs/airports.
 
Compass- track up. Direction gyro- track up. Synthetic vision- track up. My own GPS moving maps- track up. If I'm flying TO the south I want the map to indicate To as up.
 
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