you will notice on Lambert Conformal charts in the northern hemisphere.. the
lines of longitude tend to converge the farther north you go so they are not
parallel.
Remember that you measure heading reference in correlation to the lines of
longitude (normally)
so now as you draw your "straight" line, you will notice that the course
line continuously intersects the longitude lines at different angles.

For shorter distances, measure the heading at mid course and fly that
heading, you will not fly over your ground plotted track, but you will be
close to the destination at the end of the course.

make sense?

"xerj" wrote in message
...
Not that it matters terribly much, but there's a few things I don't get.

On a WAC, which is a Lambert chart, a straight line is more or less a
great
circle, right? However, to fly a great circle, you have to constantly
adjust
your heading. I still can't conceptually work out why, I must say. Any
pointers?

If you had a WAC chart that displayed the entire Northern Hemisphere on
one
chart, you could draw a straight line from Los Angeles to New York.
Wouldn't
this be a great circle? And if it is, why couldn't you just fly the single
heading of that line? Is it that because of the fact that a chart that big
would have different magnetic north references at different meridians, and
what you would actually be drawing is a rhumb line?

And speaking of rhumb lines, if you fly one by keeping a constant magnetic
heading between two points, does that mean you actually describe a curve
over the earth's surface?

Thanks in advance, because I'm pretty confused.