Spent some time tonight working on the thrilling job of finding the magnetic declination for every location that i plan to stop for the night while on my TransAm ride. Sounds like a wild night, doesn't it. :-)
I'll be carrying my Highgear Altitech digital barometer/compass/altimeter/thermometer/watch thing-a-ma-jig during my ride. In order to keep it accurate, and hence worth the trouble of carrying it, the altitude needs to be calibrated every day and the magnetic declination as often as you think your location changes enough to warrant it.
Since i'm riding from coast to coast, both the altitude and magnetic declination will change constantly. This means i will need to have accurate altitude and declination readings every day in order to calibrate the Altitech, but since i'm not going to be "connected" while on the road, i need to store this information before leaving.
To do that, i'm using magnetic-declination.com to find the daily declination readings, and earthtools.org to get the daily altitude readings.
For each day of the ride, at the top of the page in the guidebook i'm following that pertains to that day, i'm entering the declination and altitude for the location where i plan to start the day and the location where i plan to spend the night. I can then set these values each morning before setting out and the readings should be reasonably accurate. Finding the information is a slow and laborious process, but i figure i still have a month and a half so there is no hurry.
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