I'm a quite new pilot (just passed my checkride 1 month ago, 140 total hours). I'm flying a club airplane for most of my air time, a PA-28-236 Dakota, which recently passed its annual but is an old airplane with old avionics.
On my recent flights at or above 8000 MSL I've noticed a significant discrepancy between my aneroid (panel) altimeter and my GPS altitude as indicated on my iPad Foreflight app. Today, for example, I was cruising at 10,500 MSL by my panel altimeter, but my iPad said my altitude by GPS was 11, 200 MSL. My altimeter settings were checked prior to takeoff by AWOS and corrected by ATC for my location shortly prior to noting this discrepancy on my kneeboard, so it's not an input error on my end.
This has me wondering, which altitude is more likely to be true, and what should I do about it?
As I'm flying VFR and expecting other VFR traffic to be following the even/odd +500 rule for cruise altitude, a discrepancy of over 500 feet makes me wonder if I'm going to run into (literally!) traffic expecting me to be 700 feet lower or higher than I truly am...
Any insights on this issue?
On my recent flights at or above 8000 MSL I've noticed a significant discrepancy between my aneroid (panel) altimeter and my GPS altitude as indicated on my iPad Foreflight app. Today, for example, I was cruising at 10,500 MSL by my panel altimeter, but my iPad said my altitude by GPS was 11, 200 MSL. My altimeter settings were checked prior to takeoff by AWOS and corrected by ATC for my location shortly prior to noting this discrepancy on my kneeboard, so it's not an input error on my end.
This has me wondering, which altitude is more likely to be true, and what should I do about it?
As I'm flying VFR and expecting other VFR traffic to be following the even/odd +500 rule for cruise altitude, a discrepancy of over 500 feet makes me wonder if I'm going to run into (literally!) traffic expecting me to be 700 feet lower or higher than I truly am...
Any insights on this issue?
