On November 1, 1979, the MAGSAT satellite was successfully launched into a 400 km polar orbit from which it could measure the earth's magnetic field. During the first part of MAGSAT's eight-month lifetime, the orbit was nearly coplanar with that of the TRIAD satellite at 800 km altitude. This study has concentrated on transverse magnetic disturbances associated with Birkeland currents, measured by the two spacecraft. The satellites were nearly coplanar from November through the middle of December 1979. Data were compared when the satellites were over the TRIAD/Chatanika receiving station. Of the approximately 150 comparisons of magnetic disturbances, 75% are very similar in shape and magnitude. For these cases, the TRIAD peak disturbances were, on the average, larger than the peak MAGSAT disturbances by 7%, which is less than many uncertainties in these measurements (due to baselines, calibration). Better agreement in the large-scale well-defined field-aligned current signatures occurs during periods of higher Kp even with time separations as large as 45 minutes. The discrepancies in the remaining cases may be due to temporal, longitudinal and height effects of the Birkeland current system.