IFR in the 1930's

"Mike Beede" wrote in message
...
In article et, Bill
Daniels wrote:

Every figured what you would do if
the wet compass goes TA while you are in the soup and all you have is a
manually set DG? Been there.

Declare an emergency and request a no-gyro approach. If I'm out
of radar coverage, then I guess I'd just start compensating for drift
as though there were wind, even though it's really precession error.
That would get kind of difficult eventually, so I might be tempted to
reset it based on what I thought the winds really were when I appeared
to be tracking a course accurately. It probably wouldn't be any
worse afterwards....

Did you have some suggestions in mind when you asked the
question? If so, I for one would like to hear them.

Regards,

Mike

I declared an emergency and requested a no-gyro approach as you suggested -
even though I had gyros. Then, because I had quite a ways to go to the
first IFR runway, I figured out that the GPS ground track was almost as good
as a wet compass. I just set the DG to the GPS ground track and ignored
wind - which worked as long as I didn't change heading often. That got me
into approach's radar coverage and the no-gyro approach worked from there.

My CFII had told me that there was no backup for a wet compass because "they
never fail" - baloney, the glass cracked and all the fluid ran down the
instrument panel. After that, it wouldn't move. Made me think.

Bill Daniels