primary flight instruments on partial panel

I'm speaking of the question by the OP, which seemed to be
asking if all you had was the compass or the TC [needle],
which would be primary.

The compass gives 0 [zero] bank angle indication and in a
steep turn may not rotate at all. Controlling the airplane
can be done with the TC plus some pitch instrument.
Controlling the airplane with ONLY the compass is much more
difficult because it indicates reverse turn direction on all
headings except near 180 degrees (northern hemisphere).

Very few airplanes have the mag compass located where it can
be flown as sole reference, most are mounted on the
windshield post.


--
James H. Macklin
ATP,CFI,A&P

"Robert M. Gary" wrote in message
oups.com...
|
| Jim Macklin wrote:
| If you're down to just the compass, worry more about
keeping
| the wings "level" and less about heading. The compass,
in
| the northern hemisphere will work as the sole instrument
| only when flying south [saw between 150-210] heading.
It
| will be very sensitive and indicate the correct turn
| direction.
|
| I'm not sure I follow. During my CFII training I got a
solid 2 hours of
| flying partial panel with compass turns. I was able to fly
exact
| vectors to ILS, etc. If I was off even by 2 degrees when I
rolled out
| on a heading my CFII would yell at me. I can tell you from
experience
| you 100% can fly very, very exact headings in any
direction using
| compass turns if you know how to read the compass and
account for the
| effects. I'm not saying doing so in IMC would be as easy
as it is under
| the hood but personally, I would do that in a second
before trying to
| do the math required of timed turns while under the
pressure of partial
| panel IMC. Of course most of us have GPSs which are
actually a much
| better partial panel way to figuring heading (approximated
as course).
|
| -Robert, CFII
|