IFR in the 1930's

"Badwater Bill" wrote in message
...
On Sat, 30 Aug 2003 16:26:02 GMT, "Bill Daniels"
wrote:

As a geezer who learned to fly "blind" with needle, ball and airspeed I
can
say that in a slow, stable aircraft, that those are enough for rather
precise instrument flight. I can still fly a respectable partial panel
NDB
approach with just those instruments + an altimeter. (BTW, I HATE a turn
coordinator.)

For me an attitude indicator and a DG are just icing on the cake.

Bill Daniels

I agree with you Bill. The absolute minimum is a needle and ball,
airspeed, altimeter and compass. I like a few extras myself. If I
could only have one more instrument it would be a DG. If I could have
two, it would be a DG then a horizon. I also hate turn coodinators.
Pieces of crap. The turn needle is much better.

BWB

I should have said, "Needle, ball, airspeed, altimeter, CLOCK and wet
compass". Everything depended on being able to read a bouncing wet compass
and timing turns exactly.

Today we have all these fancy gadgets but most of the time we still depend
on the old wet compass for heading data. 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.

Bill Daniels

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

"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