Approved Compass ?

[PACERGUY]

The compass in my cub usually just pointed East. My IA said it was fine for long trips and if I every wanted to get back home he had one in his plane the always pointed West that I could borrow. I redid the panel and put a SRS on the windscreen (had to move it a bit to get the right spot) it actually works now. I seldom look at it but one time I had my GPS fail trying to get into Dead horse one time and it was handy. DENNY

[smcnutt]

I remember when I bought the Howard, it was out in Kansas City, and I lived upstate NY at the time. None of the radios worked, and the compass was dry. No GPS, no loran. Had an old AN directional gyro that worked OK, but still precessed quite a bit. Flew it home that way, just found airports to fly over and reset the DG based on the runway headings. About 1200 miles of pilotage without a descent heading reference. Oh, the good old days.


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Yeah but did you file a flight plan because THAT would have been unsafe. At least that's what I read in news reports about GA accidents.

I've always wondered about the compass correction card. Not sure if I've ever held a course consistently enough that a few degrees of compass correction would be noticed.

[dgapilot]

Yeah but did you file a flight plan because THAT would have been unsafe. At least that's what I read in news reports about GA accidents.

I've always wondered about the compass correction card. Not sure if I've ever held a course consistently enough that a few degrees of compass correction would be noticed.

Only time I file a flight plan is if I’m going IFR. If VFR, nobody needs to know where I’m going but my wife! Call me paranoid, but I won’t sign airport registers, and generally pay cash for gas. I try not to leave a paper trail.


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[Gilbert Pierce]

Isn’t it kind of hard to find a fuel pump that takes cash?

[dgapilot]

That was before the proliferation of self serve!


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[Troy Hamon]

I just ignore the compass. It was in the airplane when I bought it. One day my LORAN lost its signal so I decided to use the compass. I quickly noted that when the Clipper’s nose went left the compass went right. Haven’t looked at it since.

Ha! Even the old timers (sorry to label you that way Gilbert...but...you've earned it!!!) forget how compasses work! That is the accelerate/decelerate error. A normal feature of compasses in airplanes. Unless it doesn't subsequently sort itself out, in which case I am wrong, but meanwhile, I chuckled imagining how even the band of aviators that learned how to properly use a compass don't remember some of the small things.

As for looking at the compass...I still occasionally use it to set my DG just to remind myself how to do that. But it increasingly feels like equipment that might be coming off the required equipment list. Usually when I say that somebody gets on and goes on a long soliloquy about how important the compass is...but really? Does anybody actually use these things other than to practice using them?

[Gilbert Pierce]

I don’t have DG and not having a sophisticated air data computer I will admit to occasionally using the compass to determine the wind direction at altitude. Having been educated prior to hand held electronic calculators it was necessary to use a slidruler for trigonometric and logarithmic functions. Using a slidrule requires you to do simple math such as addition, subtractions and powers of ten in your head. So with a compass heading, GPS track, ground speed and airspeed I could come up with a pretty good wind speed and direction. I only do that when I get bored.
I am always dismayed when cashier says I owe him/her for example $3.13 and i giver them a fiver and 13 cents and say “just give me 2 dollars back. I hate carrying change. Had cashier get so confused it had to call it’s supervisor over to explain it to her/he.

[Steve Pierce]

I don’t have DG and not having a sophisticated air data computer I will admit to occasionally using the compass to determine the wind direction at altitude. Having been educated prior to hand held electronic calculators it was necessary to use a slidruler for trigonometric and logarithmic functions. Using a slidrule requires you to do simple math such as addition, subtractions and powers of ten in your head. So with a compass heading, GPS track, ground speed and airspeed I could come up with a pretty good wind speed and direction. I only do that when I get bored.
I am always dismayed when cashier says I owe him/her for example $3.13 and i giver them a fiver and 13 cents and say “just give me 2 dollars back. I hate carrying change. Had cashier get so confused it had to call it’s supervisor over to explain it to her/he.

That is why I like self check outs.