(The wet- or whiskey-compass has a significant 'undershoot' or 'overshoot' when the plane is turning, see the Northern Rotation Fault.)
Before take off the Gyro Compass has to be aligned with the Whiskey Compass and during the flight it has to be checked for drift (and eventually corrected) while flying in a straight line.
Some Heading Indicators have manual adjustment for the drift correction (so they have an adjustment-knob) while others have auto-correction.
For more information about gyroscopic instruments, click here.
SeaGull offers three types of 3-inch- and one 2-inch-Gyro Compass:
- The 'simplest' has no knobs (as shown here on the right),
- the second has 1 knob for drift-correction (as shown below),
- the third is being finalised and has an Auto Pilot Heading 'Bug' and two knobs: 1 for drift-correction and 1 for bug-setting.
- the forth is the new 2-inch version, as shown further below, it has no knobs.
SeaGull Gyro Compass / Heading Indicator
3-Inch panelmount instrument. Click for a Movie: Small (0.9 MB) Big (2.15 MB)
SeaGull Gyro Compass / Heading Indicator with Drift-Correction-knob. Click for a Movie: (24 MB)
Our instruments use a stepper motor to show the heading.
This type of Gyro Compass has an Auto Pilot Heading 'Bug' and two knobs: 1 for drift-correction and 1 for bug-setting.
The drift-correction and the bug-setting are fed back to the Simulator.
Our instrument uses a stepper motor to show the heading and a second one to drive the autopilot heading bug.
SeaGull Gyro Compass / Heading Indicator with Auto Pilot Heading 'Bug' and Drift-Correction-knob. Click for a Movie: (24 MB)
The 3-inch panelmount Gyro Compasses are available as Slave instrument and as Master instrument.
A Master needs an Interface Box, a Slave needs a free slot in a Master Instrument (see General concept).
The instrument is illuminated by (2) leds.
This Heading Indicator has no knobs, so no manual correction. (So in real it should be connected to an auto-correction-system.)
It is only available as Slave instrument and has (for the moment) no illumination.
SeaGull 2-inch Heading Indicator Click for a movie (2.4 MB) (note that the jitter is due to the movie; the instrument itself runs very smooth!):