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How to align the ADI ?


fjacobsen

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This is what I thought also - artificial horizon should align itself after a moment of steady flight but I guess it doesn't do a great job atm.

F/A-18, F-16, F-14, M-2000C, A-10C, AV-8B, AJS-37 Viggen, F-5E-3, F-86F, MiG-21bis, MiG-15bis, L-39 Albatros, C-101 Aviojet, P-51D, Spitfire LF Mk. IX, Bf 109 4-K, UH-1H, Mi-8, Ka-50, NTTR, Normandy, Persian Gulf... and not enough time to fully enjoy it all

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  • 3 weeks later...

After spending some time with Spit I've started to think that the artificial horizon couldn't be that bad. I mean it's an old tech but the way how it works makes it borderline useless. This video shows that it is actually that bad:

 

 

There also doesn't seem to by any fast erect button.

On a side note, the initial gyro rev-up looks insane. Nice to have but would be grate to see it modeled in DCS some day. I could bet that it would made quite a few people hypnotized or seasick :)


Edited by firmek

F/A-18, F-16, F-14, M-2000C, A-10C, AV-8B, AJS-37 Viggen, F-5E-3, F-86F, MiG-21bis, MiG-15bis, L-39 Albatros, C-101 Aviojet, P-51D, Spitfire LF Mk. IX, Bf 109 4-K, UH-1H, Mi-8, Ka-50, NTTR, Normandy, Persian Gulf... and not enough time to fully enjoy it all

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The subject of FAST erect buttons in the RAF on AH's was contentious at the time. This very subject is discussed in Jeffery Wellums book "First Light". In short the RAF point of view was that people could (and did) get themselves in to trouble if the AH was caged when not wings level etc as that could result in a false horizon etc. In time the RAF saw the light.

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Even into the 1980s, the RAF instrument test routinely included 'limited panel', in which the AH was either covered or toppled. The latter was particularly testing, in that it was difficult to ignore the faulty indications. Quite a few pilots used to carry a patch taped to the back of their bone-dome, to cover up a faulty AH and so eliminate that potential source of confusion.

 

In practice the turn and slip, combined with the rate of climb and descent indicator allowed quite straightforward IF. It was the recovery from unusual attitudes that was the most difficult - you had to include the g-meter in your scan to 'unload', i.e. reduce to around 1g, to allow the turn indicator to give a useful reading.

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I just did a flight on lunch hour in which I pulled KTKI weather (where I live) and we've got flurries of snow and solid overcast; punching through the clouds in this damn plane means you gotta ignore the ADI and maintain attitude by watching the slip needle, turn indicator and VSI, and mentally construct your own attitude indication based on those.

 

From what I read, the original Spit's ADI was genuinely a piece of crap (by today's standards) that did only right itself after you fly it straight for a bit, then it would go all wonky again once you move around a bit. Definitely not an IFR bird...

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