I spotted something very odd this morning at Bankstown airport Sydney NSW Australia. A guy alone was doing a compass swing on a single engine Cessna! He would push down the tail and swing it around manually with no engine running, poke his head inside the cabin to check the compass reading, then sight the aircraft with his handheld land compass.
I would never in my wildest dreams think of doing a compass swing on any aircraft with no engine running and possibly no electrics or radios turned on!!!
Maybe Im missing the full story here of what he was doing but belive me I have done many compass swings before and this is not the recommended or legal way to do it........
Not a lot of point just sticking his head through the door either. You need to look at the compass straight on otherwise you'll suffer from parallax error.
Why did not you ask him about what he was doing then instead of guessing now. Why do you think he was swinging the compass? My guess is he was just checking ....something.
Speculation start - Could be he was checking to see if any degaussing was required after new engine installation - speculation end. It's a bit of a bind doing a compass swing on a tail-wheel type; getting her into flying attitude, engine running for every relevant compass point.
Curious how much trouble we take to do a compass swing, when the standard liquid filled compass is only usable during a small percentage of flight in most GA aircraft. The rest of the time it is over reading, under reading, oscillating, or wizzing round in circles! Personally I prefer to wait for a really calm day and use a GPS to do the swing in the air. At least the ground checks are useful to check for gross errors.
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