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Old 4th May 2005 | 19:11
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Charlie Zulu
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Joined: Jun 2002
Posts: 743
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From: Kilmacolm
If you're asking about calculating Gyro drift on a DI, here is how you calculate it.

Table for calculating drift in the northern hemisphere (reverse the signs for southern hemisphere):

Earth Rate - Minus
Latitude Nut - Plus
Transport Wander East - Minus
Transport Wader Wast - Plus

So if you have a DI with a Latitude Nut set for 40 Degrees North and you're flying at 240 knots groundspeed on a westerly heading at latitude 50N you would carry out the following.

Latitude Nut correction for 40N (a plus sign for the latitude nut set for the northern hemisphere):

+15 sin 40 = +9.64

Then you have the Earth Rate which is minus in the Northern Hemisphere:

-15 sin 50 = -11.49

Then for the transport wander, a plus sign for flying in a westerly direction in the northern hemisphere:

(Groundspeed / 60 * tan mean latitude that you're flying)

240 / 60 * tan 50 = +4.77 (plus because you are flying west)

Put them all together:

+9.64
-11.49
+4.77

= +2.92 degrees drift per hour (increasing in reading)

In JAA questions they sometimes give you a random drift error as well (giving a + or - as well) so you'd append that to the final answer. Be careful as sometimes they ask you what is the drift for part of an hour instead of a full hour... (I've been caught out in the feedback quesitons a couple of times).

Thus as you were flying 270 degrees (west) after an hour it would have drifted to 272.92 degrees.

Um I'm still doing my JAA ATPLs so I may be wrong... (hope not as I'm taking the exams soon and I'll be in major trouble if I get this wrong!).

By the way I don't think I would have known many of the answers to the question when I took my JAA PPL (CAA back in those days) seven to eight years ago.

Best wishes,

Charlie Zulu.
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