Can you identify this instrument
 

https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/...ift%20Inst.JPG

Do you know what this instrument is and what it was used in?

Do we get any clues?

G

Apparent wind gauge from some kind of sailing vessel?

is there anything on the back?





gs

Looks like a marine wind guage.

Which could also be a wind gauge from an airship

INCLINOMETER..
 

Looks like an inclinometer, used by ships to determine how far they are heeling over...

Slight scary that the scale goes up to 180° ...

That's odd - no picture in Post 1, just a little black box:confused:

Yep, same here.
I thought it was just me.

Whew! I was about to go out for an eye exam.:ugh:

Welllllll......
 

......it was there yesterday evening. And the dial "presentation" made it look like an g2b compass display aircraft instrument.

The Ancient Mariner

Oh, well, and I thought it was just me being terminally stupid as usual. OK, back to the Horlicks

Same for me. Presumably I need to download something to be able to see it. Any of you IT experts know what that would be?

Hopefully I have fixed the dropbox image. No clues other that the 5T reference which looks RAF to me. My thought was that it might be airship related.

The little arrow above the 5T looks like an "HMG property" symbol - I have the same on the back of my wristwatch :E

Are there any connections or markings on the reverse? What's the diameter, roughly.

Whatever it is, the thing that I find most curious is the port/stbd asymmetry.


Incidentally, I'd be willing to bet that if you put a Geiger Counter to it, you may find it's fairly radioactive. Not because it's from a reactor, but because it looks like it may have used quite a lot of tritium or uranium based "glow in the dark" paint which was quite common for some years.

G

That is what puzzled me, I have asked the owner for more details. The 5 Stores Ref would normally have referred to Electrical Parts but I can find no reference to 5T!

2 days after giving a talk on Radio Navigation equipment, I was asked what this is!

My guess it that it has something to do with mooring airships.

By no means the same but it looks very much like a "gun fire arc" limiter thing I once saw inside a ships gun turret, the fellow showing us around if I remember correctly said it was to prevent self inflicted damage in the event that the automatic interupter systems failed, however if memory serves me right it was a bloody great brass thingy with similar markings on it, but it was long ago and the ship {boat?} had been laid up since the end of the war.

If it is WW II or earlier then it likely has a Radium painted dial. IIRC a 26,000 year half life. Tritium was used post WW II most likely starting in the early 1950's.

Hugh, retired Nuclear Safety guy who had the dubious experience of mapping the Radium contamination of the Elgin clock factories in northern Illinois. This was one of the places that the Radium Girls worked painting clock, watch and instrument faces..

clunckdriver
You may well be right regarding a gunnery indicator.
Now received a picture of the rear:

https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/...tor%20rear.JPG

Clearly a remote electrical indicator, so that matches the 5T stores ref. Diameter 200mm.

Jenkins, for the benifit of us in the colonies, could you please convert your last message into English or some other form more likely to be understood in the "Great White North"? I have in the past had to use a translator to understand Glasgow Tower so have little chance of understanding Royal Navy slang, although I must admit it is most likely understood by those with a sailing background, somthing I did my best to avoid during my military service as Im subject to "projectile vomiting "after one day at sea!{ but never air sick, go figure!}

I think Jenkins refers to the "star" of a long ago and much loved Radio 4 programme based on a frigate with a name similar to "Troubridge"

Radio 4 ummmm, don't you mean (until 1967 anyway) the BBC Home Service?

In fact, The Navy Lark went out on the Light Programme (aka Radio 2).

DR so it was. Back to the Horlicks (again)

Sounded like a load of BolluxDeLorean couldn't even make a car properly!

Looks like a very simple DF, working off an incoming radio signal?

Ran the image through TinEye and nothing found like it.

Looking at the backside image I see 5 wires and they are grouped in two and 3. This is the classic Selsyn grouping for a sender and a repeater. Connect them together and apply A/C power at the sender and they are electrical lock in rotation. Move one and the other follows.

I would have to find one of my engineering books to get more details as the last time I worked with them was in the early 1980's

I got the picture by clicking the little icon of a torn paper sheet in the address bar of IE. It turns blue and I can now see the picture. I also lost the irritating message "Do you want to leave this page".

I do believe the markings on the port side have eroded away, if you zoom in you can still see faint marks that would have indicated the 70 and 80 degree positions assuming therefore both sides of the dial were equally graduated up to 180 degrees.

Clinometer for a WWII Gato class submarine?

Given the +- 30 degree range is marked out in 1 degree divisions it suggests to me that whatever it was fitted to was likely to be frequently steady in this range. Plus the angle needed to be measured accurately and so was significant.

I am inclined to think this is a remote readout for an Anemometer, maybe from the bridge of an aircraft carrier where the ship would be positioned into wind for launching and recovering aircraft.

Just checked about 300 detailed internal pictures of the Gato class sub, USS COD SS 224 that I took during a visit to Cleveland, OH some years ago. Pentax 7 m pixel images.

Nothing that resembles the instrument under discussion. Several pictures have incline meters in them but they appear to mechanical not electrical.

My visit was to see the sub that a close friend had done 4 war patrol's on 43 ~ 45. He talked a lot about the patrols and the action during them. Shortly before I visited the sub he left us on his last patrol. Wished I could have talked to him after the visit.

Scratch that guess.:O

Well, I think this is the first time that PPrune hasnt come up with a definative answer on somthing like this, but there has to be some clever chap who will know for sure, maybe be we should offer a reward for the correct answer?

Thus it isn't likely to be aviation related.

Looks to me like some kind of Naval synchro/repeater as suggested above.

The restricted arc is big clue and probably rules out a wind instrument. That arc is to do with aligning something that needs to be accurately positioned within 30 deg of "ahead" and less accurately on the rest of the arcs. The restricted arc implies that for some reason it cannot be placed between Red 60 and 180. Figure what that might be and we'll have an answer.
Likely to be something not mounted on the centreline but that has limited movement across it to the left like Stbd side armament on a cruiser or battleship.

A deck crane perhaps? Torpedo tube? Not something requiring much precision like a range finder for instance.
AA/high elevation gun might fit though the emphasis on the straight ahead markings doesn't seem logical there.

If anyone knows a good maritime web site maybe they would have the answer, Im damned if I can find anything in my collection of technical books which even has anything resembling it.

It is almost definitely an apparent wind gauge (missing some markings). The reason the 30-0 sections are marked in single degrees is because you can't sail much closer to the wind than 20-25 degrees, depending on what you're sailing, so you have to be quite accurate with wind tracking.