NavList:

--- George Huxtable wrote:

> ...it may be possible to make a
> "strap-down" compass which doesn't need to be
> gimballed. But it leaves
> doubts, in my own mind, about whether the
> accelerations that occur to
> a craft in a seaway, can be properly filtered out.
> If anyone has
> experience or knowledge of such a non-gimballed
> device, it would be interesting to discover more.

The compass in my recently-installed autopilot is
called a "rate compass".  As explained to me, it
consists of a gyroscope of the type used in small
aircraft and a fluxgate compass.  The fluxgate senses
the direction, and the gyroscope smooths out the
effects of motion in the horizontal plane.  It is not
gimballed, so I suspect that it ignores the effects of
vertical motion.

Chuck Taylor
48d N
122d W


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