What exactly is happening when your compass goes out of alignment? What causes it, and how is it actually “fixed” in a real aircraft?
When I’m flying a Cessna, I pretty much have to reset my compass every 5 minutes
It’s not the compass going out of alignment, it’s the mechanical gyroscopic heading indicator that is going out of alignment. This is due to precession, which you can read more about here.
Effectively, to “fix” it, you must periodically adjust the gyro heading indicator to the current compass reading. In older gyros, as in instruments that haven’t been overhauled in a while, you’ll need to do this adjustment quite often. Newer gyros are electronic or have a compensating slaving function that will keep the gyro slaved to a magnetic compass. These generally don’t need to be adjusted.
Hope that helps!
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You can also turn this behaviour off under Assistance. I keep it off, it’s too much “realism” to have to keep adjusting it.
Textbook answer from Gambler2107900, have a cookie of your choice!
Is that the “gyro correction” option?
I have that enabled and my compass still goes out of alignment…
I actually noticed that if I go into active pause during a turn, the heading indicator doesn’t pause, it keeps turning. That was why mine kept going out of alignment so often. Hopefully they’ll fix it soon.
Interesting… does time acceleration also override the “gyro correction” option?
I increase the sim rate a lot when flying…