Back Flying Again
The directional gyro was replaced in the plane today. This evening, after a rather more careful pre-flight inspection than usual, I took off and checked the DG out in flight. In short, it works.
The DG’s heading wandered a bit when the plane was a idle or taxi. But that’s normal, there’s not enough vacuum to spin it up fully then. But it self-erected properly and promptly.
After takeoff I flew headings in a big triangle at cruise to verify that the compass and the DG (when set correctly) agreed with each other. I was concerned for a while because they were about 10 degrees different. But at cruise in this plane, the compass vibrates. When it does, it goes off heading due to resonance. When I hold it still with my non-magnetic finger, its heading is valid. And it and the gyro agrees then too.
I tried some turns around a point, the DG moved smoothly and evenly in both directions. When I adjust the heading bug, the DG doesn’t “drift” as it was before. Time to go back home.
Naturally, there’s a plane on a long straight in approach for the runway. Everyone else was doing the normal 45 degree approach to downwind, so the guy on straight in was cutting across our path. But we all worked it out and I had a nice smooth landing. It was a landing that made me feel like a super pilot. But no matter, I know I’ll have another landing sometime soon that’ll keep me humble.
Our plane is back in service.