I think we need a 'glance at compass command' similar to the 'glance at dash' command.
+1, would solve everything.
I've been away for months (too much RL happening so i didn't have time to even lurk), and my secondary hard disk gave up the ghost (which is where i keep all my games installed) so i can't even play, but i thought i'd start popping in to the simming forums and see how things are going. So, here goes...
Could someone also explain German AC: Course Autopilot Deviation, Directional Gyro, Course Autopilot Preset, Repeater Compass Course Setter, Course Autopilot Adjust Course R&L. I have read the manual and asked online for directions for using these gauges/ instruments without response. The explanation for the British compass is a big help and, although I am not yet at the "Don't Buy Green Bananas" age, I can see it from here. In other words, plesae shorten my learning curve. Many thanks, John
I don't remember the exact naming convention used in the sim and due to lack of hard disk space i don't have it currently installed to check, so i will describe the instruments and what they do. From that point on, you can map controls to them and use them (or just click on the instruments) to see which is which.
Generally speaking and if my memory serves me right, the biggest amount of instruments you'll have in a German bird is:
magnetic compass ("whiskey" compass or round compass with course setting marker)
repeater compass with course setting marker
gyro compass with heading hold selector
autopilot
This is for the multi-engined birds, the 109s just have a simple whiskey compass on the dashboard, i think the Stuka also has a repeater compass. The gyro compass with heading hold marker is used how you tell the autopilot your desired heading to keep and can be found on the 110, 111 and 88.
So, let's assume we're flying a Ju88.
The magnetic compass is the big round thing with the plane silhouette in the middle, hanging below the middle of your instrument panel (in the 111 you can find it on the right hand side cockpit wall). To read it, you either hover the mouse cursor over it and look at the tooltip, or look for the red triangle in the periphery. It's the triangle that indicates your magnetic heading. To set a course, move the course setter and the plane silhouette will move. Turn until the plane silhouette is aligned with the triangle to get on course.
The repeater compass can usually be found on the instrument panel and it has a very useful property: it's as accurate as the magnetic one, in fact they seem to be linked for all intents and purposes in the sim, so you can almost entirely forget about the magnetic compass and use that one. This makes getting a magnetic heading for calibrating your gyro compass a lot easier in the German aircraft, because it's right in front of you. It also makes it very easy to navigate "by hand" because it has a course setter too. When you move the course setter for your magnetic compass, it moves on the repeater compass as well. It's pretty simple again, the plane silhouette in the middle points to your actual heading and the top to bottom line on the outer disk of the instrument signifies your intended heading, you just turn until they align and you're set.
The gyro compass is the instrument with the two horizontally rotating compass cards. The top row is your current heading, which you need to calibrate the usual way: get the heading from the magnetic or repeater compass and input it into the gyro compass.
An important thing to note here is that the game features magnetic deviation similar to the one found over the Channel during 1940. In other words, your magnetic heading is always 10 degrees off and you have to add/subtract 10 degrees before calibrating your gyro compass, or just take it into account if you only navigate with magnetic/repeater compass. Sadly, i don't remember if the deviation is east or west, so i don't know if your true heading is magnetic + 10 degrees or magnetic - 10 degrees.In the RAF aircraft the gyro compass is pretty much essential for navigation because it's the easiest nav instrument to see on the panel. In the German aircraft you can ignore it pretty much and use the repeater compass. However, there is one reason to learn and use the gyro compass in German aircraft too: the autopilot is "fed" data from it.
To use the autopilot, you first calibrate your gyro compass with your true heading (align the top compass card). Then, trim your aircraft for straight and level flight and let it settle for a few seconds. By using the "autopilot left/right" commands, you can now rotate the bottom compass card of the instrument. This compass card is the heading you want the autopilot to keep, let's call it the heading hold selector.
Take note, the comparison is made between heading hold selector and gyro compass, not the other compasses. If i'm flying east but my gyro is wrongly calibrated to read north and i set the heading hold selector to east, instead of flying straight and level like i want it to, the aircraft will turn 90 degrees to the right and face south the moment i engage autopilot. The autopilot only sees the difference between gyro compass and heading hold selector, so if any of those is off you get wrong results. So, if my top compass card in my gyro compass is calibrated at 90 degrees (due east) and i rotate the bottom compass card (the heading hold selector) to also read 90 degrees and then engage autopilot, the aircraft should keep flying straight and level at that direction. What happened in practice when i last had a chance to fly the sim, is that there's an offset of 5-7 degrees. In other words, the instrument face for the example i used (flying due east) should look like this:
----E---- *gyro compass
----E---- *heading hold selector
but the setting that keeps the aircraft flying straight is more like this:
----E----
------E--
I don't know if this is a realistic limitation of the system or a bug and if it's been corrected in the meantime, but it's easy to account for, just rotate your heading selector a bit more to the right before engaging autopilot.
Also take note that there are two AP modes. I don't know what the second one is for, probably for use with radio navigation beacons, but you only need the course autopilot setting for this method (kurzsteurung i think it's labelled on the panel in German).So, if you know all this, you should be able to climb in a He111 or Bf110 and fly hands off to the target area. The 110 also has a big red button on the instrument panel, which servers as a temporary "autopilot bypass". Say one of your wingmen is venturing close and you need to evade, click and hold on the red button and kick some rudder, then stop clicking on the button and the AP will steer you back on your chosen course. You can still fight the controls against the AP of course, but i don't know if this messes up the gyros or anything.
A known bug back then also existed in the Ju88. The gyro compass wouldn't rotate (it just stayed where you would set it and not respond to your turns), which made it impossible to use steering via autopilot. I don't know if this has been corrected.
However, last time i checked it worked fine for the Bf110 and the He111 (with the 5-7 degree offset caveat mentioned before) and you can use this to level bomb. If you calibrate the gyro, set your heading hold selector and engage AP you can then make small corrections and steer the aircraft via autopilot. Just by briefly tapping your "autopilot left/right" keys to rotate the heading hold selector a couple of degrees at a time, you can make small course corrections while you are on the bomb run and looking through the sights. This is pretty much how it was done in real life for the most part too.
As a final note, keep in mind that the AP doesn't make coordinated turns and it doesn't take altitude changes into account, so it's better to only steer via AP when small course corrections are needed. If you rotate your heading hold selector more than 10-15 degrees at a time while the AP is engaged the aircraft will bank somewhat steeply, overshoot the target heading, turn the other way, overshoot it again and make a series of zig-zagging turns before settling on the chosen heading, not to mention losing altitude in the process because the AP has no control over your elevators. Not a good course of action if you are flying a bomber and you have wingmen in formation with you
However, using it to keep the bomber straight and level while you aim the bombs is perfectly possible and i've had some pretty good results with the 111 while doing practice bombing runs.
Hope this helps