How to set the compass

A lot of people seem to be baffled by the compass and where they are going. Here's a try at showing how to.set the darn thing.
Mind you, I'm no expert, I made it work like this for me and that's it. I just hope it helps anyone interested.......

First of all, we see the compass like this on start up:



Now move the course setter in such a way that the train tracks (the yellow lines) line up with the white needle with the crossbar (the north side of the train track should point to the crossbarred white line). In this case I needed to decrease the course setter.



On the screen somewhere in the info window you will see the degrees counting up or down. Read the last line of degrees (in this example its 252) and set that in the Directional gyro.
Again you will have to up or down the degrees until it reaches the just found setting. In this case 252




You are ready now. Fly on the Directional Gyro, but be aware the DG is quickly off. So repeat this procedure once every 10-15 minutes or after violent moves. Make sure the compass (the magnetic one) is steady before doing this, so trim your aircraft.

I hope this helps people.

Thanks Bando,

I wonder how many guys got shot down while faffing around with that piece of junk.

Compared to other country's compasses and DGs of the era, the British one does seem like an awful clunky set of gear to operate.

LukeFF thats because they were made by Royal appointment by the company Messrs Heath and Robinson. This was a well established traditional UK company that specialises in precision devices with a particular penchant to make simple tasks more complicated. It is believed that this unique attitude was what the English electrical company LUCAS saw in Messrs Heath and Robinson and so bought them out. This then ensured that Lucas could capture that unique part of the UK Auto Electrics market and provide electrical components that never worked.

IvanK: that certainly seems to be in keeping with British fighter cockpit design of the era, with the way the instruments and levers seem to be slapped together in a semi-random fashion.

Compasses and navigation have always been a fascinated of mine since I was in the Boy Scouts, so the British designs of this era are certainly...umm...intriguing.

Good thing the British reflector sites worked OK, but than the first 500 sets were made in Austria on the same assembly line that cranked out the revis.

We have a guy at EAF that restores WWII aircrafts in his sparetime. He got pretty upset when I wrote something like you opinion.

Cockpits of the British aircrafts seems to oriented around th the servicing mechanics and not the pilots. Unlike the German cockpit designs. The Bf109 could be better, but the Fw190A/D series are real masterpieces.

BTW: how in the h*ll can someone put a compass/directional gyro so far out of the way that you can't see it during normal flying??????

LUCAS - The Prince of Darkness.

I've never understood why Lucas has such a horrible reputation outside the UK - their stuff works fine here.

Lucas wiring should never be fiddled with, though. Perhaps that's the problem - once you let the smoke out of a circuit it's never quite the same again.

Cheers!

Thanks Bando, awesome post!!!

Cool post Bando.


Wheels

I gave up on the piece of junk days ago, but I really have no idea where I'm at sometimes. I just always try and keep the coast or some type of landmark in view.

Considering it's placement behind the stick..how do I even go about reading it during flight. Just a few rolls and oh yay..now i can read the compass.

DUMB...but far bigger things to cry about with this game. I just want the 3 blue lines gone and the sound to work during multiplayer!

Didn't the British have a saying something like ' second best , first ' when it came to getting stuff operational and fitted.Im a slacker , i only ever use the compass in the pacific.I can always find a landmark in europe or england to get me going where i need

Cool and easy tute Bando , maybe now with some training i can land at my correct airfield.

lol.. if you fly a mission where the weather closes in and visibility is crap, you will need that compass mate!

But don't worry, it's always a clear sunny day on Clodland

He got pretty upset when I wrote something like you opinion

I don't know why...


Yes it's simply delightful isn't it

Ming

There where some bad weather days in August 1940.

There's already a "look at the instruments" command in the controls setup of the sim: you map it to a button and you get a view of the instrument panel (regardless of whether you use head tracking or not, it over-rides everything) for as long as that button is held.
There's nothing wrong with the compass, it's realistic. All we need is a "look at the compass" command or a "look at instruments part2" command (so that non-RAF aircraft can benefit from it too, for example, it would be cool to fiddle with radios while in the gunner position of a Ju88/Me111/etc if and when they get implemented) that works the same way: lock view to compass as long as the key is held down.


In the meantime, i've found out a way to reliably calibrate it in flight without losing control of the aircraft. Move your viewpoint (via head tracking or regular mouse control) so that you are looking at the lower half of your instrument panel and left of the stick (it's like leaning left and down into the seat). This leaves a bit of visible horizon so that you can stay level and you have all the major instruments in view.

From this position you can clearly make out the alignment of the white compass bars and the yellow course setter bars, we just need to know which part of it is north. Momentarily go to zoom view/narrow FOV to identify where's the T-bar on the compass and the North marker on the course setter, now you now which way to turn it. Zoom back out and apply the relevant command while you still have a sufficient amount of forward view and all the main instruments in sight helping you maintain straight and level flight.

Absolute precision is not necessary, getting it within 5 degrees or so is just fine for the distances we fly now. On longer trips (eg, a cross-channel Rhubarb) we'll have to recalibrate anyway once identifying a ground landmark to correct for possible wind drift over the channel.

It's not optimal but
a) it works reliably and well
b) the aircraft of the time weren't ergonomically optimal either, many of them weren't even optimized in that regard
c) if you want cool automatic stuff, fly a lufty plane

Finally, if someone complains about being unable to do this drill during combat the answer is "you are not supposed to". I check it every 5 minutes or so during cruise and it never strays for more than a couple of degrees. By the time i'm in the "danger zone" i know it'll all go awry due to the gyros tumbling from the maneuvers in the dogfight so i just stop thinking about it. If i need to disengage in a hurry i know i need to go north: just turn until the cross-bar is at the top and you'll be going north. Then i recalibrate it once i'm out of the woods.

I really like all such complexity in all aircraft of the sim, it gives me a greater feeling of immersion by "muddying the waters" a bit: i can't calibrate my DG mid-combat so i'm high-tailing it out of the combat area on an approximate heading, possibly while low on fuel and/or with some damage.

I bet that after a while it's exactly this aspect of the gameplay that will get the most praise. It reminds me of when i started messing with silent hunter 3 way back in the day. I saved very often and loaded my saved game whenever the escorts pinged me. Before long i was sinking massive tonnage, i was the Kriegsmarine's wonder boy...and i was bored and stopped playing. After picking it up again at the instigation of a friend, i deliberately provoked a detection of my U-boat by the DD escorts and started playing through the evasion phase. I realized i was missing half the gameplay up until that point.

Uncertainty and a feeling of slight helplessness in simulators (as in "this is over my direct powers at this point in time") is what turns ordinary happenings and predictable successes into great gaming moments and heroic feats

Great post Blackdog

Bando, thanks for explaining this piece of kit, which I personally hadn't gotten my head around just yet. So much else to learn, and too damn' little time, with real life interfering in all sorts of unhelpful ways...

I don't quite understand your final step, could you explain it a bit more? After lining up the "railroad track" with N at the same end as the little white line in the compass, what is it I do then? I would much prefer not to have to rely on the digital overlay read-out when transferring the course to the directional gyro. Am trying to get rid of that crutch. Do I just take the number at the "forward" part of the course setter ring and enter it into the gyro? And what exactly does that number represent?

Thanks and keep up the good work. The developers have been terribly woefully inadequate in their efforts of documentation, which is really a shame, because if they had involved the community it would all have been a good deal less obtuse. Not everybody reads the SimHQ forums...

Hello Freycinet,

The compass, once set, is difficult to read. The idea is that the value to read is on the ring pointing to the nose. If you look at the second picture you'll see that the ring (pointing to the nose) reads 250 (give or take some).
If (in my setup) I change that ring (by turning it myself) I see the readout of that ring to the left of the screen. I use that readout and consider it ok to use it, for the real pilot of the time would have had much better view on that compass then we do. If you do not use any "info windows" it is somewhat harder to read, but not impossible. I use the white "dot" just above the compass. (left of the words "flood lights", SSW of the "P" in the word "PORT")

The found heading represents your magnetic heading. In this case 250 (ish) . If you want to do it all correct you might consider the magnetic variation into the quest and correct for that on the gyro to get true heading. Magvar was about 10 degrees west I believe at that time, so a magnetic readout of 250 would mean a DG heading of 240.

Oh man, rereading this I hope it makes sense.

Love your videos, keep making 'm.

Bando

Thanks Bando.

This thread deserves a rating, btw, so here are some stars for you...

I can't see enough of the compass no matter how much twisting and turning in my seat trying to via TrackIr. I guess I need the heading on the lower corner for this one.

Nice job to explain something that is not easy to explain, one picture is better than thousand words.

Have a nice game.