What is this Attitude Indicator from?

One other little snippet…reading the flightglobal article…morss said that he would want the pitch indicator to be accurately marked in the plus 30 – minus 30 range…guess what guys 🙂

rgds baz

I get it now…somebody took it out of a 4×4 (or similar),changed the car shape to an a/c shape for LH indicator – then removed the push in car type plug at the back and fitted a keywayed a/c type plug – then sent it up to strathallan – simples 🙂

rgds baz

Lady-friend of the time (1986-1992) had a Fiat Panda Sisley

It did indeed have a very similar, but very much smaller AI display 😀

Moggy

Never seen a Panda Wyvern shaped James…it would have to be a vauxhall 🙂
As I said previously my concern is that it looks a little modern for 1956,one would perhaps expect it to be black/white LOL,not sure when the first coloured instruments came out ?

rgds baz

But even read out instruments have far more complicated and finer engineered mechs than what is presented here, be it recent or back to the ’50s, remotely gyro’d or not.
Even a wartime art horizon is more complicated within.
I have a fair few dissected from different eras, I don’t buy this as being flight or development related, unless as a basic demonstration piece, even then it would seem pointless.

Like some of the PPrune ideas, esp Fiat Panda!

Many flight instruments are merely indicators – ie in a Hawk T1 the main gyro unit is in the equipment bay under the floor,gyros were simply too big to be mounted anywhere near the panel.
Also in the hawk (and most other a/c) the flux detector and master compass (or whatever the fairies call it ) are far apart in the airframe…so not sure why you think this instrument would have its gyro attached to it.
My only worry about the OP’s unit is that it looks a little modern to be 1956,but if it is a flight test/experimental unit I can understand why it was simplified as much as poss.
As you know I have been involved with flight test work and have seen many crazy ideas tried out 🙂
Morss had the right idea grouping all the important flight parameters together,it just was a matter of time for the HUD to come along and present all the info to the pilot in a clear manner and without having to put his head in the cockpit.

rgds baz

edit…only presenting the morss idea as a possibility – not a probability

There are some interesting ideas over on pprune as to what it may be, see

http://www.pprune.org/military-aircrew/484435-anyone-ever-seen-dual-artificial-horizon-one-case.html

I’ve seen it before Baz, done quite a bit of my own studying of the subject (as utterly boring as that sounds!), the only similarity I can see with that idea and the subject here is the a dual dial layout, the mechanism itself, and to some extent the display is very different.

Having an instrument display driven by torque motors suggests to me something fairly simply that relays information from inputs from another device.
A flight designed roller blind att ind is very complex when stripped.
Thats partly why I was wondering if it was a ships relay instrument read out, though watching all the vids I can’t see anything like it in use.
As you know I have a sim, and some of the instrument drives in that are similar to Ians subject, but even the faces are more complex.

In case anybody else struggles to load flightglobal pages (I struggle with chrome)
Note the similarity of the layout of pitch and roll information between the morss panel and the OP’s panel.

Hi James…if you look at page 813 in the flightglobal link…the Morss layout has great similarities but is more complicated and cluttered,the OP’s instrument is almost a simplified version of the Morss idea…

rgds baz

The ‘new’ attitude indicators of the late ’50s were a roller blind presentation instrument which recieved its information from a master computor and gyro system (often an MRG Master Reference Gyro), this replaced the older standard artificial horizons which used conventional atmosphere and gyro sensors. The attitude indicators were introduced on RN/RAF high performance jets of the late 1950s, and often had a standar art horizon back up.

Scimitar was the first type introduced with the system, followed by Sea Vixen, Lightning F.1 and lastly the Buccaneer S.1.
Vixen & early Lightnings were fitted with Pilot Attack Sights (PAS) which presented targeting information based on the same central computor (MRG) info that fed the attitude indicators. PASs bridged the GGS and HUD eras.
Buccaneer had PDU Pilot Display Unit (PDU) which was a more developed targeting/sighting system and encompassed LABS.
Vixen, & Bucc also had AI radar info for the observer to use at longer range, the Lighting pilot had an AI scope.

Head Up Displays were introduced later, Harrier/Jaguar era, HUDs presented full flight reference info as well as targeting info.

The instrument here doesn’t look like a bridging instrument between artificial horizons and attitude indicators to me, as it looks more basic than what it’s replacing and certainly doesn’t have any roller blind features, but I do agree some trials piece or maybe sim as the info is obviously fed from another source.

Interestingly…The Buccaneer may have been one of the first production a/c with an attack HUD and this may explain the FAA’s interest in alternative flight instrument layouts…

rgds baz

As I said previously – I doubt this is a shipboard or simulator instrument and have leaned towards a trials/experimental instrument layout.
There is an article by Michael Morss (Gloster a/c) in flight global archive 1956 – he wrote about the possibility of having a separate and accurate pitch (and thus AoA) indication for high performance a/c.

Michael Morss – quote from flight global

THE author is a test pilot with the Gloster Aircraft Co., Ltd. After
leaving the Royal Air Force he was engaged on technical duties at the
A. and A.E.E., Boscombe Down. He joined Glostcrs in 1955 and now
has some 1,400 hours’ flying experience. In this article, after criticizing
contemporary flight instruments with the next generation of fighters
in mind, he outlines improved equipment to replace them. His suggestions
are his own and do not take into account research which is now
producing a totally new instrument system, some components of which
have already been publicly shown

Below is a link to flight,of course this flight information was soon to come along courtesy of Head up Displays and this could be partly why the idea was never carried forward – as well as being a non intuitive layout for the pilot to contend with – I would certainly find the layout confusing as a pilot…

http://www.flightglobal.com/pdfarchive/view/1956/1956%20-%201649.html?search=attitude

Pages 811/812/813 refer

At 24.40 on the video there is a real Scimitar ‘Arrival’…ouch 🙂

Here is a 1960 FAA training film which shows some of the ‘technology’ used to control the launch/land on procedure 🙂 …

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=moBd9-srBsA&feature=related

As regards Roll/Pitch for launching – AFAIK…at that time the FDO would have the pilot waiting at max power for the ship to get to the correct part of the wave pitching cycle and then give the launch signal (lower green flag rapidly) so that the a/c would clear the deck during the upward pitch of the wave cycle…ie he would have to estimate the lag between his signal and the cat firing.

Didnt seem to have changed much during a 3 week cruise on the vincible 🙂

Although I’ve seen pictures of the sensors, I’ve never seen the bridge display unit.

And you still havent 😉

In the 1950/60’s Cook instruments Ltd (the same co that made the lovely little pedulum compass’es) made sensors which were fitted on an aircraft carrier bow so that the ships pitch and roll could be reported to the brigde. Although I’ve seen pictures of the sensors, I’ve never seen the bridge display unit.

If I get a chance will take a pic of the inside of one for you. Richard

Thanks Tony. I wasn’t doubting what you said, just surprised to learn something

And I’m Richard

Richard

Irlwpd lots of instruments these days have electric gyros in em.