I can't believe the coincidence of this thread. I just put radios in my recently acquired coupe and fixed some problems in the electrical system placing the nav and landing lights back in operation.
Now with the prospect of night flying, it started to bother me that the turn and bank I got with the airplane is inoperative. So I just this week started looking for an electric turn co-ordinator. The turn and bank has a vertical wide needle, the turn co-ordinator has a little airplane that wobbles. The difference between them is that the turn and bank only reacts to the yaw axis and will only tell you when a turn has commenced and the rate and direction. The turn co-ordinator also reacts to the roll axis and can be used like an artifical horizon to help keep the wings level before a turn even commences. The problem with which I am concerned, is the one JFK Jr. found out about, unusual attitude lacking visual references and perhaps even vertigo. It's one thing not to believe the instruments you have, and quite another to have too few to get by. I wouldn't even dream of not having at least a turn needle when flying at night or in potential low/no visability conditions. I must agree with Jack on the requirement for one and I would be surprised if one isn't required by FAR. Jack made one other comment regarding rigging. It so happens that the ball in my inop ball and bank which is nothing more than a simple inclinometer does in fact hang slightly right during s&l flight. The plane always wants to turn left and has trim tabs on both ailerons to help fight the tendency. I assume that when the wings were re-covered one of them must have gotten a slight twist built into it. High wing Cessna's have an excentric bolt on the rear spar attach point that allows the angle of incidence of the wing to be adjusted. Does the Coupe have anything similar? Comment Re: Rigging on this one. Thanks, Dick in Columbus, NM
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