From: Surplusyes@aol.com
Date: Fri May 03 2002 - 10:16:55 PDT
For years, ships had the same problem as vehicles when mountoing a compass.
Large masses of steel in bow and stern, not as much on the port and
starboard. To address this problem the binnacle where the compass was
mounted had two iron hemispheres about the sizeof cannonballs on each side of
the compass. They were commonly refered to as "navigators balls" by
adjusting the distance from the compass, they compensated for the mass
imbalance and the compass could be calibrated. Some vehicles I worked on
before the GPS craze hit in the early 90s had navigation devices that had
"north seeking gyros" they took a lot of power when turned on and were
expensive.
Regards,
Tom.....
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