Compass Systems

The Earth is a huge magnet, spinning in space, surrounded by a magnetic field made up of invisible lines of flux. These lines leave the surface at the magnetic north pole and reenter at the magnetic south pole.
 
Lines of magnetic flux have two important characteristics: any magnet that is free to rotate will align with them, and an electrical current is induced into any conductor that cuts across them. Most direction indicators installed in aircraft make use of one of these two characteristics.
 
Magnetic Compass
One of the oldest and simplest instruments for indicating direction is the magnetic compass. It is also one of the basic instruments required by 14 CFR part 91 for both VFR and IFR flight.
 
A magnet is a piece of material, usually a metal containing iron that attracts and holds lines of magnetic flux. Every magnet regardless of size has two poles: a north pole and a south pole. When one magnet is placed in the field of another, the unlike poles attract each other and like poles repel.
 
An aircraft magnetic compass, such as the one in figure 3-15, has two small magnets attached to a metal float sealed inside a bowl of clear compass fluid similar to kerosene. A graduated scale, called a card, is wrapped around the float and viewed through a glass window with a lubber line across it. The card is marked with letters representing the cardinal directions, north, east, south, and west, and a number for each 30° between these letters. The final "0" is omitted from these directions; for example, 3 = 30°, 6 = 60°, and 33 = 330°. There are long and short graduation marks between the letters and numbers, with each long mark representing 10° and each short mark representing 5°.
 
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The float and card assembly has a hardened steel pivot in its center that rides inside a special, spring-loaded, hard-glass jewel cup. The buoyancy of the float takes most of the weight off the pivot, and the fluid damps the oscillation of the float and card. This jewel-and-pivot type mounting allows the float freedom to rotate and tilt up to approximately 18° angle of bank. At steeper bank angles, the compass indications are erratic and unpredictable.
 
The compass housing is entirely full of compass fluid. To prevent damage or leakage when the fluid expands and contracts with temperature changes, the rear of the compass case is sealed with a flexible diaphragm, or in some compasses, with a metal bellows.
 
The magnets align with the Earth's magnetic field and the pilot reads the direction on the scale opposite the lubber line. In figure 3-15: "A magnetic compass", the pilot sees the compass card from its backside. When you are flying north as the compass shows, east is to your right, but on the card "33" which represents 330°  (west of north) is to the right of north. The reason for this apparent backward graduation is that the card remains stationary, and the compass housing and the pilot turn around it, always viewing the card from its back side.
 
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A compensator assembly mounted on the top or bottom of the compass allows an aviation maintenance technician (AMT) to create a magnetic field inside the compass housing that cancels the influence of local outside magnetic fields.
 
This is done to correct for deviation error. The compensator assembly has two shafts whose ends have screwdriver slots accessible from the front of the compass. Each shaft rotates one or two small compensating magnets. The end of one shaft is marked E-W, and its magnets affect the compass when the aircraft is pointed east or west. The other shaft is marked N-S and its magnets affect the compass when the aircraft is pointed north or south.