airtraffic

Author Topic: "Quick alignment"  (Read 8138 times)

Offline jonnevin

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"Quick alignment"
« on: August 19, 2008, 18:23:57 UTC »
I have heard a few times prior to departure a plane will ask tower for a short delay so they can do a "quick alignment", what does that mean?



Offline evilcuban

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Re: "Quick alignment"
« Reply #1 on: August 21, 2008, 13:08:30 UTC »
It's to realign, check, or otherwise resync their IRS. 

Offline jonnevin

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Re: "Quick alignment"
« Reply #2 on: August 21, 2008, 15:43:15 UTC »
I will ask the followup naive question...what is IRS?

Offline 180MPH

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Re: "Quick alignment"
« Reply #3 on: August 31, 2008, 14:35:59 UTC »
Inertial navigation, some aircraft have three separate units, some only have one, you feed in the Lat/Long to the unit and after it spins up it can detect what direction you are moving without any outside help from radio aids, in the old days a platform took about 30 minutes to spool up, a modern laser ring gyro can accurately sense a 1˚ change in angular displacement directly, and hence 7 minutes at mid-latitudes is sufficient to find the direction of true North.

An aircraft has to be stopped during this spool up process, an aircraft having an ir problem may attempt a quick alignment at the end of the runway to fix the problem.

180MPH

Offline goowe

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Re: "Quick alignment"
« Reply #4 on: September 01, 2008, 23:55:22 UTC »
I always wondered what this was as well -- thanks!

Offline jonnevin

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Re: "Quick alignment"
« Reply #5 on: September 02, 2008, 04:35:36 UTC »
thanks...that is very interesting