ARTIFICIAL HORIZONS

Those of you who actively cloud fly in gliders will be aware of the importance of a reliable artificial horizon.

Unfortunately artificial horizons have a bad reputation for reliability within some sections of the gliding movement. The reasons for this are as follows:

Unreliable instruments.

Poorly designed inverters

Poor glider electrical systems and flat batteries

Users who have limited understanding about artificial horizon theory, and the functions and limitations of fast erect and gyro cageing mechanisms.

Pilots who don't have the foggiest idea about instrument flying.

For more information about the care and correct use of artificial horizons, see the document I have produced, titled Care and Operation of artificial horizons.

All the artificial horizons I sell are tested military surplus instruments. I DO NOT sell inferior and overpriced instruments labelled as being of US origin but produced in China. Each instrument is sold with a hand built inverter of modern design. All inverters are built into die cast metal boxes, and all connecting leads feature high quality RELIABLE screw lock connectors. Some suppliers of instruments think it is OK to use a screw terminal strip for a 12 way cable. The links below give further details of the artificial horizons currently available.

A SAFETY TIP BGA operational regulations state that before entering cloud the pilot should announce his intentions on 130.4MHz and give his position relative to a feature on 1:500000 air charts, and give his altitude in feet ABOVE SEA LEVEL. It seems that some of you out there are incapable of setting the altimeter to QNH in flight. Not only is this dangerous, but it is sloppy and unprofessional to be cloud flying or cross country flying with the altimeter set on airfield QFE. If your altimeters millibar subscale is broken get it fixed! Idiots who cloud fly whilst giving their height relative to some arbitrary unknown datum are the biggest danger to other cloud flyers. Get it right before you kill yourself or somebody else.