ORIGINAL: JackD

Well, if I remember my physics correctly (over 20 years ago...) If angular velocity (and therefore acceleration) wasn't the same at every point of the airplane, the plane would break, right?. Imagine your canopy at 1 rpm and your nose at 2 rpm... not possible right?. And if you started from 0 rpm and increased it to 10 rpms in 10 seconds, the angular velocity would be the same accross the whole airframe at any given time during those 10 seconds, which means that angular acceleration was the same accross all the airframe (2pi radians/sec*sec), thus, the gyro would read the same acceleration no matter where you put it. Therefore, distance from center is irrelevant, is not a variable in the angular position, velocity and acceleration equations. Does this make any sense????

Now, all this is thinking of regular gyros... I don't have the slightest idea of how a heading hold gyro works... maybe for those the center position is critical, but that is not what we use for steering


Now, back to the subject, nose gear gyros work perfect. To me, take off run is probably the closest you can be to crashing your plane, so it is where I want the most help. It also helps to hold some up elevator so your mains are solid against the ground. Otherwise, some planes tend to lift the mains before the nose (specially when using flaps) making them harder to control.



Jack G