I was wondering if there are any new technologies that would allow a gyro to be mounted in a frictionless environment, perhaps through the use of electromagnets, that would prevent heading indicators from "drifting"? If this technology were possible, would it render the magnetic compass useless? Has there been any notable work done in cutting edge avionics on this subject?

How about a laser gyros with no moving parts? Or sensitive accelerometers, so small you could mount them in model aircraft?

PM

Those exist, but still have some kind of drift. Any gyro will. A laser gyro might have a very small one, but the zeroes you remove from the drift characteristic are unfortunately moved onto the price...

Wha ???

You`re still gonna get Transport Wander and other drift which is not mechanical drift which you are describing. . .

but you could also use Mercury bearings, just an idea - except when the bearings get hot then the mercury would expand. you could pump air into the system so your bearings are made of commpressed air like in an air driven gyro. Obviously, if the air source or vacuum pump fails then your system is dead. therefore, the accellerometers are the best bet and have been the innards of the INS - the Laser Ring gyro using light/laser as aforementioned by another poster - has been around since about 1979 as you know.
the laser ring gyro which is tri-angualr in shape - handles the problem of grift - esp Transport Wander by "jittering" or vibrating the gyro as and when.

. . . .but its a great idea of yours. But, if you do away with the magnetic compass then how are you going to reference the system as it will have nothing to point to? the system can`t point to True North. Unless it has a mag ref including the variation. If you use a North Aligned INS system with the accelerometers which is a great idea - you still need to tell the system where North is and the latest craze for that is the Magnetic compass. Or have I been asleep for too long?

Yours sincerely,

Rip Van Vinkle.

Wow....talk about some grave digging! Those gyros were seriously rusted and the laser stopped shinning a long time ago before you showed up Fasty!

Wait up a second, watchoo onnabout?

How you gonna align accellerometers, or rather how you supposed to do anything if you do not have ref to Mag North?
Even a GPS with RAIMS (which is 3D plus Elev honeychild, as you know) will have no bearing on Direction if Mag, I mean ?True North is gonna be 90 degrees N - oh ok, yeh I goddit. Fair enough. I lose!

Back to eating fruit from a tin at FL290 then. . . . (damn, why don`t they allow smokin`. . am dyin` for a ciggy, )

But are not the accelerometers in the INS based on Gyros, I mean is not the. . . oh no, because a laptop has an accelerometer and that aint got a gyros. . . .

I suppose you are going to tell me thay don`t wear goggles anymore?
did they ever give pilots a paramedic nurse, I mean a parachute?

Now that the thread has risen from the dead, there's one solution to gyro drift and it's already implemented in most everything doing commercial operations: The flux gate valve.

This device senses the magnetic field and aligns the directional gyro with magnetic north.

Even if you were able to eliminate friction and other causes of mechanical drift, you would still have earth rate to deal with. The earth spins, and the aircraft goes with it. The gyro, however, remains aligned in space and only corrects for the altered direction of the gravitational field. At the poles, this translates into 15 degrees per hour (360/24) of drift.

It is much cheaper to just keep checking the gyro vs the whisky compass every now and then than to go for fancier gyros.

Cheers,
/Fred

Simple solution to a simple problem.

Even the (at least our) Cessna 210 has a flux gate valve out on the left wing-tip. Thought ours would need replacement a couple of trips ago as I couldn't get the HSI to slave initially. Did the manual alignment while spot-checking the slave function, which eventually worked after cycling it a few times. No problems the rest of the day and didn't give it any more thought.

But on my last trip, discovered that it was a gyro issue. While lining up with the runway for takeoff last Thursday, I watched the HSI "take a break" at about 190 while lining up to 040. Okay...not a flux valve, but a stuck gyro. Should have called the avionics shop after the last trip.

Back in my King Air days, we had an "Erect" button, or as we should probably call it now, the "Viagra" button... in the event of gyro mis-alignment.

But back on point, those who's aircraft are so equipped with a slaved DG or HSI are sort of like those who have gone from dial-up to broadband. You will get spoiled and will never want to go back.

And like you Fred, I see no point in "improving" on such a simple solution..