GB396547A - Improvements in and relating to automatic steering systems - Google Patents

Abstract

396,547. Wireless control of distant apparatus. BRITISH THOMSON-HOUSTON CO., Ltd., Crown House, Aldwych, London.-(Assignees of Alexanderson, E. F. W. ; 8, Adams Road, Schenectady, New York, U.S.A.) July 14, 1932, No. 19983. Convention date, July 15, 1931. [Class 40 (v).] An aircraft or other moving craft is steered automatically in accordance with a course determined by a magnetic compass and also in accordance with signals received from a radio beacon when the craft drifts from the course. An earth inductor compass is used and gyroscopic means are provided for correcting for the vertical component of the earth's magnetic field due to tilting of the compass platform during a turn. An inductor compass 1 has its armature connected in circuit with an indicating instrument 4, resistances 6, 7 and the winding of a polarized relay 5. The relay co-operates with contacts connected through low resistances to the grids of two thermionic valves 15, 16 which are normally negatively biassed by a battery 22 through high resistances 23, 24. When one or other contact is closed, anode current is caused to flow through the corresponding valve to energize one or other of two windings 13, 14 of a reversible clutch which connects a motor 9 to worm gear 11 for turning a rudder 8. The signals from a radio beacon of the kind modulated to different frequencies on the two sides of the determined direction are picked up by an aerial 44 and the detected signals are fed to two windings 50, 51 around magnets having reeds 48, 49 tuned to the two frequencies. The output from two windings 52, 53 on opposed magnets is rectified and fed to an instrument 56 connected across a part of the resistance 6. Normally no current flows through the instrument 56 but should the craft drift off its course a voltage is applied across the part of the resistance 6 and the relay 5 is actuated.