Jeff York asked about deviation on his compass when it was in the instrument panel.
Take a hand held compass and hold it near the bowden cables for you throttle, mixture, and heat controls. I'll bet that you will find that they are magnetized. Back in the 60's and 70's, the picture tubes on the color TV sets would get rainbows in the corners because of magnetism building up on the outside metal shield of the tube. The TV repairmen had a degaussing tool that consisted of a coil of wire about 8 inches in diameter that was plugged into 100 volt ac. By passing this over the surfaces of the picture tube, it would eliminate the magnetism. For the past 30 years, the TV sets have a degaussing coil built into the mount for the picture tube that degausses every time you turn off the set. If you can find a radio amateur that used to repair TV's, there's a good chance he has a degaussing coil in his junkbox. You turn in on AWAY from the Bowden cable, then pass it slowly down the cable, then pull it AWAY before you turn it off. Check for magnetism again with the compass, and you will probably find the compass deviation has gone away. The reason I know about this is because I put a vertical card compass in my Renegade, and it had over 30 degrees deviation. After degaussing the engine control cables, the maximum deviation was 1 1/2 degrees. The chances are slim that the aileron/rudder/elevator cables are magnetized, because they are normally made of stainless steel wire, which is non-magnetic. Jim Vance va...@bhcomm.net Claflin, Kansas
