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Went to the EAA AirVenture museum in Oshkosh and got stuck staring at a 1950s autopilot system
I was wandering through the vintage avionics display at the EAA museum in Oshkosh last month, and stopped dead in front of this old Sperry A-12 gyropilot unit from a B-17. The thing is basically a box of vacuum tubes and spinning brass weights that somehow kept a bomber stable through flak and wind. Makes me appreciate how easy we have it with modern glass cockpits - you ever try troubleshooting a tube-based gyro that's the size of a microwave?
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charlie_allen11d ago
Old tech was tougher and you could actually fix it with a screwdriver and some patience.
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adam_nguyen711d agoTop Commenter
Bro my buddy actually tried to fix his old iPod classic last month and it was the most stressful thing ever lmao. He watched a tutorial, got the tools, popped it open and somehow bent the metal frame so bad it wouldn't close right. Ended up just taping it back together and now it looks like a science experiment. I get the whole "old tech was better" thing but some of that stuff was a nightmare to actually work on without breaking something else first.
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