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Which Way is Up?

Written by John F. Harvell

Kudzu Scientific Instruments, Grantville

September 1634

Helmut Strauss pounded the table in frustration. "I don't care what you do, you have got to get this thing working. Der Adler has about reached the end of his patience, and so have I!"

"But Herr Strauss," Bertha Klepsh protested, "we've tried everything we could think of to make it work. Followed every suggestion we've been given! Everything we do just seems to make it worse. At this point we simply don't know what else to do."

"You were able to repair the up-time gyro instrument for Herr Smith. I do not understand why you cannot make the new unit work. Der Adler is very anxious to be able to install these gyro instruments in all of his aircraft. Do something! Use stronger springs! Lubricate the bearings! Do something!"

Strauss stood abruptly and stalked out of the shop. He headed back to the procurement office at the air base.

Hans Richter Field, Grantville

October 1634

"You know, Woody, I'd never even heard of a graveyard spiral before," Kevin Clements said.

"Yeah, well, I'd just barely heard of it," Woody Woodsill replied. "They mentioned it in AFROTC when we were getting ready for the instrument familiarization. It makes a difference when it kills a buddy, doesn't it?"

"It sure does. Poor Rudy. He never had a chance! Haze can be as bad as fog when it gets thick." Kevin hesitated. "The boss sure seems to be taking it hard."

"That's the truth. I worry about him. He keeps trying to do everything himself, at least when he's here. He blames himself every time we lose a pilot and it really frustrates him that we don't have any decent instruments or navaids yet."

Woody got a thoughtful look on his face. "Navaids . . . navigational aids. Up-time we had VOR, TACAN, and GPS. What I wouldn't give for GPS now. I know VOR and TACAN were just radio stuff, but pretty sophisticated by our current standards."

"Jesse mentioned something about radio ranges and low freq homers, once, but we didn't have time, then, for him to explain about them. He just said that they were pretty basic and that some of the old heads had talked about them, but he'd never used them himself."

"We could sure use something like that," Woody continued, "we need something bad."

Hans Richter Field, Grantville

Late October 1634

Traditionally, at least back up-time, the graduating cadet class was supposed to pass in review for all of the assembled dignitaries and family members. In the USE Air Force, the graduating cadet class would barely have constituted a squad, hardly enough people to provide a reasonable review.

Instead, the ceremony held in the new hangar was pretty low key and relatively brief. Colonel Wood had returned just in time to make the traditional remarks, the chaplain provided a non-denominational blessing, the cadets received a commission and a training certificate, and the sweethearts and mothers pinned the new gold bars of a second lieutenant on their shoulders and a pilot's wings on their chests.

Major Woodsill was circulating among the new lieutenants congratulating them on their achievement and wishing them well for the future. When he came to the newly-minted Lt. Joseph Glazer he grinned and said, "Congratulations, Joe. You did a great job, and you really earned those wings and bars. Good luck to you!" He turned away, then turned back. "Oh, before I forget, the boss has a job for you. Why don't you stop by the colonel's office before you take off and let him tell you what he has in mind."

****

"Hi there, Joe. Congratulations on winning your wings. If you're like me, you'll remember today for a long time." Colonel Wood looked exhausted.

"You wanted to see me, sir?"

"Yes, I did." He stared into space for a moment or two while he gathered his thoughts. "Joe, you know what happened to Rudy in the weather. What you may not know is that last summer I almost busted my ass by going out and trying to fly in marginal weather, too." Jesse stopped for a moment.

Joe was startled. This was The Colonel, Der Adler, the man who knew more about flying than anybody! He just didn't do things like that!

Jesse smiled grimly. "Yeah, it really happened. Mother Nature is, indeed, a bitch! I had forgotten just how fast you can get yourself in trouble without gauges.

"We've been trying to fix that, but so far we haven't gotten the damned thing to work. I've had KSI working on a turn needle for about a year, and it certainly looks almost identical to the one usable one we've got, but somehow it just doesn't work right. I'd like for you to try and help out to see if you can get it to work."

Again, Joe was startled. "Me, sir? What . . . ?"

"We really need to be able to fly in bad weather, which means we really need gyro instruments and radio navigation aids. In fact, we're already damn late, considering Rudy." Lines furrowed the colonel's forehead.

"Major Woodsill tells me that you've done some gyro work. Is that true?"

"Well yes sir, I did try to make a gyro autopilot for a model back before the Ring of Fire, but I don't know if that really qualifies in this case. It didn't work too well, either."

"Joe, that gives you a hell of a lot more experience than anybody else I know down-time. I need to leverage that experience to try to get this thing going. I've got an old manual, Instrument Flying, and it gives you a pretty good introduction to the things we need and how they're used, but it only gives us principles, not designs.

"What I'm hoping you can do is figure out how to translate those principles into something we can build and use." He held up his hand before Joe could protest. "We've gone over everybody's records and you seem to be the only one in our bunch that might have a chance to do this."

Joe started to say something, then he closed his mouth and sat back, his mind racing through the implications of what he had just heard. He recognized that his modeling work did give him just a little bit of a leg up for a job like this, and probably no one else had even done that. But it was certainly a big step to go from there to any kind of gyro instrument. He didn't know anything about navaids! "I don’t know whether I can figure out how to fix the turn needle or not, but I'm willing to give it a try. I know we really need them. I don't know anything about navigation aids, though."

"I'd have been surprised if you did." Jesse tapped the manual lying on the desk. "Read through this and see if it makes any sense to you. If you have questions, come see me and I'll try to help. I don't expect you to make this stuff on your own, but you need to be able to talk intelligently to somebody like GE and get them to make something we can use. I think I can carve out a budget for you."

"I'm sure willing to give it a try, sir."

"All right, Joe, why don't I take you and introduce you to Helmut Strauss? He's my chief of procurement, and he does a good job getting supplies and services for the air force. Do you know him by any chance?"

"I think I've seen him around, sir, but we haven't been introduced."

"Well, let me warn you that he is a pretty crusty sort of guy and he's really frustrated that he hasn't been able to get this gyro delivered. He may not take it too well if he thinks I'm replacing him with you, which I guess I really am, to some extent. Just remember, he's the procurement officer and you're his technical advisor. I want to make it clear that you're working with him, not for him. You'll be working directly for me as a coequal technical assistant to Helmut. Notwithstanding all that, it would be a big help if you could be as diplomatic as possible with him. The last thing I need is to have my folks fighting with each other."

"Yessir, I'll do my best."

Strauss was rather stiff and formal when he found out what Joe was going to be doing, but he agreed to introduce Joe to the people at KSI who were working on the turn needle, on the following afternoon.

Same Evening, Glazer Residence

Sophia Glotz opened the front door in response to Joe's knock. "Why, good evening Herr . . . no, I guess I should say Lieutenant Glazer, now. What brings you here this evening?"

About that time a young woman in a sweater and jeans came down the stairs. "Ah! I thought I heard strange voices. Hi, Joe. What are you doing here tonight?"

Joe and Maria Glotz had been classmates in high school for the years since the Glotzs had arrived in Grantville in 1631, and shared a lot of classes because both of their family names began with "G." Neither Joe nor Maria had realized that the other had applied for Cadets until they found themselves standing next to each other in formation at their first muster.

"Hi, Maria. Oh, and congratulations, Lieutenant Glotz! I was just about to tell your mother that the colonel has given me a project that means I'll probably have to make use of my workshop in the basement. I hope that won't be too much of a bother for you folks."

"And congratulations to you, too, Lieutenant Glazer!" Maria made a mock curtsey. "I don't think there'd be any problem unless you got particularly noisy or smelly down there."

Maria's mother said, "We really shouldn't stand here in the door. Please, Joe, why don't you come into the living room and sit down?"

It was an odd sensation for Joe. This was the house he'd lived in for most of his life. Even most of the furniture remained, except for some small pieces that his parents had taken to Badenburg. And yet, it felt different. It even smelled different.

When they were seated, Joe shook off the feeling of strangeness and turned to Maria, who was more likely to understand. "The colonel wants me to see if I can help get some instruments made that we can use to fly in weather. They will have to be gyro instruments, so I may need to use my shop to do some machine work."

"I think I remember a little about gyros from science class," Maria said. "Are you a good enough machinist to make something like that?"

"Well, I don't have to make a complete gyro. KSI has been working on a prototype for some time. The colonel hopes that I can help sort out the problems they're having. I have a little experience building a gyro autopilot for a model airplane, but that was just before the Ring of Fire, so I never finished it. I'm not real sure I can do what the colonel wants, but I can at least give it a try. Maybe I can help."

"The other thing we need is more difficult, at least for me. The colonel wants me to get some navigational aids, navaids, started. They're radios that allow you to figure out where you are in flight. I just barely got through the electrical stuff in school, and I don't know anything about radios. I wouldn't even try to make something like that on my own, but GE should be able do it. Anyway, I need to use the shop."

"Ooo! Can I come along and see your secret laboratory, Doctor Frankenstein?"

Joe shook his head in mock disgust. Shy and retiring she was not! "You might as well come along," he said, and headed for the basement stairs.

****

His shop looked smaller than he remembered it, and messier, which was not helped by the dust that had accumulated in the time since he'd been there last. Joe turned on the two lights over his workbench, then pulled off the dust cover that covered his modeler's lathe.

"What's that?" asked Maria.

"Hmm?" responded Joe absentmindedly as he examined the machine minutely. "Oh, this is the combination lathe/milling machine. Compared to what you'd see in a machine shop this looks like a toy, but if you're careful, you can do pretty good work with these little things. I've already used it a lot to make things for my models. One of them was the small gyro that I mentioned." He searched through the clutter on the bench for a few moments and then held up the gyro.

Maria didn't know what a gyro should look like, but she could see that what he was holding was neat, smooth and gave the appearance of good workmanship. She was impressed. He blew most of the dust off and spun the wheel experimentally. She noticed that it spun very smoothly, and continued spinning for some time.

When it finally stopped, Joe wrinkled his nose. "Not too good. It used to spin much longer than that. I guess the dust has gotten into the bearings." He put it back and wandered along the bench sorting through the clutter to see what was buried there. He opened the drawers one at a time and shoved stuff around till he could get a good idea what was in each one. He walked over to the set of shelves along the other wall and inventoried the odds and ends on them. Finally he pawed through some boxes that were under the bench.

He stood back and ran his hand through his shock of short, unruly brown hair. "Well, are you properly impressed by my secret laboratory? Is there anything more you'd like to see? I'm sorry, Igor has the day off so I can't fire up the lightning machine."

Maria laughed.

The next day

While everyone was stiffly correct, it was obvious to Joe that the relationship between Herr Strauss and the artisans at KSI was not the best. After Herr Strauss had made the somewhat stilted introductions and left, Joe tried to ease the tensions.

"Look guys, I'm no expert, no master as you might say. I'm just a fellow who had a little bit of experience with gyros back up-time. I know they can be tricky to work with, and it may be that I can see something that's causing your difficulty when it's not obvious to you. Why don't we sit down and get a good look at this thing and see if there's something that sticks out."

When they brought over the covered tray and pulled the dust cover off, Joe was immediately impressed with the appearance of the assembly. Whatever their problem might be, it was not lack of craftsmanship. Joe praised their workmanship, which caused a noticeable lessening of tension around the table.

Joe looked up. "Do you have an air or vacuum source we can use to power this up?"

"Yes, of course. Just a few minutes," Elise responded.

When the air source was connected the rotor spun up handily, but to Joe it did not sound quite right. He put a finger very lightly on the gimbal. He could feel just the faintest evidence of a tremor. He sat back and thought for a moment. "Do you know how fast the rotor is turning?"

"Yes," Jakob answered. "The rotor is spinning at almost 12,000 rpm. We could go even faster if it were not for the vibration."

Joe thought That's too slow, and it needs to be balanced better. He sat back and signaled for them to turn it off. "Tell me about how you got started in this."

"Yes, of course. Herr Smith loaned us the only available up-time unit to study last year," Bertha explained. "He apologized that it was not performing properly, but said we could use it as a pattern. We disassembled it, making note of every screw and every adjustment so we could restore it accurately. Drawings were made of every piece, and each process and procedure was written up. In doing that we cleaned every part thoroughly so we could make precise measurements. When the unit was re-assembled and returned to Herr Smith he discovered that it was once more functioning properly, and later installed it into one of his airplanes. That gave us a great deal of confidence that we would be able to produce new units. Unfortunately, we seem to have been mistaken, at least so far."

"And did you make your new unit exactly like the up-time unit?"

Jakob, Bertha and Elise exchanged looks. Elise took up the explanation. "It is as close as we can make it. We could not obtain the jeweled bearings, so we had to substitute bronze. Because of vibration we couldn't spin the rotor quite as fast, plus the nozzle would have to be opened up to get a little more air. It was Herr Strauss' opinion that this would not make any difference, so we did not try to run it faster."

Joe stared at his steepled fingers for several moments. "Have you ever done anything with gyros before? Do you understand how they work?"

Jakob looked embarrassed. He shrugged and replied, "Unfortunately, no. None of us have ever worked with gyros before, and I've found no one who can explain them more than the most basic theory. All of us have had problems grasping the principles behind this device."

"That's because you don't think at right angles." Joe grinned at him. "You shouldn't be embarrassed. Gyro instruments were not invented until the late nineteenth century in the old time line, about two hundred and fifty years from now. If you can be available tomorrow, why don't I come back and provide a little introduction to how gyros work?"

Bertha spoke up quickly. "If you could do that, we would be forever in your debt. Do you have any idea how difficult, how frustrating it is to work with something you don't understand?"

The next day Joe came back with the toy gyro his father had found in a flea market when he was a kid, and with the manual that the colonel had given him. After a half hour or so of demonstrating the basic principles of the gyro, Joe then went through the illustrations of each of the basic gyro instruments in the manual and showed how the principles were applied. Joe had never thought of himself as a teacher, but it was actually thrilling to see the light of understanding dawn in the eyes of his new friends.

Flight Line, Hans Richter Field

Early January 1635

Joe and Maria were headed back to the briefing room to debrief after their afternoon training mission. A cold north wind was blowing, and it cut like a knife after the relative warmth of the Gustav cockpits. They were both huddled down in their winter flying gear.

Maria raised her voice to be heard over the wind. "You goin' over to the Club for a brew after we debrief?"

"Naw, I got to hurry back to the shop. KSI has done some more things to clean up their gyro and I want to run some turntable tests on it tonight," responded Joe.

"You sure spend a lot of time on that stuff. How's the work going?"

"Tell you about it after debrief," Joe said as he turned up his fur-lined collar and pulled his chin down into its protection.

Later, Joe spent a few minutes trying to explain to Maria just how a turn needle worked. She was having a hard time grasping the ideas.

"But I don't understand! Why do you need this gyro thing? Couldn't you just use a plumb bob, or something like that?"

"A plumb bob can't tell when you're turning. It only tells you whether you're coordinated. That's the kind of thing that killed Rudy Hocheim."

"I'm still confused, and I still don't understand what you're telling me."

"Okay, tell you what. Come down to the shop tonight and I'll try to show you how this thing is supposed to work."

"Gee," she teased, "a date?"

"Nope," he responded, straight faced, "a training session."

"Ah well, too bad."

****

Joe hung up his coat and headed back to the kitchen where the basement door was. Sophia Glotz was busily getting dinner ready for her husband, Hubert, and Maria.

Joe stopped for a moment. "Hi, Missus G. How are you this cold, chilly evening?"

"Good evening, Joe. It certainly is cold. I almost froze walking home after work!" Sophia worked as a housekeeper at the Higgins Hotel. Her husband had been a farmer, but now he had worked his way up to foreman at one of the large firms that had sprung up in the area around Grantville.

"Have you had any supper yet, Joe? Should I set another place?" Joe had been spending so many afternoons and evenings in his shop that the Glotzs had taken to inviting him regularly for dinner. Joe had finally accepted with the condition that he be allowed to contribute some money toward the food budget.

The same circumstance had led to Joe frequently spending the night in what had been his old room instead of at the air base. Joe found his old room comfortably familiar, although it was not nearly as cluttered as it had been when he had lived there. He did discover that he had to be a little more circumspect about using the bathroom. He'd never had a sister, so dealing with two females in the house took some adjustment.

Joe had grown up in the old foursquare and knew most of its quirks. He knew how to stop the toilet from running, how to relight the pilot light in the furnace when it blew out, and which gland nut to tighten under the kitchen sink when the drain started to leak. It didn't take too long for Joe to begin to seem like one of the Glotz family.

They heard the thumpety-thump of someone coming down the stairs, and shortly Maria breezed into the kitchen. "Well, are you ready for the training session, oh lord-and-master instructor!"

Joe made a face at her and then looked helplessly at Sophia. Sophia grinned at the two of them. It was obvious to her that Maria was "interested" in Joe. It was equally obvious that Joe hadn't a clue!

"Come on," Joe said and led the way downstairs, Maria following closely behind. Early on, Maria had followed Joe down to his shop every visit, but she soon found that, for her, things got pretty dull in a hurry. Once Joe started working he became very absorbed in what he was doing, and Maria discovered it wasn't very exciting to watch someone else work. She quickly became bored with that and went back to doing whatever it was that girls did, while Joe toiled away. About the only time they saw each other at the house was over the dinner table on the days when Joe ate there.

Joe switched on the lights and pulled the dust cover off of a stand in front of the bench. He started his guided tour. "I salvaged an old phonograph to make the turntable." Joe pointed to the middle of the assemblage of things on the stand. "Of course, I had to change the gearing with these belts and pulleys so I could run it at either a half rpm, or a quarter rpm. The motor is a synchronous motor, so that it stays phase-locked to the commercial power."

Maria rolled her eyes.

Joe saw it and grinned ruefully. "Okay, okay, okay. I guess I need to start another way. Let's see . . . all right, the first instrument we're trying to build is what's called a turn needle." Joe launched into a detailed discussion of what a pilot would see and how he would use the instrument.

"That seems easy enough," she said, "but what does the rest of this stuff do?"

"Those are the guts that make the turn needle work, just like those are the guts that make you work." He poked her in the midsection.

"Hands off the bod!" she shot back.

Embarrassed, Joe felt his ears turning red. "Sorry," he mumbled. He changed the subject.

"I guess you need to get some idea how gyros work." He rummaged around in one of the drawers for a minute or so, then held up the object of his search. "Okay, this is a toy gyro I got as a kid.Gyros do two things: they stand still, or they turn over."

"Huh?"

Joe demonstrated the basic gyro principles again with his old toy gyro and then explained how they were used in the prototype, ending up with "What I want to do is power up the latest version and then start the turntable to see if it works. Assuming it does, then I'll try to calibrate it. They got everything put together yesterday, so if it doesn't blow up when we power everything up we should be able to run the test tonight."

"Blow up?" exclaimed Maria, sounding alarmed.

"Well, no! It's just a figure of speech."

"I'm certainly glad of that! You never know what to expect in a secret laboratory!" Maria said with mock severity.

Joe laughed, and then Sophia called down the stairs. "Joe, Maria, dinner is ready and Papa is at the table, please come up to eat."

****

The tests that night were, at best, partially successful, which was still far better than before. The turn needle sort of worked, but it had a tendency to hang up sometimes and then jump. Joe thought that part of the problem was the need for better bearings, and it seemed like the speed was still vibration limited, too. Joe knew that KSI had about reached the limit of their high speed balance capability. He knew that jeweled bearings would work, but he didn't have any experience with those, and he didn't know where they might find such a thing down-time, anyhow. The only other thing he'd heard about that might have lower friction was air bearings, but they required finer tolerances than either KSI or Joe could achieve. Then too, he'd need to figure out how to get the air to the bearings through the gimbals. In addition, he figured that he would have to get the services of an up-time machine shop to balance the rotor to reach 20,000 rpm.

The testing finished up fairly late, and Joe spent the night in his old room. The next morning Joe and Maria caught the bus out to the air field. Joe owed the colonel a progress report, so he brought along the latest version for show and tell.

****

The colonel sat quietly while Joe pointed out the changes they'd made since the last status report and then discussed the results of last night's testing. He asked a few technical questions, which Joe was able to answer readily. Then he commented, "Joe, you're making much more progress than I had hoped. I think you're on the right track with the air bearing idea. Why don't you go down to Marcantonio's and see if they can provide any help? Hal Smith says they do pretty good work. Do you have any drawings of these bits and pieces?"

"Yes, sir, I do. KSI made up drawings and I've copied them to my computer. Do you want me to bypass Herr Strauss on this?"

The colonel shuffled some papers on his desk and came up with that day's flying schedule. After perusing it for a moment he said, "Okay, Joe. Looks like you're not on the flying schedule today. Helmut is all wrapped up in trying to negotiate a big buy right now, and I don't want to wait. Why don't you go ahead and take this down to Marcantonio's and explain what you're trying to do." Then he rummaged through a desk drawer and found a piece of paper with project numbers on it, copied one of them to one of the requisition forms and handed it to Joe. "They can charge any work on this project to this number. I shouldn't have to tell you to be sparing in its use."

"Yes, sir."

****

When Joe and Dave Marcantonio got down to talking about the purpose of his visit, Dave asked a lot of penetrating questions, most of which Joe was able to answer. He'd brought along his archive of drawings and he and Dave pored over them, talking about how they might be modified for air bearings and for easier machine work. The price Dave quoted seemed astronomical, but Joe swallowed hard and told him they'd go ahead with it. On the other hand, when Joe reported the price to the colonel, it didn't seem to faze him.

The hardest part was waiting for his project to come up in the queue at the machine shop. Joe went in a couple of times, mostly to discuss proposed changes for various reasons, and most of which he agreed with.

Early February 1635

It was almost a let down to go into Marcantonio's to pick up the turn needle to take to his shop for testing, along with some auxiliary stuff. After setting things up and mounting the latest example on the turntable they headed upstairs to dinner.

After dinner he and Maria headed down to the basement, fired up the system, and found that it performed just exactly like it was supposed to. The only thing needed was calibration of the needle in each direction. Joe timed the rotation of the turntable each way to be sure that the rate was correct, and then adjusted the tension on the tiny springs inside the unit to get the needle in exactly the right position. It looked like the air bearings had done the trick.

Joe had carefully avoided touching Maria after that one night, so he was a little startled when she threw her arms around him and hugged him after the test was seen to be a clear success.

****

The next step was to get the instrument into an airplane. After reporting to the colonel the next morning, Joe went over to see Hal Smith. Some time earlier they had agreed to use Belle 01 as the test bed. Hal had stayed abreast of the progress on the turn needle, so he was ready when Joe showed up and announced he was ready to put it in the airplane. It took the better part of two days to get the prototype installed in the airplane and all of the checks completed.

Since it was Joe's project, he had the job of conducting the first test flight. The flight itself was an anticlimax. He spent about a half hour, first checking that the turn needle functioned in the airplane like it did on the turntable, and then practicing standard rate and half-standard rate turns.

When Joe landed, Colonel Wood was waiting in the parking area. Joe climbed out, the colonel climbed in, then the whole system got a second shakedown.

"That's really great," Colonel Wood said after he landed. "Maybe there's a little light at the end of this tunnel. Maybe we can actually do this!"

Jesse invited Joe to his office and sent someone to get Major Woodsill. When Woody arrived Jesse got right down to business. "Okay, what do you think? Can we build this thing now and start an instrument training program pretty soon?"

"We already had a decent set of drawings and Marcantonio's has updated the drawings for the precision parts and the air bearings, so we have a good set of technical data. Air bearings don't wear out like others do because there's not normally contact between the bearing surfaces. As long as we keep the bearings from being contaminated by dust or dirt they should last for a long time. Other than that, I can't think of anything that we'd need to worry about," Joe said.

Jesse looked ...