Crown-Horned Snorkack wrote:
> In 1920-s and 1930-s (and later) plenty of aircraft were wood and
> cloth, rather than metal. Their infernal combustion engines had to be
> metal, though.
I wonder if you could posit that magnetic activity causes thermal
lifting bands along the planetary surface? Excite the air enough, it
warms, and you'd get a lifting action. Then you could play with long
distance gliders taking advantage of stable aerographic features that
are unreliable here.
>
> If magnetic storms are common, would they cause serious interference
> with the navigation of a wooden ship (that has a compass)?
I would think you answered your question up above, and yet. Wooden
ships are very slow, so magnetic storms might not have a great effect,
since presumably you wouldn't have to live with a constant and
unknowable deviation. You'd probably find that your average deviation
over long distances would generally bring you to where you wanted to go.
For airplanes, you might find that the storms lasted long enough that
you could develop a system for adjusting for magnetic flux before
takeoff, and rely on the storm to keep the compass reliably wrong
through the flight! :-)
Bill
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