Aligning the Pedestal for Shipboard Use

In the best cases, the motion reference unit (MRU) sensor is mounted with an orientation exactly matching the antenna pedestal. Unfortunately, this is not always possible.

Perform the following steps while the ship is docked

  1. Use a digital level to match the MRU's tilt to the pedestals tilt in both axis.
  2. Make the pedestal's azimuth 0 when the MRU's heading is 0.
  3. Check that the GPS antenna orientation match.
  4. If the inertial navigation unit (INU) data may be shared by many different experiments, use a pitch and roll offset for the INU in RCP8.

    See Aligning INU and Pedestal for Shipboard Use.

    You do not need an antenna heading offset, because you can make the zero headings match with a pedestal offset.

The roll, pitch, and heading for antenna stabilization are now correct. It does not really matter if this matches other parts of the ship.