In article ,
Ron Garret wrote:

In article ,
"Morgans" wrote:

"Ron Garret" wrote

The Cirrus has an electric trim. I find it's all but impossible to get
fine enough control to really get the thing trimmed up properly at high
speed; it's just too twitchy. But the Cirrus also has an autopilot,
which more than makes up for the twitchy trim.

Thanks; a reply that I can use. ;^)

So the auto makes it possible. What if the auto was not working, or you
just needed (or wanted) the stick time? Would it be reasonable to fly 2
hours without your hand getting overly tired?

Well, I'm just heading out to the airport now. I'll let you know in
about three hours :-)

Well, I just got back from flying sans autopilot for about an hour. My
conclusions are that 1) it can be done but 2) it's a pain in the ass.
The biggest problem is not your hand getting tired, it's trying to keep
the damn thing in trim. The roll trim is (thankfully) much less of a
problem than the pitch trim. I was able to fly hands-off the roll for
many minutes at a time. But the best I could do in pitch was 20-40 FPM
climb or descent at speed in calm air. When I hit up or down drafts
things got much worse, and at one point I lost 500 feet in (I estimate)
10-15 seconds while I was fiddling with the radios. But YMMV. I tend
to fly with the AP on by default in cruise. If you fly with it off most
of the time you might get better at trimming it than I am.

Slowing down helps a lot. It's vastly easier to keep things under
control at 120 KIAS then at 175 KIAS, but then the downside is obviously
that it takes that much longer to get where you're going. The good news
is that hand-flying approaches is quite doable, since you're not going
to be flying those at 175 KIAS anyway.

Personally, if I ever lose the autopilot in IMC I'm probably diverting
to the nearest airport immediately.

rg