On Feb 14, 1:28 pm, Mxsmanic wrote:
writes:
I guess I have to disagree with you there. The first priority should
be keeping the airplane from stalling/spinning/spiraling into the
ground (AVIATE, navigate, communicate).

That is situational awareness. As long as you know the aircraft's attitude
and condition, you can avoid stalls, spins, and spirals. To know that in IMC,
you need to read the instruments.

How you actually fly the aircraft once you know your situation is irrelevant
to IFR. You can use the autopilot if you want, and in fact doing so will give
you more freedom to worry about other things. The actual flying of the
aircraft is no different in IFR from in VFR--the aircraft behaves the same way
and responds the same way. So you don't need to worry about that if you
already know how to fly in VFR. What you need to worry about is keeping
tracking of your position, altitude, attitude, and so on, so that you know
what control inputs to make.

This being so, it's not "cheating" to use an autopilot for IFR.


I don't want to have my life dependent on a working autopilot, so I am
purposely avoiding it for now I understand that the airplane doesn't
know if it's in the clouds, but I can sure tell. Being able to fly
without an autopilot, and using only the instruments as a reference is
a HUGE part of my training.

That said, once I have my rating I will take advantage of everything
(autopilot, handheld GPS) at my disposal. But I still intend to
practice partial panel, no autopilot, no GPS so I don't get too rusty.


This is easy when using an autopilot, but unfortunately autopilots aren't
as common on light single engine aircraft as one would hope.

I personally would question the wisdom of flying anywhere IFR without an
autopilot, but it's not a regulatory requirement (at least in the U.S.).

It sure is a lot more interesting when all you have are the "steam
gauges". But I agree with you that autopilots do make life easier
(and safer).


Failure to Aviate seems to be the most popular method of killing yourself
in instrument conditions.

Yes. But still, if you have an autopilot, use it. In IFR the difficulty is
determining what to do--not actually doing it (which is the same as in VFR).

When your autopilot breaks, there is also difficulty in actually doing
it.


Put another way, "aviating" is the same in IFR as in VFR, when it comes to
controlling the aircraft.

The only setting I saw in MSFS for gauge quality is for 3D. I don't
use that mode when flying instruments, but maybe there's another
setting I haven't found yet.

There's that one, but there must be other internal settings because add-ons
often give more options. You can control the update rates for scenery and
instruments separately inside the simulator.

I've seen those advertised before, but I haven't met anyone who has
tried one. If they are that much better, I would be very willing to
buy one.

The Reality XP add-on instruments are astonishingly realistic--absolutely
smooth, photographically real in appearance, and they also do _everything_
that the real-world instrument does--all the buttons work, etc.

The Garmin GPS units from Reality XP use the same Garmin software as Garmin's
own simulations, so they are guaranteed to behave exactly like the real thing.
You can step away from the sim and into the cockpit and continue using the GPS
unit without skipping a beat.

The built-in GPS units are lame by comparison. The same holds true for quite
a few other instruments.

I went to Reality XP's website, and they had a side by side comparison
of the "stock" gauges, and their product. Amazing. One of the planes
I fly (and will be training in) has the Garmin 430, so I might be
downloading that as well. Thanks for the tip.

Steve


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