AUTOPILOT PROS & CONS

Heavy use of the autopilot is not a problem. Reliance on the autopilot
is absolutely deadly unless you have multiply redundant autopilots with
redundant power sources. There's no problem in using the autopilot as
long as you're also getting plenty of time in the equivalent flight
conditions and are very comfortable in them. Basically, it's OK to use
the autopilot any time you would allow a child with emotional problems
who is good at playing flight simulator to fly the plane while you
watch. The degree of monitoring you should exercise should also be the
same.

Most pilots already get plenty of experience flying day-VMC in cruise,
so using the autopilot in those conditions is no big deal, just as it
would be no big deal to let any passenger fly under those conditions.
If you're one of those rare people who gets plenty of actual all the
time and feel very comfortable in the soup, there's no issue with using
it in the soup either. If you shoot so many approaches to minimums in
actual that you find the process boring, it's fine to let the autopilot
shoot the approach.

If you are struggling to get enough actual to stay proficient, and even
going under the hood, then why would you give any of that valuable IMC
time away to the autopilot? You need that time to keep your skills
sharp and hopefully develop them. You're paying for that time.

Realize that no GA autopilot on the market has the capability to
crosscheck gyros. Any of them can cause the ailerons to go to full
deflection smoothly but quickly. As long as you're always in a
position where you are confident you can recover from that safely,
there's no problem with using the autopilot. If you're in a position
where that's not true, why are you there?

If the reason is because you can't handle the workload (or are not
confident you can handle the workload), fine, turn on the autopilot.
Then make it a point to get more training/practice prior to your next
IMC flight. Otherwise, all you're doing is increasing the risk.

Personally, other than in training, I use the autopilot only in level
crusie in VMC, generally on long trips so I can rest. I never use it
in IMC because I don't feel like I get enough of it to stay sharp (I go
under the hood at least once a year for recurrent) so I'm not going to
give any away to the autopilot. If I ever feel like I'm losing it,
I'll turn it on. If I had to fly several hours of solid IMC in one day
single pilot, I would use it in level cruise, to reduce fatigue and
keep myself shart for the higher workload terminal and approach
operations.

Of course everything I said above is based on the idea of the
proficient pilot - someone who could easily pass his instrument
checkride in whatever plane he normally flies IFR without needing to
prepare for it. This does not describe most instrument rated private
pilots I've met. I suspect that has a lot to do with the abysmal
safety record of private IMC flight. I've only ever met a few who fit
this description, and most of them, even if they don't fly
professionally, hold professional ratings. The average instrument
rated private pilot I've met was probably at his best as an instrument
pilot the day he took his IFR checkride, and would need to practice
quite a bit to pass it again. For someone like that, I recommend
buying the best, most modern autopilot he can afford and using the it
as much as possible throughout the flight, since the autopilot is less
likely to screw up than he is - that is assuming he is not willing to
practice enough to bring his skills up to par and is unwilling to give
up flying IFR, both of which I consider better options.

Michael

Degrading hand-flying skills while using the AP? I've got the solution to
that one! My AP ain't so good.

Only roll control and my plane takes rudder action to make anything happen.
Flying with the AP takes about as much hand-flying skills than without.
However, at least it won't let the roll get away from me, if I were to get
distracted for a few seconds. But, if I'm not paying attention, it will be
in a skid in no time as it tries to turn but can't without a little rudder
help.

With the AP on, I can spend more time watching outside or looking at charts
and glance at the turn coordinator and altimeter until I resume my normal,
full scan.

My AP is best when it's calm. Of course, in that situation, the plane flies
about the same no hands and no AP. When it's turbulent, I can hand fly
better than my AP. But it does lighten the workload until I start feeling
seasick with the wandering back and forth.
--
-------------------------------
Travis
Lake N3094P
KPWK

"Roy Smith" wrote in message
...
In article ,
"STICKMONKE" wrote:

I got my IFR rating 7 months ago. I use the KAP140 autopilot a lot. From
climb-out to MDA/DA. I find it really helps in my management of the plane
and the IFR flight. I am interested in comments regarding the pros and
cons
of a heavy use/reliance on the autopilot.

The only real con of the autopilot is that it's too easy to become
dependent on it and let your hand-flying skills degrade to the point there
you're in trouble if George quits. Turn it off every once in a while and
hand-fly to stay in shape.

Don't just click on the A/P and zone out. Take advantage of the workload
reduction it gives you to stay further ahead of the airplane. Pull out
those approach charts earlier and brief the approaches you might end up
doing. Get on the radio and talk to Flight Watch to find out what the
weather is up ahead. Update your flight planning to make sure that
re-route ATC gave you didn't eat into your fuel budget too much.

And, above all, keep up your instrument scan! If George wigs out and puts
you into an unusual attitude, you've still got to recognize it and
recover.

Matt Barrow wrote:

"Sam Spade" wrote in message
news:_oM6g.175224$bm6.117405@fed1read04...

Matt Barrow wrote:

Sam, you're one of the most knowledgable people in here, but your
communications (writing) leaves much to be desired by those of us that
don't read minds (intentions, contexts).





How have I failed to communicate?


Notice how many people are completely confounded by what you write.

You have to write to _the audience_, not to yourself.


It is tough to know the audience in a forum like this.

I work in an environment where a lot of this stuff is a given.

I guess here it could end up being article writing. That is not what
these Usenet forums are about.

Also, I have been accused by some here of being an "AH jail house
lawyer" so it is a no-win situation in some ways.

"STICKMONKE" wrote in
:

I got my IFR rating 7 months ago. I use the KAP140 autopilot a lot.
From climb-out to MDA/DA. I find it really helps in my management of
the plane and the IFR flight. I am interested in comments regarding
the pros and cons of a heavy use/reliance on the autopilot.



PRO: A good autopilot will typically fly an approach as well or better than
a person. Also, it allows the pilot to have time to manage the other
aspects of the flight.

CON: Autopilots can fail. If you exclusively rely on the autopilot to fly
the plane, you quickly become the passenger, not the pilot. You need to
stay attentive and proficient enough that if the autopilot fails, you don't
kill yourself.

Brien K. Meehan wrote:
The biggest "con" I've observed is that it sometimes gives the
passengers the impression that you're not working hard enough.

I actually had a passenger say to me, "What am I paying you all this
money for? This is easy, you're just pressing buttons! I could do
that myself!"


You say "come on up, and do it yourself".

In article .com,
says...


If you are struggling to get enough actual to stay proficient, and even
going under the hood, then why would you give any of that valuable IMC
time away to the autopilot? You need that time to keep your skills
sharp and hopefully develop them. You're paying for that time.

Realize that no GA autopilot on the market has the capability to
crosscheck gyros. Any of them can cause the ailerons to go to full
deflection smoothly but quickly. As long as you're always in a
position where you are confident you can recover from that safely,
there's no problem with using the autopilot. If you're in a position
where that's not true, why are you there?

If the reason is because you can't handle the workload (or are not
confident you can handle the workload), fine, turn on the autopilot.
Then make it a point to get more training/practice prior to your next
IMC flight. Otherwise, all you're doing is increasing the risk.



That's a pretty well-stated, sane approach to how to manage real-time
risk vs loss of proficiency and over-reliance on automation. Well put.

GF

How true. My KFC225 has failed about a dozen times in 4 years, most of
them without any indication.

Yuck. I knew they were unreliable. I didn't know they were THAT
unreliable.

On one occassion the red Disconnect button failed (this was after the
AP drove the ailerons to full deflection) so the master disconnect had
to be used.

This is the sort of thing I worry about when it comes to autopilots.
Ailerons go hard over at the wrong time, and that's all she wrote.

All this makes a complete joke of TSO-129 certification, which
obviously has no concept of software/hardware quality or reliability.

Eventually, you will come to accept that FAA certification only adds
cost, not value or safety. It's only obvious in those areas where you
know what's going on. In areas where you are ignorant, FAA rules can
seem like a good idea. They never are.

I also hand fly a proportion of approaches, but not all because flying
them (especially an ILS) with the AP is also something that needs to
be done with the correct procedure and that needs practice too.

You know, I've shot a lot of approaches in IMC, including more than one
ILS to real mins (less than 300 ft and less than a mile vis) including
one in a plane I only got into that morning, with an HSI that had
failed and a compass that was unreadable due to a bad light. But the
ILS approach that scared me most was in VMC - with a Century 2000 A/P
flying it. It never seriously occurred to me that I would roll the
plane over just because I was flying with a partial panel at night in
low IMC in an unfamiliar airplane - I always had confidence that it
might not be pretty, but I would either put it on the runway right side
up or make a passable miss. But I knew for a fact that uncommanded
hard rolls are part of life with an autopilot - and frankly my
enthusiasm for low altitude aerobatics on instruments is very low, even
in good VMC. I certainly did not have confidence that I would
successfully recover from such an uncommanded roll - especially if the
disconnect were to fail as well, necessitating fumbling for the rarely
used master disconnect. At 300 AGL my fear got the best of me, I
switched off the AP, and completed the approach by hand - and again,
this was VMC. Risking an uncommanded hard roll at 300 AGL in IMC
strikes me as a last-resort kind of option.

I know the airlines do it - but they're doing it with substantially
better equipment that is maintained far more meticulously.

I have to ask - what was your altitude loss when the ailerons went hard
over and the A/P disconnect failed? What is your logic behind having
it engaged when you are lower than that (assuming you do have it
engaged then)?

Personally, you can't pay me enough to have the autopilot engaged on an
actual IMC approach. I quite agree with you that the procedures
involved require practice, and I do practice with it - under the hood
with a safety pilot I can really trust, and never below 800 AGL.

Michael

"Peter" wrote:

CON: Autopilots can fail. If you exclusively rely on the autopilot to fly
the plane, you quickly become the passenger, not the pilot. You need to
stay attentive and proficient enough that if the autopilot fails, you don't
kill yourself.

How true. My KFC225 has failed about a dozen times in 4 years, most of
them without any indication.

My buddy has a KFC225 with a similarly dismal history. The avionics shop
tells him this is not unusual for that model. Not usual!!!

My S-Tec 50, a 2-axis, rate-based unit, has operated with only one glitch-- a
bad switch--in 700+ hours since installation. It's a much simpler piece of
gear, not as precise or as smooth in turbulence as the KFC225, but I'll take
reliability over capability every time.

--
Dan
C-172RG at BFM

My S-Tec 50, a 2-axis, rate-based unit, has operated with only one glitch-- a
bad switch--in 700+ hours since installation.

A friend of mine has a 50 in his Bo, and it hasn't fared as well as
yours. If went 'dead' - meaning no action on aileron control and no
annunciation - multiple times before the problem was resolved. Usually
by the time he got it to the A/P shop it was working again, and the
shop could not figure out what was wrong. Eventually it died for good.
It was a bad motor in the roll servo.

On the flip side, I once instructed a student in an Ovation who told me
his KFC-225 never hiccupped.

Michael

"Michael" wrote in message
ups.com...
My S-Tec 50, a 2-axis, rate-based unit, has operated with only one
glitch-- a
bad switch--in 700+ hours since installation.

A friend of mine has a 50 in his Bo, and it hasn't fared as well as
yours. If went 'dead' - meaning no action on aileron control and no
annunciation - multiple times before the problem was resolved. Usually
by the time he got it to the A/P shop it was working again, and the
shop could not figure out what was wrong. Eventually it died for good.
It was a bad motor in the roll servo.

On the flip side, I once instructed a student in an Ovation who told me
his KFC-225 never hiccupped.

Michael

Some autopilot failures are very subtle. I was shooting a coupled ILS to
minimums with a King autopilot in a Mooney. After capturing the glideslope,
I noticed the rate was about 75'/min more than I was used to. As we got
closer to DH, the DME was still showing about 2 miles to the airport. I
leveled at DH, and while motoring along 200' above the houses, I tapped the
Vor/loc. The GS needle snapped to the top of the case. It was "stuck"
centered, and the autopilot
was literally flying the needle. Iron Mike, indeed.

Al