Beachcraft Bonanza terrible autopilot

The autopilot can only be described as uneuseably poor. The plane will literally fly in a constant wobble if you are on a slight offset to your navigation path as it overshoots over and over, banking wildly to the left and right requiring human intervention to stop the insanity. If you use FLC or VS prepare to ■■■■■■■ trim 100% up till you stall into a massive crash.

Can’t tell you how many times I’ve come 3/4 through a multiple hour flight only to have the autopilot completely ■■■■ up, either crashing me while im not paying attention or causing me to ■■■■ the flight off because I don’t want to sit and baby a plane in cruise for 40 minutes because the autopilot is so legendarily ■■■■■.

Inb4 I get told to unassign multiple controls for the trim, it didn’t do jack ■■■■.

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This does not seem to be an inherent universal issue as I have frequently used the Bonanza AP without any problems, down to flying an ILS approach to minimums. I know that does not help you but I thought it needed to be said that it does work for some of us. That seems to imply that it is a hardware, configuration or setup issue on your side.

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I can use autopilot to fly ILS approaches on most planes including the 747 and the citation logitude. I highly doubt this is a hardware or configuration issue given this only happens to me in light aircraft and most consistently with the beachcraft bonanza (and I mean every flight with the bonanza).

https://forums.flightsimulator.com/t/auto-pilot-steam-guages-working-properly/283928

Did you start flying in larger planes? Perhaps you are trying to fly a light aircraft like an airliner?

I haven’t had issues with the autopilot once in any light aircraft. And I mostly fly the bonanza

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?? I take off, put my gear away, retract my flaps, click VS, set an extremally reasonable and slow climb rate, click AP and it instantly cranks the trim to 100% up every single time. This happens literally every time and does not occur in either the airliners, the private jets or even the TBM.

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What you are describing has never happened to me, in any GA aircraft in MSFS. Do you mean just by turning on the AP button, before selecting holds of any kind?

Never has happened to me as well. Could you record a video of this? It would help people figure out what’s going on.

No, if I choose only NAV mode it just does the rediculous overshoot because it banks 30 degrees to correct a 100 foot offset for the nav path. If I am already in AP and select VS or FLC mode it will 100% of the time crank the trim 100% up. If I have VS or FLC set up and enable AP it will crank the trim 100% up every time.

Ouch! Sounds like that needs a Zendesk report.

Crazed Autopilot Experience - consistent in SR-22, Daher, C172 G1000, C172 Skyhawk.

I’ve got default flight plans and parameters that I’ve used to compare my FSX / Orbx experience with MSFS 2020. Each of those planes, despite me being perhaps 1-2 degrees off-course from true GPS FP, the AP ranges from overcorrection as described, zig-zagging for a couple of NM, all the way to massively rolls over 45 degrees. I’ve basically given up on AP ALT step-up / step-down. I hand-fly to cruise alt, then set ALT HOLD. Calculate my TOD, manually disengage and control descent rate.

It’s a good thing I’m only point-to-point GPS. Lots of teeth-gnashing in other threads where people are hard-core IFR.

I filed a Zendesk too. But what it might take to get this looked at is what I did with Manual Caching. I sat down, used the Search function and found all the Map Caching complaints and bug report threads, consolidated them into one big thread, titled it appropriately, and asked for up-votes in the Bug Report section.

Yeah, you’re doing MS-Asobo’s job, but if you feel strongly enough about it, at least your conscience is clear and you gripe about it knowing you did everything you could. I wish Community Managers were tracking trends like this. They did for some, but strangely not for others. Given MS’s access to Big Data analysis, a trending report even weekly of new threads by keywords with a bit of AI assist (this is commonplace now in many metrics-driven industries) would tell CMs and Dev Team what the main gripes are.

None of the AP work on any of the GA aircraft I fly in the Sim… They will hold altitude but will not hold a heading or follow the GPS on nav mode… Very frustrating…

I have a video capture here:

Sorry it’s 200MB I just used the game bar capture thing I CBA setting up OBS for this

Happens to me in the 172. I raised a ticket and its scheduled to be fixed.

Just confirm you’re not pressing ALT then using VS? That was the old wrong way that FSX was programmed.

In this sim,you would normally bug a heading on departure, bug your altitude, and then either scroll the pitch wheel to a 10 degree pitch up or just preset 500-1000 fpm (press VS). During climb, trim for climb power, and then press AP. To change altitude, scroll the wheel to whatever, then engage VS for climb/descend. I do admit that FLC appears to be flaky lately.

yeah I don’t miss the FSX autopilot at ALL

I am not enabling altitude hold before hand though this should be a perfectly acceptable for the AP system. I appreciate the info but I’m aware of how to use the autopilot systems it’s just that the autopilot in the beachcraft bonanza isn’t worth ■■■■. If you look at the video I posted above you will see the issue I’m describing.

I showed off how the FLC mode was completely borked, I didn’t show that even disabling FLC after that moment would not prevent the AP applying 100% trim up, or that this can occur using VS mode if you had previously foolishly attempted to use FLC.

I’ve had these issues from day 1 just the fact it wasn’t fixed in the patch and caused me to abandon a 2 hour on-air flight just made me rage and post the complaint lol.

Hmmm. I noticed you had LVL on? That would bring the aircraft to level flight. Well not necessarily level, but it should bring the nose to the horizon and it would level your wings.

So it seems you have that engaged but also VS mode… so the AP is working against itself.

What happens if you start off with nothing, then bug an altitude, then press VS, select say 500 fpm, then bug runway heading. Takeoff, and then when established in a climb, press AP.

If you click FLCon this AP system it automatically enables LVL, there is no input to enable LVL independantly on this AP system. In that video i had spawned on the runway and I showed every input I made into the AP system.

The VS mode intermitently works, roughly half the time it does the same thing as demonstrated in the above video.

Interesting. I have been using this very good Bonanza modification:

So I did your test with the mod and the LVL came on, but the AP didn’t pitch up like your video. (again it’s the mod, not stock)

Yes, I noticed LVL comes on…that’s wrong. But what if you bug runway heading, and press HDG, after pressing FLC on the ground? Does the AP still pitch up wildly when you engage it?

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