How much Autopilot do you use?

Rudder trim makes minute corrections to the rudder (the tail) which controls your yaw (your left to right movement on a fixed plane); the aileron trim controls the ailerons on your wings which control your bank (your left to right tilt).

I use A/P almost all the time after T/O unless there’s a reason I need to cut it off at landing (drifting or something). I typically only fly airliners on IFR plans (currently 100% the PMG 737-700).

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Really? I read somewhere that while the C172 G1000 in MSFS doesn’t have aileron or rudder trim - try to find those controls in the plane - you can use the keyboard commands nonetheless, but with my Xbox and a keyboard I’ve tried to trim both, but couldn’t see any movement on either surface or any effect on my plane while in flight. I guess I’ll try it again.

On the topic of AP, it depends. I fly the C172 G1000 almost exclusively, and am still learning. I find AP is very helpful when I’m trying to learn other things, like how to lean the mixture or while exploring the menus on the G1000 NXi. I’ve started a trip where I want to land in and takeoff from every U.S. state and Canadian province (not sure how I’ll do Hawaii yet) and each leg of the trip has a few objectives. The objective on my first leg was to fly AP all the way from West Chicago to Mackinac Island, and it worked great, so I imagine I’ll be using it now and again as I cross the country, especially because I find the little joystick on the Xbox controller tedious to use in cruise and quite treacherous on landing. In short, it’s a tool, and I’ll use it as I need it.

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I fly two aircraft. Icon A5 is for “sightseeing” and no autopilot anyway. TBM is for “travel” and once I get the last ATC message to continue shortly after takeoff, I hit AP and once arrived, I try to ILS all the way in until maybe 1000 feet or so

I like doing VFR in the little GA planes, and not all of them even have an autopilot. :slight_smile: For takeoff, landing, and just sort of poking around it’s a lot of fun to hand-fly, but for longer trips with long straightaways or climbs it’s helpful to use the AP to reach and maintain altitude and keep in a straight line.

For those journeys, I usually stick it on HDG mode and steer based on my charts and what I see out the window. Twisting the HDG knob isn’t as satisfying as the yoke but it gets the job done. :wink:

When I do IFR I’ll run almost everything on autopilot between TO and landing and concentrate on doing the procedures right – but to me that’s not as much fun as freewheeling it. :slight_smile:

Quite the Opposite !!!

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Autowhat?

Ok, Altitude hold in some situations…

It’s aircraft-dependent. If you’re flying airliners, AP from take off until landing. If it’s a fighter, time to use that flight stick!

I would think most of them. Certainly anything with a G1000, if you’ve got the Working Title NXi installed (and probably even if you don’t but I’ve never tried the default… why would you when the NXi is free?). Just couple up on an ILS and the autopilot will take to to the runway (you’ll have to disconnect to flare of course, only airliners actually autoland.)

I used to fly airplanes in real life without any AP installed. Now due to my dystonia and parkinsons, i can only handfly in the sim during take off, initial climb, approach and landing…

As much as the professional pilots. To reduce workload :sunglasses:

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This depends to type of flight I do.

In case of ifr flight i can’t imagine do all things without it, only of course in case of malfunctions. It’s not easy to do all atc commands correctly without it.

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