I am new to autopilots, and now have some bindings to turn it on for alt and heading, but I can’t figure out how to get the NAV heading to work, i.e. follow the flight plan. Manually I have tried clicking the NAV button the G1000, and it shows GPS on the top of the PFD, but HDG still just goes to the manual setpoint. What am I missing? Note also when I press the HDG button, it seems to only go from HDG/ROL, and it seems that it should show NAV there?
EDIT: Also to add, this is using 172 in career mode, using auto-generated flight plans.
I will have to check when I play later. I didn’t realize the colors changed.
Pressing “NAV” will arm navigation mode following the CDI selection (probably you want it on GPS, sounds like you got that already). This will show a white “GPS” in the indicator, I believe. If you are within two notches on the indicator of the course, it will activate – this will turn it green, and it’ll start turning to match course.
If you’re not close enough or on the way to getting close enough, then you should hit HDG and tune the heading knob to point in the right direction. Then when it gets close enough it’ll pick up and turn into the final navigation line.
I’ve run into this issue before as well and it turned out to not be the G1000 but the flight planning as you said. On the accept screen, I always click the EFB and check the flight plan and either alter it, or leave it as is, and file with ATC. This seems to have resolved those issues you speak of. I think this is a product of the EFB and the G1000 having different sets of data for some reason.
I will say, another issue to be careful of is, it seems to catch RNAV super early and your plane appear to be going wonky.