Ok not sure I am in the right topic area, but I am having major problems with the JF PA III/IV autopilot. I must be misisng something really simple but when I put the PA III/PA III/IV Turbo in AP - the ac just starts to bank to the left and the turn bank angle increases until it starts to dive to the ground. This happens no matter what mode the AP is on. It is turned on in the 530, NAV1 is turned on at the bottom , underneath the AP display. Both AP displays are turned on to the appropriate display - nav/heading etc… What have I done wrong? This has only strated happening since the last update and clear;y on first flying the Turbo. I did install the GNS 530 MOD, but have since deleted that. I have the G1000 mod installed - but that works fine - will this effect the 530? Does anybody else experience this problem?
I had similar effects with the default G36 Bonanza once but could not reproduce it, so I’m not sure if that’s specific to this addon at all.
Since there were some AP issues on the initial release (which were fixed later), I still follow the rule to not touch the autopilot before being airborne (don’t preset anything).
Once airborne I turn on the AP Master (which ends up in ROL mode), then turn on the heading switch (set HDG bug to runway heading prior takeoff). Then select the CDI and then turn the Coupler switch to OMNI.
And back to your problem - if you follow this exact set of commands, at which step does the AP bank to the left?
Also in the initial version of the regular Arrow III in such situations it helped me to turn off the AP and turn it back on, it then recovered to work as expected. But that didn’t work ever time.
Also make sure that you don’t have any controls/knobs/switches in your hardware assigned to autopilot commands since they can interfere with the AP (which is also suggested in the above mentioned thread).
Make sure both white rocker switches are on and then select the mode on the dial. Do you have flight model (I think that’s what it is called) set to MODERN?
I have seen this happen as well but when I selected a different mode and went back to the original selected mode it worked.
Don’t touch the autopilot until you are in the air. I have definitely encountered wild banking with the JF Arrow (and other aircraft as well) if I try to set up the autopilot on the ground.
I think I know when this happens and I would want it to be looked into by the developers too.
If I exit a flight with the autopilot switch enabled (technical stuff, crash etc) and State Saving on, the autopilot will be borked for the next flight, even after I switch it off again. Once engaged it will bank and crash as the OP wrote.
It seems to me that the autopilot switch must not be On at the initialization of the flight, but that’s very hard with state saving.
Thanks to all that replied. I unmapped my HOTAS and only mapped the pitch and roll access, brakes and gear and it appears to be working. Tehre must have been a conflict with one of the mapping’s! Seems to be working.
On the Ipad of both the Arrow and the Turbo, you have an option to start flight as the previous one ended, that is, if you left a key connected, such as the AP in the previous flight, when starting the next flight it will be pressed.
When you finish a flight you have to leave the plane with everything removed, if you had this button pressed on the Ipad, you can also deselect it and it will always start the same,
I like to have it pressed because it forces me to make a correct parking lot, removing everything, but that is already comfortable for each one,
That’s the problem, if the sim crashed you would still need to switch off the AP and reload the flight. And if you forget to reload, the AP goes haywaire.
I’m not sure if in this case the state would be saved at all. I’d expect you to boot into the state before the flight that got a CTD since the state should be saved when regularly exiting the flight.
Therefore I only can think of a scenario with AP ON in state saving when exiting manually inflight.
There are many possibilities what may end up in the saved file after a crash, and this is but one.
We can try to do all kinds of things, make stick-its to our monitor that we need to check the AP switch, live with dozens of threads in the coming years that all deal with the same problem …
But at the end of the day autopilot can’t be used if it was enabled at the start of the flight, and that can not be intended behavior.
I would suggest the AP switch should simply default to OFF on every flight initialization. It would not be the only function that resets (for example the lights, trim and lots of other stuff do not save either)
If they implemented the state saving in the exit process, there is nothing saved after a crash.
It’s pretty normal to only save states during a graceful shutdown/exit to not leave inconsistencies. Also your thought would mean they are constantly saving the state which would be a lot of write access without any purpose.
So until proven wrong, I would assume the state is not saved in a CTD scenario.
good!