Hi, I watched several videos, read guides, yet I still can’t understand the basic workings of the autopilot.
What I would like to know is this -
How do I turn on autopilot, making it steer into the correct waypoint heading on an altitude that I have set?
Here is what just happened:
took off, engaged Autopilot. Autopilot did not engage, no matter what I tried. The button remained on ‘engage autopilot’ instead of ‘disengage’, which normally shows when it’s on.
Crashed my plane, retried, autopilot engaged fine. No idea why it didn’t on the first try.
I engage autopilot, it steers into the correct heading but it keeps climbing. I set my altitude to 1500 but that does nothing, autopilot keeps climbing.
Then for some reason autopilot turned off by itself. I turn it on - now it keeps diving. I set my alt as high as possible but to no use - autopilot keeps diving until my plane hits the ground.
Any good complete beginners guide would be welcome too
Thanks I actually watched this one and all the other tutorials I could find on Youtube. Problem is that these 1-hour tutorials explain so much that it’s overwhelming. I was hoping that I could get an extremely basic ‘press this for navigating, press that for altitude’ explanation. Problem is that when I switch autopilot on, press nav it does head into the correct direction - but the altitude button doesn’t seem to do anything.
But I guess I’ll just have to study the whole G1000 guide to understand how this thing works.
I must admit I have a garmin nav on my racing bike and that one already took me hours to figure out
Hmm this was one of the first ones I watched and I didn’t get it. Now that I messed around with autopilot a lot and rewatching this, it makes a lot more sense. Cheers
Yeh, there’s not really a 5 minute explanation that can completely explain a complex system like an AP. You need some time to explain it, and as a viewer, some time to process it.
It’s why it takes quite a while to get a pilot’s license, and can’t just get one by taking a 2 hour online course.
In some AP Systems if you set the Alt, you also have to set VS, I use the X cub mod for 180 Hp, and the AP works fine the way above, also note if I want to change the Alt, I also have to activate or push the VS button and set the + or - fpm. I use the HDG, and NAV. Works really well, I use to explore different mountains regions like Patagonia, I have used the AP in long legs of Bush Trips, is one of my favorite planes, I also use Saitek Multipanel, which contains AP Controls among others.
I think I understand most of it now, so far everything works as it should. I bought that Solfly FS2020 guide but that one only explains the function of each button, not how to actually use or combine settings or explain what can cause the AP not to function. The video above does a great job explaining all that fortunately. Thanks again for steering me in the right direction.
My method is to preset everything before takeoff. To fly a heading, the first thing I hit is the Flight Director (FD) button. This puts the magenta chevron on your PFD. In the air, serves as an autopilot, except that the servos aren’t actually controlling anything. You watch that chevron and fly towards it when it isn’t centered. Preset your desired heading and press the HDG button to engage that portion. When you press the ALTitude button, it automatically selects the nearest 100’ increment. The next thing is to dial in the altitude you want. But that won’t do anything until you choose a vertical rate. You can use the Flight Level Change button and then select a climb speed, then the system will maintain a pitch to keep up that speed. If you throttle up, the nose will pitch up to keep the speed steady. The other option (my choice) is the Vertical Speed mode. Select something around 800 FPM to start. But be careful. If you slow down, the system will try to pitch up to maintain the vertical speed, which can stall you out real quick.
All of this said, you still haven’t actually engaged the autopilot servos and you’re flying manually with the chevron to guide you. This is why I preset everything on the ground. Once you’re in the air and ATC tells you to make your departure turn, all you have to do is hit that AP button and let the servos take over.
This is still just the very basics. For the G3X in the XCub, I recommend this video:
Thank you tclayton2k, that was one heck of a well done explanation, setting parameter in advance is a great habit in the sim and in IRL. Sometimes is tough to put into words something that you know how to do, but the writing skills are hard to comeby, usually I’m not in the sim when I try to help and remembering every detail as well as you wrote it is a skill, kudos to you sir.
Thanks, that was an excellent explanation. After watching that first tutorial video I spent an hour in the air messing around with all the options and it all works perfectly. What I did first, messing with the controls without knowing what they were doing turned out not to be the best option to learn how it works
Guys I think there is more going on here and most of my autopilot issues were because of a (huge) bug…
I was doing a custommade bush trip over Idaho. I aborted the 3rd leg and redid that one later.
But the navlog was now incorrect - some of the entries were completely missing and the headers above the description, showing the waypoint number and the heading, did not match up with the descriptions. The first 2 headers were completely missing, the header above the first description was actually the header of the 3rd description.
I deleted my save file for that bush trip, redid it and now the navlog was correct in that leg.
I had this same bug before by the way with the Nevada bush trip.
So yesterday I did a new flight, messed around with the autopilot and everything worked perfectly, just as explained in the tutorials.
This evening I continued my Idaho bush flight and again autopilot was going crazy, diving straight into the ground. Nothing worked as it should work.
Then I realized that again entries in the navlog were missing.
It seems that if you quit a leg halfway there is a change that the navlog and/or flightplan goes haywire and stays broken even after you restart the leg, apparently also making autopilot going nuts.
I switched between doing another bushflight were autopilot worked perfect again, then back to this one and AP was going crazy again.
