Originally Posted by
Judd
Naturally, you would have done the right thing by writing up the perceived autopilot defect in great detail in the maintenance document. Did the technicians fix the fault?
Hilarious! Should I also write up the engines for being underpowered? How about the pressurisation system for not allowing flight above FL310? It is not a fault in the autopilot, just a limitation of the design.
Originally Posted by DIVOSH!
Same for the Q400. Most pilots hand-fly onto the Localiser and then (possibly) re-engaging the autopilot.
Even then it's not a guarantee. After LOC capture, you still have to be prepared to disengage and hand-fly in case you drift too far off centreline.
I was once called "Tracking" with the ILS captured, AP engaged (had been for a while) and we were almost half-scale deflection with a 15kt quartering tailwind. Luckily for 34R and the wind blowing us away from 34L.
Interesting. I've only flown the classic Dash 8s and thought the autopilot was pretty good apart from a tendency to porpoise in a VNAV descent, but I did very few ILSs. The 146 is manageable but you have to know its limitations. Once on the LOC it's ok, but it doesn't handle the capture very well unless you're quite slow. It's best if you let the LNAV turn onto the ILS and then select V/L but that is not normally an option in Sydney where it's all about vectors.