When manually flying would you always use the flight director (providing it was available) or would you turn it off? It's fun to fly it yourself and good to practice but although the FD helps you why use it? If you feel you need it, or are struggling under a high work load/fatigue,etc why not use the autopilot? If you want to practice hand flying, or are just doing it for fun why use the flight director?
Perhaps I'm missing the point. Is there a safety reason in that it acts as a back up to your personal judgement, an operational reason as it commands a more efficent way to fly than leaving it to pilot judgement, or just good practice to keep the autopilot commands in sync with your intentions even though it is not being used?
I'm a curious chap and these questions probably arise out of a lack of knowledge of companies' opinons on when and how much manual flying is permitted or encouraged.
Many thanks, Skut.