Which reference does your 'HUD-equipped jet' have? Pitch attitude or flight path vector?
The autothrottle gain rates will be modified according to pitch attitude from a vertical gyro to maintain the selected IAS derived from the pitot-static or Air Data Unit; you 'hand fly' the aircraft attitude and the AT adjusts thrust level to maintain the speed you selected.
'Point and Power' is a technique which refers ONLY to flight relative to a fixed touchdown reference point. On an instrument approach you are correcting to either an electronic glidepath on a precision or a height/range cue on a non-precision approach. If you are above the glideslope, for example, and just pitch forward to a new attitude ('poking at the ground' as it's sometimes described), your AT will indeed do the work to sort things out. If you 'hand fly' properly by maintaining your attitude, wriggling off some power to increase rate of descent to recover to the glideslope and then restoring the correct power, your passengers will also not have to endure unnecessary pitching on the approach.
The 'technique' which you are trying to describe is the only method of flying with AT engaged as you have no direct control of thrust settings, merely of demanded IAS. It is not appropriate to basic flying or full 'hand-flying' - but pointing the aeroplane in the required direction and letting the AT automatics sort things out is probably all the Nintendo generation will ever need. If that's all they can cope with, then heaven help them or their passengers when all the computers decide you need to run Scandisk and stop voting! That's why basic techniques are still taught!!
On your 'lightweight go-around', if you're hand-flying without AP/AT, you reduce the thrust initially to reduce RoC as you approach the cleared altitude, adjusting the attitude slightly to maintain IAS. The concept of reducing power before levelling off is the one big new technique, I agree, which must be learned early in jet conversion. This is entirely due to the different THPa/THPr curves for jet and propeller aircraft and their differing relations to best climb and best range cruising speeds. Then you select, hold and trim the appropriate attitude for level flight, reducing thrust again as the desired IAS is achieved. Nowadays that's becoming more and more essential when levelling at RVSM levels in order to reduce climb rate to 500-1000 fpm before 1000ft to the cleared level is achieved.
However, in one high performance jet aircraft I once flew, rather than reducing power about 1500 ft before levelling off at medium level, we used to leave the power alone, roll inverted whilst still climbing rapidly at 370 KIAS and about 20 deg nose-up, then pull through to level flight at the rquired level at about +2g before rolling erect again and then throttling back when Vc (Vs multiplied by the square root of the max g limit) - about 420 KIAS was achieved. Not particularly appropriate on spamcans or people-tubes though!
[ 21 October 2001: Message edited by: BEagle ]