Random ramblings
One of the early adopters of the first free range A-320s, via a now very defunct outfit, I only had 100 hrs on early type before the outfit went zot, so it's barely acceptable for me to scribble a by-line here.
However . .
All my flying career I hand flew to TOC, inserted to cruise micro-trimmed, and plugged in George for the rest of the way, with 20 minute re-trims. This kept me in tune with the overall envelope of every type.
But when trying this (then) on the early A320, I discovered that there was a steady pitch-up of approx 1 degree/min, which was neutralized with approx 10g fwd pressure on the stick. Little finger, holding light fwd pressure: measured later on scales at home. This was 'standard' on 9 of out of our 12 ships, i.e., all those I got flew.
It was my suspicion that this was a deliberate program branch to cause old fogies like me to cease & desist messing with the programme-meister's concepts of how an aircraft should be flown.
Is this pitch-up effect still observable in the current Airbus operating systems?
Some of their thoughts I seconded - amazingly, it suddenly became OK to accept a V overshoot, say on climb/descent, instead of having to slam the pax between floor and roof as some old ex-Spitfire types used to do, chasing +/- 5 kts.
Other observations - I >loved, loved, loved< the side-stick, having flown-up on the Victa Airtourer in Oz, with it's single sentral (sic) s'equally super sensitive 'side' stick. The only logical place to have one, I reckon. The table? Dreams-ville. The early programming? It must have been improved by now. Surely? Trust it? No. But then I didn't trust Boeing motorcycle rated 20 minute batteries either, or F-108 and later flight instruments to tell me they'd failed: or DC-9 auto-coupled approaches: etc, etc. I won't go on, it would be boring. But everyone surely seeks the possible flaws in their current mount, and plans defenses as best as they can.
When Airbus A-3xx is good, she seems to be very, >very< good, but I suspect when she is bad she may well be horrid, given the complexity of software and the almost infinitude of possible permutations and possibilities in the multiplicity of networked boxes. Thus the monster QRH, most likely. Ever tried to write a software manual? It's hard not to finish up gross trying to cover all possibilities. Keep an aviator's overview might cover most possiblilities, hopefully.