Nadzab: interested to know why you think hand-flying increases noise footprint? I refer to your comment regarding noise abatement departures, citing LHR as an example.
As a regular operator in/out of LHR, I'd have thought that, provided you followed the departure track (i.e the FD in LNAV), you'd fly over the monitoring points? How can they tell from the ground (well, based on noise anyway) that you are hand-flying?
There are other good reasons for not hand-flying in busy environments, but that's not the topic.
TM