Originally Posted by
jcjeant
It seems to me that flying a airplane manually (without the assistance of automation) requires that the pilot use the trim manually
And that's an opinion you're welcome to, but that doesn't make it correct.
This is certainly what all airline pilots make when piloting an aircraft non equipped with automation
Which has nothing to do with aircraft designed differently. This is what I meant by a "nebulous definition of what constitutes "real piloting" and what does not".
Is that the pilots of Airbus airplanes or other brands equipped with automation have no longer know how to fly a Cessna 172 ?
Well, one would hope they know how to - but they fly it differently than a FBW Airbus.
As I said though, manual trimming is a lot easier with feedback (either direct or artificial). Autotrim grew out of having PFCs without dynamic artificial feedback, and as I said to CONF iture, it behaves perfectly well as long as the inputs make sense. Perhaps it should be made more explicit that in Alternate Law, the PFC controls the trim as well as the elevators, but that in itself is not a bad design.