Salute!
Lemme review the bidding, Doze.
I thot this thread was about "hand-flying" the jet. I realize that much was focused upon the cruise phase, but sooner or later ya gotta land the sucker. Oh yeah, ya gotta take off to get to the cruise phase. Then a climb, and then a descent. I can just see Joe Baggodonuts ( think Bolin, RIP) descending in sub-law 2(b) modified, or "direct". Think you would have a smooth ride back on seat 26B?
Oh yeah, the modes are so damned transparent that many pilots don't even know what mode they are in!! And then we have a crew that turns off the air data in order to wrest control from HAL when the AoA sensors went to hell. Gotta hand it to those guys.
BTW, you may not have read my previous post about landing the jet and flying in turbulence. Sheesh. Your post hours are getting close to my 2,000 hours in single-seat, single engine jets with about 2/3 of those either full FBW or FBW assisted ( go look up the A-7D "control aug" and then think about Viper prototype using the A-7D stick grip because it had all those force transducers that our system used to make things smoother and more precise).
And there' no such thing as a dumb fighter pilot. Out!