GA Autothrottle?

[Confabulous]

Guys,

I've been trawling the net to see if there's such thing as an autothrottle for GA prop aircraft? From what I know it's rare or nonexistent, propably because of the narrow speed range, but is there anything to prevent one being developed?

Surely as GA FADEC/HITS/AGATE becomes more popular it would integrate nicely with the rest, reducing IFR workload?

Confab

PS: What about a max G/Vne sensor to pop the airbrakes and retard? And a max alpha sonsor to drop the flaps and increase power?

[englishal]

It probably won't be long before this happens. The most automated aircraft I've flown had a really cool auto-pilot where you coud set rate of descent and climb in 00's of feet per minute. It was slaved to the GPS so you could shoot a GPS approach, and if on an ILS, the thing would do virtually everything down to <50'. All you needed to do was adjust the throttle.....FLy by buttons.

[IO540]

That autopilot functionality has been about for a little while - even I have it :O (down to Cat 1 i.e. 200ft, officially)

Auto throttle is a complicated bit of kit and I would be suprised if somebody did it in a piston GA plane soon. One reason, I guess, is that when one has an autopilot which is tracking a programmed VS or an ILS, one has a low cockpit workload anyway and it is trivial to adjust the airspeed using simply the throttle.