A-10A Autopilot

[aviador]

Can anyone explain to me exactly what the key A does and what it doesn't do. Imagiine my surprise when I went to get a coffee I found on my return the aircraft coming in for a pergect landin -albeit a slightly higher speed than recommended for touchdown. But I also know it will also fly me straight into mountains unless I take over.

[nomdeplume]

I don't really know myself... I think it's a kind of "cheat"/simplification mode? It may simply be route-following mode. If you look in the controls screen you'll see there's a bunch of autopilot modes (pitch hold, roll hold, wings level, alt/baro alt hold, route following) bound to alt+number key combinations. The "A" key for enabling autopilot seems not to fit in well, so I wonder if it actually represents a real autopilot mode in the A-10 or if it's a simplified helper function.

 

I think it's route-following mode, holding at your present barometric altitude. But I don't know for sure and hopefully someone wiser than me can confirm or refute that.

[aviador]

I don't really know myself... I think it's a kind of "cheat"/simplification mode? It may simply be route-following mode. If you look in the controls screen you'll see there's a bunch of autopilot modes (pitch hold, roll hold, wings level, alt/baro alt hold, route following) bound to alt+number key combinations. The "A" key for enabling autopilot seems not to fit in well, so I wonder if it actually represents a real autopilot mode in the A-10 or if it's a simplified helper function.

 

I think it's route-following mode, holding at your present barometric altitude. But I don't know for sure and hopefully someone wiser than me can confirm or refute that.

 

I suspect you are right that it takes you to the next waypoint but it does change the thrust and sometimes the altitude. It also adjusts the flaps but you need to lower your landing gear yourself coming in to land. Also it seems you have to engage it beore you do the LAlt thingymijigs other wise you get taken out of NAV mode.

I've searched the manual but what the manual really needs is an index of keywords so that you can jump to the appropriate page - a mammoth task I suspect because it is voluminous.