Flight Director bars disappear manual approach - SOLUTION

[gassa]

Hi,

First of all congratulations for this great product.

I have a question though....

Whenever switch of the autopilot and autothrottle on an approach, my flightdirector bars disappear as well.

As long as the aircraft is in automatic approach mode, everything is fine.

The ILS was set on NAV 1, the LLZ course was set in both windows on the MCP.

Am I doing something wrong, or is it a bug? I never witnessed this behavior on PMDG's NGX for example.

 

Kind regards

Martin G.

Edited May 6, 2016 by Morten

[BMFlight]

Do not disengage the autopilot with the bar..   That will cause the flight directors to shut off, which is working as intended.  Disengage it with the clickspot on the yoke or binding a key to your joystick.

[Litjan]

6 hours ago, BMFlight said:

Do not disengage the autopilot with the bar..   That will cause the flight directors to shut, which is working as intended.  Disengage it with the clickspot on the yoke or binding a key to your joystick.

Totally correct. The disengage bar removes electrical power from the Flight Control Computers, which also drive the FD´s.The disengage bar is more of an emergency device, when nothing else will work in disengaging the autopilots...It is NEVER used in normal operation (although a lot of simmers seem to use it extensively, not sure where that habit started).

Jan

 

[gassa]

Thank you very much for your answers guys. 

So the bug was sitting in front of the monitor :-) 

[captain_alligator]

On 05/05/2016 at 7:04 AM, Litjan said:

Totally correct. The disengage bar removes electrical power from the Flight Control Computers, which also drive the FD´s.The disengage bar is more of an emergency device, when nothing else will work in disengaging the autopilots...It is NEVER used in normal operation (although a lot of simmers seem to use it extensively, not sure where that habit started).

Jan

 

Probably copying bad habits from videos on Youtube!

[Rodeo]

On 5 May 2016 at 8:04 AM, Litjan said:

(although a lot of simmers seem to use it extensively, not sure where that habit started).

Or more likely, laziness. The proper autopilot disconnect button is on the yoke, which requires moving around the 3D cockpit, or worse, re-enabling the yokes if they're hidden, whereas the disconnect bar is easily accessible on the MCP.

There's always mapping a command to a button or a key, but just about every advanced addon has its own custom command for this. You can script around it using e.g. FlyWithLua, but not everyone is willing to deal with X-Plane's "internals", and also what happens if you have a bug and the developer asks you to "remove all other plugins"?

The third solution is to remap the key/button whenever switching planes, but that's equally cumbersome…

Edited June 5, 2016 by Rodeo

[J.M.G.]

Just use the stabilizer trim switch (which should be assigned to your joystick). This will disconnect the A/P. You will still have to silence the horn then (which can be done by clicking on the annunciation even in "captain view".