• There seems to be an uptick in Political comments in recent months. Those of us who are long time members of the site know that Political and Religious content has been banned for years. Nothing has changed. Please leave all political and religious comments out of the forums.

    If you recently joined the forums you were not presented with this restriction in the terms of service. This was due to a conversion error when we went from vBulletin to Xenforo. We have updated our terms of service to reflect these corrections.

    Please note any post refering to a politician will be considered political even if it is intended to be humor. Our experience is these topics have a way of dividing the forums and causing deep resentment among members. It is a poison to the community. We appreciate compliance with the rules.

    The Staff of SOH

  • Please see the most recent updates in the "Where did the .com name go?" thread. Posts number 16 and 17.

    Post 16 Update

    Post 17 Warning

Is there good freeware autopilot..... and a rant about FS aircraft misbehaving

S

SADT

Charter Member
Is there good freeware autopilot..... and a rant about FS aircraft misbehaving

Hello All,

To say that I am angry is an underatatement; I am f****** mad! So i am trying to do a long distance flight in my A2A Corsair, and am using the autopilot, and have slaved the Nav/Gps switch to"N". When I engage nav hold (default bendix A/P), the aircraft starts flying around in circles. So Ithink, "Perhaps the aircraft is trying to follow Nav1, which isnt availiable in the Corsair. So I then press "N" again, and the aircraft still keeps flying around in circles................. :mad::a1451::angryfir: I had a valid flightplan loaded, and the autopilot was set up correctly, so I do not know why it did not follow the flight plan :tgun2::censored::angryfir:. To my main point: Is there a good freeware autopilot, that has Nav/gps hold, altitude hold AND an NAV/GPS switch included?

Craig.
 
any ap will do, even if its from a cessna.. The other part however isnt so obvious.. The nav/gps toggle by default isnt defined in the controls/buttons menu.. you need to set up a control key for it. I personally use ctl+shift+N. that toggles on the gps navigation ( which is what you want to fillow a predefined coursse ). another option is to install the Civa Delco Carousel IV INS. dont worry about having to program it. simply load your plan after you get in the plane, take off, set the mode switch to Nav/Loc and hit your GPS toggle..
Also remember. many early AP's had nothing to do with navigation. you could change our hold altitude or course, but it was all mechanical and had no brain of its own till after the mid sixties..
 
Thats the thing Pam, is that even when I pressed my assigned hot key to change the nav/gps, the aircraft still circled.... What I am looking for is an all in one A/P, that includes every function somebody could ever want!
 
SADT said:
Hello All,

To say that I am angry is an underatatement; I am f****** mad! So i am trying to do a long distance flight in my A2A Corsair, and am using the autopilot, and have slaved the Nav/Gps switch to"N". When I engage nav hold (default bendix A/P), the aircraft starts flying around in circles. So Ithink, "Perhaps the aircraft is trying to follow Nav1, which isnt availiable in the Corsair. So I then press "N" again, and the aircraft still keeps flying around in circles.....I had a valid flightplan loaded, and the autopilot was set up correctly, so I do not know why it did not follow the flight plan . To my main point: Is there a good freeware autopilot, that has Nav/gps hold, altitude hold AND an NAV/GPS switch included?

Craig.
Click to expand...

You can get as angry as you want and it won't fix anything.... the first thing is to understand what the terms mean and what the functions are...

1. The Nav/GPS switch only selects the source for navigation data (NAV for Navaids -normally only VOR 1 -- GPS for the GPS)

2. The Autopilot "Nav" button tells the AP to use Navaid inputs as opposed to "Heading" inputs - and the only acceptable Navaid is a VOR (an autopilot will NOT track to or from an NDB) or a GPS.

So, even if you build a flightplan it's just like a shopping list of places you want to go. In real life you would have to program that into the GPS - FS does it for you when you use the MSFS Flight Planner (or something like Plan G)- but the only way to follow it unattended is to have a GPS, select NAV on the autopilot and GPS on the NAV/GPS switch.

If you want the autopilot to aid your flight but don't want to use the GPS then the flightplan has to be built using VORs as the waypoints and you must have a working VOR1 installed and you must tune the VOR frequency and set the OBS manually for each leg. (The actual management of the flight process is a bit more complicated, but that comes later)

So, changing the autopilot won't improve your chances of success.

For a comprehensive tutorial on Instrument Navigation I suggest you read this:
http://www.faa.gov/library/manuals/...andbook/media/FAA-H-8083-15A - Chapter 07.pdf

Other available guides can be found here:
http://www.faa.gov/library/manuals/aviation/
 
SADT

Your problem is not the Auto Pilot it is the GPS.

If i remember correctly the A2A Corsair has the Garmin 295 GPS installed. In FSX you can not couple an Auto pilot to the 295 GPS. You can only do that with the GPS 500.

All you need to do is change the GPS and your problems will be solved.

Here is one thing to watch out for. The panel.cfg file in the A2A Corsair has a lot of extra code in it that FS Panel Studio will not understand. If you open the panel.cfg file with FS Panel Studio it will pork a considerable number of gauges in the cfg file.

For that reason use a text editor to swap out the gauge. I think I did a cut and paste from the GPS section on the Cessna 172 to put mine in when I had that plane installed.
 
Thanks everyone for the help here!

I think I will change out the GPS before the next flight - Replace it with a Garmin GNS 430.

Thanks again,
Craig :)
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top