Flight Director

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Paaaaatel

New Member
Hey!

Just wanted to ask a quick question to all you airline pilots, or whoever knows the answer.

When you hand-fly an ILS approach, is the Flight Director used (The horizontal and vertical bars you have to keep centred to take you straight to the runway)?

Thats all!

Cheers!
 
I use the flight director on hand flown approaches ... typically I turn it off after I go visual so it is "out of the way" ... just my personal preference while flying the King Air.
 
In actual conditions almost everybody uses the flight director. A lot of people turn it off for a handflown visual approach.
 
When I was flying a real airplane...the 727....I wouldn't turn it on unless the weather was less than VFR. Now that I fly a glass cockpit, autoland, wonderplane (757)....I figure it will be on all the time unless it's clear and a million and I decide to do a visual. I bet every Capt I fly with will be like....you wanna do what....turn off the autopilot and fly it....what are you thinkin' boy...
 
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When I was flying a real airplane...the 727....I wouldn't turn it on unless the weather was less than VFR. Now that I fly a glass cockpit, autoland, wonderplane (757)....I figure it will be on all the time unless it's clear and a million and I decide to do a visual. I bet every Capt I fly with will be like....you wanna do what....turn off the autopilot and fly it....what are you thinkin' boy...

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I'm being dragged kicking and screaming to that world too next month, DE. I feel your pain.
 
No doubt.

I tend to turn off the flight director and go into plain hsi 'rose' mode on my ND during visuals and it completely trips guys out.

"How can you read that?!"
 
I leave it on almost all the time, When cleared for the visual, if i can make it work where Im still following it a little to intercept, ill use it on the visual and sync it to Apr. mode just like an ILS, I guess im super lazy!
 
We've got those dagblasted horizontal/vertical bars for a flight director. Hate 'em hate 'em hate 'em!
 
I did my first landings in the sim yesterday and overcontrolled pretty bad. My poor sim partner is an ex-Navy Capt, A6 and up driver, that was flying jets when I was in junior high. He's been on the panel for 3 years and not flown at all. Poor guy was all over the place. Then our sim instructor has us follow through on the controls with the autopilot doing an autoland....tells us to learn the inputs from the machine. I didn't know whether to laugh or to cry.......

Damn computer does a hell of a job...I'll give it that. Book even says it's been flight tested to a 25 knot tailwind....much more than I'd ever try to handle. But you can't do autolands on one engine or for a non-precision approach...so I guess my job will last for a while. I think I'll be happy to sit back and let it do it's thing most of the time and turn it off for those clear and a million visuals once in a while....just so I don't forget the 727 days.
 
Whenever I fly with a former A6 pilot, I move my seat all the way down and back a little from his and ask, "Hey, this feel familiar?
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"
 
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Whenever I fly with a former A6 pilot, I move my seat all the way down and back a little from his and ask, "Hey, this feel familiar?
smile.gif
"

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Nice one!! LOL.
 
Or even more fun is when you tell your captain you've got traffic in sight, he asks where and you say: "Nine o'clock, about four inches above the rail! Or talking to San Diego depature and saying "Departure, Delta 123 cherubs 8 for angels 150"" (I probably screwed that one up).

The general answer is "Where did you learn that?"

"That's all you guys talk about!"
 
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"That's all you guys talk about!"

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And one time..........at band camp.
Sorry, couldn't resist.
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We've got those dagblasted horizontal/vertical bars for a flight director. Hate 'em hate 'em hate 'em!

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That's just raw data, right? Didn't think that was technically a "flight director".
 
It is. Instead of having "wings" superimposed on the ADI where if you match yourself directly with it you'll be doing what you want, these have a separate bar for vertical and horizontal.
 
After flying nothing but single-cue FD's... I went out to FSI LGB last year and brought my parents. We flew that MD-90EFD sim....and it had that blasted Dual-Cue!!! It looked like amateur night for awhile!
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Just out of curiosity, how do fancy jet autopilots do with sudden microburst or wind shear situations? Are you supposed to hand fly if wind shear is a possibility on approach?
 
Not supposed to fly in them!
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Probably the simplest answer because you'd be performing your "Standard Recovery Technique" if you encountered windshear or a microburst.
 
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