Up until now, the A/P on all my aircraft has worked fine -- I have used itto steer a course for me , track a nav station, keep altitude, come down anILS glideslope for landing.BUT -- yesterday , I got vectored to a ILS/BC runway -- so I thought --OK,just dial in the backcourse, select backcourse, turn off the altitude hold ,give it a bit of down trim and visually descend while holding the backcoursedirection using the A/P. Easy!!UH -UH!!!! No can do!! Aircraft will not descend!!! Pushing the stickforward only causes the trim wheel to go crazy and try to take me back tothe altitude dialed into the A/P. Reduce the altitude to ZERO000---aircraft still wants to return to previous altitude.The ONLY way I can get these aircraft to descend is to completely turn offthe A/P and all its' functions.What am I doing wrong??

Hi Down Under,Well, if I understand your problem correctly, the fix is easy. Add the folowing to lines to your Autopilot data: use_no_default_pitch=1 and use_no_default_bank=1. Now you can disengage the altitude hold function whilst the rest of the A/P works as advertised. Add a little nose down trim and away you go for a back course approach.Regards,Layabout

EDITED: Nevermind, I misread the first post... Sorry

>Hi Down Under, >>Well, if I understand your problem correctly, the fix is >easy. Add the folowing to lines to your Autopilot data: >use_no_default_pitch=1 and use_no_default_bank=1. Now you >can disengage the altitude hold function whilst the rest of >the A/P works as advertised. Add a little nose down trim >and away you go for a back course approach. Thanks for that advice -- will try it . Does this apply to ALL aircraft? The 2 that I was having the problem with were the default 737 and the 727-200.Also, I know that there was a "fix" published dealing with the wing leveller - some people thought it was needed and others did not --this "fix" you have advised is not simply the "wings level " fix, is it?Thanks

Yes, all aircraft. It fixes both the wing-leveler and the inability to manually pitch the aircraft.

>Yes, all aircraft. It fixes both the wing-leveler and the >inability to manually pitch the aircraft. Thanks for that -- I read an advice in Microsofts website that talks about multi - axis A/Ps compared with simple single axis A/Ps - and how these are more realistic in a jet. But , it seems that this means that the Autopilot is in fact less flexible than the former.I wonder if the autopilot is turned off and then turned on again , if this would work?But that doesn't sound very realistic or practical to me!!??Barry

Of course, the other option is to turn off the AP and handfly the beast as it is done in the real world. Coupled landings are actually fairly rare according to the big iron drivers I have talked with. The main exceptions are for CAT II and CAT III conditions (very low ceilings and visibility) and training. Bob

There is a small program by Dave Westbury that will adjust this for all your planes, see here:http://www.fsfreeware.com/dcd/Topsites/Alastair