Captains-once and for all: The NG does NOT autotune ANY VOR - it autotunes to DMEs for IRS purposes ONLY, and that, as an option.Hope this clarifies.

"One question though, if the FMS is transparentlly tuning the VOR/DME's how can the pilots tune them as well? "Steve....Each DME Interrogator (there are two of them) is capable being tuned to different 5 DME stations (at the same time), so, depending on DME station coverage, the FMC can accept data from 10 different DME stations. It uses the stations which give the best geometry for a position fix. Manually tuning the VOR (which tunes the associated DME station) will use up two of the ten, but the FMC will use the information from these stations if it is required.Hope this makes sense.Cheers.Ian.

I don't think it's a step back, I call it "First Officer Job Security". In the C-130, we definetly don't have autotune, other than the PNF tuning and independantly verifying and following position by NAVAIDS. Boeing I think was smart to not add that, but that's just my .02