Autothrottle stays slow after takeoff

Thanks, Will and Kyle. I finally understood that the FD/AP will briefly run Takeoff mode and will hold the runway heading without a specific heading input but setting HDG can also work.Here is the key piece of text it took me many flights and re-reads to finally see: "When the FMS PROF mode is engaged, altitude is controlled by the FMS altitude targets in PROF climb or the FMS steering commands in PROF descent." For me, this one sentence buried in hundreds of pages was huge. The PROF mode works differently in climb than in descent. In descent it's monitoring waypoints so tweaking the filght plan may make more sense; in ascent its watching the accel targets on the FMS takeoff page. Couple this with the fact the PROF mode will set the throttles to THRUST mode when climbing to the FCP altitude and now I can finally understand why the autothrottle behaves the way it does.To climb out on runway heading, all one has to do is (one method as you said Kyle) is to pre-arm PROFILE on the ground, engage autopilot at 100+ to hold the runway heading automatically, and PROFILE will takeover at 400+ and cause a "throttle up" to THRUST mode so you can clean up. You need not be on the flight plan at this time because PROFILE ascent doesn't use the waypoints, it uses raw altitude targets. It finally clicked. I let it go and it does what it claims beautifully. I thought I had tried this before and it didn't work but I must have been setting altitude explicitly, not using PROFILE. I think that leads to "speed on pitch" which is not the acceleration I wanted. I could nose over I guess and that's ok, its just not what I was looking for at that time.Heh, this plane only gets better and better. Thanks all.CheersClark