Well, after 4 days of heavy "manual reading" I felt ready to fly this aircraft (J41). Wow, what a nice machine!! I did the tutorial flight from beginning to end and everything went without a hitch all the way to the approach.

 

Now I do have one question if I may. As per the tutorial, I was on autopilot and turning from TICON towards MOSBY. At that point I selected "Appr" on the FD panel (I was still in LNAV as per diections). As soon as I did, I got the orange "Cap" on the APPR Annunciator as expected, but my autopilot kicked off for some reason, and I could not re-engage it. I've not been able to find anything in the manual (so far) regarding that happening, and it's likely that's it's "finger trouble in the cockpit" (i.e. I had something configured incorrectly), but has anyone else experienced that? I was still in the turn towards MOSBY (I was not intercepting the ILS), and everything else was pretty much nominal.

 

Now, this did allow me to simply hand fly the approach which is a good thing when on a new airplane and I found it to be extremely nice to fly. I had no trouble nailing speeds and altitudes by following the tutorial, so this wasn't the worst thing that could happen. But it would be good to know for the future (and who knows - if it was something I screwed up I may never see it again).

 

Thanks a bunch,

 

Glenn Davy

PS - this is NOT a bug with the aircraft. I'm absolutely certain that it was something I did/didn't to just right so I'm trying to find out what that might have been - just want to make that clear

The J41's autopilot is more sophisticated than the 707 but more rudimentary than the 737. I think it kicks off at a certain height/altitude since you can't autoland her. I could be wrong about that though. I'm only part way through the manual and she's been in my hangar for the last year or so.

Yeah, I wondered about that, but I was still at 3,000 ft, so it shouldn't be that. Good thought though :). Thanks.

 

Glenn Davy

I'm pretty sure you have to manually deactivate it. The tutorial says to click the button twice. This is my procedure at decision height.

 

Now I do have one question if I may. As per the tutorial, I was on autopilot and turning from TICON towards MOSBY. At that point I selected "Appr" on the FD panel (I was still in LNAV as per diections). As soon as I did, I got the orange "Cap" on the APPR Annunciator as expected, but my autopilot kicked off for some reason, and I could not re-engage it. I've not been able to find anything in the manual (so far) regarding that happening, and it's likely that's it's "finger trouble in the cockpit" (i.e. I had something configured incorrectly), but has anyone else experienced that? I was still in the turn towards MOSBY (I was not intercepting the ILS), and everything else was pretty much nominal.

 

In terms of it not reengaging, it will turn off if you are maneuvering the aircraft...it's fairly sensitive that way...and (it seems to me) not engage until the airplane is stable. I've had occasional problems with getting it to engage from time to time but it's not the norm.

Thanks Gregg. That's probably why I couldn't get it to re-engage. As for the disengage, that may have been a "one-of". Now I never did press the V/L twice on the approach to KIAD to maybe I confused it or didn't have something set right. I flew the trip back to Westchester and did a vectored approach to the LOC and set up the autopilot APPR mode about the same distance out and all was hunky dory. No problems at all. Usually I wait to see if I have an ongoing problem with something, and I didn't this time for some reason, but all seems good now. But your note about it being sensitive to re-engage is good to know and I think I did run into that. Thanks very much for that info.

 

Glenn Davy