Working Title CJ4 - LOC Mode Issue

[regis9 4,026]

Hello, I did my first full flight in the excellent Working Title CJ4 tonight.  Everything went really well except that on approach I wasn't able to arm LOC mode and therefore couldn't intercept the localizer.  I had the ILS frequency properly tuned (KIAD 01C ILS), I could see the frequency recognized on the PFD display.  When I hit the APPR button, it armed G/S mode but not LOC.  Did I miss a step?  Is the procedure to arm LOC in this aircraft different than most?

Thanks,

Dave

Edited December 13, 2020 by regis9

[MattNischan 3,781]

Hi Dave,

Hitting approach mode does not currently auto-switch the nav source to the localizer. So, if you're in magenta FMS needles, you'll want to switch to green needles by clicking the NAV button above the PFD, which will switch the nav source between FMS and the two nav radios. Then APPR should capture laterally.

If that doesn't do the trick, you may be hitting the sim bug where the localizer just doesn't capture sometimes. We have a fix coming in the upcoming version of the aircraft that will address that problem.

-Matt

[regis9 4,026]

Thanks Matt, I should have mentioned I was in HDG mode when I was attempting the intercept with green needles set to VOR1.  What I found odd was that when I hit APPR, I got the white G/S indication to show G/S mode was armed, but I didn't get the white LOC indication so it's like LOC wasn't being armed at all.

The only other issue I ran into was that while using my Brunner CLS-E yoke the autopilot was very unstable.  It would bank to far and start to roll over when trying to intercept the NAV course and I was also getting a lot of nose up and down bouncing.  When I unplugged it and switched to my Warthog joystick all worked fine so it seems to be something specific to the Brunner yoke.  This is the first aircraft I've run into this with so I'm not sure what's up there.

Kudos to you and the team for an amazing mod.  Having not flown this in a while I was blown away by the added features and overall improved experienced you and the team have added.

[MattNischan 3,781]

45 minutes ago, regis9 said:

Thanks Matt, I should have mentioned I was in HDG mode when I was attempting the intercept with green needles set to VOR1. 

That actually tracks with the strange behavior we've seen in the most recent MSFS version while working on the next CJ4 update: somehow when going to APPR the sim AP ends up reporting being in _both_ HDG and APPR, which should definitely not be possible at all. There's some internal state getting corrupted somewhere inside the sim.

 

48 minutes ago, regis9 said:

The only other issue I ran into was that while using my Brunner CLS-E yoke the autopilot was very unstable.

One thing our resident pilot K2 found is that if the yoke has a noisy output, then the AP will go absolutely bonkers and do stuff like this. In his case, his yoke cable was making the trim axis quite noisy, and the AP just couldn't deal. So that may be why a different set of controls is working better.

50 minutes ago, regis9 said:

Kudos to you and the team for an amazing mod.  Having not flown this in a while I was blown away by the added features and overall improved experienced you and the team have added.

You're very kind, thank you so much! Just wait till you see the next version. Watch this space, it's coming very soon!

-Matt

[Flyfaster_MTN002 412]

Saw this behavior tonight as well trying to shoot RNAV approaches as well FWIW

[regis9 4,026]

9 hours ago, MattNischan said:

One thing our resident pilot K2 found is that if the yoke has a noisy output, then the AP will go absolutely bonkers and do stuff like this.

That makes sense, the Brunner yoke has a functionality to move the yoke to mimic Autopilot yoke movements so perhaps that’s the issue.  I’ll try disabling that.

[PapaRomeo 40]

Having problems with latest build, before it worked fine for me.