In article ,
says...


On Feb 17, 1:43*am, VOR-DME wrote:
In article
,
says...



Interesting, in that we tend to handfly the Mooney in IMC, using
autopilot only when we need a break if there's only one pilot on
board. It's a subjective thing I suppose, but hand flying does not
take a lot of effort en route (or most of the time, if truth be told)
and I'd not want to have to suddenly transition to hand flying in IMC
in the unlikely event the autopilot had a subtle failure.

Interesting. I do not share your point of view, but I respect it.
I not only hand-fly, in training, but I (like others) fly partial panel, to
simulate vacuum failure (conventional systems) or electrical failure (glass
systems). In "real" flight, I use everything available, freeing up the xx%
of
my brain that was used just maintaining heading and altitude to maintain a
higher-level vision of the progress of the flight. I believe this overall
vision is more important that the difficulty of transitioning to a degraded
control mode in the case of a system failure, partly because of the
unlikelihood of the latter.

There's more to our side of the story -- we like to hand fly! Our self
adminstered safety flights are a bit more challenging than those
administered by our cfi, esp w/r/t partial panel, instrument
failures, and unusual attitudes. I suspect the difference in safety
between our two methods would be hard to quantify. One of us could
type more loudly than the other, I suppose -- this is the usernet
after all. .

Sorry for the /null/ post!!
I like to hand fly too. Insisted on it in my IR training. NDB approaches IMC as
well. But I won't subject my passengers to increased risk just because I think
it's more challenging for myself. IS THAT CLEAR? I*S T*H*A*T C*L*E*A*R*?? :-)