Dan Luke wrote:
: It's all about building confidence, and having someone to
: hold the plane for a minute while you collect your
: charts/plates/frequencies/weather
: briefing/wits would be a nice safety-net to task saturation. I
: believe most people
: call them "auto-pilots," but my plane is not so equipped...

: What are you going to do when you don't have that? Don't get me wrong,
: I'm a firm believer that a good autopilot reduces the risk of
: single-pilot IFR operations - I use mine extensively - but what if it
: dies? Shouldn't you be able to hand fly the procedures to minimums
: without help?
: --
: Dan
: C172RG at BFM

I agree completely. Perhaps my statement was poorly written so as to be
misunderstood. My plane does not have an autopilot, nor do I believe it makes sense
to add one (can't polish a turd... PA-28-180 isn't a hard IFR machine). If one has an
autopilot, I belive that the transition to single-pilot IFR might be a bit easier,
since you can let George fly while you collect yourself/charts/wits/etc. Just during
the initial learning and confidence-building stage it could be useful as a
"backup".... You'd still better be able to do it all by hand, though. Autopilots are
good if used as a tool, but I think lots of people depend on them.

-Cory

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* Cory Papenfuss *
* Electrical Engineering candidate Ph.D. graduate student *
* Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University *
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