On Jun 4, 3:22*pm, a wrote:
A recent post regarding technology made me curious about something

The question for other pilots: on a 3 or 5 hour XC, do you let the
transistors do the work, or do you mostly fly the airplane from
"Clear" up to idle cut off?

. I'm guessing that 80% of the time I'm doing a cross country I
carefully trim the airplane and hand fly it -- bits of pushing and
pulling, twisting and turning, to keep the airplane from meandering
too far off course. the autopilot actually flies better than I do -- I
suspect that's true for most of us, I'm guessing the RMS error of the
a/p's course error is a degree or so and it mostly keeps the needles
centered on an ILS: it pays better attention than I do. Never the
less, I like manual controlling the airplane *and mostly do that..

What do YOU do?

Hand fly. I'd fall asleep if I used autopilot. Autopilot in my now
sold Sundowner was inop so I didn't have a choice. :-)

Plus I like NOT being a passenger and working the plane even in solid
IMC.