Autopilot Basics

As you enter a bank, the attitude indicator shows it immediately, but it takes a moment for a turn to show on the turn gyro. Try it. You dont even have to look at the instruments. Sharply roll into, say, about a 30-degree bank. Your nose is most likely still pointing in the same direction it was before the roll. Then, the plane starts to turn. This is why its more difficult to maintain a heading on instruments without an attitude gyro, just using the turn gyro.

Editorial Staff

Wednesday, July 11, 2018 at 12:00 AM ET

Verified

Key Takeaways:

Autopilots have evolved from rare wing-levelers to near-necessities for instrument flight in GA aircraft, controlling roll, pitch, and sometimes yaw axes using either simpler rate-based or more precise attitude-based gyros.
Modern systems offer various lateral modes (e.g., Heading, NAV, GPS Steering for precise course tracking) and vertical modes (e.g., Altitude Hold, Altitude Preselect, Glideslope, Go-Around) to manage diverse flight parameters.
Many capable autopilots include a flight director, which visually guides the pilot via command bars on the attitude indicator, showing the desired pitch and roll commands whether the autopilot is engaged or not.

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Finding an autopilot in a piston GA airplane 50 years ago was rare. Now, while not (yet?) ubiquitous, autopilots are a near necessity for serious instrument flight. Thus, we’re seeing autopilots in more and more of our aircraft, allowing us to focus our attention at higher levels of thinking. But, just like our magic wonder boxes, proper autopilot use requires some understanding of what’s happening behind the scenes.

What is Autopilot?

The things we call autopilots range from devices that will simply keep the wings level all the way to something that’ll follow your navigator for the entire flight, even to the point of keeping you away from the edges of the aeronautical envelope—or, if you get too close to those edges, return you to a safe attitude at the press of a button.