I’ve introduced a lot of pilots to a lot of different types of autopilots in over 30 years teaching in high-performance aircraft. What began for me as a building-block teaching technique has evolved into the way I use autopilots myself: beginning with the basics and adding complexity. It puts the aircraft in simple automated control right away while giving me time to build complexity as desired from there.
Just as I introduce autopilot operation to students, I’ve found it useful in my normal flying to engage the autopilot first in the simple modes with little chance of mode confusion. That gets the airplane going in the basic directions (vertically and laterally) I want, reducing my flying workload. I’ll then add complexity by engaging various modes, as needed. But what are those modes?
