Advanced AP flight director

[bobl_51]

Does this new flight director in the upcoming AP understand IFR procedures?
Can I load a database that includes IFR SIDs/STARS/Approaches and create a flight plan that the flight director/AP will follow?

 

[dynonsupport]

A flight director is not a GPS Navigator or a Flight Management system. A flight director shows the pilot what the autopilot would be doing if the servos were engaged.

You are asking if our navigation software supports GPS approaches, and it does not. This is a function that must be certified (in the USA at lease), even in homebuilt aircraft. To fly GPS approaches with our autopilot, you still must have a approach certified GPS on board.

 

[preid]

Silly question, but How will the flight director work on the Skyview and what is required other than the AP to have it work. I see that it "shows the pilot what the autopilot would be doing if the servors were engaged" why is that important?

 

[60av8tor]

Silly question, but  How will the flight director work on the Skyview and what is required other than the AP to have it work. I see that it "shows the pilot what the autopilot would be doing if the servors were engaged" why is that important?

Think of a FD like lateral and vertical guidance during an ILS. Some FDs are crosshairs, some are chevrons - I believe Dynon has both available to be selected in the upcoming update. Keep your attitude indicator in the chevrons and you'll be on your selected course, on altitude, on airspeed. It is a nice feature to minimize workload while still hand flying. VERY glad Dynon is adding it. Can't wait for the next update. You rock Dynon!!

 

[clippertee]

A flight director is not a GPS Navigator or a Flight Management system. A flight director shows the pilot what the autopilot would be doing if the servos were engaged.

You are asking if our navigation software supports GPS approaches, and it does not. This is a function that must be certified (in the USA at lease), even in homebuilt aircraft. To fly GPS approaches with our autopilot, you still must have a approach certified GPS on board.

In all systems I have flown the flight director is for hand flying as most F/D’s are completely independent of the autopilot. It will usually closely follow what the A/P does. Turning off the A/P and centering the command bars in a dual que (command bars) system by centering the bars with the controls will give the desired results. When on A/P the F/D bars are present if turned on so the pilot can take over manually when required. Again, with an A/P, you do not need flight directors. Their greatest benefit is when the A/P is off.

 

[ljbuller]

I have 27 years of flying behind a flight director, so I have a working understanding of the system. On my first flight with Rev 6 software, the FD is working, but showing a couple degrees high. For instance I am VSI - ALT and climbing at the commanded vsi. The FD is above the yellow airplane symbol by about 2 degrees. Straight and level, and trimmed out, the point of the yellow airplane symbol is just above the horizon line. Is there an adjustment for the flight director?

 

[dynonsupport]

Unless you are following the flight director, it can be off. The flight director is kind of a relative device, it asks when it wants you to change what you are doing. Thus, if the plane is level at the altitude you chose, the FD isn't going to want to rock that boat and ask you to start moving.

In this case, the slightest of pitch up or down will cause the FD to move and likely end up centered.

All that said, we did discover that the FD doesn't follow the pitch adjust in the PFD setup menu, so if you have a few degrees of pitch adjust and are using the single cue symbology, that may be part of the issue and we'll need to fix that in a future release.

 

[Dynon]

We think there might be a small bug here. Is your SETUP>PFD SETUP>FLIGHT ANGLE PITCH ADJUST set to a non-zero value? If so, zero it out as an experiment. Now does it work?

 

[clippertee]

why not make the flight director available without an auto-pilot installed?

 

[DrewSwenson]

Here is what Dynon said in 2010: "Yes, you can have a flight director without physical servos, but you can't have a flight director until we have an AP subsystem in the SkyView. So we won't have a flight director until after SkyView can be an autopiliot. Sounds like we're on the same page."

Here is the link: http://dynonavionics.com/cgi-bin/yabb2/YaBB.pl?num=1267042984/5#5

I assume this means that the next release will enable the FD regardless of installed servos.

 

[Dynon]

Well, if you read the post two after it, we said: "When we have it, you will be able to enable it independent of engaging the servos.". The first statement was a bit clumsy. What it meant to convey is that a flight director doesn't strictly have anything to do with servos, but we didn't intend to imply a promise that FD would work without the servos installed.

Nonetheless, that statement was from 3 years ago, which was well before we actually had an actual product in the works. In the end, we decided to tie the flight director to the presence of servos upon this release because in our system, the presence of servos is what turns on all of the AP interface, code hooks, etc. So while it's easy to say "just let me turn on the FD even if I don't have servos", realize that there is lots of testing that you have to do to make sure that the behaviors you are after are the behaviors you end up with. We'll keep an eye on this capability for the future, but no promises.

 

[DrewSwenson]

ok--roger that---no FD without servos. I did look at 2 posts down as you suggested. But here is one post up from my original:

"I think we have a terminology mismatch. Won't the autopilot functions (heading, alt, ILS engage, etc) eventually be part of the main display (as opposed to a separate box) and be available to set regardless of whether you have autopilot servos or not?

You should be able to set the flight director without having actual servos----and the pilot should be able to follow flight director commands manually."

This was your next post: "Yes, you can have a flight director without physical servos, but you can't have a flight director until we have an AP subsystem in the SkyView. So we won't have a flight director until after SkyView can be an autopiliot. Sounds like we're on the same page"

To me---sounds like I was pretty clear----and that you were pretty clear 3 years ago. If you have changed your mind, I accept that. But I don't think that I misunderstood.

Still a loyal and happy customer. Installed your first EFIS system in my Longez. Then installed your EMS10 in my Cozy---still have the EMS10 and also the smaller Skyview. Looks like servos will be next.

 

[Dynon]

True enough, we may have had different intentions when we were thinking about about it back then. I'm one of the people that thinks about this stuff a lot (back then inclusive, though I wasn't the author of that particular post - a few of us post here as Support), and I'm honestly not sure where we thought we were heading back then. Sorry for making that sound to promisey. We try to keep that to a minimum around here. And thanks for your support!

 

[swatson999]

We think there might be a small bug here. Is your SETUP>PFD SETUP>FLIGHT ANGLE PITCH ADJUST set to a non-zero value? If so, zero it out as an experiment. Now does it work?

Same problem here...and yes, when I reset the adjustment to 0, the two matched perfectly. But, of course, straight and level will vary depending on airspeed, so you need to fix this so that the FD understands and uses the flight angle pitch adjustment.

Other than that, which caused us some confusion during fine-tuning per the procedures, everything is working great!