Flight Director display without Autopilot Installed?

[Bill Putney]

For Certified types that can't yet install Dynon Autopilots, Is there a tactical advantage to being able to use the Flight Director display to assist in hand flying? I've never had an autopilot coupled to a flight director display.

Is the autopilot functionality (including Flight Director) disabled if the software can't find servos?

 

[Dynon]

Currently, the Flight Director is tied to servo installation / calibration. This wasn't originally done with strong intent to lock out the flight director - the two features were just bundled because of their overlap. At this point, it hasn't been pulled out because of the moderate complexity of separating them.

 

[Flying_Monkey]

I was just looking for the FD functionality in my Dynon for certified without autopilot (not yet STC’d for my Pa32). Sure would be nice to have the Fd function. I used to have a GRT mini-GA installed as a PED in my old 180 and even that had flight director bars. Hopefully it can be included in a future softwar3 update....

 

[Bill Putney]

The FD display is tied tightly to AP in the Dynon software. For those of us prohibited from having AP by the Dynon Certified AML, it still might be nice to have FD. For reasons I don't understand, a somewhat parallel functionality is "Highway In The Sky" (HITS) is available without AP. I haven't flown with either FD or HITS yet but it seems like they get around to displaying the mostly the same information. If Dynon made a "baby-FD" function that used the information from the HITS logic displayed as FD that might be nice for we AP deprived folks that get claustrophobic flying through boxes.

 

[JF_Monier]

The FD display is tied tightly to AP in the Dynon software. For those of us prohibited from having AP by the Dynon Certified AML, it still might be nice to have FD. For reasons I don't understand, a somewhat parallel functionality is "Highway In The Sky" (HITS) is available without AP. I haven't flown with either FD or HITS yet but it seems like they get around to displaying the mostly the same information. If Dynon made a "baby-FD" function that used the information from the HITS logic displayed as FD that might be nice for we AP deprived folks that get claustrophobic flying through boxes.

I confirm, that would be nice to have FD available also for very light aircraft when adding servo's is not possible due to extra weight added.

 

[RVDan]

From my experience working AP certifications, the FD has to include the sensitivity and rates of the AP so that the command bars don‘t lag or be too jittery.