Stick Engage Button

[PaulSS]

More planning ahead

I would like to keep my panel incredibly clean and will be using the knobs on the HDX to control the autopilot. It's okay, I have tried the options but am very confident I can do what I want to do my using the inbuilt capabilities. I would like to avoid installing a LEVEL button if I can. I have two buttons available on my stick top(s) and would like to use one to engage the autopilot (preferably in the LEVEL mode) and the other to disengage.

The wiring for the disengage is simple enough that even I can understand it but I cannot find anything in the manuals or this forum which tells me if I can use the button on my stick to engage the autopilot.

Is anybody able to either describe which pins have to be connected and how, or point me in the direction of a wiring diagram which shows how to do what I'd like to.

Thank you for your advice

 

[Carl_Froehlich]

Save yourself some pain and get a better panel as a bonus. Install the SkyView AP module. You are installing the Knob Panel as well, right? Makes AP track and altitude inputs very easy.

This module also replaces whatever you are using for trim relays, and gives you Autotrim.

Carl

 

[PaulSS]

Yep, understand all of that, Carl, but I have manual trim and have used the HDX with and without the Knob Panel and AP Panel. I am quite happy to have just the HDX installed in my panel and nothing else. At 90kts in a EuroFOX I have little use for many, or speedy, mode changes and will leave that to the day job

Having said all that, I think I may have just found the answer to my own question but post the answer here to (a)check I'm right and (b)leave it in case anyone else has the same query.

The LEVEL button connects to aircraft power (Pin 1 or 20), the dim output (Pin 26), Contact Input 1 (Pin 28) and Ground (Pin 21 or 22). It took me a while (and a glaringly obvious diagram of the D37 layout) but the power and dim pins are only needed to illuminate the button and it is really only Pin 28 and Ground that are doing the work. So running Pin 28 through the stick top button and to ground SHOULD (I think) engage the LEVEL mode.

If anybody thinks I'm talking bollox then please enlighten me.....I'm all ears.

Cheers

 

[PaulSS]

Oh, now that I like Admittedly that's what my MGL autopilot does (one press to engage, one to disengage) but I'll be happy if that can all be done using one button with the Dynon system.

Thanks very much for pointing that one out to me

 

[cbretana]

I found that the buttons on the top of the stick are too easy to activate inadvertently.
On my aircraft i have the A/P disengage/CWS wire hooked up to a 3 inch long lever switch mounted vertically on the front of the flight control stick just below where my pinky normally rests. That way, to toggle it, I just lower my pinky about an inch and pull it back, but it is less likely to be activated inadvertently.