The first thing to do.. is park the jets and climb into the C172..  master the fundementals of approaches... and even when you're ready for jets;you must first master landing them yourself, before turning on an autopilot.

What you've described is an autopilot that was having to "fight" to keep on the glideslope..  meaning the approach was flawed, in any number of ways. Probably an airplane on the heavy side.. and 160kias sounds a bit fast for 20 degrees of flaps.

Click the image at the bottom of my post, and go from there 

...and turn off the blasted EFIS!

Those rectangles look really cool, but they're a major distraction and totally unneccesary. Look at it this way: if you know how to use a VOR and properly perform an ILS approach, then you don't need EFIS and you're concentrating on those two needles anyway. If you don't know how to fly an instrument approach; then EFIS is just going to get you killed as you chase the rectangles instead of fly the approach. On the rare occasion I do use them - generally on zero-zero approaches into a short strip under heavy icing, turbulence and precip at two in the morning - I use it strictly as verification, rather than as guidance.

Staiduk wrote on Oct 3^rd, 2009 at 2:39pm:




Please explain why you would turn of EFIS.  EFIS is not those rectangles, it is an Electonic Flight Istrument System, with essential information needed to fly the particular airplane.  It varies in most aircraft, but the PFD always has the primary flight instruments displayed on it.

For a Learjet, land between 125-135 knots. 160 is too high. You may use a little of the speed brakes to reduce your speed here and there on your final but do not extend it fully on final.

Try taking your airplane to, say, 5000 ft. Set up a simulated normal final approach (gear down, full flaps, final approach speed). Trim the airplane so it maintains the right final approach airspeed and rate of descent, hands-off. Engage the autopilot and let it descend for, say, 1000 ft. Then disengage the autopilot. I think you will see that if the airplane is properly trimmed before you engage the autopilot, it will maintain its trimmed attitude when you disengage the autopilot.

Hope this makes it more fun for you.

Art

olderndirt wrote on Nov 8^th, 2009 at 11:48am:


Yeah - I'll definitely say I'm a lot braver in my choice of flight conditions in FS than I am in real life... 

happens to me all the time when i forgot to trim the ailerons to their standard position before activating autopilot. At the time you press autopilot (on) it will head,climb,speed in the way youve put the autopilot. When you put the autopilot off the ailerons (in your case the ailerons therfore the dive) will automatically set back to the position before you activated the autopilot. So if your ailerons were downwards 30degrees before activating the autopilot they will return to 30degrees downward once you deactivate the autopilot.

in short....

after takeoff you put on autopilot, and remain on autopilot during the whole flight until landing on most ifr flights until you land and have to shut off autopilot. Then it returns to 30degrees downward and at 1000feet you wont have any anticipation to correct that aileron to zero. In real life it would also cause many g's forcing your body to even be unable to handle the steer at all let alone climb back. so make sure when you put on autopilot that your ailerons are set to 0 degrees.