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Autopilot on older planes?

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Anything with an approach coupler has auto-land too....I didn't say anything about flare and "smooth" auto-land.
 
Thedude said:
Messed around with a Convair 550 that had an autopilot. I had a big switch abouve the glareshield to turn it on and a big green light to let you know it was on. The best I remember all it has was heading and altitude hold.

Good Grief, what is a Convair 550?

DC
 
Obviously he wasn't the first, but wasn't Bill Lear credited with some sort of AP design breakthrough?

That B-17 AP sounds pretty darn slick for it's time!
 
Eastern Airlines

I remember reading an article about airlines and autopilots many years ago. It seems that Eddy Rickenbacker wasn't to keen on the idea of paying good money for autopilots when he had two highly paid professionals sitting up front. For that reason, Eastern was the last major airline to equip their aircraft with autopilots and they only did so after a study showed something like a 5% fuel savings with them. (So much for real pilots don't need autopilots. :p )

'Sled
 
NuGuy said:
It was pretty basic stuff. wing leveler, heading hold, airspeed and vertical speed hold. Altitude hold. VOR/ILS tracking. No altitude capture or LNAV.

There are flight directors, but they are totally non-integrated with the autopilots (separate systems entirely). NWA's DC-9 APs are Cat 2 qualfied, and they do the job well enough..
Yep, I thought that was a weird (or just old) set-up, usually a Collins FD-108/109 working with a Sperry SP-50 A/P... but they didn't "talk" to each other. Want to capture an ILS? Go for the FD control panel and switch it to AutoApp, then over to the AP panel and switch that to AutoApp. Everything was a two switch operation... no big deal I guess, just low tech. 1960's state of the art baby!
 

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