VC10 Autopliot "Best Practice"

[vololiberista]

What I'm curious about is whether flightcrew have a best practice or whether they do what they feel is best for them. The AP functions are mostly pitch related leaving the throttle to be manually controlled.
To give an example: If you select AP soon after take-off how do you transition from a steep rate of climb to a noise abatement drift out and clean up?
Do you:-
1.Use the thumb wheels and throttle back?
2. Select Alt and reduce the climb rate with datum adjust - and throttle back?
3. Select IAS Hold and use the datum adjust to target required IAS?

All three potentially have the same effect but I would go with option 1. and then fine tune.

Climb out/Cruise climb is easy enough just by setting the IAS and maintaining throttle values.

vololiberista

[Charlie]

What I'm curious about is whether flightcrew have a best practice or whether they do what they feel is best for them. The AP functions are mostly pitch related leaving the throttle to be manually controlled.
To give an example: If you select AP soon after take-off how do you transition from a steep rate of climb to a noise abatement drift out and clean up?
Do you:-
1.Use the thumb wheels and throttle back?
2. Select Alt and reduce the climb rate with datum adjust - and throttle back?
3. Select IAS Hold and use the datum adjust to target required IAS?

All three potentially have the same effect but I would go with option 1. and then fine tune.

Climb out/Cruise climb is easy enough just by setting the IAS and maintaining throttle values.

vololiberista

It's been a while, and others have far more experience and recency on the forum, but the autopilot wasn't connected until after flap retract, which was after any noise abatement - if there was one. If it was done any other way, I think "1" would be the only sensible way, as the ALT or IAS locks wouldn't cope with such a drastic change in performance. Sometimes they barely coped in a simple climb/descent or the cruise!

[vololiberista]

What I'm curious about is whether flightcrew have a best practice or whether they do what they feel is best for them. The AP functions are mostly pitch related leaving the throttle to be manually controlled.
To give an example: If you select AP soon after take-off how do you transition from a steep rate of climb to a noise abatement drift out and clean up?
Do you:-
1.Use the thumb wheels and throttle back?
2. Select Alt and reduce the climb rate with datum adjust - and throttle back?
3. Select IAS Hold and use the datum adjust to target required IAS?

All three potentially have the same effect but I would go with option 1. and then fine tune.

Climb out/Cruise climb is easy enough just by setting the IAS and maintaining throttle values.

vololiberista

It's been a while, and others have far more experience and recency on the forum, but the autopilot wasn't connected until after flap retract, which was after any noise abatement - if there was one. If it was done any other way, I think "1" would be the only sensible way, as the ALT or IAS locks wouldn't cope with such a drastic change in performance. Sometimes they barely coped in a simple climb/descent or the cruise!

That makes sense! It's much easier (and good airmanship too) for the pilot to "stabilise" the IAS/throttle etc and then hand over to the autopilot. Nowadays the AP's in effect allow the pilots to "fire and forget". The consequence of forgetting is to end up at the bottom of the South Atlantic!!

[Charlie]

Nowadays the AP's in effect allow the pilots to "fire and forget". The consequence of forgetting is to end up at the bottom of the South Atlantic!!

Yes indeed, you couldn't really afford to "forget" about the autopilot in a VC10! That said, the bonus of the autopilot switchery was that if it "fell out", it was normally accompanied by a loud click!