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System Overview
Press the “AP” button on the autopilot control panel
(servos will disconnect but the flight director will remain
active);
Pull the circuit breaker(s) controlling the power to the
autopilot.
For those aircraft with the stall warning wired directly to the
autopilot, the autopilot will disconnect if the aircraft stall warning
alarm is triggered.
In most cases, the autopilot disconnect will be accompanied by a
16-beep disconnect aural alert. This tone can be muted by
another press of the AP Disconnect switch on the control yoke.
FD vs. AP
The status of the reference bugs, autopilot annunciators, autopilot
control head, and flight director steering command bars indicate
when the IFD is coupled with the autopilot.
A solid magenta heading, altitude, IAS or VS bug indicates that
function is currently coupled to an engaged or armed mode of the
autopilot or the flight director. A hollow magenta bug indicates
that the function is not currently coupled to the autopilot or flight
director in an engaged or armed mode. In other words, the
autopilot and flight director, are ignoring any hollow magenta bug.
The flight director command bars will indicate the required
steering of the aircraft to achieve the commanded tracking of the
autopilot. In full autopilot mode, both the “AP” and “FD” buttons
will be lit on the autopilot control panel and “AP” will be displayed
in the autopilot annunciation field on the display, the command
bars will be visible and
magenta
and the aircraft should track
those bars very precisely.
In Flight Director only mode, only the “FD” button (and not the
“AP” button) will be lit on the autopilot control panel and “FD” will
be displayed in the autopilot annunciation field on the display, the
command bars will be visible and
green
, and the pilot is expected
to use the flight controls as required to track those bars. In Flight
Director only mode, the pilot is hand flying the airplane and is
expected to guide the aircraft such that the yellow aircraft
reference symbol is tucked into the steering command bars.
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