A friend of mine who is a QF 767 Captain calls it the autopilot master, his to his own I guess.. Anyway yes, the autopilot....
And I have 8000 hours on that aircraft...... It has autopilot 'engage' buttons on the MCP, and a 'disengage bar' just underneath. The actual disengage switch is next to the PTT button. There is no switch designated the 'master'.
Mode? I assume ARM, however I am not familiar with the specifics. Can you elaborate on the differences?
Goodness, I thought you knew this stuff. At least that was the impression earlier on. The autothrottle will not be armed. Hopefully, like the autopilot, it's active. SPEED would be a good place to start.
For speed, that obviously depends on a/c weight, flap setting and environmental factors. Aim for a landing speed of 160 kias in a B737 is what I have been told.
Actually, what I meant was how will you manage the speed on the approach? Whilst I fly approaches in which I start at relatively high speed, and decelerate through much of it, as I take more flap and the landing gear, that would not be what you would need in this situation (nor, in fact, in any abnormal situation). The safest way to manage the speed would be to decelerate in level flight, and fully configure the aircraft, before reaching the glide path. That way there would be no need for any configuration and speed changes.
One of the sim's failure in depicting realism since if I leave AP on the aircraft slams into the ground. I take it since the real aircraft has a radar radar altimeter it's capable of flaring itself..
Well, it is if it's in the right mode.
I was under the assumption the transmit switch is located on the stick.
Well, yes, it is. But so are a number of other buttons.
More generally, would you mind explaining how you perform an ILS approach?
Well, no, I'm not going to write a long treatise on the buttons I need to push, and how I'll set it up, simply because EVERY approach is different. The weather conditions differ, the approach set up will be different (i.e. ATC may have cut you in close, so that you're high, or fast, or both, or perhaps you've actually flown the entire STAR with no deviation). I may be able to fly the approach in managed NAV and SPEED right up to the point where I select APP, but just as likely I'll have used both managed and selected speed, open descent, and vertical speed, as well as heading. In fact, for a short period this morning, we looked at one approach that would have been flown in NAV and FPA.
I never disconnect the autothrust in the AB (other than at 40 feet, when the thrust levers are closed, which also disconnects it), and I used to leave it engaged in the 747 until about 500 feet. 767 was manual thrust if I was flying manually, otherwise autothrust with the autopilot.
Normally I select flap 1 at about 14 miles to run. Flap 2 at glideslope intercept. Gear at about 2300 feet. Flap 3 at 2000 and 4 immediately after. Aircraft will have decelerated from about 190-200 knots at the start, to about 138 knots by 1200 feet or so, with the power and speed stable by 1000', with the checklist complete.
I understand many pilots express resentment towards "simmers' when they start talking about flying like they know what's going on but I'll take any opportunity to learn. Have I flown an aircraft before? Yes a Cessna 172 and I acknowledge it's far from a passenger jet hence my questions.
I've got nothing against simmers. In fact, I find the level of knowledge, and attention to details, that they sometimes show, to be amazing. But, we do get annoyed when they start to think that what they do has any real relationship to the real world. I've tried the sim games. I've also flown the 'sim', and the aircraft. Believe me, all three are quite different. I'm quite prepared to accept that in some ways these games provide quite valid training...but, they are not the real thing.
