What is the Flight Director?

[Bill Von Sennet]

I was looking at a panel, and next to the AP Autopilot Switch there is a FD Flight Director switch.

What does it do? All I see different is a slight change to the center of the Attitude Gauge.

[Bill Hendrix (bgas046)]

Bill, go to this link and it will give you pretty good info about a flight director switch.
www.aopa.org/special/microsoft/articles/autopilot0009.html

[pterodactyl (George)]

Bill
I don't know if MS has it the same as I see in the aircraft I work on but usually the FD switch enables the Horizontal / Vertical tracking bars that are part of the Flight Director Attitude Indicator. These bars give the pilot a central visual reference that Autopilot is tracking the planned route. If you select a different heading or altitude with the bars "on" you will actually see the barstrack to your new direction.

[Tom Goodrick]

You guys are close but are missing the true point of a Flight Director. To day the FD is used in all jets and turboprops. In general it is independent of the autopilot and is normally used when the autopilot is OFF. It shows you what you should be doing to fly the aircraft properly but lets you do all control inputs manually. In FS9 you often see the FD remain alive when you shut off the autopilot as when near the approach phase.

It moves bars on the attitude reference gauge to show what you SHOULD be doing with the aircraft. BUT the big problem with this is that often, when we shut down the autopilot to go on manual, we do not have the correct guidance set to put the airplane on the ground. We still have obsolete entroute data set. Thus the FD gives us BOGUS information. I never use it and make it a habit of turning off the FD switch when I turn off the autopilot.

In many real planes today you MUST fly with the FD on and with proper guidance set. This merges with the use of the FMC or Flight Management Computer that can go into approach phase and give you accurate control cues.

It is true that, when using the autopilot, the FD gives you more information on how well the autopilot is flying the airplane. But its primary purpose is to show you waht you should be doing when flying the airplane as though you were too dumb to remember all that info in the manual. (Of course it knows the stall speed for your weight and flap condition and tells you to ADD POWER if you get too low or too slow.

It just dawned on me that, in FS9 today, if you set up a complete IFR flight plan using ATC from a parking place on one airport to another airport (with a parking place determined at some time), you can use the arrows to guide you during manual taxi, use the autopilot in heading and alttitude mode during departure, use nav mode to fly to the destination etc etc until the arrows guide you to a parking place. I would not be surpirzed if the FD tells you what to do all the way.

[Bill Von Sennet]

Thanks you gentlemen for your answers. It is probably something I will ignore, but I may fool with it a little bit.