Autopilot goes from VOR to ROLL when tracking VOR

Black Square

I've yet to see this happen myself, but I will be on the lookout for it. Autopilot disengagement due to loss of signal is entirely handled by the native autopilot controller, so I doubt there is much I can do, unfortunately.

MarkS

@Black-Square I know the real plane doesn’t have this feature but for purposes of trying to catch an uncommanded fallback from NAV to ROLL, an audible alert when it occurs would be useful. The autopilot disconnect sound, for instance, would certainly get my attention. Where would be an appropriate place to implement this pseudocode?

If CurrMode = ROLL and LastMode = NAV then
    PlaySound(AutopilotDisconnect)
LastMode = CurrMode

Black Square

@MarkS If you really want to open that can of worms for yourself, search for the following in Starship_Interior.XML

(&gt;L:var_AutopilotDisconnectTone, bool)

I'm happy to help with that. I just wanted to give you a quick answer before I left my desk for a few minutes.

Jouxeur33

actually idk if i'm missing something but sometimes when coming in an angle in HDG mode i cannot capture LOC signal, idk if its an autopilot limitation but i couldnt find something like that in the manual, also sometimes when coming via a FMS route to an IAF when i select appr mode it goes in FMS GS and i have to change nav source to finnaly capture LOC but in a case of vectoring im not sure to know how to fly an auto coupled approach from HDG mode to appr LOC GS.. but i'm sure im missing something here...

jmarkows

Are you running the latest version? There was a bug at launch that caused that.

Jouxeur33

oh i have 0.1.0 but latest is 0.1.2 u think that could be the cause?

EDIT : i've read the change log and there is something about it indeed so its on me thanks anyways!

MarkS

@Black-Square said in Autopilot goes from VOR to ROLL when tracking VOR:

I'm happy to help with that. I just wanted to give you a quick answer before I left my desk for a few minutes.

@Black-Square Nick, sorry, I know you're a busy guy, but I'm going to have to ask for some help with this. My first calculator was a slide rule way back last century, but this RPN stuff throws me once the nesting starts. I have to tease it out into a non-RPN form to try to get a handle on it, and even then I'm not sure I'm getting it right.

(In fact, I'm pretty sure I introduced an intermittent timing issue with my "personalization" mod, because I get spurious warning button activations from time to time, sometimes only transient, sometimes they cycle for a while. That's on me though, not asking for your help with that.)

To recap, what I am looking to do is to trigger the autopilot disconnect tone if the autopilot fails over from NAV to ROLL mode. And of course it should cease sounding if I press the autopilot disconnect button as usual.

If CurrMode = ROLL and LastMode = NAV then
    PlaySound(AutopilotDisconnect)
LastMode = CurrMode

The code itself likely isn't that hard, but I'm having trouble locating the relevent mode variables, and there's nested code in that whole Flight Director section that I can't quite get my head around, so I'm not sure where to safely put the code even if I had the vars on hand.

Black Square

@MarkS Give this a try I'm not sure exactly what this will do, but it should be a good place to start.

<UseTemplate Name="ASOBO_GT_Update">
	<FREQUENCY>1</FREQUENCY>
	<UPDATE_CODE>
		(A:AUTOPILOT MASTER, bool) (O:lastApNavMode) (A:AUTOPILOT BANK HOLD, Bool) (A:AUTOPILOT WING LEVELER, Bool) or and and if{
			1 (&gt;L:var_AutopilotDisconnectTone, bool)
		}
		(A:AUTOPILOT NAV1 LOCK, bool) (&gt;O:lastApNavMode)
	</UPDATE_CODE>
</UseTemplate>

MarkS

@Black-Square said in Autopilot goes from VOR to ROLL when tracking VOR:

@MarkS Give this a try I'm not sure exactly what this will do, but it should be a good place to start.

Thank you. Any particular location in the Flight Director code section you'd recommend to put it?

Black Square

You can drop that anywhere in the file between other <UseTemplate Name="ASOBO_GT_Update"> tags. For instance, right after the  comment.

MarkS

@Black-Square I'll give it a go. I suppose it could be dropped in anywhere but in good practice it ought to be at least near the other relevant functionality.

(P.S. as hard as it is for me to parse RPN, your code is a treat to work with for this old automation engineer).