Real Airbus Pilot A320 NEO Autopilot Basics Tutorial in Microsoft Flight Simulator!

[Music] hello everyone and welcome to another video with me 320 sim pilot where today we're going to look at how to use the autopilot in the a320 neo in microsoft flight simulator i am a real world airbus pilot so hopefully this can bring some extra context to your home simulations on microsoft flight simulator but of course none of this is for any real world use it's just for our use in flight simulator to get us some entertainment and hopefully see some of the differences between the two i've just departed uh from geneva code lsgg and we're at flight level one two zero and what we're gonna do is just have a go at climbing and descending and turning so let's get started right so here we are in the flight deck as usual i will complement the graphics because it is exceptionally good i am amazed at how well they recreated this flight deck in terms of the visuals and we'll have a look at some of the uh automatic modes first of all we need to look at our primary flight display our pfd which is here and as you can see it's in these modes so up here we have what are called a flight mode enunciators these are fmas which is what pilots will call them and what they do is show us the modes that the automatics are following and what these flight director bars these green lines are doing for us and what they're trying to achieve so what i can see is it says thrash climb so i need to make sure that i have the climb gate now that would normally mean in the real aircraft that it's targeting a climb thrust so that's wrong because we aren't at climb thrust we are currently sitting at the thrust to target this speed because it's fine 320 knots so that's actually definitely not true to the airplane but that's what that was trying to say so that shows us where the um what sort of speed mode we're flying whether it's a climb thrust or a speed mode and that's what the auto thruster will then do here we have out it's in out which means it's trying to maintain this altitude over here now i've set standard up here which you do by uh pushing that so there you go if you push it in with a little arrow up it goes qnh1013 because i've set it to hpa by clicking that because in europe that's what we use at pascals and then if i put it towards me which means uh if i move the arrow so it's down it pulls towards you and you set std standard and that means we are on a flight level of one two zero so that's how you mix between the two so that's staying out flight level one two zero and that is fine nav mode tells me it's following this green line now this green line was already loaded into the flight plan in the mcdu and i am going to do some videos on the mcdu if you guys would like uh to explain it a little bit there's a lot of differences between the real aircraft but some similarities that we can use but so you can see that uh the green line the green waypoint is 30. so these are other waypoints on our route and that is to do up here so you know we're heading towards it the service should be the next waypoint or which it is up here civ so that's good um so we're on that green line there so that was loaded in by flight simulator because i told it the route i was going to fly which is quite a neat feature i do like that makes it quite simple so we're in nav mode and that's what that's telling us over here i can see autopilot one is engaged which is great that means that autopilot one i can swap it over all the pilot two and it does that thing where it shows you the white box because there's been a change and it goes to ap2 so we're gonna say on autopilot one typically in the airbus we fly with the autopilot of the side of pilot flying so we take turns and if it's the captain flying then they will use autopilot one so that is uh engaged up there one ft2 means the flight directors are on so that's this fd and we would always have those on if we're using the autopilot and they are both on in microsoft flight simulator they turn off together which is quite handy so you can see that now both of these are off and both of them are on if they're off you get nothing in there um so we can have those on we're using the auto pilot and that's what this video is about and then auto thrust is white if it was blue it means it's armed but because it's white it means it's engaged and i can see that here a slash thr auto thrust is engaged and you get the green line now it's important to note that to get this auto thruster work thrust levers need to be somewhere from here to here and as i reduce them i limit the auto thrust which is what these little donuts show me so if i bring them back the auto thrust can't use all of its range and it seems to say speed mode i mean that's that's what it should have been in the first place but if i put it to climb which is where we leave it for most of the flight basically you take off in a takeoff thrust and then you put it to climb around about a thousand or 1500 feet above the runway um but that's where i'm going to leave it to make sure the automatics can use basically up to climb thrust to maintain the speed or whatever i ask it to so there we go to turn off the auto thrust you can press that button and then you'll see that you have control using your thrust levers which moves these little circles called doughnuts and we can adjust the thrust like a traditional aircraft but now we're accelerating so let's go ahead i press that button to arm it and then i need to put these in the climb gate it's called and now it should target that speed again now let's have a look at a climb let's climb to flight level 180 so how do i do that well first of all i'm going to wind it into this window so 18 000 feet and then i have a few options in the real aircraft i can use what's called managed climb and that's here engage managed altitude mode and that would be if i click now it'll air up we push this altitude knob towards the airplane or away from you and it will go into a mode where it will target the computed altitudes and climb gates so if i push it in it climb and it should climb to flight over 180 with climb thrust so we'll see the engines increase and up it goes now i've tried this in actual flights motor and it doesn't always work because it gets confused and tries to climb through the flight level so let's see if that works what you can also do is climb in open climb so that would be selected astute mode where i pull it towards me so the little arrow up it's managed and the little arrow down is selected so if i do that it should go open climb in open climb it will just climb at climb thrust at the speed i've got all the way up to that flight level if i was to then change the speed which i can do by pulling the speed towards me and then winding it up with the mouse wheel the nose should lower and it will actually try and climb at whatever speed i've got set using climb thrust because as you can see it's only targeting uh flush climb so the thrust will stay the same and it will just try and climb using whatever speed i've given it and if i now reduce that speed using the mouse wheel then those will raise as it tries to climb at 290 knots now as we get close and you're going to see a crazy rate of climb that's that's too high it's pretty unrealistic but um it should go into out star mode so you wouldn't want to be climbing this fast anywhere near this flight level um but let's see if it manages just to see what the autopilot does out star is a mode up here so it's currently it's in climb open climb there's out star which means it's going to capture this altitude or flight level in this case so that has worked which is good and now we'll see it level off at flight level one eight zero that was my mistake i've got uh the t flight hot s4 and then constantly if you move these structures slightly you get these different modes um so yeah that's why that changed then but still outstar is working and it's leveling off at flight 180 so that is good that's all worked and selected speed has worked so as you can see by pulling it towards me the little down arrow i click that i have control of the speed and now i can wind it up and down as i need to it should really say speed mode up here because that's the mode it's in now it should say speed out star but there we go so that is working what i can also do is push it away from me manage speed mode and you can see that we get these dashes up here because the airbus now is controlling that and it's targeting 320 knots which is fine great so there you go we've seen two different ways to climb and we've had a look at changing the speed something else we want to look at is how do we uh navigate so if we get given a heading by a traffic control how do i know how to get to that well at the moment we are in heading mode sorry nav mode it says nav up here and i want to get it into a heading so to do that in the real aircraft i would pull this switch so put the arrow down and engaged selected so you'll see a theme here that selected is when you have control manages when the airbus has control so pull that towards me and it goes into heading and now it's in a selected heading mode now i can wind that round so if i went to heading north three six zero or zero zero zero heading and then see the little blue triangle here shows me that's the heading i'm targeting and the heading mode up here tells me that's what the airplane's going to fly towards and as it does that we come around hopefully it's heading north how do i go back into nav mode now it's done that well same principle put the little arrow up push it towards the airplane it goes into dashes the airplane takes control and we get nav mode up here it's not enough to look up here we need to see these and that's why it frustrates me that this thrust climb is wrong because it's not targeting thrush climb it's starting that speed but there we go and it goes back to civ so there you go there's just a few ways to climb and turn the airbus in flight simulator another thing we can do is climb in vertical speed this is rare but it might be a way to control your climb rate when you're near to a level off so as you can see we were climbing very fast within about a thousand feet to go of your flight level or altitude you want to have that i'm reduced to something reasonable maybe a thousand feet per minute so let's pretend that air traffic control has cleared us to climb further so let's put light bulb two three zero and now i'm going to use vertical speed now in the real aircraft i can select this like this and then uh by by using the mousel uh wheel i can set the vessel speed and then pull and it goes straight to it but it doesn't work in flight simulator so i'm gonna use selected flight path angle vertical speed engage vertical speed so i'm gonna pull that and it goes vs0 now it should show that here as well but it doesn't so that's wrong and now i can wind this up so let's say 600 or a thousand feet minute and then again i'm going to pull and it goes vs1 thousands so we can see that it's now going to target a thousand feet a minute let's see if it does that so it does and now we're climbing what is strange is because i've set 2 3 0 up here this should say that i don't know why it doesn't it's this is very odd and this is a little bit frustrating because we've set that up here so this window should now say to 23 000 and we would normally have an out blue mode what happens if i pull that and then it goes to open climb okay so now what happens if i pull the vertical speed now let me get vertical speed okay so in principle you pull the vertical speed towards you and then set it in the real aircraft you can do that either way around but once you pull it you can take control i'm just going to set this lower and let's see if it levels off at flight level 200 no it's still left at two three zero very odd and if i go manage it just goes to climb mode so i'm not sure the vertical speed mode seems pretty ah there you go it did level off there but if i set that to 230 it should continue climbing in vertical speed but it doesn't seem to have that ability it would always just target whatever the last climb or open climb mode was set to so yeah so vertical speed is is not that great at the moment i i that's pretty pretty bad really so let me think the only way around this i suppose is to set let's say we set flight two through zero we pull it so we get open climb and now i'm gonna pull vertical speeds and set a vertical speed and that should then level up at two three zero so let's see if it does that so here we are now arriving within a thousand feet of our level off i'm just gonna change that vertical speed so i can just wind that down to let's say one thousand feet minute ps1000 and hopefully it will level off but like i say we would normally have an out armed mode so and out written in blue underneath um but for some reason it just doesn't seem to work in the vertical speed so the vertical speed mode is very much i'd say broken at the moment in the air bus it's not at all how i would expect it to be um which is strange it's it's so it doesn't seem as if it's they've got open climb and so on working there we go outstar so it has captured but it only worked because i already engaged another mode before engaging with speed and that is not correct the airbus does not work like that but there we go okay so there are some climb modes so let's have a look at descending before we descend let's pretend we're in the cruise and our traffic control clearance to go direct to a waypoint which does happen quite often in real life so it's not always just headings so i press the dir direct page and they say direct to lumen and then i'm going to use this arrow to scroll through these waypoints to get to lumen the real aircraft wouldn't show you the ones you've already been passed it only shows you one of the old way points but there we go select the little key next to lumen and it always that appears at the top waypoint lumen and then you get direct to arrays which will just remove it and it goes back to normal or we can select it again lumen and then direct to insert and now you get the yellow line and then lumen and that lumen is the waypoint that we're flying towards so if they were to clear us direct to lamso we just do the same thing i'm so check it out there and you get the yellow line showing you what it's planning on doing and then insert and makes the right turn and now the lamp starts the direct point so that's good that seems to be working a little bit nicer than the first time i tried i don't know if they've changed anything but there we go so that is a way to uh use direct and heading of course if you're in heading mode you then need to re-engage manage mode by using little up arrow until it goes into nav right let's have a look at descending so let's pretend we're cleared to descend down to flight level to uh one five zero so i'm going to scroll it down to one five zero and exactly the same as before i can either pull selected attitude mode in which case it should go open descent so do that and it goes into des now that is not right if i put the arrow away from me there's okay so when you pull it should go open dez it will just go to idle thrust so that should again say thrust idle not thrush climb i don't know why it's insisting on saying that yeah very strange um but it should go to idle thrust and descend down to flight level 150 at 320 knots in idle thrust and if i then select the speed and wind the speed back it should raise the nose because if we descend at a slower speed we will have a lower rate of descent there's less drag the faster we're going the higher that rate of descent at idle thrust will be but that should say thrust idle open descent so that this this whole thrust um fma it seems very odd to me i'm not sure what what happens there and once it reaches 280 knots we'll see it put the nose down again i hope and carry on and there's openness so it does manage eventually i should still say uh thrust idle but there we go so that's what opendes is it's just the quickest way down by just using idle thrust and down we go and then if i want to go down faster i can wind the speed up and you'll see it put the nose down more so that's great and of course there is the alternative which is manage descent mode so we can push the little arrow up and it should go oh sorry that's nav we want that nav uh we should push the azure window up there it goes and we get des now des mode is again the airbus using its computed uh vertical profile where it knows what else it wants to be and you can see that on here it should tell you that lam so it wants to be at 13 950 feet you can see that because this little number here uh at x-pos it wants to be 10 400 feet so these are these waypoints here so it has that in its mind the real aircraft does show us where we are in relation to that profile but this one does not sadly um so that would be nice if they could add that but uh yeah so now it should be using whatever vertical rate it thinks to maintain that profile which which may not be a thrust idle descent and it's best off if you're going to use managed descent managed speed works really well because that's what it is expecting to be flying at so there we go so hopefully that's given you some confidence in using the autopilot so that's just a video to give you hopefully some more confidence in using the airbus automatics and the autopilot it is slightly different to a lot of other airliners so that's why hopefully that's been a bit of use to give you an idea of what exactly it's trying to tell you and what we're trying to achieve by being able to push and pull the controls i'll be doing more videos covering some other systems setting up the aircraft and the mcdu as well as being able to fly some approaches so if you'd like to see those do please subscribe and we'll see you again in another video soon thank you very much for watching

Channel: 320 Sim Pilot

Views: 183,566

Keywords: real airbus pilot, real pilot tutorial, microsoft flight simulator 2020, MSFS2020, MFS2020, A320 NEO tutorial, airbus tutorial, microsoft flight simulator tutorial, real pilot msfs2020

Id: ibIj6nLlro0

Length: 18min 18sec (1098 seconds)

Published: Thu Aug 20 2020