A300 autopilot completely broken

[matteolosardo]

Hello, we've talked a lot about this in the discord server, and also on other reports in this forum. surely something is wrong here.

What happened is: I started a KDFW - KPHX flight in the latest version A300, and as soon as I takeoff, the autopilots is completely broken.

The NAV mode engaged shows the FD bar completely deviated to the right (even if the route should command a left turn)

The HDG select mode correctly causes a change in FD bar, but the autopilot simply does not follow it… Whichever mode the autopilot is in, the plane does not actually follow it… sometimes it evens start a right roll that becomes a spiral towards the ground.

I tried restarting the sim, totally uninstalling and reinstalling the A300, but it did not fix it… it even does the problem if I spawn directly on the runway, as I did many times when troubleshooting.

To me this only happened in KDFW (default airport), but another user in the general chat reported the problem after taking off from a different airport. Can I please get help or have this issue acknowledged by a dev? I really want this plane to become stable and know that it won’t have such problems. Thanks in advance

 

[matteolosardo]

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[matteolosardo]

I wanted to add this happens both in passenger and cargo version... it never happened before the update.

 

[matteolosardo]

14 minutes ago, matteolosardo said:

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sorry here I tried to link some images in the wrong format... I'll send them again.

 

 

[matteolosardo]

something new and quite important I noticed: I only have the issue IF I delete the "manual" waypoint from the SID, along with the discontinuity.

If I leave the manual segment and the discontinuity, and takeoff with them still in the FMC, and after takeoff I just go direct to the first SID WPT, the autopilot and NAV mode works as it should. I hope this can help understand what the problem is... maybe it's related to "manual" segments during a departure.

[Crabby]

1 hour ago, matteolosardo said:

something new and quite important I noticed: I only have the issue IF I delete the "manual" waypoint from the SID, along with the discontinuity.

If I leave the manual segment and the discontinuity, and takeoff with them still in the FMC, and after takeoff I just go direct to the first SID WPT, the autopilot and NAV mode works as it should. I hope this can help understand what the problem is... maybe it's related to "manual" segments during a departure.

Nothing to do with the possible issue but explains why I never see this behavior.  You were probably on an RNAV with a vectored first segment.  The manual waypoint and discontinuity are not a mistake.  On those SIDs, if you use live ATC, you will get vectors and should take off in HDG mode.  Once you are cleared "Direct To" hit the direct to button.  If you are not using ATC, you can simulate that at any time.  Basically, this will be the case any time you see a chart where the first waypoint is not drawn to the departure runway.  

Are you using charts?

[matteolosardo]

34 minutes ago, Crabby said:

Nothing to do with the possible issue but explains why I never see this behavior.  You were probably on an RNAV with a vectored first segment.  The manual waypoint and discontinuity are not a mistake.  On those SIDs, if you use live ATC, you will get vectors and should take off in HDG mode.  Once you are cleared "Direct To" hit the direct to button.  If you are not using ATC, you can simulate that at any time.  Basically, this will be the case any time you see a chart where the first waypoint is not drawn to the departure runway.  

Are you using charts?

yeah I know why the vectored segments are here, I'm totally familiar with it, but it makes zero sense that if I delete them and DCT to the next SID waypoint, the autopilot should not randomly become useless, not even allowing me to use HDG SEL.

[Skipper]

Hmmm I made three fully automated testflights with auto-land so far, with manual flight path programming, and the autopilot and also the ILS always worked flawless. Impressive how this old retro computer system cannot draw curves on the screen but the plane itself is cutting corners flying a smooth path. Love this plane, it is awesome!

I was especially impressed that the internet said Bergen Lufthavn ILS frequency 109.90 with 27nm range, and somewhere below 30nm the A300 slowly begun to catch the ILS signal and started following the glide path down. I made it even more difficult for the MCDU when testing the systems by programming a flight path with vectors directly above the landing runway, but the machine left the pre-programmed MCDU waypoint course to catch the ILS, just like it should. Awesome.

(I have not tested VNAV in the MCDU but manually went up to 10.000 and back to 3000 to catch the ILS. I rarely use pre-programmed MCDU-VNAV.)

Everything seems to be fine with the autopilot. I never fly by hand and found no problem with the automatic systems so far. Maybe you encountered a glitch in the simulator or a simbrief problem.

[matteolosardo]

1 hour ago, Skipper said:

Hmmm I made three fully automated testflights with auto-land so far, with manual flight path programming, and the autopilot and also the ILS always worked flawless. Impressive how this old retro computer system cannot draw curves on the screen but the plane itself is cutting corners flying a smooth path. Love this plane, it is awesome!

I was especially impressed that the internet said Bergen Lufthavn ILS frequency 109.90 with 27nm range, and somewhere below 30nm the A300 slowly begun to catch the ILS signal and started following the glide path down. I made it even more difficult for the MCDU when testing the systems by programming a flight path with vectors directly above the landing runway, but the machine left the pre-programmed MCDU waypoint course to catch the ILS, just like it should. Awesome.

(I have not tested VNAV in the MCDU but manually went up to 10.000 and back to 3000 to catch the ILS. I rarely use pre-programmed MCDU-VNAV.)

Everything seems to be fine with the autopilot. I never fly by hand and found no problem with the automatic systems so far. Maybe you encountered a glitch in the simulator or a simbrief problem.

it can't be, because I tried reinstalling the aircraft and restarting the sim multiple times... it's a weird bug which is not easy to identify the cause of, but seems like a couple of other people are experiencing as well... it could be related to some SIDs with manual legs and discontinuity bugging the autopilot, either way I filed a support ticket so the devs can look into it a bit more 

[johe_ini_2312]

19 hours ago, matteolosardo said:

something new and quite important I noticed: I only have the issue IF I delete the "manual" waypoint from the SID, along with the discontinuity.

If I leave the manual segment and the discontinuity, and takeoff with them still in the FMC, and after takeoff I just go direct to the first SID WPT, the autopilot and NAV mode works as it should. I hope this can help understand what the problem is... maybe it's related to "manual" segments during a departure.

I had the same problems, and interesting: I too had deleted the manual segment and the discontinuity in the flight plan before...

The autopilot should work correctly and in this case automatically follow the waypoints.

Especially it never should crash the plane in a curve to the ground.

[Nix]

On 1/11/2024 at 8:15 AM, johe_ini_2312 said:

I had the same problems, and interesting: I too had deleted the manual segment and the discontinuity in the flight plan before...

The autopilot should work correctly and in this case automatically follow the waypoints.

Especially it never should crash the plane in a curve to the ground.

I can confirm this. In order for the AP to do it's job, for some reason, no route discontinuities should exist in the flight plan. Thank you for this!