Autopilot is almost unusable in the Citation C4J

[ZombieHunter]

I type in my destination as KCID and the activate the FPLN and the autopilot chooses a course 180 degrees from the destination. I turn off autopilot and the turn off LNV1 to ROL and the damn jet stays in a left bank FOREVER. Nothing I do will take it out of the bank.

Great VFR sim. IFR and any kind of cross country navigation on FMS is completely borked. Doesn't even work right. Half of the FMS is inop. Want to zoom in...nope doesn't work. Zoom out...nope doesn't work. C'mon. What a half ass attempt at a jet. Why even include the Citation is if is so glitchy as to be worth of being grounded indefinitely?

And active pause is the single dumbest feature I've ever seen in any flight sim to date. Just let us pause the damn simulation. Why do you keep updating the aircraft? I have to pause it to use your busted ass autopilot that is glitchy as hell while travelling 346 knot ground speed hoping to goodness your autopilot doesn't try to kill me at any second.

Ridiculous. Back to flying locally since that is all this sim can handle or using G1000 GPS which seems to work. But FMS is 100% completely broken to hell and back.

[mluthanen]

Huh. I have been using that plane more than the others and I taught myself to partially use AP by experimenting. I haven't figured out how the flight director works, but setting altitude and heading is pretty straightforward. FC (I don't know why this abbreviation was changed to hearts. Perhaps an F followed by a C is obscene in some circles) is also a mystery to me so far.

Are you able to manually set your AP heading and altitude? Is at least that much working for you?

I have noticed that if I turn the AP off and then back on, it becomes homicidal and banks like you describe.

I have not ever had trouble zooming with the mouse wheel in the cockpit, though the world map is zooming too wildly to use tonight... Using the D-pad on the controller also works fine for changing where the camera is pointing in the cockpit and outside.

[ZombieHunter]

Yes altitude capture and hold works. Heading hold works. But plotting a course in the FMS does not seem to work. The legs are there and I press activate and FMS looks good and the destination is on the map but the aircraft heads in the wrong direction. So annoying. Maybe it was trying to head back to the first waypoint and cycling waypoints is a pain in the butt.

ROL hold is completely bonkers though and just turns in a tight circle.

[Old*Man*River's Ghost]

I flew the CJ4 for the first time and had no problems getting to altitude and maintaining flight plan. I first set the altitude with the knob below the ALT button and then use vertical speed (VS) to set the climb rate. Once it gets to the altitude set point it levels off and maintains altitude. Had to manually adjust throttles to hold climb speed, but it's fairly easy. I set up the FPL in the pre-flight configuration screen with the world map and that gets transferred to the FMS. So basically I took off, turned on AP, turned on yaw damper, set desired climb rate with VS engaged, then engaged NAV and the plane turned to the destination airport in the FMS. Easy. I also figured out how to program the FMS via the keypad. So you can either set your flight plan up via the map or you can just do it manually once you are in the plane and sitting on the runway or tarmac.

I think the CJ4 uses a Bendix FMS so if you're familiar with it from FSX it works the same here. It goes like this: punch FPLN. On the screen you will see ORIGIN and DEST at the top of the screen. To set the origin, punch the button to the left of ORIGIN and you will see a message at the bottom of the screen NOT IN DATABASE. Then using the keypad enter the 4 digit airport code, like KPHX for Phoenix. Then punch the ORIGIN button again and it will populate the origin code into that slot. You then do the same for setting the destination. Once you have successfully entered the destination code, you will see the route line populate on the MFD and PFD nav display. You're all set.

[ZombieHunter]

Originally posted by Old*Man*River:

I flew the CJ4 for the first time and had no problems getting to altitude and maintaining flight plan. I first set the altitude with the knob below the ALT button and then use vertical speed (VS) to set the climb rate. Once it gets to the altitude set point it levels off and maintains altitude. Had to manually adjust throttles to hold climb speed, but it's fairly easy. I set up the FPL in the pre-flight configuration screen with the world map and that gets transferred to the FMS. So basically I took off, turned on AP, turned on yaw damper, set desired climb rate with VS engaged, then engaged NAV and the plane turned to the destination airport in the FMS. Easy. I also figured out how to program the FMS via the keypad. So you can either set your flight plan up via the map or you can just do it manually once you are in the plane and sitting on the runway or tarmac.

I think the CJ4 uses a Bendix FMS so if you're familiar with it from FSX it works the same here. It goes like this: punch FPLN. On the screen you will see ORIGIN and DEST at the top of the screen. To set the origin, punch the button to the left of ORIGIN and you will see a message at the bottom of the screen NOT IN DATABASE. Then using the keypad enter the 4 digit airport code, like KPHX for Phoenix. Then punch the ORIGIN button again and it will populate the origin code into that slot. You then do the same for setting the destination. Once you have successfully entered the destination code, you will see the route line populate on the MFD and PFD nav display. You're all set.

Yes I have some FSX Carenado planes that use the same kind of FMS. They work fine. The C4J flight plan was loaded but it was tracking wrong. I really think it was trying to hit the initial waypoint instead of just track the course. So it was trying to fly back to the first SID.

[mluthanen]

I read that they're working on improving the autopilot implementation. No ETA on that or even the scope of that, but it sounds like there are problems they acknowledge that they are trying to fix.

[Neo King Arthur]

Yeah, backtracking is a common AP issue not only in the C4J but the airliners as well. Whenever the ATC gives me the approach vectors, when I enter it to the FMC and execute the new flight plan, it backtracks to the last waypoint that I've passed since it's the "first waypoint" to reach in the approach. But since the ATC give me the approach vectors late and after I passed the waypoint, that's when the trouble happens.

The only thing I can do with that is to switch to heading mode and trace the flight path semi-automatically. Then use the LOC and G/S modes of the APP when captured the ILS.

The Devs are working on improving/fixing the Auto-Pilot, but it's not really unplayable at this stage, since you can use the multple redundant autopilot modes that are working.