Many people including myself struggled with airplanes violently pitching down when AP is first engaged during the initial climb. So I thought I would test out the reasons and provide a bit of a solution. In the video, you will see that the take off and climb is pretty smooth and no nose pitch when AP was engaged at 700AGL. Here’re the steps:
- Set heading, flaps 5 and importantly trim 40 before you accelerate down the runway. Altitude is set at this point but NOT engaged.
- Manual control of liftoff and keep an angle of 10 degrees
- Set auto air speed at 200KIAS
- (This is the important part) Gradually increase trim, so that to keep the 10 degree elevation, you gradually push down on the yoke until a neutral position is reached. When this is achieved, you engage auto-pilot and this will give you a smooth seamless transition (in the video, this happened at 700AGL).
- Retract flaps (900AGL in the video), set final climb rate and sit back to enjoy the view.