Autopilot

[Dan Johnson]

Hi David,
I had my auto control III completely gone through and tuned up at Century in Mineral Wells about six months ago. They did excellent work while I waited then we did some air work for final verification. They had parts in stock and if not their shop is capable of rebuilding the components right there while you wait. I thought it worked ok before but now is excellent.
It was very interesting to hear the stories from the staff there about how they had teamed up with Roy Piper to install all the autopilots in the piper aircraft back in the day and rename the century autopilots piper autocontrols.
Regards,
Dan

[Jody Brausch]

Rate based autopilots may provide much more than wing leveling capability in the event of a vacuum failure. Depending on the unit, many provide HDG and NAV functions, climb/descent profiles, ALT capture and hold, and fully coupled LOC/ILS/GPS approaches, all without any input from the vacuum driven instruments. It is purely a function of what you use your aircraft for, and how much redundancy is important to your way of flying.

[David Pyle]

Dan,

That's good news. In earlier times Century would not support their earlier autopilots. Now I believe that the operation in Mineral Wells will service and install Century autopilots as well as other avionics. Times change.

[David Callon]

I have an Altimatic III does anyone know where to get them repaired in the Northwest?

[David Pyle]

Our Comanche avionic expert is John Van Bladeren of "Ron & John's" in Portland OR. His phone is 503 329 8512. He is an ex ICS President and R&J runs ads in the Comanche FLYER.