Autopilot

Knowing that this particular airplane had mostly original equipment, meant that I could test out the simple Cessna 300A "Navomatic" autopilot. That's exactly what N601SF has too.

On one flight, I set the heading bug on the direction gyro to something about 15 degrees off our current heading made sure that the HDS SEL button was pushed, and turned the autopilot on. As if by magic, the airplane turned to that heading and then flew wings level (minus a small rudder trim problem) on course without me having to touch anything.

That's pretty cool. I can definitely see how this is going to be useful on longer flights now. Even without the altitude hold feature that fancier S-TEC autopilots have, it means you can fly mostly hands-free for a good stretch.