When I say "heading hold", I don't mean the autopilot heading and route following system when the heading is dictated by HSI or PVI-800 and the Autopilot-proper is actually turned on. I'm talking about the heading hold capability when you're trimmed and the yaw channel of the SAS is on. You can see it in the HUD direction tape with the DH-DT switch to center/off. When you're in Flight Director mode, it's just a yaw damper since the trim no longer functions, which is always nice. I personally am not a huge fan of the need to trim the yaw/heading direction all the time, so damping is a nice alternative. If you're not in FD, the yaw channel is on, and you also have auto turn to target activated, it should also... you know... turn somewhat to target. It was always kind of lacking authority for any of this in the original Blackshark release and required some assistance with additional pilot input at times (easy with a trim knob mixed in using GlovePIE), but with the patches it barely seems to do any of this. If it is doing anything, it's very subtle rotation rate limiting, but like the SAS has hardly any authority anymore. It does seem like ED reduced oscillation and dutch roll response from yaw inputs as a result of the flight model improvements in general, but the basic function of both the yaw trim function, the yaw damper, and the turn to target seem muted in comparison to the original release. It's really hard to tell if they're doing anything, actually. Like I said, the aircraft is a little more stable and predictable now, but that appears to be separate from the reduced authority yaw channel of the SAS. That is odd, because I remember reading in the first patch something about an increase of authority for the SAS yaw channel. In the v1.02 patch, the yaw channel of the SAS appears inferior to the stock BS1 install.
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