Definition
A flight director display mode that presents guidance on two axes — pitch and roll — typically shown as a pair of command bars (or a single crossbar pair) that the pilot follows to maintain the desired flightpath. In a helicopter AFCS, two-cue guidance does not include collective (power/vertical) command information.
Plain English
A flight director that tells you what to do with the cyclic in two directions — nose up or down, and bank left or right — but does not give you guidance on the collective.
Context Anchor
Seen in helicopter instrument flying when describing the stabilization system, automatic flight control system, or flight director display.
Derivation
‘Cue’ here means a guidance signal or prompt shown to the pilot. ‘Two-cue’ literally means two channels of guidance — pitch and roll. A three-cue system adds a third channel for collective.
Why Pilots Care
Provides decoupled, precise attitude guidance that reduces pilot workload and improves accuracy when flying solely by instruments in a helicopter.
Intuition Check
Two cue does not mean two warnings or two checklist prompts. Here, cue means a visual steering signal, and two cue means separate pitch and roll signals.
Example Sentence 1
The helicopter’s two-cue flight director gave him pitch and roll guidance down the ILS, but he had to work the collective himself to hold the glideslope.
Example Sentence 2
With two cue selected, the horizontal bar gave pitch guidance while the vertical bar commanded bank during the missed approach climb.