we once had the autopilot MEL'd on the 727 and hand flew from DTW -Vegas-MSP-MotorCity one fun summers day, back at a supplemental that shall remain nameless, flying by hand at non RVSM altitudes just like Daddy did, fortunately there was no mountain wave over the Rockies or we would have been requesting block altitudes, it ended up being a very good day with nary an ASAP report being required, the 727 being a total joy to fly in all regimes except takeoff out of hot,and slightly high LAS,where we routinely rotated way far down runway 25R , shouting fore as we sagged upward and accelerated over that golf course , and not relaxing till that wing morphed clean and we had 250 kts on the ticker, and 10k in the bank beneath us.