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MY FS FLIGHTS
Flight Score
Arrival
Begin the flare with progressive back pressure and keep it coming until the sink is arrested, rather than flying it on flat.
What happened: The nose was barely raised in the flare and little of the sink was taken out, flying the aircraft onto the runway. This pattern usually carries through to a firm touchdown with a noticeable sink rate.
Watch for: Vertical speed indicator: a smoothly reducing sink through the normal flare band, not a steady rate into the runway.
There are several things that can go wrong during the flare, carrying too much speed over the threshold, starting the flare at the wrong height and inconsistent flight control inputs, all contribute to a poor flare resulting in a hard touchdown or a float down the runway.
Read more in Flare TimingStart to finish · 15 stages, 13 in the score
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From brake release to the end of the climb, against time, then the takeoff point by point.
Rotated at 60 kt, 4 kt below the 64 kt target, and lifted off at 66 kt 2.5 s later, the nose coming up at 2.0° a second.
Two traces from brake release: the airspeed on top, and below it the pitch, which is how far the nose is above the horizon. The dashed green line is the speed to rotate at for this aircraft at its weight, and the green dot is where the nose started to come up. The figures at liftoff are the pitch then and how fast the nose came up, in degrees a second.
The takeoff, point by point
Side view from the start of the roll to 761 ft. The distance scale changes past the runway end.
Reached 35 ft with 288 m of runway left; then climbing at 830 fpm on average to 761 ft.
The takeoff from the side: the height above the runway against the distance along it. The numbers along the runway are the speeds reached at each point. Lifting off in the amber last quarter of the runway costs marks for the roll length.
Plan view the roll down the 628 m runway.
Rolled from the start of the runway, drifted right of the centreline, 3.5 m at the widest, and lifted off 2.7 m right, in 5 kn of crosswind from the left. Airborne 34 % of the way down the runway, before the 75 % line.
The roll from above, with your left at the top. The line is where the wheels went, and "widest" is the furthest you drifted off the centreline. Lifting off before the amber 75 % line gets full marks for the roll length. The arrow beside the runway is the crosswind, pointing the way the air was moving, so it pushed the aircraft that way.
Right-hand, 1,000 ft circuit height. The plan shows your circuit over a textbook one for this runway; the profile unrolls the same path from liftoff to the threshold.
Plan landing direction to the left; in pale blue the textbook circuit for your downwind speed, 0.9 nm out at 95 kt
The lap from above, with the landing direction to the left: the opposite of the runway drawings. The wide pale-blue line is a textbook circuit for your downwind speed - the downwind a mile out for every 100 kt, every turn at 30° of bank - and your track is drawn over it, each leg in the colour of its mark. The numbers are the four turns, the same as on the profile and the cards below. The 45° line from the threshold is the usual point to turn onto base.
Around the circuit height and bank; the turns are shaded
The same lap straightened out, so the height and the bank can be read together. Each shaded stretch is a turn, numbered as on the plan. The green box is circuit height, 1,000 ft, on the downwind. The amber line is 30° of bank, and a turn's steepest bank shows red above 32°. "Turn crosswind from" is the lowest height to start the first turn at.
Off heading: 9° from the leg's heading on average.
Each lap slightly wider and higher than the last, because you're unconsciously using the previous lap as your reference instead of the runway and the numbers. Invisible lap to lap, unmistakable across ten. This is the failure that only measurement catches, because your memory of lap three is gone by lap eight.
Read more in Pattern WorkHigh on downwind: 1,133 ft against 1,000 ft, 133 ft above.
Downwind. Parallel to the runway, opposite the landing direction, at pattern altitude and roughly 90 kt. The single most important moment of the entire circuit is the point abeam your intended touchdown point. Power back (around 1,700 RPM in a 172 works as a starting value to calibrate), first stage of flap, pre-landing flow, and re-trim. Everything from abeam to touchdown is one continuous energy problem. Arrive at the abeam point high or fast and you'll pay for it ninety seconds later in the flare, which is why analysing only the touchdown so often misdiagnoses the fault.
Read more in Pattern WorkOff heading: 8° from the leg's heading on average.
Bank angle in the pattern is conventionally kept to 20 to 30 degrees, and the base-to-final turn is where that convention earns its keep. Stall speed rises with bank because the wing must produce more lift in a turn. Roughly 7 per cent higher at 30 degrees, about 19 per cent at 45, and around 40 per cent at 60. At 65 kt on base you don't have much margin to spend steepening a turn to salvage an overshoot.
Read more in Pattern WorkGood: full marks on the turn.
The final from 4 nm.
Profile height against the 3° glideslope, with its 2° band in green.
Inside the glideslope band from 2.0 nm, where the final began, to the threshold, never more than 120 ft below the slope.
Your height above the runway against the distance still to go. The glideslope is the steady descent path to the aiming point, 305 m past the threshold: 3° here, which is about 320 ft for every nautical mile out, crossing the threshold at about 50 ft. The row under the distances is the height it puts you at. Inside the green band your path is drawn green; outside it, amber.
Plan distance off the extended centreline, your left at the top, with the 1° band. Sideways distances are drawn 3× larger than distances along the final.
Inside the 1° band all the way from 2.0 nm, never more than 111 m off the centreline.
Looking down from above, flying left to right towards the runway: up the page is left of the centreline, down is right. Sideways distances are stretched so that small drifts show, so a line that looks wild here may be only a few tens of feet. The labels are how far off you were at each distance, amber when outside the band.
Speed against the approach speed. The green band runs from 5 kt slow to 29 kt fast at the 1,000 ft gate, closing to 17 at 500 ft and 10 at the threshold.
Inside the speed band all the way, between −4 kt and +18 kt on the approach speed of 58 kt.
Your indicated airspeed down the final, against the approach speed for this aircraft at its landing weight. The band allows 5 kt slow and more on the fast side further out, closing as you get lower, because the speed is expected to come off on the way down. The figures are knots above (+) or below (−) the approach speed.
Over the threshold
Touchdown
The aircraft touched down before the threshold. Everything the flare is measured against - the profile, the crossing height, the aim point - is referenced to a threshold this landing never reached, so read the numbers below as what happened short of the runway, not on it. Landing short is the fault to fix before anything about the hold-off is worth judging.
Side view — the last 628 m of the approach.
Began the flare at 15 ft, 81 m before the threshold; crossed the threshold at 43 ft, close to the 50 ft target. Touched down 43 m before the threshold.
The last stretch of the approach and the touchdown, from the side. The height is stretched so that the last few feet show: 80 ft top to bottom, against 628 m across. The dashed line is the ideal, 50 ft over the threshold and down 305 m in. The flare ring is where you began raising the nose, and "descent slowed" is where the sink came off; the figures beside them are the sink rate, pitch and speed at that point.
Plan view — the full 628 m runway, to the same scale as the side view.
The runway from above, with your left at the top. Touching down inside the green bracket scores full marks for the distance. The shaded part is the rollout, up to where it ended. The arrow beside the runway is the crosswind, pointing the way the air was moving, so it pushed the aircraft that way.
Touched down 43 m short of the threshold. The 339 fpm arrival was firm.
The rest of the report
The Cessna 172 departed from runway 24 at EDLH Hamm-Lippewiesen Airfield. The take-off roll was 218 m, which is 35 % of the runway length, and rotation occurred at 60 kt. Local weather at departure was temperature 12 °C, wind 5 kt from 192°, with a 3 kt crosswind and a 3 kt headwind.
Initial climb to 400 ft agl took 53 seconds, averaging 864 fpm and reaching 80 kt at the top of the climb. The aircraft then entered cruise and completed the remaining distance of the flight, covering a total of 10 nm in 9 minutes and using 4 kg of fuel.
Descent began from 751 ft agl and continued to 232 ft agl over 121 seconds. Stabilisation checks performed at 500 ft above the runway were all met: gear down, landing flap, sink rate, glideslope, centreline, speed, and wings level.
On final approach to runway 24, the aircraft touched down 43 m short of the threshold; the threshold was never crossed in the air. Threshold speed was 59 kt, and touchdown speed was 54 kt, both recorded as good. The flare was described as very poor, with little round-out, and the aircraft landed with a firm rate of -339 fpm. Runway-touchdown alignment was very good and no bounce occurred. Local weather at landing matched departure conditions: temperature 12 °C, wind 5 kt from 192°, 3 kt crosswind and 3 kt headwind.
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