Events
Events
MY FS FLIGHTS
Flight Score
Departure
Use rudder and aileron to hold the extended centreline, correcting drift before it reaches -1.1°.
What happened: During the initial climb the heading drifted -1.1° off the runway track.
Watch for: Heading indicator: wings level on the runway track
Arrival
Roll out of the downwind turn sooner, using coordinated aileron and rudder to hold a shallower, constant bank angle through the turn.
What happened: The downwind turn was flown with 41° of bank, and that much excess bank in the pattern usually carries through to the touchdown, as it did here with 2.6° of bank still present at touchdown.
Watch for: Bank angle indicator: a shallow, constant bank through the turns, wings level by touchdown.
The rudder input is a changing profile through the roll rather than one that is held. So the demand on your right foot starts large at power application, eases as speed builds and the rudder gains authority, then jumps again at rotation.
Read more in Improve Your Take-OffsStart to finish · 16 stages, 13 in the score
Events
Events
From brake release to the end of the climb, against time, then the takeoff point by point.
Lifted off at 77 kt with 3.7° of pitch.
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 figure at liftoff is the pitch then.
The takeoff, point by point
Side view from the start of the roll to 691 ft.
Reached 35 ft with 635 m of runway left; then climbing at 1,440 fpm on average to 691 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 1,224 m runway.
Rolled from 78 m in, drifted right of the centreline, 2.8 m at the widest, and lifted off 1.6 m right. Airborne 17 % 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.
Left-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, 1.2 nm out at 118 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.
Steep: 52° of bank.
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 WorkSteep: 51° of bank.
The 45-degrees-behind-the-wing cue assumes you can turn your head and use peripheral vision. Downwind spacing cues like "put the wingtip halfway up the strut" assume a fixed, known eyepoint. Neither survives a monitor unmodified. If you fly on a fixed monitor, stop pretending and fly a numbers-based circuit.
Read more in Pattern WorkOff heading: 9° from the leg's heading on average.
Steep: 46° of bank.
From abeam the threshold, fly roughly 30 to 45 seconds before turning base, in nil wind at 172 speeds. Treat that as a starting value and calibrate it. If your finals keep coming out at 400 ft instead of 500, add a few seconds. Then adjust for wind, roughly a second per knot of headwind on final (a headwind on final is a tailwind on downwind, carrying you further from the field per second).
Read more in Pattern WorkThe final from 4 nm.
Profile height against the 3° glideslope, with its 2° band in green.
Inside the glideslope band from 1.2 nm, where the final began, to the threshold, never more than 50 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.
Joined 373 m left of the centreline at 1.2 nm, then inside the band from 0.7 nm to the threshold.
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 39 kt fast at the 1,000 ft gate, closing to 23 at 500 ft and 10 at the threshold.
Inside the speed band all the way, between −12 kt and +24 kt on the approach speed of 77 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
Excellent landing flare. It lost 2.5 points, mostly for the nose going up and down 2 times.
3 kt across from the right, which takes about 3° of crab to hold the centreline at 62 kt. Touched down with the nose 5° into wind, 5° of bank.
Wind 191° at 13 kt · 13 kt head · 3 kt across
The wind is the one recorded at the landing, split along the runway (headwind or tailwind) and across it. To hold the centreline in a crosswind the nose points a little into wind - the crab - and is straightened with rudder just before the wheels touch, often with the into-wind wing lowered to stop the drift. These are the nose against the direction you were actually moving, and the wings, at the moment of touchdown. Shown for reading; not marked.
Side view — the last 1,224 m of the approach.
Began the flare at 38 ft, 233 m before the threshold; crossed the threshold at 1 ft, 49 ft below the 50 ft target; ballooned 2 ft from 21 ft. Touched down 57 m in, 247 m short of the ideal 305 m.
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 1,224 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.
Sink and pitch — through the flare, lined up with the side view.
The sink went from 510 fpm at the flare to 90 fpm at touchdown. The nose came up 2.7° on the way down.
Lined up with the side view above, so a point on one sits under the same point of the other. On top, how fast you were coming down: 0 is level, and −600 is 600 ft a minute down. Below, the pitch. In a flare the nose comes up and the descent slows towards 0. The figure at the touchdown line is your touchdown rate.
Plan view — the full 1,224 m runway, to the same scale as the side view.
Touched down 9.5 m left of the centreline, and stayed about there down the rollout, 9.7 m left at the widest.
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.
The 57 m touchdown sits inside the full-score zone. The arrival was smooth.
The rest of the report
Departing from Reichelsheim Airfield (EDFB), the Extra 330 aircraft initiated its departure roll on runway 18, accelerating to a liftoff speed of 78 kt within a takeoff distance of 270 m, which accounted for 22% of the available runway length. The local weather conditions at the time of departure featured a temperature of 24 °C and a moderate headwind of 13 kt from a direction of 192 °.
As the aircraft entered the traffic pattern, it proceeded to complete a left-hand circuit, navigating through the various phases of the approach with precision. The downwind turn, executed at an angle of 75.2 ° to the runway, covered a distance of 1 nm. The subsequent base leg turn, with an angle of 43.9 ° to the runway, also measured 1 nm. The aircraft's performance during the approach was satisfactory, with a final approach speed of 66 kt and a touchdown speed of 62 kt. The touchdown distance of 58 m was also within acceptable limits, and the touchdown rate of -62 fpm was excellent.
Upon landing, the aircraft touched down on runway 18, with a slight misalignment of 9.5 m from the centreline. The total landing distance of 360 m accounted for 29% of the available runway length. Following touchdown, the aircraft's rollout alignment was also slightly misaligned, by 9.7 m from the centreline. The total flight distance of 6 nm was completed within 4 minutes, with a fuel consumption of 1 kg.
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