Events
Events
Events
Events
Events
Events
Events
MY FS FLIGHTS
Flight Score
Departure
Hold the nose down a touch longer and let speed build to 68 kt before liftoff.
What happened: The aircraft lifted off at 51 kt, 17 kt below the 68 kt target.
Watch for: Airspeed indicator: 68 kt at liftoff
See Departure Roll
Arrival
Add power and raise the nose to climb back to pattern altitude on downwind before continuing the circuit.
What happened: On downwind the circuit height was low at 748 ft agl.
Watch for: Altimeter: hold the normal downwind circuit height
See Pattern Downwind
A typical trainer rotates in the mid-50s of knots - a 172 at around 55 KIAS, climbing out at a Vy in the low 70s, though check your own POH rather than memorising Cessna's numbers - and the transferable rule is that Vr sits just above the stall speed in takeoff configuration. Rotate early because "it felt ready" and the aircraft lifts off inside ground effect, where induced drag is reduced, then climbs out of it into more drag. On a marginal-performance day the result is an aircraft that lifts off and then refuses to climb, sagging back towards the runway.
Read more in Improve Your Take-OffsStart to finish · 16 stages, 14 in the score
Events
Events
Events
Events
Events
Events
Events
From brake release to the end of the climb, against time, then the takeoff point by point.
Lifted off at 51 kt with 5.8° 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 49 ft.
Reached 35 ft with 163 m of runway left.
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 998 m runway.
Rolled from 335 m in, drifted left of the centreline, 2.6 m at the widest, and lifted off 2.6 m left. Airborne 40 % 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, 1 nm out at 96 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.
Early: turned crosswind at 678 ft. US guidance is within 300 ft of circuit height, 700 ft here, so the climb ends on downwind.
Crosswind. Turn 90 degrees when you're within about 300 ft of pattern altitude, which at a standard field means roughly 700 ft AGL, or two-thirds of the way up. That rule exists for a reason worth knowing. It means you finish the climb and level off on downwind, wings level, rather than trying to capture an altitude mid-turn. If you turn crosswind at pattern altitude instead, you arrive on downwind still cleaning up, and the abeam point catches you unconfigured.
Read more in Pattern WorkLow on downwind: 748 ft against 1,000 ft, 252 ft below.
Descending on downwind. Power comes back abeam, the aircraft isn't re-trimmed, your eyes are outside judging the turn point, and 100 ft leaks away before base. Shows up as a low gate 2, and everything after it is a scramble.
Read more in Pattern WorkLate: turned base with the threshold 25° behind, against 45°.
The stopwatch. 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 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 1.5 nm, where the final began, to the threshold, never more than 70 ft above 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 from 1.5 nm, where the final began, to 1.3 nm, then drifted 68 m left between 1.3 and 0.9 nm, then back inside it from 0.9 to 0.4 nm, then 15 m left of it from 0.4 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 29 kt fast at the 1,000 ft gate, closing to 17 at 500 ft and 10 at the threshold.
Fast from 1.5 nm, where the final began, to 0.9 nm (up to +32 kt), then inside the band to the threshold.
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
Perfect landing flare
Little crosswind (2 kt): nothing to correct for. Touched down with the nose 2° left of the track, wings level.
Wind 147° at 3 kt · 2 kt head · 2 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.
From 59 kt at touchdown to taxi speed (30 kt) in 16 s, an average deceleration of 0.09 g.
Your ground speed from the moment the wheels touched until you were down to taxi speed, against the distance rolled. A steep line is hard braking, a shallow one a long, gentle roll. For scale, an airliner's lowest autobrake setting decelerates at about 0.15 g, a medium one about 0.3 g. Shown for reading; not marked.
Side view — the last 998 m of the approach.
Began the flare at 20 ft, 18 m before the threshold; crossed the threshold at 16 ft, 34 ft below the 50 ft target. Touched down 193 m in, 112 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 998 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 400 fpm at the flare to 60 fpm at touchdown. The nose came up 3.1° 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 998 m runway, to the same scale as the side view.
Touched down on the centreline and drifted to 5.8 m left on the rollout.
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 193 m touchdown sits inside the full-score zone. The arrival was smooth.
The rest of the report
The Cessna 172 departed from runway 19 at 1L8 General Dick Stout Field. Takeoff distance was 456 m, 46 % of the runway, and liftoff occurred at 51 kt. Local weather at departure was temperature 16 °C, wind 5 kt from 146°, with a 4 kt crosswind and a 3 kt headwind.
The aircraft climbed to 400 ft agl in 13 seconds, averaging 218 fpm and reaching 64 kt at the top of the initial climb. The right-hand circuit for runway 19 lasted 4 minutes. The downwind leg was 3 nm and was flown in 105 seconds at 830 ft agl; the base leg was less than 1 nm and was completed in 10 seconds.
During final approach to runway 19, the descent was from 658 ft agl to 108 ft agl in 70 seconds. Stabilisation checks at 500 ft above the runway were met for gear down, landing flap, sink rate, glideslope, centreline, speed, and wings level.
Landing was on runway 19, whose length is 998 m. Threshold speed was 55 kt. The flare was described as perfect. Touchdown occurred at 49 kt, 193 m from the threshold, with a rate of -59 fpm. Alignment on touchdown and during rollout was perfect, and no bounce occurred. Total landing distance was 569 m, 57 % of the runway, and rollout alignment remained perfect.
After landing, the aircraft taxied to parking in 1 minute, covering less than 1 nm. The total flight covered 7 nm in 8 minutes and used 2 kg of fuel. Local weather at landing was temperature 16 °C, wind 5 kt from 146°, with a 4 kt crosswind and a 3 kt headwind.
Scroll or drag the slider to zoom · double-click to reset · hover for values