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MY FS FLIGHTS
Flight Score
Departure
Hold the nose down until the speed reaches 56 kt, then rotate.
What happened: You started the rotation at 45 kt, 11 kt before the 56 kt rotation speed.
Watch for: Airspeed indicator: 56 kt at rotation
See Departure Roll
Arrival
Add power on short final to hold speed at 58 kt, correcting the slow threshold speed before it carries through to the flare.
What happened: Threshold speed was slow at 54 kt against 58 kt, and touchdown followed short of the aim point at 111 m. Crossing the threshold slow like this usually carries the touchdown short.
Watch for: Airspeed indicator against 58 kt on short final.
Every knot above Vref is stored kinetic energy, and energy stored at the threshold must be dissipated in ground effect before the aeroplane will stop flying. Because kinetic energy scales with the square of speed, the excess you must dissipate grows fast. At a 45-knot approach, five knots hot is over a tenth more speed and roughly a quarter more energy to get rid of in ground effect. This is why the fix is never in the flare. It was decided three miles earlier, on final, at the airspeed indicator.
Read more in VRef ExplainedStart to finish · 15 stages, 13 in the score
Events
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Events
From brake release to the end of the climb, against time, then the takeoff point by point.
Rotated at 45 kt, 11 kt below the 56 kt target, and lifted off at 62 kt 4.6 s later, the nose coming up at 0.7° 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 37 ft.
Reached 35 ft with 184 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 837 m runway.
Rolled from 41 m in, drifted right of the centreline, 2 m at the widest, and lifted off 1.8 m right. Airborne 44 % 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.
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, 0.8 nm out at 83 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: 7° 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 WorkOff heading: 9° from the leg's heading on average.
Spacing cues are relative to your eyepoint, so two simmers with different FOV settings following the same wingtip cue fly patterns half a mile different in width, and a wide FOV compresses depth so the runway on base looks further away than it is, biasing you towards a late turn. Pick a camera position and FOV, save it, and never change it, because every judgement you calibrate is calibrated to that picture.
Read more in Pattern WorkOff heading: 11° 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 WorkOvershot: went 529 m through the centreline turning final.
Overshooting final. A tailwind component on base sweeps you through the extended centreline, the instinctive correction is to steepen the bank and, when that's not enough, to skid the turn with rudder. In a real aircraft this is the base-to-final stall-spin scenario that kills people. The sim under-punishes it, because a spring yoke transmits no lightening of control force, there's no buffet through your hands, and no seat-of-the-pants sensation of the skid. You get the numbers of the skidded turn without the feel of it. The correct response is the same in both worlds and needs practising until it's reflexive. Don't steepen past 30 degrees, and if you've blown through the centreline, go around and reset.
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 1.6 nm, where the final began, to the threshold, never more than 240 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 529 m right of the centreline at 1.6 nm, then inside the band from 0.5 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.
Inside the speed band from 1.6 nm, where the final began, to 0.8 nm, then fast to 0.5 nm (up to +17 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
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.
No crosswind: nothing to correct for. Touched down straight, wings level.
Wind 270° at 1 kt · 0 kt head · 0 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 55 kt at touchdown to taxi speed (30 kt) in 8 s, an average deceleration of 0.15 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 837 m of the approach.
Began the flare late, at 5 ft; crossed the threshold at 55 ft, close to the 50 ft target. Touched down 111 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 837 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 837 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.
Touched down 111 m short of the threshold. The 1.78 G arrival is the firm side of smooth.
The rest of the report
The Cessna 172 departed from runway 34 at LIRU Rome Urbe Airport. Takeoff used 402 m, 48 % of the runway, and rotation occurred at 45 kt. Local weather was 15 °C with wind 1 kt from 269°, giving a 1 kt cross-wind and no head-wind.
Initial climb reached 50 ft agl in 6 seconds, averaging 539 fpm and attaining 72 kt at the top of the climb. The aircraft entered a left-hand circuit for runway 34. The downwind leg was 2 nm and lasted 91 seconds at 950 ft agl; the base leg was 1 nm and lasted 48 seconds.
On final approach the aircraft descended from 374 ft agl to 64 ft agl in 74 seconds. At 500 ft above the runway the stabilisation checks were met for gear down, landing flap, sink rate, glideslope, speed, and wings level; the check for centreline was not met. Configuration on final was flap position 3 at 235 ft agl with a speed of 81 kt.
Landing was on runway 34, whose length is 837 m. Touchdown occurred 111 m short of the threshold; the threshold speed was slightly below target at 54 kt. Touchdown speed was 46 kt and the rate was heavy at minus 614 fpm. The flare was described as very poor, with little round-out, but runway-touchdown alignment was very good and there was no bounce. Total landing distance was 316 m, 38 % of the runway, and rollout alignment was very good.
Taxiing from the runway to the parking area took 1 minute and covered less than 1 nm. The total flight was 7 nm, lasted 7 minutes and used 0 kg of fuel.
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