Events
Events
Events
MY FS FLIGHTS
Flight Score
Arrival
On the crosswind leg, use coordinated aileron and rudder to roll back onto the assigned heading as soon as the drift begins.
What happened: The crosswind leg drifted -14° off the assigned heading, and this pattern usually carries into a wide base turn and an uncorrected -9.7° heading error on base.
Watch for: Heading indicator: wings level on the assigned crosswind heading
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 WorkStart to finish · 13 stages, 12 in the score
Events
Events
Events
From brake release to the end of the climb, against time, then the takeoff point by point.
Rotated at 56 kt, on the 56 kt target, and lifted off at 65 kt 3.5 s later, the nose coming up at 1.6° 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 503 ft.
Reached 35 ft with 697 m of runway left; then climbing at 710 fpm on average to 503 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 1,452 m runway.
Rolled from the start of the runway, never more than 1.1 m off the centreline. 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.
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, 0.9 nm out at 87 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: 14° 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: 1,144 ft against 1,000 ft, 144 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 WorkEarly: turned base with the threshold 77° behind, against 45°.
Base. Turn 90 degrees towards the runway when the threshold sits about 45 degrees behind your shoulder. Descend at around 80 kt with second-stage flap. The geometry of that 45-degree cue isn't arbitrary. It produces a base leg long enough to lose roughly 500 ft at about 500 fpm before the final turn. Once you know that's what the cue is for, you can derive your own turn point for any aircraft and any speed.
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 0.7 nm, where the final began, to the threshold, never more than 150 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.
Joined 237 m left of the centreline at 0.7 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 31 kt fast at the 1,000 ft gate, closing to 18 at 500 ft and 10 at the threshold.
Inside the speed band all the way, between −2 kt and +16 kt on the approach speed of 61 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 1.3 points, for the nose going up and down 2 times.
No wind recorded: nothing to correct for. Touched down with the nose 1° right of the track, wings level.
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 1,452 m of the approach.
Began the flare at 25 ft, 56 m before the threshold; crossed the threshold at 15 ft, 35 ft below the 50 ft target. Touched down 360 m in, 55 m past 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 1,452 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 100 fpm at touchdown. The nose came up 5.9° 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 1,452 m runway, to the same scale as the side view.
Touched down 4.9 m left of the centreline.
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 360 m touchdown sits inside the full-score zone. The arrival was smooth.
The rest of the report
The Cessna Skyhawk departed from runway 10 at LSZR Sankt Gallen Altenrhein Airport. Takeoff used 512 m of runway, which is 35 % of the available length, and rotation occurred at 56 kt. Local weather at departure was temperature 22 °C.
Initial climb to 400 ft agl lasted 40 seconds, with an average climb rate of 726 fpm and a speed of 76 kt at the top of the climb.
The aircraft entered a left-hand circuit for runway 10. The downwind leg was less than 1 nm and was flown in 16 seconds at 1,160 ft agl. The base leg was also less than 1 nm and was completed in 26 seconds.
Landing was made on runway 10 at LSZR Sankt Gallen Altenrhein Airport, whose length is 1,452 m. The threshold height was good and the threshold speed was 59 kt. The flare was described as excellent. Touchdown occurred 360 m down the runway at a speed of 41 kt, with a smooth descent rate of minus 102 fpm. The touchdown point was slightly off centreline by 4.9 m, but there was no bounce. Local weather at landing was temperature 22 °C.
The total flight covered 7 nm, lasted 5 minutes and consumed 1 kg of fuel.
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