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MY FS FLIGHTS
Flight Score
Departure
Ease back pressure in smoothly as you approach 61 kt, holding a steady rotation rate rather than snatching the controls.
What happened: On the takeoff roll the aircraft bounced before becoming fully airborne.
Watch for: Attitude indicator: a smooth, continuous pitch-up through liftoff with no secondary bounce.
See Departure Roll
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 · 14 stages, 13 in the score
Events
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From brake release to the end of the climb, against time, then the takeoff point by point.
Lifted off at 72 kt with 2.0° 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 557 ft.
Reached 35 ft with 1,092 m of runway left; then climbing at 740 fpm on average to 557 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 1,814 m runway.
Rolled from 104 m in, drifted right of the centreline, 1.5 m at the widest, and lifted off 1.3 m right. Airborne 11 % 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 94 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.
Good: full marks on the turn and the leg after it.
Turn onto downwind: scored 84.
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 WorkGood: full marks on the turn and the leg after it.
Overshot: went 224 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 WorkOne stabilised approach gate for a circuit: five checks where the approach path is 300 ft above the runway. The 1,000 ft gate is an instrument-approach check and does not apply.
Still turning onto final at the lower gate, so the centreline and wings level are not asked there - the aeroplane was not lined up yet, and was banked because it was turning. The other checks are marked as usual.
When the approach was stable
Every check met from 0.3 nm, about 120 ft above the runway, to the threshold, after the 300 ft gate. The last to settle was the centreline.
Each line is one of the gate checks, run along the whole final rather than only at the gates: green where it would have passed, amber where it would not. The glideslope, centreline and speed lines use the bands in the charts beside this card. The sink rate is allowed what the glideslope needs at your ground speed plus 600 fpm, the wings 10° of bank, and the gear and flap are read from when you moved the levers. The bottom line is green where every check held at once, ignoring blips shorter than 0.2 nm, and the sentence above it says from where it held to the threshold. A ring is a stabilisation gate, where the checks in the table were taken.
The final from 4 nm, with the stabilisation gates on it.
Profile height against the 3° glideslope, with its 2° band in green.
Inside the glideslope band from 1.1 nm, where the final began, to the threshold, never more than 140 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. A ring is a stabilisation gate: green when every check there passed, amber with the failed checks named beside it.
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 224 m left of the centreline at 1.1 nm, then inside the band from 0.3 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 33 kt fast at the 1,000 ft gate, closing to 20 at 500 ft and 10 at the threshold.
Inside the speed band all the way, between −7 kt and +11 kt on the approach speed of 66 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
Little crosswind (1 kt): nothing to correct for. Touched down with the nose 2° right of the track, wings level.
Wind 270° at 2 kt · 2 kt head · 1 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 1,524 m of the approach.
Crossed the threshold at 20 ft, 30 ft below the 50 ft target. Touched down 217 m in, 88 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 1,524 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 350 fpm at 19 ft to 50 fpm at touchdown. The nose came up 3.9° 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 first 1,524 m of the 1,814 m runway, to the same scale as the side view.
Touched down 2.7 m right 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 arrow beside the runway is the crosswind, pointing the way the air was moving, so it pushed the aircraft that way.
The 217 m touchdown sits inside the full-score zone. The arrival was smooth.
The rest of the report
The flight began with a departure roll from runway 23 at EGPE Inverness Airport, where the aircraft, a Carenado CT182T G-ANRW, successfully took off after covering a distance of 343 meters, which accounted for 19% of the runway. The liftoff speed was 73 knots. At the time of takeoff, the local weather conditions were characterized by a temperature of 16 degrees Celsius and a wind speed of 2 knots at 269 degrees, resulting in a crosswind of 1 knot and a headwind of 2 knots.
After taking off, the aircraft entered a right-hand pattern from runway 23, completing the entry in less than 1 nautical mile in 24 seconds. The subsequent right-hand pattern crosswind was also completed in less than 1 nautical mile in 11 seconds. The pilot then initiated a pattern downwind turn, covering a distance of 1 nautical mile at an angle of 54.1 degrees to the runway. The downwind leg itself was 2 nautical miles long and took 73 seconds to complete.
Following the downwind leg, the pilot executed a base leg turn, covering a distance of 1 nautical mile at an angle of 40.0 degrees to the runway. The base leg itself was less than 1 nautical mile long and took 12 seconds to complete. The final turn was also less than 1 nautical mile in 27 seconds. The aircraft then began its final approach to runway 23 from the north-east, heading 237.0 degrees at 1 nautical mile and 325 feet above ground level.
The landing on runway 23 was successful, with the aircraft touching down after covering a distance of 215 meters. The touchdown speed was 50 knots, and the touchdown rate was smooth at -133 feet per minute. The runway touchdown alignment was very good, and the local weather conditions at the time of landing were characterized by a temperature of 15 degrees Celsius and a wind speed of 2 knots at 270 degrees, resulting in a crosswind of 1 knot and a headwind of 2 knots.
In total, the flight covered a distance of 7 nautical miles and took 5 minutes to complete, using 2 kilograms of fuel in the process.
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