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MY FS FLIGHTS
Flight Score
Maintain the centreline
See Departure Roll
A small uncorrected heading error at 40 knots becomes a metre of offset per second by 100 knots, noticed only at rotation, producing a crabbed liftoff. Root cause is nearly always eyes on the tape instead of the far end of the runway. Small heading changes displace a distant point visibly long before the nearby centreline stripes look wrong.
Read more in Improve Your Take-OffsStart to finish · 18 stages, 16 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.
Lifted off at 89 kt with 7.5° 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 418 ft.
Reached 35 ft with 305 m of runway left; then climbing at 830 fpm on average to 418 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 1,230 m runway.
Rolled from 54 m in, drifted right of the centreline, 42 m at the widest, and lifted off 42 m right. Airborne 50 % 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, 1.4 nm out at 143 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 59.
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: 16° 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 92 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 3.4 nm, where the final began, to the threshold, never more than 360 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 321 m left of the centreline at 3.4 nm, then inside it from 3.1 to 2.4 nm, then drifted 92 m right between 2.4 and 1.6 nm, then inside the band from 1.6 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.
Over the threshold
Touchdown
No crosswind: nothing to correct for. Touched down straight, wings level.
Wind 182° at 7 kt · 7 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 70 kt at touchdown to taxi speed (30 kt) in 24 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 1,230 m of the approach.
Crossed the threshold at 4 ft, 46 ft below the 50 ft target. Touched down 122 m in, 183 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 1,230 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 250 fpm at 4 ft to 60 fpm at touchdown. The pitch barely changed.
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 1,230 m runway, to the same scale as the side view.
Touched down 7.6 m right of the centreline and drifted to 11 m right on the rollout, back to 2.5 m right by the end.
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 122 m touchdown sits inside the full-score zone. The 1.14 G arrival bounced.
The rest of the report
The flight in the Spitfire Mk IX from EDFB Reichelsheim Airfield was conducted smoothly, with a departure roll on runway 18. The takeoff distance was 600m or 49% of the runway, with a liftoff speed of 89 knots. The local weather conditions at the time of departure were 1°C temperature with a wind speed of 8 knots coming from 181°, resulting in a headwind of 8 knots.
The flight followed a left hand pattern entry from runway 18 at EDFB Reichelsheim Airfield, covering a distance of less than 1 nm in 45 seconds. The subsequent left hand pattern crosswind leg from runway 18 covered a distance of 2 nm in 34 seconds. The pattern continued with a downwind turn covering 4 nm with an angle to the runway of 45 degrees (60.2°) and a downwind leg covering 3 nm in 78 seconds. The base leg turn covered a distance of 4 nm with an angle to the runway of 45 degrees (47.2°), followed by a base leg covering 1 nm in 29 seconds. The final turn covered less than 1 nm in 25 seconds, leading to the final approach to runway 18 at EDFB Reichelsheim Airfield from the north at a heading of 178.0°, 2 nm out, and 491 ft above ground level.
The landing on runway 18 at EDFB Reichelsheim Airfield was successful, with a runway length of 1,230m. The threshold height was good, and the threshold speed was above target at 87 knots. The touchdown distance was 121m, with a touchdown speed of 79 knots, albeit on the faster side. The touchdown rate was excellent at -58 ft/m, but the runway touchdown position was slightly misaligned by 7.6m from the centerline. The local weather conditions at the time of landing were 1°C temperature with a wind speed of 7 knots from 181°, resulting in a headwind of 7 knots.
The total landing distance was 661m, accounting for 54% of the runway, with a slightly misaligned runway rollout alignment of 10.7m from the centerline. The total flight distance covered was 16nm, taking 8 minutes and using 17 kg of fuel. Overall, the flight in the Spitfire Mk IX was executed effectively, with successful takeoff, pattern maneuvers, and landing.
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