Events
Events
Events
MY FS FLIGHTS
Flight Score
Track the centreline on final
See Arrival Final 1
Preparing for a stable approach will give you time to decide on whether to attempt the landing or going around. Too much altitude with a high sink rate will result in carrying too much speed onto the runway. Configuring flaps and the gear late also won't help the speed decay.
Read more in The Stabilised ApproachStart to finish · 14 stages, 13 in the score
Events
Events
Events
From brake release to the end of the climb, against time, then the takeoff point by point.
Lifted off at 60 kt with 1.7° 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 349 ft.
Reached 35 ft with 778 m of runway left; then climbing at 620 fpm on average to 349 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 1,390 m runway.
Rolled from the start of the runway, drifted right of the centreline, 3.1 m at the widest, and lifted off 3.1 m right. Airborne 25 % 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.
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 91 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 WorkTurn onto downwind: scored 46.
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 WorkLate: turned base with the threshold 36° 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 WorkOvershot: went 157 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 0.8 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.
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 157 m left of the centreline at 0.8 nm, then inside the band 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 78 kt fast at the 1,000 ft gate, closing to 48 at 500 ft and 10 at the threshold.
Inside the speed band all the way, between −3 kt and +8 kt on the approach speed of 62 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
No crosswind: nothing to correct for. Touched down straight, wings level.
Wind 270° at 2 kt · 2 kt tail · 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.
Side view — the last 1,390 m of the approach.
Crossed the threshold at 21 ft, 29 ft below the 50 ft target. Touched down 236 m in, 69 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 1,390 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 420 fpm at 20 ft to 90 fpm at touchdown. The nose came up 5.2° 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 1,390 m runway, to the same scale as the side view.
Touched down 2.4 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 236 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 09 at EGPN Dundee Airport, where the PA38 Tomahawk aircraft took off with a takeoff distance of 370 meters, which is 27% of the runway length. The liftoff speed was 60 knots. At the time of takeoff, the local weather conditions were characterized by a temperature of 15 degrees Celsius and a wind speed of 2 knots from a direction of 270 degrees, resulting in a negligible crosswind and a slight tailwind.
After taking off, the aircraft entered a right-hand pattern from runway 09, completing the turn in less than 1 nautical mile in 38 seconds. The subsequent right-hand pattern crosswind turn was completed in less than 1 nautical mile in 8 seconds. The pilot then initiated a pattern downwind turn, covering a distance of 1 nautical mile at an angle of 45 degrees to the runway, which was 26.6 degrees. The downwind leg itself was 2 nautical miles long and took 89 seconds to complete.
The pilot then turned onto the base leg, covering a distance of 1 nautical mile at an angle of 45 degrees to the runway, which was 36.2 degrees. The base leg itself was less than 1 nautical mile long and took 15 seconds to complete. The final turn onto the final approach was completed in less than 1 nautical mile in 23 seconds. The aircraft then began its final approach to runway 09 from the west, heading 95.0 degrees at an altitude of 251 feet above ground level.
The landing on runway 09 was successful, with a touchdown distance of 233 meters and a touchdown speed of 44 knots, which was considered good. The touchdown rate was excellent at -88 feet per minute, and the runway touchdown alignment was very good. The local weather conditions remained the same, with a temperature of 15 degrees Celsius and a wind speed of 2 knots from a direction of 270 degrees.
The flight was completed with a total distance of 6 nautical miles, taking 5 minutes to complete, and a fuel consumption of -42 kilograms. This indicates that the aircraft used less fuel than it was carrying, resulting in a net gain of fuel.
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