Events
Events
Events
Events
Events
MY FS FLIGHTS
Flight Score
Departure
Ease the yoke smoothly to hold a steady one g through the ground roll instead of letting it sag to 1.1 g.
What happened: During the ground roll the g force averaged 1.1 g, well below the smooth steady load expected while tracking the runway.
Watch for: Watch the g meter and hold it steady near one g through the roll.
See Departure Roll
Arrival
Lower the nosewheel smoothly and apply braking evenly after touchdown, avoiding abrupt pitch or brake inputs that spike g force.
What happened: The rollout average g force measured 0.6 g, well outside a smooth deceleration.
Watch for: Watch the g meter through rollout, keeping it steady near one g rather than spiking to 0.6 g.
See Arrival Rollout
When Vr arrives, an abrupt near-full-scale pull, pitch overshoots, a push, and an oscillation through the first 200 ft. It feels like “this aircraft is twitchy” but the actual fault happened before liftoff. The pitch trace needs to show a clean ramp during liftoff.
Read more in Improve Your Take-OffsStart to finish · 14 stages, 13 in the score
Events
Events
Events
Events
Events
From brake release to the end of the climb, against time, then the takeoff point by point.
Rotated at 78 kt, on the 79 kt target, and lifted off at 85 kt 2.0 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 770 ft.
Reached 35 ft with 1,197 m of runway left; then climbing at 1,180 fpm on average to 770 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 1,866 m runway.
Rolled from 322 m in, drifted left of the centreline, 2.4 m at the widest, and lifted off 2.2 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. The arrow beside the runway is the crosswind, pointing the way the air was moving, so it pushed the aircraft that way.
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, 1.2 nm out at 118 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.
High on downwind: 1,478 ft against 1,000 ft, 478 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 WorkGood: full marks on the turn and the leg after it.
Overshot: went 1,052 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 WorkOver the threshold
Touchdown
Perfect landing flare
Little crosswind (1 kt): nothing to correct for. Touched down with the nose 2° right of the track, wings level.
Wind 269° 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.
From 68 kt at touchdown to taxi speed (30 kt) in 10 s, an average deceleration of 0.20 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 1,524 m of the approach.
Began the flare at 25 ft, 17 m before the threshold; crossed the threshold at 21 ft, 29 ft below the 50 ft target. Touched down 300 m in, close to 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 450 fpm at the flare to 20 fpm at touchdown. The nose came up 3.0° 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 1,866 m runway, to the same scale as the side view.
Touched down on the centreline, and stayed within 0.9 m of it down the rollout.
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 300 m touchdown sits inside the full-score zone. The arrival was smooth.
The rest of the report
The Pilatus PC-12 departed from runway 23 at EGPE Inverness Airport. Takeoff distance was 483 m, 26 % of the runway, and rotation occurred at 78 kt. Local weather was 15 °C with wind 2 kt from 269°, a 1 kt cross-wind and a 2 kt head-wind.
Initial climb to 1 000 ft agl took 41 seconds, averaging 1 260 fpm and reaching 133 kt at the top of the climb. The aircraft then climbed from 1 018 ft asl to 1 659 ft asl in 1 minute while covering 2 nm, beginning about 1 mile north-west of Croy.
Level flight was maintained at 1 500 ft asl for 6 minutes, covering 14 nm and starting roughly 1 mile north of Balloch.
Descent began from 1 450 ft asl to 437 ft asl in 2 minutes, covering 3 nm, with the descent starting 2 miles south-east of Ardersier.
The aircraft landed on runway 23 at EGPE Inverness Airport, whose length is 1 866 m. The threshold height was good and the threshold speed was a little below target at 74 kt. The flare was described as perfect. Touchdown occurred 300 m down the runway at 68 kt with a perfect rate of -15 fpm and perfect alignment; no bounce was observed. Total landing distance was 535 m, 29 % of the runway, and rollout alignment was perfect.
The entire flight covered 20 nm, lasted 12 minutes and used 36 kg of fuel.
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