Events
Events
Events
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 · 15 stages, 14 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 119 kt with 5.8° 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 844 ft.
Reached 35 ft with 518 m of runway left; then climbing at 1,920 fpm on average to 844 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 2,737 m runway.
Rolled from 1,693 m in, drifted left of the centreline, 3.5 m at the widest, and lifted off 3 m left. Airborne 69 % 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, 1.8 nm out at 177 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 82.
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 WorkEarly: turned base with the threshold 57° 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 WorkOvershot: went 95 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: seven 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.
At the 300 ft gate: centreline more than 1° off and wings more than 10° from level.
When the approach was stable
Not every check held at once from 1.2 nm to the threshold.
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 1° band in green.
Inside the glideslope band from 1.2 nm, where the final began, to the threshold, never more than 40 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. 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 95 m left of the centreline at 1.2 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 25 kt fast at the 1,000 ft gate, closing to 15 at 500 ft and 10 at the threshold.
Inside the speed band all the way, between +1 kt and +11 kt on the approach speed of 99 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
Good landing flare
No crosswind: nothing to correct for. Touched down straight, wings level.
Wind 270° at 1 kt · 1 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.
From 84 kt at touchdown to taxi speed (30 kt) in 15 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.
Crossed the threshold at 20 ft, 30 ft below the 50 ft target. Touched down 563 m in, 258 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 1,524 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 120 fpm at 17 ft to 30 fpm at touchdown. The nose came up 2.8° 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 2,737 m runway, to the same scale as the side view.
Touched down 2.3 m left of the centreline, and stayed about there down the rollout, 3.2 m left at the widest.
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.
Touched down 563 m past the threshold — beyond the full-score zone. The arrival was smooth.
The rest of the report
The flight began with a departure roll from runway 12 at Glasgow Prestwick Airport, with the Beechcraft King Air 350 taking off after a distance of 255 meters, which accounted for 9% of the runway. The aircraft lifted off at a speed of 120 knots, and the local weather conditions at the time were characterized by a temperature of 20 degrees Celsius and a wind speed of 3 knots from a direction of 227 degrees.
As the aircraft entered the right-hand pattern, it did so from runway 12, with the entry distance being less than 1 nautical mile in 22 seconds. The subsequent right-hand pattern crosswind turn was completed in less than 1 nautical mile in 10 seconds. The pattern downwind turn was a 45-degree angle to the runway, with a distance of 2 nautical miles. The downwind leg itself was 3 nautical miles long and took 64 seconds to complete.
The pattern base leg turn was another 45-degree angle to the runway, with a distance of 3 nautical miles. The base leg itself was 1 nautical mile long and took 48 seconds to complete. The final turn was less than 1 nautical mile in 31 seconds, after which the aircraft began its final approach to runway 12 from the north-west, at a heading of 124 degrees and an altitude of 185 feet above ground level.
The landing on runway 12 was successful, with the touchdown point being 129 meters beyond the touchdown zone. The touchdown speed was 82 knots, which was considered good, and the touchdown rate was perfect at -22 feet per minute. The runway touchdown alignment was also very good. The local weather conditions remained the same, with a temperature of 20 degrees Celsius and a wind speed of 3 knots from a direction of 227 degrees.
The total landing distance was 903 meters, which accounted for 33% of the runway. The runway rollout alignment was also very good. The total flight distance was 10 nautical miles, and the flight took 5 minutes to complete. The aircraft used a total of -45 kilograms of fuel during the flight.
Scroll or drag the slider to zoom · double-click to reset · hover for values