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MY FS FLIGHTS
Flight Score
Arrival
Begin the flare with progressive back pressure and keep it coming until the sink is arrested, rather than flying it on flat.
What happened: The nose was barely raised in the flare and little of the sink was taken out, flying the aircraft onto the runway. This pattern usually carries through to a firm touchdown with a noticeable sink rate.
Watch for: Vertical speed indicator: a smoothly reducing sink through the normal flare band, not a steady rate into the runway.
Twenty knots on a monitor produces the visual sensation of about ten. The advice to "taxi at a walking pace" cannot fix this, because your sense of walking pace is exactly the thing that's broken. Put the groundspeed readout in your scan and obey it for the next fifty flights, the way a student pilot leans on the airspeed indicator before learning to read attitude.
Read more in How to Taxi AnywhereStart to finish · 17 stages, 14 in the score
Events
Events
Events
Events
Events
Events
From brake release to the end of the climb, against time, then the takeoff point by point.
Rotated at 83 kt, 4 kt below the 87 kt target, and lifted off at 90 kt 1.8 s later, the nose coming up at 3.0° 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 841 ft.
Reached 35 ft with 2,520 m of runway left; then climbing at 1,740 fpm on average to 841 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 3,284 m runway.
Rolled from 81 m in, drifted left of the centreline, 4.7 m at the widest, and lifted off 3.3 m left. Airborne 17 % 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, 1.5 nm out at 147 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: 11° 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 WorkGood: full marks on the turn and the leg after it.
Late: turned base with the threshold 27° 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 WorkGood: full marks on the turn.
The final from 4 nm.
Profile height against the 3° glideslope, with its 2° band in green.
Inside the glideslope band from 3.2 nm, where the final began, to the threshold, never more than 240 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 491 m right of the centreline at 3.2 nm, then inside the band from 1.4 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 42 kt fast at the 1,000 ft gate, closing to 25 at 500 ft and 10 at the threshold.
Inside the speed band all the way, between −3 kt and +7 kt on the approach speed of 84 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
The flare held the target profile well. The aircraft was flown onto the runway - pitch changed 1.9° and the descent was barely arrested. Touchdown was 478 m past the threshold. Start the flare with progressive back pressure rather than one pull, and keep it coming.
Little crosswind (2 kt): nothing to correct for. Touched down with the nose 4° left of the track, wings level.
Wind 001° at 3 kt · 1 kt head · 2 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 72 kt at touchdown to taxi speed (30 kt) in 9 s, an average deceleration of 0.31 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 39 ft, 11 ft below the 50 ft target; began the flare at 21 ft. Touched down 478 m in, 173 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 260 fpm at the flare to 40 fpm at 6 ft, then back up to 170 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 first 1,524 m of the 3,284 m runway, to the same scale as the side view.
Touched down on the centreline, and stayed within 1.8 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 478 m touchdown sits inside the full-score zone. The arrival was smooth.
The rest of the report
The TBM 930 departed Auckland International Airport (NZAA) from runway 05R, using a take-off distance of 593 m which represented 18 % of the runway. Liftoff was achieved at 90 kt. Ambient conditions were 33 °C with a wind of 3 kt from 1°, giving a 3 kt cross-wind component and a 1 kt head-wind component.
The aircraft entered a right-hand pattern from runway 05R, covering less than 1 nm in 16 seconds.
A right-hand pattern cross-wind leg followed, also less than 1 nm and completed in 14 seconds.
During the downwind turn the aircraft flew 2 nm while turning to an angle of 107.3° relative to the runway heading.
The downwind leg extended 4 nm and was flown in 89 seconds.
The base-leg turn was executed over 4 nm with a turn angle of 27.5° to the runway.
The base leg itself was less than 1 nm and lasted 28 seconds.
The final turn covered less than 1 nm and was completed in 31 seconds.
On final approach to runway 05R the aircraft descended from 1,002 ft agl to 49 ft agl in 130 seconds and met the stabilisation gate criteria.
Touchdown occurred on runway 05R, whose length is 3,284 m. The threshold speed was recorded at 81 kt, touchdown distance was 478 m, touchdown speed was 70 kt and the vertical speed was -134 fpm. Alignment at touchdown was very good. Weather at landing was 32 °C with a wind of 5 kt from 1°, providing a 4 kt cross-wind and a 2 kt head-wind component.
Runway rollout alignment was perfect and the total landing distance measured 688 m, representing 21 % of the runway.
In total the flight covered 13 nm, took 7 minutes and consumed 26 kg of fuel.
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