Events
Events
MY FS FLIGHTS
Flight Score
Departure
Ease back pressure in smoothly as you approach 70 kt, holding a steady rotation rate rather than snatching the controls.
What happened: On the takeoff roll the aircraft bounced before becoming fully airborne.
Watch for: Attitude indicator: a smooth, continuous pitch-up through liftoff with no secondary bounce.
See Departure Roll
Arrival
Add power on short final to hold 76 kt over the threshold instead of letting speed decay.
What happened: Threshold speed was 10 kt below the 76 kt target, and the sink was arrested at 33 ft while already slow, so the aircraft settled as the speed ran out, producing a firm touchdown at 173 fpm.
Watch for: Airspeed indicator: 76 kt at the threshold
A typical trainer rotates in the mid-50s of knots - a 172 at around 55 KIAS, climbing out at a Vy in the low 70s, though check your own POH rather than memorising Cessna's numbers - and the transferable rule is that Vr sits just above the stall speed in takeoff configuration. Rotate early because "it felt ready" and the aircraft lifts off inside ground effect, where induced drag is reduced, then climbs out of it into more drag. On a marginal-performance day the result is an aircraft that lifts off and then refuses to climb, sagging back towards the runway.
Read more in Improve Your Take-OffsStart to finish · 15 stages, 13 in the score
Events
Events
From brake release to the end of the climb, against time, then the takeoff point by point.
Lifted off at 78 kt with 3.2° 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 667 ft.
Reached 35 ft with 675 m of runway left; then climbing at 1,980 fpm on average to 667 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 1,224 m runway.
Rolled from 65 m in, drifted 7 m right of the centreline and was back on it to lift off, in 10 kn of crosswind from the right. Airborne 19 % 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 115 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 WorkSteep: 43° of bank.
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 WorkSteep: 39° of bank.
Good: 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 1.1 nm, where the final began, to the threshold, never more than 50 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 596 m left of the centreline at 1.1 nm, then inside the band from 0.6 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.
Speed against the approach speed. The green band runs from 5 kt slow to 38 kt fast at the 1,000 ft gate, closing to 23 at 500 ft and 10 at the threshold.
Inside the speed band all the way, between −12 kt and +21 kt on the approach speed of 76 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 strayed well off the target profile. The flare took all the sink out 33 ft agl above the runway and the aircraft settled on from there, 648 fpm of sink coming back, having crossed the threshold below target speed. Touchdown was 150 m past the threshold. Carry the speed to the flare and hold it lower - the aircraft ran out of lift before the wheels arrived, so the fix is energy on the approach, not attitude.
11 kt across from the right, which takes about 12° of crab to hold the centreline at 55 kt. Touched down with 12° of it still on, 6° of bank.
Wind 228° at 15 kt · 10 kt head · 11 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 47 kt at touchdown to taxi speed (30 kt) in 13 s, an average deceleration of 0.07 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 1,224 m of the approach.
Began the flare at 38 ft, 180 m before the threshold; crossed the threshold at 10 ft, 40 ft below the 50 ft target; ballooned 2 ft from 32 ft. Touched down 150 m in, 155 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 1,224 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 380 fpm at the flare to 170 fpm at touchdown. The nose came up 4.2° 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 1,224 m runway, to the same scale as the side view.
Touched down 8.1 m left of the centreline, and stayed about there down the rollout, 8.5 m right 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. The arrow beside the runway is the crosswind, pointing the way the air was moving, so it pushed the aircraft that way.
The 150 m touchdown sits inside the full-score zone. The arrival was smooth.
The rest of the report
The Extra 330 departed EDFB Reichelsheim Airfield from runway 18, achieving liftoff after a ground roll of 285 m, which represented 23 % of the available runway. The aircraft reached a liftoff speed of 78 kt under local conditions of 19 °C, wind 14 kt from 229°, a cross-wind component of 11 kt and a head-wind component of 9 kt.
During the approach the pilot entered a left-hand pattern on runway 18, covering less than 1 nm in 27 seconds for the entry and 1 nm in 25 seconds on the crosswind leg. The downwind turn spanned 2 nm with a 72.9° angle to the runway, followed by a 2 nm downwind leg completed in 53 seconds. The base-leg turn also measured 2 nm at a 57.9° angle, after which a 1 nm base leg was flown in 41 seconds, and the final turn covered less than 1 nm in 43 seconds. The final approach descended from 265 ft AGL to 28 ft AGL in 37 seconds and satisfied the stabilisation gates.
Landing was executed on runway 18, whose length is 1 224 m, with a threshold speed recorded slightly below the target at 66 kt. Touchdown occurred 149 m down the runway at a speed of 55 kt and a vertical rate of minus 108 fpm. The touchdown point was offset 8.1 m from the centreline, while the total landing distance measured 372 m, representing 30 % of the runway.
Rollout continued with a slight centreline deviation of 11.4 m and the aircraft came to a stop within the remaining runway length. Weather at the time of landing was 18 °C, wind 12 kt from 228°, a cross-wind component of 10 kt and a head-wind component of 8 kt.
In total the flight covered 7 nm, required approximately 4 minutes of flight time and consumed 2 kg of fuel.
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