Events
Events
Events
Events
MY FS FLIGHTS
Flight Score
Departure
Ease back pressure in smoothly as you approach 58 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
Arrive slow and the sink rate at the threshold is already above schedule, the flare is short because there is no energy to extend it, and the touchdown is hard in a way that feels exactly like a late flare. Diagnosing a slow arrival as a late flare is the catastrophic misread: you respond by flaring earlier, which bleeds more speed, which makes the next one worse. The tiebreaker is threshold speed against VRef, not feel. Never diagnose a flare without it.
Read more in Flare TimingStart to finish · 14 stages, 13 in the score
Events
Events
Events
Events
From brake release to the end of the climb, against time, then the takeoff point by point.
Lifted off at 57 kt with 3.4° 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 424 ft.
Reached 35 ft with 2,057 m of runway left; then climbing at 600 fpm on average to 424 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 53 m in, never more than 1.4 m off the centreline. Airborne 12 % 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, 0.9 nm out at 90 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.
Early: turned crosswind before the end of the runway, at 592 ft.
Upwind (departure). Climb straight ahead on the extended centreline. Don't turn early. A curved departure leg makes every subsequent leg unrepeatable.
Read more in Pattern WorkTurn onto downwind: scored 0.
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 61° 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 WorkGood: full marks on the turn.
Over the threshold
Touchdown
Fair landing flare
Little crosswind (1 kt): nothing to correct for. Touched down straight, 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.
Side view — the last 1,524 m of the approach.
Crossed the threshold at 65 ft, 15 ft above the 50 ft target. Touched down 495 m in, 190 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 420 fpm at 63 ft to 60 fpm at touchdown. The nose came up 8.2° 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 first 1,524 m of the 2,737 m runway, to the same scale as the side view.
Touched down on 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 arrow beside the runway is the crosswind, pointing the way the air was moving, so it pushed the aircraft that way.
The 495 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 30 at EGPK Glasgow Prestwick Airport. The PA38 Tomahawk aircraft required a takeoff distance of 293 meters, which was 11% of the runway length. The liftoff speed was achieved at 58 knots. At the time of departure, 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. This resulted in a crosswind of 1 knot and a headwind of 2 knots.
As the aircraft entered the right-hand pattern from runway 30, it demonstrated impressive agility, completing the turn in less than 1 nautical mile in just 16 seconds. The subsequent right-hand pattern crosswind turn was also executed efficiently, taking 22 seconds to complete. The pattern downwind turn was made at an angle of 45 degrees to the runway, covering a distance of 1 nautical mile. The downwind leg itself took 54 seconds to complete, also covering a distance of 1 nautical mile.
The pattern base leg turn was made at an angle of 61.2 degrees to the runway, with the base leg itself taking 29 seconds to complete and covering a distance of less than 1 nautical mile. The final turn was made in 26 seconds, bringing the aircraft into position for the final approach. The approach was made from the south-east, heading 302.0 degrees at an altitude of 107 feet above ground level (agl) and a distance of 0 nautical miles from the runway.
The landing on runway 30 was executed smoothly, with the touchdown point being 52 meters beyond the touchdown zone. The touchdown speed was 43 knots, which was well within the target range, and the touchdown rate was an excellent -72 feet per minute (fpm). The runway touchdown alignment was perfect, indicating a high degree of control and precision during the landing. The local weather conditions remained the same as during the departure, with a temperature of 15 degrees Celsius and a wind speed of 2 knots from a direction of 269 degrees.
The flight was completed with a total distance of 5 nautical miles, taking 4 minutes to cover this distance. The aircraft used a total of -43 kilograms of fuel during the flight. Overall, the flight demonstrated a high level of proficiency and control, with the pilot executing a series of complex maneuvers with ease and precision.
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