Events
Events
Events
Events
MY FS FLIGHTS
Flight Score
Arrival
Add power on short final to hold 64 kt at the threshold rather than letting speed decay.
What happened: You crossed the threshold at 45 kt against a target of 64 kt, below reference speed.
Watch for: Airspeed indicator, hold 64 kt down to the threshold.
See Arrival Landing
Every knot above Vref is stored kinetic energy, and energy stored at the threshold must be dissipated in ground effect before the aeroplane will stop flying. Because kinetic energy scales with the square of speed, the excess you must dissipate grows fast. At a 45-knot approach, five knots hot is over a tenth more speed and roughly a quarter more energy to get rid of in ground effect. This is why the fix is never in the flare. It was decided three miles earlier, on final, at the airspeed indicator.
Read more in VRef ExplainedStart to finish · 14 stages, 12 in the score
Events
Events
Events
Events
From brake release to the end of the climb, against time, then the takeoff point by point.
Rotated at 52 kt, on the 52 kt target, and lifted off at 56 kt 1.4 s later, the nose coming up at 2.5° 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 462 ft. The distance scale changes past the runway end.
Reached 35 ft with 147 m of runway left; then climbing at 650 fpm on average to 462 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 699 m runway.
Rolled from 42 m in, drifted left of the centreline, 3.3 m at the widest, and lifted off 3.3 m left. Airborne 54 % 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.
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, 0.8 nm out at 78 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: 1,367 ft against 1,000 ft, 367 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 WorkOff heading: 8° from the leg's heading on average.
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 WorkOvershot: went 112 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 WorkThe final from 4 nm.
Profile height against the 3° glideslope, with its 2° band in green.
Inside the glideslope band from 1.5 nm, where the final began, to the threshold, never more than 290 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 112 m right of the centreline at 1.5 nm, then inside the band from 0.8 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 32 kt fast at the 1,000 ft gate, closing to 19 at 500 ft and 10 at the threshold.
Inside the speed band all the way, between −18 kt and +1 kt on the approach speed of 64 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
Perfect landing flare
No crosswind: nothing to correct for. Touched down straight, wings level.
Wind 270° at 1 kt · 1 kt head · 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.
Side view — the last 699 m of the approach.
Began the flare at 19 ft, 158 m before the threshold; crossed the threshold at 2 ft, 48 ft below the 50 ft target. Touched down 47 m in, 257 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 699 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 640 fpm at the flare to 100 fpm at touchdown. The nose came up 5.7° 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 699 m runway, to the same scale as the side view.
Touched down 4 m left of 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 47 m touchdown sits inside the full-score zone. The arrival was smooth.
The rest of the report
The Tecnam P2008 JC taxied to runway 26C at LSZL Locarno Airport and commenced the departure roll, using 390 m of runway (56 % of the available length). The local weather was 15 °C with a wind of 1 kt from 269°, giving a head-wind component of 1 kt and no cross-wind.
At liftoff the aircraft reached a speed of 57 kt and became airborne from runway 26C.
The aircraft entered a left-hand pattern from runway 26C, covering less than 1 nm in 68 seconds.
It then proceeded on the left-hand crosswind leg, again covering less than 1 nm, this time in 20 seconds.
During the downwind turn the aircraft described a 2 nm arc with a 45° entry angle of 11.5° to the runway.
The downwind leg extended 3 nm and was flown in 132 seconds.
The base-leg turn was a 2 nm maneuver with a 45° entry angle of 27.3° to the runway.
The base leg itself was less than 1 nm and was completed in 26 seconds.
The final turn covered less than 1 nm and was completed in 21 seconds.
On final approach to runway 26C from the east, the aircraft was aligned on a heading of 254.0° at 1 nm distance and 590 ft above ground level.
Landing was made on runway 26C, whose length is 699 m. The threshold height was good and the threshold speed was slightly below the target at 45 kt. Touchdown occurred 45 m down the runway at a speed of 42 kt, with a smooth descent rate of minus 104 fpm. The touchdown point was offset 4.2 m from the centreline. Weather at landing was 15 °C with a wind of 1 kt from 294°, providing a head-wind component of 1 kt and a cross-wind component of 1 kt.
In total the flight covered 7 nm, lasted “taking 7”, and consumed 0 kg of fuel.
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