User Guide

Learning To Fly with Rod Machado
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7
Tutorial 8: Takeoffs, Traffic Patterns,
and Landings
Years ago a fellow flight instructor had a student who spent a few too many hours on the high seas.
On his first flight lesson, he walked out to the airplane, loosened all three tie-down ropes, tossed
them aside and yelled, “Cast off!” Hmmm, apparently he still had a little sea water on the brain.
Sorry, but airplanes don’t do castoffs, they do takeoffs. And once you’re in the air, you need a
practical way to return to an airport in preparation for landing. It’s similar to bringing a boat in to
dock. You don’t just barge into the herd of boats heading for port. You get in line and follow the other
boaters and fishermen back home. This way they don’t get upset, which can lead to fishticuffs. And
that will put the fear of cod in you.
This approach and
alignment with the
runway is called a traffic
pattern—a rectangular
pattern as shown in
Figure 1. It has five major
legs or segments:
· The departure leg
· The crosswind leg
· The downwind leg
· The base leg
· The final approach
Let’s review each segment and discuss its purpose.
From the Flights menu, click Select Flight, then choose Tutorial 8, Situation 1, which puts you in
beautiful Honolulu, Hawaii!
That’s right, baby! You’re in town for a little pattern practice and some R & R. You’re lined up with
Runway 26 (that’s a direction of 260 degrees). In the bottom-left corner of your screen is an
undocked Top-down View window. This will be your eye-in-the-sky to help you fly the pattern
properly.
Here’s what you’ll do. Follow my directions as I take you around the pattern. At each segment, I’ll
have you pause the simulation. Then I’ll talk about what you’re seeing. Let’s start with the takeoff.
Figure 1
BASE LEG
DOWNWIND LEG
CROSSWIND LEG
FINAL APPROACH
DEPARTURE LEG