I did not use my GPS during the circuit!
You should. Just to record your flight path and then download it into, for instance, OziExplorer. You can see every deviation from the "perfect" circuit in great detail.
Yep - I can relate to that..... especially as I'm not too good at correcting for drift
I've often taken my PDA with memory map on it to record what I've done and then "allowed" my very experienced friends, to critique my circuit flying in the club house over a cup of tea..... shows the
(lack of) precision nicely.....especially when you change the map to the 250000:1 and zoom in... (also shows the speed & height profile when you download it to your PC)
I did have
(just the) one, absolutely superb day where I was flying the circuit with almost metronome precision and I can't have been more than 10ft away from each track, and that was over 8-10 circuits....
Thread drift......
I remember that day especially well as it was my first solo flight after passing my test and had been feeling quite elated when I got back to the club......grin from ear to ear........and than a (fairly new) instructor pulled me over and said I'd been flying in the neighbouring airfields ATZ ... Still assuming that
all instructors are sky gods and therefore always right even though I knew I'd been flying the pattern I'd been taught from day 1......I whipped my PDA out to check where I'd been (all worried... thinking "oh $%^&^l - they let me loose and I screw up!!"
) and proved that I'd not only been within OUR ATZ but followed the approved circuit path.... But he still thought he was right because that edition of the chart showed the neighbouring ATZ as curved when the join between us should have been a straight line - the chart was wrong(!)..... and had been amended.
But that whole situation totally deflated me
...
Our ex CFI heard what had happened from another instructor, and came over to look at the PDA as he hadn't seen that set up before..... He complimented me on the accuracy of my circuit flying
and said that I'd been precisely where I should have been - "borrowed" the PDA to show the track to another recently qualified as an example of accuracy - and then wanted to know which instructor had tried to ruin my day!