Originally Posted by Vilas
If you descend to terrain clearance 400ft on downwind do you consider approach stabilised on downwind?
Not until steady on final commencing descent on the PAPI. We were approved for 400ft, then it changed to 500ft to "fit in" with everybody else, and now visual circling is not permitted as we have straight-in RNAVs everywhere. I note Airbus comments about using a 400ft stable height for circling approaches in it's
Stabilised Approach note.
Back to the OP's issue, while this is supposed to be a purely visual manoeuvre, I think there is a case for using "the system" to help. I'm definitely not suggesting a building a full LNAV/VNAV min wx circuit, but using Fixes makes life easier, with no need for 45/30. My preference is to place a fix at the end of the Downwind leg ie at the Base turn point, then put a "radial" line back along the Downwind leg. When you get Visual, you then simply fly over to the line in TRK, follow it to the fix and turn Base. Having an app that would calculate that Fix point (taking into account spacing out from the runway/crosswind effect and distance/head/tailwind) would be helpful. The stopwatch would be used as a backup.
The Fix position would be based on the threshold waypoint. You could input the runway QFU, the wind velocity, the bank on Base and the speed, and it'd spit out the location of the base turn point WRT to landing threshold.
For normal circuits, I just use 40° off at 3.4nm.