Circuit Tips?
 

I did my first circuit detail at the weekend, and found it a tad intense, to say the least! By the end of the hour, I was literally trembling from the concentration and effort.
Now everybody at the school made an big effort to insist that a couple of lessons from now I'll be in the rhythm of it and finding it much less stressful, with everything coming together much more easily. However, do any of you have any hints or tips for making the workload more manageable? I know my instructor is first base for this kind of information, but I now have a three week wait to my next lesson, and I'd be grateful for a little food for thought to chew over in the meantime ...
Thanks.

Don't forget to stand on one leg and fart the national anthem while you're at it.:}

Then try doing it twice as fast - it's a bit like a circuit at Denham (where I trained).

TPK:ok:

fart the national anthem while you're at it

Did you see the F1 car on Top Gear last night? They had their laptop running the engine in the pits and it played the tune.

If you've got three weeks to go..
 

I would fire up the flight simulator.

Chances are it has your airfield already installed on it.

Practice the theory there.

Naturally a control yoke, rudder pedals and headset help.

DF.

Pre-landing check BUMPFFICHHL !!!!!!!!!!

Change school to one that dosnt teach folk lore and spend the extra time with LOOKOUT.

Quote::

Pre-landing check BUMPFFICHHL !!!!!!!!!!

Change school to one that dosnt teach folk lore and spend the extra time with LOOKOUT.

***************************************

Schools make more money by making something simple complex.

And it gives the instructors the false sense they are operating the space shuttle.

And it takes just 1.5 seconds to hit another aircraft.

There are many ways of doing things Gemma, drinking one wine dosnt make you a wine expert and 21,000 hours dosnt make you a good instructor. Ive woiked with brand new instructors who are much better that their high hour counterparts.

There isnt even an airliner I have flown with that many pre-landing checks!

If you need a check list to remind you to put the wheels down, best stay on the ground

G-EMMA, I see the value in giving a student a handy means of covering the necessary items prior to landing. What I don't see is the point of adding irrelevant items that the aeroplane does not have because you may one day fly a machine so equipped.

You should be taught to fly the aeroplane you are in and through getting to know that understand how to cover different items in different machines. A one size fits all strikes me as rather silly. 'Lets check the gear is down' when we know it can't be anything else looks daft to me.

I wonder how you are being taught circuits?

I often introduce one circuit demo at the end of the early sorties as an ice-breaker.

When I teach the circuit the first instructional detail will concentrate on (mainly) the azimuth pattern and how to Go Around from a) downwind, (b) base leg, (c) final and (d) demo of recovery from misjudged flare. This means that the student has been enabled to recover from an incorrectly executed circuit and/or go around due to other traffic.

From there onwards it depends a bit on the aptitude of the student but in the early days I place little emphasis on the actual landing and more on a well flown circuit and final approach and encouraging the student to make an early decision to go around if things dont look good.

Prelanding checks and even RT can be blended in when the student begins to get the idea of the circuit.

Hope this helps!

I'm just going to pop in, say my bit, and then leave before things heat up!

Use the kitchen table as your runway, and 'fly' your circuit around it. Literally stand up and walk around it - see where it is (including piano keys etc.) from each point on your circuit and how it looks (over which shoulder, what sort of angle etc.). You'll be amazed how that basic bit of situational awareness 'training' will make things easier in the air.

Okay, you'll look a right t**t doing it, but who cares!

Sam.

On your kitchen circuit, also do your checks (er, whatever they are), your radio calls, what heading will you need for what course, etc. etc.

Not speaking from any deeper knowledge, but "one student to another"-type advice...

a) You asked for tips, and you got plenty, so one more then: Don't overthink it! It will come together with experience; at our stage, it is practice we need most.

b) Read up on and practice the checklist and procedures used at your school, but don't do it any other way, no matter how sensible some pprune advice might seem... If we take what our instructor says, add in some good ideas of our own, and a few good suggestions from elsewhere, it'll all be a fine mess in the end, even if the individual ideas are great (been there, done that ;)).

For instance, at my club we take a very different approach to landing checks from what G-EMMA (and others here) speak about... Maybe theirs is better, maybe ours is, but either way I'm not even considering changing until after I have my PPL! We have neither the knowledge nor the experience to go second-guessing our instructors, IMHO, so for better or worse, their method is the one we'll use...

c) Echoing the Flightsim advice, if you're even a tiny bit into such things... Has helped me tremendously, by being a far more immersive way of "dry flying". Not just for pattern training either; can go through the whole flight, including preflighting and actions on the ground before and after the flight, in the sim... Near useless (or worse!) for stick and rudder skills; superb as a procedure trainer! :ok:

Gemma

Most of those checks are pointless thats why.

Hatches and Harnesses for instance--whats changed since your last check did you open the doors on landing?

I would leave the fuel pump on

U/C --ridiculous (landing wheels up mainly happens to PPLs who forget the checklist that they rely on to prop them up esp after a GA)

Pitch -- ridiculous

I mean why not check the cabin is depressurising too and the cabin crew are secure. (well you never know you might be fliyng an airliner one day, thats your argument)

The main reason is that I am most likely in a circuit with low hour pilots who think lookout is something to do with a bank raid. All of my attention is going to be focussed on lookout.

I think the chances of you landing wheels up in your Warrior are a bit slimmer than having a near miss in the circuit but as you already know I do not think or teach like others do.

I would aslo add that long lists encourage reading without doing(in my 20,000 hour experience)

Just to take up what Firefly Bob is saying

He is far too nice to say what he is thinking.

Is your school the type that introuduces you to the complete circuit exercise in the first hour, RT as well, if so no wonder it is tiring.

Also notice FBs leaning towards Go Arounds rather than Landings at this stage. Its not a great landing you should be aiming for but the ability to make a great go around.

It is interesting to compare...

We only have five points on our landing checklist:
1. Altimeter -- Set
2. Fuel valve -- Both
3. Mixture -- Rich
4. Landing light -- On
5. Vth @ flaps 30 -- 60 - 70 KIAS

1 - 3 we get out of the way before even entering the pattern, 5 is not until on final. The only downwind 'check' is to switch on the landing light, which we do when opposite the touch down point, as we decelerate and add first notch of flaps. Flap handling is not even on the checklist. Checklists in the air are all memorized, but there are only 21 points all in all, so that is perfectly doable.

This is when flying the 172R or S; when forced to fly the N we have to remember the carb heat as well... But since those are different aircraft, we use different checklists and different speeds; still even us studes seem able to keep those different procedures apart, without resorting to 'generic' lists...

Which method is better? *shrugs* Will form an opinion on that once past my PPL exam! :)

I was also busy typing a response when I realised that it didn't contribute anything more than what Bjornall and other had said already.

The way I see it, there are two schools of thought:
- Come up with an acronym as long as you can manage, which includes every conceivable check that you might want to carry out in-flight, and do that just before landing. This ensures that you've done each and every check at least once during the flight. (Oh well, I'm overreacting but checking for example the hatches, for the first time since taking off, on downwind, sounds a bit unnecessary. If there's something wrong with the hatches you should have noted that earlier, shouldn't you?)
- Keep the downwind checks as short as possible, so maximum time is spent looking outside.

For me personally, I'm from the second school. My checklist works out as follows:
- FREDA check well before entering the circuit. This takes care of fuel management, instruments, radio settings etc.
- Dab the brakes two or three times to check pressure, and on most aircraft you can feel if the parking brake is engaged - the dabs will feel different with less "give". (The second and third dab are there to detect an engaged parking brake if the parking brake is a one-way valve type. You feel the buildup of pressure on the second or third dab.)
- Fuel pump on before entering the circuit, or anytime I'm operating below 1000' AGL
- Carb heat anytime RPM is below 2000.
- Mixture rich anytime before I make a power change.
- Lights anytime viz is poor, or when a lot of traffic is around. In good conditions, the aircraft seems to land perfectly fine without the landing lights on. But in bad conditions, the lights are on well before I enter downwind.
- Flaps is something I consider a flight control just like pitch, roll, yaw and throttle. I don't "check" flaps but "operate" them. Hence they're no "check" item.

Also interesting to read the POH. Or even better: have a look 'round the panel. A Warrior, for instance, requires a placard with the landing checklist to be in full view of the pilot:
Fuel on proper tank
Mixture rich
Electric fuel pump on
Seat backs erect
Flaps - set (white arc)
Fasten belts/harness
Air conditioner off

Sooo... Different ways of doing things. As long as you're a student, do as your instructor tells you. Later on, find a way that works for you, is safe and works across the range of aircraft you are flying. Anything from one or two memory items, to BUMPFITCCHC-like acronyms, to "Red, Blues, Greens, and we're cleared to land" to taking out a paper checklist, to using whatever is placarded in the cockpit.

American check lists are designed to protect the manufacturer in the event of litigation. Mine are based on best practice, although I have never been CFI of the year( or month). Noticably as cliams increased so did the length of checklists

Published pre-landing checks are based on returning to an aerodrome after an en route flight not repetive circuit and landings.

Continually checking things that do not need checking shows lack of understanding and rigid rule book mentality both have little to do with airmanship and good judgement.

By the way to keep this on subject.

The best way to do anything is to do as simple as possible.

Ive seen instructors brief and conduct circuit training as if it was a military exercise, why? I am more intersted in the checks that you do on the ground than in the circuit. I could miss all of the checks mentioned above in all the posts and still fly safe circuits.

I should add that when I started instructing I worked for a school that had monsterous checks some need all the downwind leg to carry out the checks and all of that time was spent with the stude looking in = complete madness. Lookout the window and keep it simple

I would defend BUMFFPICHH as a good checklist for landing...but for doing circuits over and over again it is too much (in the words of one of my instructors) like sucking a dummy.

G-EMMA, like you, in the circuit was exactly where I learnt BUMFFPICHH and while training for the circuit I did do it every single time.

I have to say I am rather surprised at the bad reaction some posters have had to it, perhaps they've forgotten what it is like to be a student PPL or wrongly associate adherence to procedure with lack of judgement.

llanfairpg are you an airline pilot? If you are then I find your comment slightly surprising considering that lack of SOPs is one of the reasons GA doesn't have the excellent safety record that the airlines do.

Redbird,

Honest answer - don't sweat it. Just keep doing your best and it will all come together of it's own accord. Trust me. Really.

It's like driving. You probably can't even remember a time when it was all you could do to keep the car on the road and not hit oncoming lorries. Now you can probably go around a 3 lane roundabout on two wheels, downshifting to accelerate out of your exit, all while changing the CD, eating a burrito, and not hitting the lorry that's in the lane you want. And you just kind of got to that point with no real thought, just time behind the wheel.

Flying's the same way. It'll just magically work itself out and you won't even notice it happens until suddenly you'll realise you're bored on final approach because it's taking so long and there's nothing left to do. Yes, really. :)

Pitts2112

lanfairpg are you an airline pilot? If you are then I find your comment slightly surprising considering that lack of SOPs is one of the reasons GA doesn't have the excellent safety record that the airlines do.

Having a simple practical pre-landing check is an SOP. The answer is yes and simple pre-landing checks are very much the feature of modern airliners.

I alsked a collegue of mine once why they had 3 pilots on the Trident he answered. One to hold the checklist, one to read it and one to action it.

Thankfully the new geneartion aircraft have a check list on a card rather than a book!

Each to his own I suppose.

But if you're training and one day you say to your instructor: "Actually I don't agree with what you've told me...I read blah blah blah on PPRuNe so I'm going to do it that way instead."

What sort of reaction would you get?

If you are training and taught BUMFFPICHH then I'd stick to that.

It loses me on here sometimes, it really does, Contact tower, when did I learn Brakes are OFF, Undercarriage is FIXED, Mixture is RICH, Pitch is Fixed, Flaps, Fuel is on sufficient, FUEL PUMP IS ON, Altimeter is SET, DI is aligned, engine t's and p's are within limits, carb heat on, hatches and harness landing light is on.... ready for my first land away and with no need to reference a written checklist and also carrying out the actions, it was of course whilst flying circuits. :uhoh: It is pretty obvious I wouldn't have managed that lot when under the stress of my first land away at a new airfield without going over it in the circuit a few times.

Even worse having to do that lot at a strange airfield and navigate and do the radio and look out for other traffic--thats exactly why I have simple pre-land checks.

All your other checks are completed as Airfield Approach Checks normally FREDA. The time to set an altimeter is before you join a circuit not in it, same with the DI.

Just to add a little fuel to the fire...

The mnemonic that I was taught is 'BUMCOFFHHAC' for Brakes, Undercarriage, Mixture, Carb heat (hot), Oil temps/pressures, Fuel, Flaps, Hatches, Harnesses, Altitude, Carb head (cold). Usually done immediately after the downwind call (thought realistically, often during because of traffic).

When I first started this, I would break the checks up into the three pronounceable syllables, BUM, COFF and HHAC, pausing for a good lookout in between each. Its a good 'starter for 10' with the instructor around, but I found that as I did it more and more I would be doing the checks and looking out simultaneously.

llanfairpig, I bow to your vastly superior experience, but I do tend to think that it is easier for us student types to have boxes to tick at this point in our flying career. Your opinion that there should be less boxes to tick seems to be a valid one, but probably one to take up with the instructor community rather than confusing us poor students. At the early circuit stage of my training, if my instructor had told that one of the pre-landing steps was to open the door and jump out, I most likely would have complied :ok:

Oh, one other thing. Could we please stop calling them downwind checks, and call them pre-landing checks instead? What if you get a direct base join, or heaven forbid, a straight-in approach?

DP

llanfairpig, I bow to your vastly superior experience, but I do tend to think that it is easier for us student types to have boxes to tick at this point in our flying career. Your opinion that there should be less boxes to tick seems to be a valid one, but probably one to take up with the instructor community rather than confusing us poor students. At the early circuit stage of my training, if my instructor had told that one of the pre-landing steps was to open the door and jump out, I most likely would have complied :ok:

I appreciate what you saying, obviously you must follow what your instructor says or more correctly the school or club policy.

This is a forum for debate and what I am suggesting is that you consider that there may be other alternatives to many of the things that you are doing now as a students and may like to consider for instance if you ever fly into Oshkosh or Silverstone when the British Grand Prix is on!. Anyone can blindly follow the instructions of another but progress in any aspect in life starts by questioning why we do certain things and could there be better way of doing something. If pilots were constrained to the thoughts of their original instructors we would all still be flying around in canvas bi planes with limited panels. (Mind you I quite like the sound of that)I use the definition of airmanship when trying to judge on what action to take.

Airmanship is to take the most effective and safest course of action in a given set of circumstances.

To my thinking when flying in an ATZ where there is more chance of meeting other student pilots who are also involved in encylopeadic checks the most effective and safest course of action is to dedicate as much time as possible on lookout, removing unnesecarry checks achieves this(I think). You may be able to recite the checks in groups or whatever but that will still distract your attention away from the radio. You may be able to check the gauges on the otherside of the cockpit and check the passengers harness and lookout and listen to the radio and build up a picture of the circuit traffiic and call downwind all at the same time but you see i am not that good, I cannot plus I am lazy I just want to sit back relax and concentrate on the traffic situation, listen to the radio, look out the window and call downwind.

When I fly in an ATZ I am frightened and its a good feeling I hope I will always retain. The experinece you bow to of mine(and please do not as your opinion is just as important as mine) includes having an Islander fly underneath me at Wellesbourne downwind with a student and carry on downwind and land and he never saw me once. Having a pilot fly underneath me when I with a student and was at 300 feet on finals at Bannf. Having an idiot in a twin join on the wrong base leg at Wellesbourne and nearly wipe us out.Having several near misses with joining aircarft in various circuits etc. I am also very aware of why some Cherokee 180s in this country have windows fitted in the roof.

But my major experince is sitting beside students trying to get to grips with getting a radio call in, notice I said trying to get a radio call in and then doing a litany of checks most of which are not neccesary. As a CFI when I wrote the SOPs my main concern was for the safety of students and not to encourage them to check whether the door was locked and they were strapped in downwind. You may well be able to cope with doing all those checks and perhaps reciting a monologue too but you must remember that as a CFI I must write policy that can be safely carried out by everyone and I have had students from Richard Branson to students who could not even write their names. In PPL training you come across a very very wide range of abillity and a resposnsible CFI will always take that into consideration when standardisng or writing policy.

That sounds good sense to me llanfairpg. Times might have changed but when I learned in 1976 check lists were very frowned upon and only checks relevant to the particular machine were included in any pre -landing scan.

It seems today there is desire to include in basic training a universal ritual intended to be applicable to all machines. I really think this is wrong.

How is this supposed to translate to post qualification flying? Always go through some sort of pantomime or what? My flying time is overwhelmingly in Pitts, Stampes and Tigers. There are no relevant checks so am I expected to imagine I am flying something else and perhaps pretend to lower the undercarriage, change to a fuel tank I don't have etc??.

It is very clear from this forum that everyone's attitudes are formed by their own type of flying and particular experience. In my case my experience is very deep but also very very narrow so it is interesting to hear what others think when the 'common ground' of circuits and landing is concerned.

My message is simple, forgetting to do your pre landing checks downwind will not cause you much grief but flying into another aircraft will.

Be careful
 

Take what people say here with extreme caution. The person you should be asking this of is your instructor. For example I've had people on here tell me how I should be recruiting people at work, without even knowing what industry I work in! The only thing I'd offer is get that BUMFPICH (or whatever checklist you use) memorised, and make sure you can whizz through it (with precision, not rushed) quickly.

Some of the comments made here are totaly one sided.

Some of you are screaming and shouting at "G-EMMA" etc about doing the check BUMPFFICHHL, well whats wrong with considering undercarriage from the start? Wouldn't you prefer to have it installed as a natural reaction to simply consider the undercarriage? It probably takes no more than half a second for the thought to pass through memory whilst maintaining a lookout. As for the hatches and harnesses, how do you know that your pax- possibly small children- havent removed theirs etc.

Someone was moaning about the fuel aspect for christ sake, certain aircraft may require a touch and go on the fullest tank. Theirs that sorted.

And talking about: "why dont you check the cabin crew are sitting while ur at it" etc, well, i think we should keep this general aviation

How about "FUN"?

Where's the chance to just have a jolly good time in all this pedantry?

Has the weather been that bad for that long???

Some of you guys spend way too much time "aviating" and not enough time flying. Give the wingroot mounting bolts a break and lighten up a little.

Pitts2112

How about FUN & SAFETY, that way you get to have FUN on the next flight too

I try to bear in mind the bad things that may potentially happen at any phase of flight, and act to mitigate them - this applies in the circuit as much as anywhere else. The exact actions depend on the type of aircraft being flown. In the circuit, I try to avoid the following;

1) Flying into someone else.

2) Gliding into the ground some distance from the runway.

3) Hitting the downwind hedge.

4) Hitting the runway in an expensive fashion.

5) Hitting the upwind hedge.

(1) involves looking out of the window. In the Pitts, this also involves rolling 20 degrees left and right to see round the comedy oversized interplane struts every few seconds. I don't feel the urge to do this in the Yak, because people would accuse me of flying like a gumby.

(2) involves engine and fuel management. I don't feel the urge to check the mixture control in the Yak, because there isn't one - nor the carb heat control in the Pitts, for the same reason. They both require fuel, although the former uses it hilariously quickly.

(3) involves flying a controlled, stable approach, ideally from a position where should my efforts at mitigating (2) are sub-standard, I can still arrive on the runway. Quietly.

(4) involves having the wheels meet the right spot on runway in as gentle a fashion as possible, and that the propellor doesn't meet the runway in any fashion at all. In the Yak, this involves looking at three green lights, and three indicator sticks, and then telling no-one in particular over the radio that I can see the three green lights. In the Pitts, it involves making sure I have my lucky underpants on. I don't tell anyone I'm looking at three green lights on final in the Pitts, because I can't see any. Partly because there aren't any fitted, but mostly because I've got my eyes shut.

(5) involves a bit of (4), but also being prepared to miss the runway completely and hoof round to have another go at it. In both cases, attempting to do so with a coarse prop is going to be tricky, and in the Yak attempting to do so with the cowl gills shut can cook the engine remarkably quickly. There are handy levers on both types to manage this. I don't pretend to check the cowl flaps on the Pitts, because there aren't any - and if there were, it would be a Model 12, and I wouldn't be sat here typing this - I'd still be out there, in the dark, in the seventh consecutive hour of a torque roll in the overhead. Laughing.

What I'm trying to say, in a round-about way, is that learning slightly dodgy-sounding and long-winded acronyms for checks is all well and good, but what you're really trying to achieve is avoiding (1)-(5) above. In different aircraft, there are different ways of going about it - so chanting checklist items about features your aircraft doesn't have isn't going to help much, but if it makes you happy, what the hell.

Thanks so much for all your contributions, particularly the reassurance that it does get easier. I think part of the reason for my anxiety is down to most of the exercises to date being "set pieces" (for want of a better phrase) and fairly straight forward to drill and get into my head. Now I'm having to pull several together in the circuit.

The dinner table technique sounds good (i haven't got flight sim software) and can't be more embarrassing than getting caught practicing RT while driving! :}

I apologise if anyone got the impression that my instructor had thrown me in the deep end - I don't believe he did, I certainly got let off RT for the day! Whilst I found the session intense and frustrating, I wasn't drowning - just left with a lot to chew over.

Oh and G-EMMA - good luck with the nav!

Ta,

Red.:ok:

Just remember the three "F"s, once you're solo, and you won't come to grief.

Fuel,

Fan (only if it's variable),

and errr, Depart.

Nothing else really matters.

How is a PPL student supposed to concentrate on flying in the circuit when they are forced to do a check list that would confuse a two man crew on the Airbus A380?

Ah, Chuck--common sense is alive and well after all!

RED--No need to walk around a dining room table--get a small model aircraft and take it around a square on that table.

Also brief a circuit and draw it on an A4 sheet

For RT practice, talk into a recorder, playback and learn, get an airband radio.

you can learn a lot about landing by watching other students land

The three Fs wat a load of FS!

Maintain thy airspeed correctly or the ground will come up and smite thee dead.

LOOKOUT --you never see the one that hits you.

If there is any doubt there is no doubt, GO AROUND.

Theres 3 that actually make sense!

I don't know about the 380, but in light of the recent 340 event I'll add the following note-to-self to avoid.

(6) Taxiing at full power into large concrete walls.

Even better make a note of this

Never action a checklist or checklist items when airmanship dicatates that your attention would be better employed in another area

Getting any flying licence or rating is akin to jumping through hoops. Once you have shown the examiner what he wants to see you can develop your own style. I used to teach BUMFITCH when I instructed but now when I fly for fun I never use it because I know how I need everything set and thats that, however I do think the structure of checks can be useful during the early stage. Anyway, there is hardly anything that's critical to landing in a simple single: Fuel pump is a good back up, flaps are optional unless on a short runway, prop and gear is fixed, mixture, well who ever touches it unless you go high or fly a bigger single... but lets not go there!

As a point of interest the landing checks I use at work are...

Cabin signal.... ....ding ding
Gear...................down
Flaps..................45
landing clearance.....received.

Thats it. Keep it simple!

Redbird 72
 

For what it's worth. Use whatever pnemonic pre-landing check you have been taught. + Look out. + Listen out.

Then, on finals, use the "Embarassment Check" PUF.

Propellor
Undercarriage
Flap

That should keep you out of trouble in ANY GA aeroplane.

Neppie

:ok: