Circling Refresher

摘要

We don't want to turn this into a treatise on circling, but any discussion of flying a VFR pattern after an instrument approach needs to quickly refer to the two diagrams at left.The top one, of course, is the FAA circling maneuvers diagram, straight from the Aeronautical Information Man-ual. It depicts the FAA's recommended methods for align-ing the airplane with the desired runway. The bottom one references the airspace protections —chiefly terrain and obstacle clearance —one can expect. The "r" denotes the radius of any turn being made to align the airplane with the runway and how the terrain and obstacle protections apply only within that radius.