Using the heading indicator to visualize pattern entry
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Sometimes it seems like the most difficult part of a cross country is properly planning and executing the traffic pattern entry at an unfamiliar, non-towered airport. Did you know that you can use the heading indicator to visualize your pattern entry well before you can even see the runway? Let's pretend that we are on a heading of west, going direct to the airport. After checking the weather, we have determined that runway 32 is the best one to use. Now, how do we enter that pattern?
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First, draw a line from the middle of the heading indicator out to a heading of 320. This is the direction that we'll be flying once we are on final.
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Next, draw your downwind. In this case we are going to draw a left downwind. This can be hard to visualize, just remember that on a left downwind, the runway will be to your left once you are on the downwind leg.
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Finally, draw your base leg to help you visualize the complete pattern. All we've done is drawn a map of the downwind, base, and final legs, oriented with our current heading up instead of north.
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Here is a "zoomed out" map of the runway with the complete pattern (including 45 degree entry to downwind) depicted in green. A red line was used to depict the ideal flight path from our current location to the entry, in this case passing over midfield at least 500 feet above traffic pattern altitude.
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