Practice lab
Circuit Position Trainer
Translate between the plan view and what you actually see out of the window. The core spatial skill of flying a circuit, and one no commercial aptitude test bothers to measure.
Plan view, north up
Heading 090, runway 090, 1.1 nm out. The threshold bears 000, which is 90° left of the nose.
What you see
Reading a net without folding it
Opposite faces never share an edge, on any net. Turning that into an answer takes one of four moves, and which one works depends on the net in front of you.
- Straight line of three
- Three panels in a row or a column: the two ends fold to opposite faces. This is the rule worth reaching for first, because it settles a pair in a second.
- Bend of three
- Three panels that turn a corner: the two ends meet along an edge on the cube, so they are never opposite. A bend rules a pair out rather than in.
- Zigzag of four
- Four panels that turn at every join: the two ends fold to opposite faces. This is the one that saves you on a staircase net, where no straight line of three exists.
- What is left over
- There are only three pairs. Settle two of them and the two panels you have not used must be the third, with no folding required.
That is the whole difference between the three nets here. The Latin cross gives up all three pairs to the straight-line rule. The offset 1-4-1 gives up two, and the third is what is left. The staircase has no straight line of three anywhere, so the first rule finds nothing on it and you fall back to the zigzag. Counting two panels along a path is not a general rule, and on the staircase it is wrong every time.
For training and reference only. This is practice material built from the geometry, not a reproduction of any airline’s assessment, and the 45 second pace is ours rather than a published limit.