Was this flown with an autopilot or not?

Peter wrote:

That could be done by hand. With great care it is possible to fly an accurate rate 1 turn and hit your own wake.

Yes, but given a slight breeze, and you won’t fly over the same spot on the ground again, not even on autopilot. It would not be a circle You could make the circle really big of course, essentially a series of straight lines.

LeSving wrote:

Yes, but given a slight breeze, and you won’t fly over the same spot on the ground again

That can be achieved by a different technique, of maintaining a spot on the ground (the spot around which you want to turn) at constant angle to your longitudinal axis by varying your roll angle.

lionel wrote:

That can be achieved by a different technique, of maintaining a spot on the ground (the spot around which you want to turn) at constant angle to your longitudinal axis by varying your roll angle.

I know. It’s a standard “maneuver” I use when instructing. Then we have two spots and fly in an “8” around them. Takes some training with no wind, and MUCH more with wind To compensate for wind is one of the main purposes with the maneuver.

To get one circle this way as round as in that plot? perhaps, with some luck and no wind.

That is a part of the FAA CPL (which I have) but is difficult to do because you have to keep looking at where the left wingtip is pointing, while looking at the altimeter.

It also has to be done at a very low level – IIRC about 1200ft if flying at ~120kt. I am not going to think about the maths If you want to do it at say 5000ft you end up with the wingtip pointing at a very distant point which is then hard/impossible to judge and you certainly won’t end up flying a circular route.

LeSving wrote:

some luck and no wind

Hand-flown. It was my first ‘post lockdown flight’ in summer 2020 so I was looking at my Skydemon track afterwards or I wouldn’t have noticed.