Distance & Bearing
Read the air picture
EUROCONTROL's "estimate distances and directions" exercise. You are given an air picture — a lettered and numbered grid carrying aircraft and waypoints — and answer fifteen questions about how far apart things are, what heading an aircraft needs, and which way it should turn. Each square is 5 NM along a side and 7 NM across the diagonal. Twenty different air pictures rotate, and the same one never comes up twice in a row.
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What to expect
- An air picture with five aircraft and four named waypoints.
- Aircraft shown as a number, a diamond and a heading line; waypoints as named triangles.
- Fifteen questions in eight minutes, one after another.
- Choosing an answer commits it and moves you straight on — there is no going back.
What it measures
- Judging distance and bearing by eye
- Working in a controller's frame of reference
- Sustained accuracy against a clock
Instructions
- 1Use the grid, not your instincts — count squares first, then convert: one side is 5 NM, one diagonal is 7 NM.
- 2For turn questions, compare the aircraft's heading line with the bearing it needs. The shorter way round is the answer.
- 3For two-leg questions, work out each leg separately and add them; the initial heading is only for the first leg.
- 4The clock covers all fifteen, not one at a time — so spend a moment on a hard one rather than guessing, but do not stall.
Tips
- An aircraft's line shows where it is going, not where it has been. Reading it backwards reverses every turn answer.
- Diagonals are the ones people misjudge. Two squares corner-to-corner is 14 NM, not 10.
Distance & Bearing
Distance and bearing. Read the air picture rather than calculating it precisely — the exercise wants a fast, accurate estimate.
You are at the centre of the display. An aircraft sits directly below you on screen, halfway to the edge of the outer range ring, which is 40 miles. What is its bearing and range from you?