You’re almost at your destination airport. You’ve never been there and you are unfamiliar with the area. You can see where the airport is in the distance but are unable to see the runway. You have to start thinking about entering the 45 to get into the pattern but how can you figure that out if you can’t see the runway?

I’ve flown with many people that have a hard time figuring out where the 45° entry is. They try to imagine the pattern but stilll struggle with it. Unless they see the runway, they get confused. There is a super easy way to figure this out as you will soon see. Let’s start by looking at the image below.

You’re almost at your destination airport in an unfamiliar area and you need to get set up to land at an airport you’ve never been to. You’ve narrowed the location of the airport down to one area but can’t see it yet. You don’t need to see the runway to set up for a landing, you just need to know where the airport is.

It’s really easy to figure out. To make this easy for you, we will start with the first step. You should be flying directly toward the area where the airport is. Now look at the area where the airport is and imagine a vertical line going right through the center of it, dividing the airport area into a left and right side. Now do the same thing with a horizontal line making a near and far side. See image below.

Once you have imagined the airport split into a left and right side and a near (area before the airport) and a far (area past the airport) side, then we will figure out which one of these quadrants the 45° entry will be in. In order to do that we need to know what runway we will be using.

For this example we will assume we are using runway 7. As you should know by now, 70° is the number that runway 7 is associated with. With that in mind, we will move on to the next step which is to look at the heading indicator and find 70°, which represents the runway we will be using. See below.

So far all you’ve done is image the airport area divided into a near and far side and a left and right side for step one. For the second step all you had to do is find the runway number on your heading indicator and look one inch to the left of it while imagining a line extending out through that point from the center of the heading indicator.

There’s no need to remember any other numbers or do any math. Just remember where that line you imagined is because the next step may make it more clear. In the next step, you are going to repeat the first step by dividing the heading indicator into 4 sections just like you did with the airport area in the first step! See next image.

Are you beginning to see the picture yet? The line you imagined coming out from the center which is one inch to the left of the runway number (dashed red), is where your 45° entry is. The 4 sections are the same as those that you imagined with the airport area and you can see which section you need to be in for your 45° entry to the airport. According to the image above, you would enter from the near left side of the airport. See below for a better visual putting the 2 examples together.

The only thing you have to do now is figure out how far out from the airport you want to enter the 45. If you plan to be about 2 1/2 to 3 miles out on the 45 then you just have to estimate that distance as I did with the X in this example and start heading that way! When you get there, just turn toward the airport area and fly directly to it.

Since you are doing this without seeing the runway, it is possible that you may be off a mile to the left or right but you will still be in the right area when making your radio call on the 45. As you get closer, just keep scanning left and right of your course as well as looking straight ahead and the runway will eventually come into view. Once you see it, you can change your heading slightly to get heading exactly where you need to be.

A couple of things to remember: Your entry is where the dashed line is. When moving one inch to the left of the number, you move left as you read the number, so when the number is upside down, you have to imagine which way left would be if your head was upside down reading it.

If you are flying into an airport that has a right hand traffic pattern, the only thing that you have to do different is to find the runway number and move one inch to the right instead. Give this a try and let me know how it works out for you!

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