VyCurve Climb performance & awareness

A published station record for general aviation airfields

Your airfield already has a story. VyCurve publishes it — beautifully, and in a register everyone trusts.

Not a dashboard. A station record: a climb and approach report your board can read cover to cover, an atlas of where aircraft actually go, a live plate of the field right now, a dated printable edition every week, and a record card for every single flight. Nearly two hundred figures, each captioned with what was observed, over how long, and how sure it is. It is an awareness instrument by design — never enforcement, never fault-finding, never a ranking of identifiable pilots.

Request a demo See a sample report
Initial Mid climb Final 2,400 1,600 800 0 Distance from runway (nm) 0 1 2 3 4 5 Height above the field (ft) — illustrative Estimated margin over the ridge — flagged when it is thin One observed departure Median climb (all departures) Terrain along the route
Observed departure Median climb Middle 50% of departures Full range Terrain

Fig. 1. Illustrative rendering for Fairview Airfield (FAA), a fictional demonstration field. Every figure on this page is synthetic — drawn to show what the product does, not what any real airport recorded.

Airports have the data. What they lack is a shared way to read it.

Three conversations every airfield eventually has — and how a common, restrained report changes each one.Restraint is the design: no pilot is named, no tail is ranked, and no chart implies more than the data can carry. The register borrows from print journals because that is the register communities extend trust to.

With the neighbors

Noise and overflight concerns usually arrive as anecdotes, and anecdotes escalate. VyCurve gives the community a factual, aggregated picture of where aircraft actually fly and climb — so meetings start from the same page instead of competing recollections.

With the pilots

Climb performance varies with aircraft, loading, density altitude, and technique. VyCurve shows each pilot how a departure compared to the field's own observed envelope — a private, educational debrief, not a public scorecard.

With the board

Trend lines, terrain-margin review cues, and obstruction-surface context give managers and boards something better than gut feel when they weigh pattern changes, signage, or outreach — with the methodology published alongside every number.

Four surfaces, one record

Every page in a VyCurve site belongs to one of four reading surfaces, and each one keeps its own chrome, its own pace, and its own promises. You always know which kind of thing you are looking at.This is the whole architecture. A reader who learns the grammar once — navy is the observed signal, graphite the reference, green the terrain, red only below a stated threshold — can read all 190-odd figures without learning anything else.

Surface one

Report

Editorial chapters that read top to bottom: the front page, the same record in plain English, flight operations, trends, weather, fleet, terrain and margins.

  • Front page — this week at the field
  • In plain English — feet, counts, clock hours
  • Flight operations — departures, arrivals, pattern
  • Trends · Weather · Fleet · Terrain & margins

Surface two

Atlas

Spatial plates where the map gets visual priority: the awareness map, the field right now, a map explorer, the terrain grid, and the protected-surface views.

  • Awareness map — AGL, cell by cell
  • The field now — a live plate
  • Map explorer · Terrain grid
  • Part 77 surfaces & observed corridors

Surface three

Ledger

Dense, filterable records where a table is the right primary interface: the finder, the evidence board, and the day's operations board.

  • Finder — every accepted climb and landing
  • Evidence board — score against evidence
  • Operations board — one local day
  • Sortable, exportable, masked by default

Surface four

Record card

One subject, portrait-oriented, designed to print or share: a flight, a day, an aircraft, a model, an engine, an operator.

  • Per-flight debrief & printable plate
  • Day record, with a replay to match
  • Aircraft, model, engine and operator pages
  • Share cards for the club board
190+ Figures, tables and maps, every one cross-indexed in a public Chart Library
50+ Distinct pages, from the front page to a single climb's plate
25 Figure forms — profiles, envelopes, wind roses, clocks, waterfalls, matrices, maps
0 Third-party fonts, chart runtimes or trackers on any published page

Core figures are rendered on the server, so they print, cache, and survive a reader with scripting turned off. Counts describe the shipping product; every figure reproduced on this marketing site is synthetic and illustrative.

Browse the figure gallery → Open the atlas →

Capabilities

One record, several readers. Every view is drawn from the same observed flight tracks, and every number carries the method that produced it — one click away, on the same page.

The Climb Report

An answer-first front page: what a typical departure looks like, whether it is changing, why it varies, and how much terrain margin there is — four questions, four charts, plain language.

Awareness map

A grid-cell map of observed altitude above ground, with terrain, traffic pattern, and FAR Part 77 obstruction-surface overlays. Low-margin cells are flagged as review cues, never as findings about a flight.

Trends

Daily and seasonal medians with interquartile bands, so a shift in the numbers reads as an observed pattern — with the sampling caveats attached — rather than a verdict.

Fleet analytics

The same medians split by aircraft model, engine, and operator — always as distributions, never as rankings of identifiable pilots or aircraft.

Weather decomposition

Every profile is matched to local weather, so the report can show how much of the variation is simply density altitude — warmer, thinner air, less climb — before anyone reaches for another explanation.

Pilot debriefs & share cards

Any single climb or landing can be opened as a printable debrief: the profile against the field envelope, phase-by-phase readings, and a clean share card for the club bulletin board.

Privacy by default

Tail numbers are masked everywhere they could appear, registrant names are never displayed, and aggregated views are always preferred over identifiable records. Masking requests are honored by default.

Published methodology

How every number is produced, what it can and cannot support, and the known limits — on a public page, next to the findings, where it belongs.

Approach score

The mirror image of the climb report: a descriptive read of how high and how stable each arrival stayed before it needed to descend, and how much of the approach sat inside the low-altitude window where an aircraft is most audible over the ground. A learning aid — not a decibel meter, and never a verdict. See how it reads →

Touch-and-go & pattern days

A circuit detector reads training laps on their own terms — sessions, aircraft, and the shape of the training day by local hour — so pattern work is understood in context instead of muddying the departure and arrival statistics.

The field right now

A live plate of every aircraft the station can see, drawn over the corridors this field actually flies — and, uniquely, against what the field normally does at this hour. A tracker shows you the sky; this shows you whether the sky is normal. See the plate →

Dated, citable editions

Daily, weekly, monthly and annual issues, each sealed and printable, each with its own cover drawn from its own data. A figure you cite in a board packet this July still resolves to the same numbers next July. See the shelf →

An illustrated primer

Seven hand-built diagrams explaining what a climb profile is, why climb rate is worth measuring, Vx against Vy, the traffic pattern, and density altitude — so a neighbor or a board member can read the report without a briefing. See two of them →

How you read it

A VyCurve site is arranged as a document, not a control panel. It opens on a finding, widens into chapters, narrows to a single flight, and ends on a sheet of paper you can hand to someone.The register borrows from print journals on purpose. That is the register communities extend trust to — and it is the one that survives being photocopied into a board packet.

1

Open on the finding

The front page is one sentence and one figure: what a typical departure looked like at your field this week, drawn over the terrain it was flown across. Nobody has to build a query to get an answer.

2

Follow a chapter

Flight operations, trends, weather, fleet, terrain and margins — each a chapter that reads top to bottom, with numbered figures, takeaway captions, sample sizes, and a backing table one disclosure away from every chart.

3

Narrow to one flight

Any figure, table row, or map cell opens the record behind it: a day, an aircraft, a model, or a single climb set against the field's own envelope and against that airframe's own history.

4

Print it, or hand it over

Every report and record page is designed as a printed artifact first — clean on Letter and A4, controls hidden, captions and provenance kept. Plus share cards for the club board and a sealed edition for the minutes.

A season at Fairview Airfield, in four readings

This is the report your community would see — rendered here from a synthetic demonstration dataset for a fictional field. Navy is the observed signal, graphite is the reference, green is terrain, and red marks only values below the chosen threshold.Small multiples, in the Tufte sense: one visual grammar, learned once and read four times. The eye does the comparing; the design stays out of the way.

Graphical excellence is that which gives to the viewer the greatest number of ideas in the shortest time with the least ink in the smallest space.

Edward R. Tufte, The Visual Display of Quantitative Information

Tracks collected

12,400

One demonstration season

Climb profiles scored

3,180

After GPS-noise & completeness filters

Registry matched

96%

Model & engine context

Low-AGL review cues

41cells

Below the 1,000 ft reference

All figures in this section are synthetic and illustrative. Fairview Airfield (FAA) is a fictional demonstration field; no real airport's data appears anywhere on this page.

What a departure looks like

Illustrative
Distance from runway → Altitude →

Fig. 2. A typical demonstration-season departure clears the first mile near 720 fpm. The dashed line is the median climb; the inner band is the middle half of flights, the faint band the full range. Variation between flights is normal.

Is it changing?

Illustrative
90 70 50 30 Week → Median score /100

Fig. 3. The weekly median drifts gently upward across the demonstration season — an observed pattern, not proof of cause. The mix of aircraft and the weather move this line as much as anything pilots changed.

Why it varies

Illustrative
Departure density altitude → Score /100

Fig. 4. Scores fall as density altitude rises — less dense air, less climb. The pattern spans the whole demonstration fleet; it explains no single flight, and the report says so wherever it appears.

Terrain margin

Illustrative
1,000 ft reference Minimum estimated AGL → Map cells

Fig. 5. Most overflown cells show comfortable margin; a handful sit below the 1,000 ft reference and surface on the awareness map as review cues for those areas — not as findings about any flight.

Observed signal Reference or cohort Middle half Terrain Below a stated threshold Small sample

One grammar, learned once and read everywhere. It is the same on the front page, in a board-packet edition, and on a single flight's plate.

Every figure carries units, dates and sample size Small samples are flagged, not hidden Every chart is one disclosure from its table
Explore the climb report in depth →

A dedicated walkthrough of the climb-profile score, its three phases and gradient target, and — in full — what it is and is not.

The field right now

Flight trackers already draw aircraft on maps, at a scale we never will. What none of them can answer is the question an airport manager actually has: is this normal for this field? That needs an archive of your airport, not a view of the sky.Positions are interpolated between two observed fixes rather than extrapolated past the last one, so the plate runs deliberately a little behind rather than confidently wrong. Marks that have gone quiet fade instead of vanishing.

Four aircraft in view against a typical five for this hour; the wind and the observed traffic agree on runway 27; density altitude is 310 ft above its seasonal normal. Every number that can carry a comparison carries one.

Fairview Cedar Junction Granite Bench observed departure corridor observed approach corridor Class D 27 9 33 15 in use N-•••4G 3,900 ft · +720 fpm N-•••7T 2,400 ft · −480 fpm N-•••1M 1,300 ft · pattern N-•••9K stale · 41 s WIND 250° 9 kt favours 27 RUNWAY IN USE 27 traffic and wind agree SKY Few 6,500 10 sm DENSITY ALTITUDE 7,240 ft +310 vs normal NORMAL FOR 15:00 HERE 4 aircraft · typical 5 last 9 hours Positions are interpolated between two observed fixes, never extrapolated — so the plate runs deliberately a little behind. Faded marks have gone quiet. +−
Fig. 6. The live plate reads the present against the archive: the field-state strip names the runway in use from two independent signals and says which one answered, and the traffic count sits beside what this hour usually looks like. Illustrative rendering over invented geography.

Built for the wall

The same frame renders three ways: the plate with its map, a tracked-aircraft table for a second monitor, and a big-type wall display for a screen nobody is standing at.

Today against yesterday

Movement by movement, with density altitude through the day drawn over yesterday's and over the median for this month and hour, and the runway in use hour by hour.

Corridors underneath

Live marks are drawn over the corridors this field's departures and arrivals actually fly, so an unusual track is visible as unusual rather than needing to be remembered as such.

And the day, replayed

When a day is complete it can be played back on the map with a clock, a scrubber, speed presets, and ghost trails — the pattern filling in, the flow flipping with the wind. See the replay →

The community map, cell by cell

The question neighbors actually ask is "where do they fly, and how high?" The community map answers it one terrain grid cell at a time: every square an aircraft crossed carries its estimated height above ground, drawn over the airspace your field actually has — and drawn in a color grammar built not to alarm.

Of 1,940 observed grid cells in the demonstration season, 41 show a minimum estimated AGL below 1,000 ft (lowest observed 620 ft). Those are the cells worth a closer look — a review cue, never a finding that any flight was unsafe.

Legend

Grid cells

Lower AGL, stepped every 50 ft Mid-range AGL Higher AGL, still below 1,000 ft AGL ≥ 1,000 ft Missing data
Aeronautical context
Runway Class D Part 77 horizontal Part 77 conical Part 77 approach Runway Protection Zone Traffic pattern (JO 7400) Observed departure corridor Observed approach corridor
Reference points
Public airport Private airfield FAA fix / waypoint FAA navaid FAA obstruction
FairviewCedar JunctionGranite Bench Grid cell C-0412 × Average AGL 840 ft · Minimum 620 ft Observations 96 · Unique aircraft 22 AGL histogram Estimated from available tracks and terrain data How this is measured + − 2 km Illustrative basemap — fictional geography

Fig. 7. Colors use the same 50-ft stepped, non-threatening cool-color scale for average and minimum AGL: values below 1,000 ft move gradually from violet through blue toward teal; values at or above 1,000 ft are gray. Cells with no observations are simply absent — never shown as "high AGL." Illustrative rendering for Fairview Airfield (FAA), a fictional demonstration field: synthetic cells over invented geography.

Colors chosen not to alarm

Cells step every 50 ft through a cool violet-to-teal scale below 1,000 ft; at or above 1,000 ft they go quiet gray. Missing data is hatched, never hidden — and an absence of color is not "safe," it means no observed track crossed that cell.

Three honest ways to measure

Color by average AGL, minimum AGL, or visit frequency. Ground reference is switchable too: terrain directly below, or the FAA AC 91-36 convention — the highest terrain within 2,000 ft laterally, which lowers AGL near ridges and canyon rims where noise concerns actually live.

The airspace you actually have

Toggle the real context on and off: Class D, the Part 77 horizontal, conical, and approach surfaces, Runway Protection Zones, the JO 7400 standard traffic pattern, FAA fixes, navaids, and obstructions, distance rings — and observed departure and approach corridors clustered from accepted full-distance profiles.

Click any cell

Each square opens into its own record: an AGL histogram, observation count, unique aircraft, and source coverage. A toggle switches the whole map between climbs, landings, or both — the same grammar for departures and arrivals.

Cell Min AGL (ft) Avg AGL (ft) Max AGL (ft) Observations Aircraft
C-04126208401,1809622
C-03937009101,2408819
C-05117609801,3106117
C-02888901,0501,4207421
C-04509401,1201,5055714

The review-cue list behind the map: cells ranked by the lowest observed minimum AGL, with the sample size that produced each value shown beside it so a single color is never over-interpreted. Synthetic demonstration values.

Airport operations: how the field is actually used

Every accepted operation is matched to the runway end it most likely used — a departure from its climbout heading, a landing from its approach heading, each checked against the track's position near the runway — then crossed with the wind, the local hour, and the fleet. Observations from available tracks, never operational runway assignments.

Of 4,990 classified operations at the demonstration field, the most-used end is 27 (62%). About 3.1% of operations with usable wind data carried a tailwind component of at least 5 kt on the runway they used — a small figure worth watching, never a finding about any flight.

Runway utilization

Illustrative
27 · 3,090 ops · 62% 9 · 1,300 · 26% 33 · 400 · 8% 15 · 200 · 4% N Bars point the way aircraft travel; length scales with operations

Fig. 8. The airport diagram is the chart: each runway in true relative geometry, a bar growing off each end in the real direction of travel. A longer bar is a busier end — not a better one.

Wind rose, split by runway end

Illustrative
N E S W Petals point the way the wind blew from
Used end 27 Used end 9

Fig. 9. A petal made mostly of one color means that wind almost always sent traffic to one end — into-wind ends fill the sectors they face. Calm and variable winds are omitted, never guessed.

Operations by time of day

Illustrative
End 27 End 9 06:00 09:00 12:00 15:00 18:00 Local hour · darker is busier · minor ends omitted for clarity

Fig. 10. When the field is busy, and which way it flows. Here the morning favors end 9 and the afternoon end 27 — watch the flow switch ends as the wind backs and veers through the day.

The fleet, in design-standard terms

Illustrative
Share of operations by engine class Piston 78% Turboprop 12% Jet 8% Turboshaft 2% Operations by Aircraft Approach Category 64% 30% 5% 1% A B C D

Fig. 11. Every observed tail is matched through the registry to the numbers airport design actually uses — approach category, design group, taxiway design group, MTOW bands, even approximate wheel load — weighted by real operations, not the registry at large.

The flying day, as a clock

Illustrative
The flying day, as a clock Take-offs and landings by hour of the local day 00 03 06 09 12 15 18 21 local Take-offs Landings Busiest hour 15:00 127 movements Quiet before 06:00 and after 20:00 Wedge length is movements in that hour · shaded arc is night

Fig. 12. The question a neighbor asks first is when, not how high. Take-offs and landings on a 24-hour face answer it in one look — and the quiet hours are as much of the finding as the busy ones.

Where the field connects

Illustrative
Where the field connects Arc thickness is movements · a distribution, not a route map CJT 210 GBH 168 WLD 96 STN 74 ARO 52 MPL 41 Fairview Local-only flights excluded · origins and onward fields are estimates

Fig. 13. Arrivals counted by estimated origin and departures by estimated onward field — who your airport actually connects to, which is usually the first slide a sponsor asks for and the hardest one to source.

End Operations Share Median climb score Median approach score Median headwind Tailwind ≥ 5 kt
273,09062%78817 kt64
91,30026%74795 kt58
334008%76806 kt18
152004%72774 kt15

Wind components are computed against each assigned end's published azimuth from the nearest weather observation; winds under 5 kt are treated as calm-wind noise rather than counted. Runway assignment is an estimate from climbout or approach heading plus threshold proximity, and low-confidence assignments are flagged rather than guessed. Synthetic demonstration values.

The runway in cross-section

Arrivals and departures on one signed along-centreline axis, each profile anchored where it physically was, with the runway deck drawn between them — both halves of the flow read against the runway rather than against each other. See it →

Crosswind, and "does wind help?"

The crosswind component operations actually held against, in 3-kt bins — plus a headwind-versus-score scatter whose trend line is usually nearly flat. That flatness is the finding, and the page says so.

Surface hotspots

Where ground tracks dwell: taxiways, run-up pads, hold-short queues — colorable by visits or by low-speed dwell time. Aggregate cells only; individual ground movements are never shown.

Pattern work

A sibling view runs a touch-and-go circuit detector over the same tracks, so training-lap activity is read on its own terms instead of muddying the departure and arrival statistics.

Approaches, landings & the low-altitude window

Departures are only half of what flies over your field. VyCurve reads the arrival with the same restraint — how high and how stable each approach stayed before it needed to descend, and how much of it sat inside the low-altitude window where an aircraft is most audible over the ground.This is an awareness read built from altitude and geometry — not a sound measurement. It models where an aircraft was, not how loud it was on any porch.

Across 2,540 scored approaches in the demonstration season, the median arrival held its shelf to 3.1 mi out and flew about 1.8 mi below 1,000 ft AGL. A calmer approach spends less of its length in that window — a thing to learn from, never a flight to fault.

The approach and the low-altitude window

Illustrative
1,000 ft AGL capture ≈ 3.1 mi low-altitude window 6 nm out Touchdown

Fig. 14. The arrival holds a high shelf, captures a steady descent about 3 mi out, then crosses into the shaded window below 1,000 ft AGL — the length of that shaded stretch is the awareness signal, not a judgment about the flight.

What the score rewards

Illustrative
Share of each component's maximum earned High shelf — altitude benefit 86% · max 40 High-shelf stability 78% · max 15 Descent-capture timing 72% · max 20 Stable descent after capture 90% · max 20 Touchdown / data confidence 60% · max 5

Fig. 15. Five plain components add to a single 0–100 read. Green marks the strongest, amber the clearest thing to look at next — a private debrief cue, never a public scorecard.

82 / 100 Approach score · demonstration arrival

A descriptive summary of how this arrival compared to the field's own observed envelope — not a determination that it was quiet, safe, legal, or well-flown.

Read this the right way

This is not professional acoustic monitoring. There is no microphone and no decibel measurement anywhere in it. The score is a geometry-and-altitude proxy built from observed flight tracks, terrain, and weather — an educational awareness aid meant to help pilots and communities learn and improve approaches, not a compliance, enforcement, or legal instrument. Every figure here is synthetic and illustrative.

Explore approaches & the approach score →

A dedicated walkthrough of the arrival read, the five components, and — in full — what it is and is not.

Every flight has a record. Every record prints.

The chapters answer the field's questions. The record card answers a person's: how was my flight? One subject, portrait-oriented, self-explanatory away from the site — and designed as a printed artifact before it was designed as a page.Printability is a release criterion, not a nicety. Controls and navigation are hidden; titles, captions, dates, provenance and data labels are kept; figures and tables never clip; and page breaks fall between figures on both Letter and A4.

Fairview Airfield Departure · Tue 14 July · 15:04 local · runway 27 N-•••4G Cessna 182T Skylane Height above the field against distance · shaded band is the field's middle half CLIMB SCORE 78 /100 FIRST MILE 780 fpm AT 3 MILES 2,340 ft DENSITY ALTITUDE 7,240 ft VyCurve A descriptive summary of one climb — not a verdict on how it was flown.

Fig. 16. The share card. A self-contained image of one climb with its headline figures — the thing that actually gets pinned to a club noticeboard or sent to a student. It carries its own caveat so it stays honest once it has left the site.

CLIMB PLATE Fairview Airfield Runway 27 · Tue 14 July 15:04 local 78 climb score /100 Fig. 1 The climbout, in altitude and ground 1 mi 2 mi Fig. 2 Density and pressure altitude along the track density altitude pressure altitude PHASE DISTANCE MEDIAN RATE VS TARGET Initial 0.0–1.0 mi 780 fpm +6 Mid 1.0–2.5 mi 610 fpm −3 Final 2.5–5.0 mi 470 fpm −8 Masked identifier · figures are descriptive summaries of the observed track, not determinations of safety, legality, or how the flight was flown.

Fig. 17. The printable plate. A single cockpit-style sheet pairing the climbout with the density and pressure altitude along the same track, and the phase table underneath. One flight, one page, no login.

The same flight, inside its own history

Illustrative
This flight, inside its own history The same airframe's previous climbs — its own benchmark, not the fleet's this flight its median · 11 previous climbs 0 1,000 2,000 3,000 Distance from the runway (NM) Height above the field (ft)

Fig. 18. A debrief that only compares a flight to the fleet tells a 172 it is not a Bonanza. VyCurve also places the climb inside that airframe's own history — the comparison a CFI can actually use, and the one a pilot recognises.

The day record

One local day at the field as a single document: taxi, climbs, pattern work and landings, the weather it happened in, and a replay of the whole thing on the map.

Aircraft, model, engine, operator

Each subject gets its own card with its own envelope, its own daily score line, and its own tracks — masked identifiers throughout, registrant names never shown.

Arrivals too

The landing debrief mirrors the climb one: the approach in altitude and ground, descent rate along it, and the score taken apart against the field's own arrivals.

A private console for schools

Clubs and flight schools get a private fleet view — sessions, comparisons, trends, exports — built from the same components as the public site, behind an unguessable link that is deliberately absent from navigation.

Dated issues, sealed and citable

A continuously updated site is a poor thing to cite. So the record is also published as an almanac: daily, weekly, monthly and annual issues, each one printable, each one sealed. A figure quoted in this July's board packet still resolves to the same numbers next July.A sealed issue is never silently rewritten. If something later changes the archive behind it, that shows up as a new issue with a note — not as a quiet edit to a document somebody has already quoted in minutes.

The cover wall

Illustrative
The cover wall Each cover is that issue's own data — the cover is the figure, not decoration MONTHLY JULY 2026 3,104 movements WEEKLY WEEK 28 6–12 Jul 812 movements DAILY TUE 14 July 2026 128 movements A sealed issue is never silently rewritten — a citation made today still resolves next year. ✓ marks a sealed issue

Fig. 19. Every cover is drawn from its own issue's data — that period's median climb over the terrain it was flown across, with the headline movement count beneath it. The cover is the figure, not decoration for one.

Issue Period Movements Median climb Trend State
MonthlyJuly 20263,10478 Sealed
Weekly6–12 Jul 202681279 Sealed
DailyTue 14 Jul 202612877 Sealed
DailyWed 15 Jul 202696— In progress

The issue shelf: every issue on file, newest first, with its movement count and whether it is sealed or still filling in. Sparklines are punctuation here, not decoration — they carry the shape of each period in the row that names it. Synthetic demonstration values.

More of the same report

The same observed tracks answer more than one question. Five more readings that ship with every field's site — training activity, the air a climb was flown in, where the climb is decided, how a score is built, and the station's own climate.

The training day

Illustrative
08 10 12 14 16 Local hour · detected touch-and-go laps

Fig. 20. A circuit detector reads training laps on their own terms. Here the field's instruction day peaks mid-afternoon — pattern work counted separately so it never distorts the departure and arrival numbers.

Same airplane, different air

Illustrative
90 50 10 Cool, dense air Hot, thin air Climb score /100

Fig. 21. One model, split by the air it flew in. The median falls with density altitude — thinner air, less climb — so the report reaches for weather before it reaches for any story about pilots.

Where the climb is won or lost

Illustrative
on target Initial climb +6 Mid climb −3 Final climb −8 Points above / below phase target

Fig. 22. The score, opened up by phase. Here the departure starts strong and loses ground in the final third — the kind of pattern a CFI can turn into a specific, teachable adjustment.

How the score is built

Illustrative
How the score is built Every point accounted for — the number is legible, not a black box 0 25 50 75 100 50 Base +14 Initial -6 Mid +11 Final +5 Consistency 74 Score Points, from the base to the published score · one illustrative climb

Fig. 23. A score nobody can take apart is a score nobody should trust. Wherever a 0–100 number is shown to a reader it can be opened into the points that made it — base, each phase, and consistency.

The station's own climate

Illustrative
Median density altitude · month × local hour Field elevation 5,000 ft · the station's climate J F M A M J J A S O N D 06 09 12 15 18 cool, dense air hot and high 2,000 ft above the field

Fig. 24. Median density altitude for every month and local hour. Before anyone argues about technique, this shows which hours of which months are simply hard — the contour rings the cells sitting 2,000 ft or more above the field.

The first two minutes

Illustrative
The two-minute chart Height above ground per 15-second bin · fleet median with the middle half 0 500 1,000 1,500 2,000 500 ft AGL at 20s 1,000 ft AGL at 49s 0 30 60 90 120 150 Seconds after start of climb Height above ground (ft)

Fig. 25. The one figure with a time axis. How long the fleet takes to reach 500 and 1,000 ft above the ground, direct-labelled where the crossings happen — the form of the question a neighbour actually asks.

Every figure in this section is synthetic and illustrative, drawn for Fairview Airfield (FAA), a fictional demonstration field. They show what the product renders, not what any real airport recorded.

And a primer, so nobody has to be briefed first

The rest of the record assumes a reader knows what a climb profile is and why climb rate is worth measuring. A neighbor at a community meeting does not. Seven hand-built diagrams supply the missing context, in plain language, with a glossary — no live data, so the page reads identically to everyone.

Best angle, or best rate

From the primer
Vx or Vy — best angle, or best rate The same take-off, two techniques, two different shapes over the ground Vx · best angle Vy · best rate more room over the ridge the ridge is the reason to choose same take-off Distance over the ground Height above the field

Fig. 26. Why two departures from the same runway can look nothing alike and both be correct. Terrain is the reason to choose, and the diagram says so where the choice is actually made.

The traffic pattern

From the primer
The traffic pattern A left-hand circuit, roughly to scale · the turn radii are real, not stylised 27 9 upwind crosswind downwind base final 1,000 ft above the field pattern altitude Pattern altitude, direction and dimensions come from each deployment's own configuration — nothing in VyCurve is hard-coded to one airport's geometry.

Fig. 27. Drawn roughly to scale with real turn radii — so a reader can see why an aircraft is where it is, rather than being told. Altitude, direction and dimensions come from each field's own configuration.

The full primer also covers what a climb profile is, why climb rate is measured at all, what a strong profile looks like, altitudes and enroute operations, and density altitude — the last of which quotes the same numbers as the weather chapter, at your field's own elevation.

Built on restraint

Awareness tools earn trust by stating their limits as plainly as their findings. These commitments ship with every VyCurve site and travel with every chart.

Above all else show the data.

Edward R. Tufte, The Visual Display of Quantitative Information

What VyCurve does

  • Shows aggregated, observed patterns in climb, approach, and pattern work.
  • Flags thin terrain margins as review cues for the areas involved.
  • Attributes variation to weather and aircraft mix before anything else.
  • Masks tail numbers by default and honors masking requests.
  • Publishes its methodology, its sample sizes, and its known limits beside every figure.

What VyCurve never does

  • Determine fault, safety, or legality for any individual flight.
  • Support enforcement, accident investigation, or complaint targeting.
  • Rank identifiable pilots or aircraft.
  • Display registrant names or expose source files.
  • Present a score as anything more than descriptive aggregation.A score summarizes how a climb compares to phase targets in the available data. It is never a verdict on whether a flight was safe, legal, or well-flown.

Who it serves

One report, four readers — each gets a view written for them, from the same underlying data.

Airport managers

Trend and margin evidence for board packets, noise-abatement reviews, and outreach — with the method attached, so the numbers survive scrutiny.

Flight schools & clubs

Field-specific climb envelopes for ground school, and printable debriefs that turn every dual departure into a teaching moment.

Pilots

A private look at how a departure compared to the field's observed envelope on that day, in that weather — awareness, not a grade.

Community groups

A public, plain-language site that answers "where do they fly, and how high?" with observed data instead of speculation — in both directions.

Pricing

Priced for real airfields, not airlines. One subscription, one field, the whole report — masking by default, the published methodology, and the community-facing site are all part of it.There is deliberately nothing to configure away: privacy defaults, the methodology page, and the public register ship with every subscription. Restraint is the product, not an upsell.

VyCurve Airfield

$250 / month

No tiers, no add-ons, no feature gates. All four surfaces, all 190-odd figures, every record card, and every privacy commitment ship with the subscription.

Request a demo

Hardware and setup included. Cancel anytime; your field keeps its archive and its sealed editions.

What the subscription includes

  • Daily Climb Report & community awareness map
  • Trends, fleet, and weather decomposition
  • Approach scores & landing debriefs
  • Pilot debriefs, climb plates & share cards
  • Part 77 obstruction-surface overlays
  • Airport operations, touch-and-go & pattern-work views
  • The field-right-now plate, table & wall display
  • Day records, day replay & the illustrated primer
  • Dated daily, weekly, monthly & annual editions
  • The Finder, evidence board & exports
  • A private console for your school or club
  • Internal views separate from the public site
  • Hardware, setup & onboarding
  • Community-meeting support & board-packet exports
  • Tail-number masking & privacy defaults — always on

Running several fields or a sponsor district? Write to us — multi-field roll-ups and cross-field comparisons are quoted per network, on the same single-subscription terms.

Questions airfields actually ask

What does our field actually get on day one?

A published site of its own, on all four surfaces: the report chapters, the awareness map and live plate, the ledger, and a record card for every flight in the archive — plus the illustrated primer, the methodology page, and the Chart Library index. There is no blank-dashboard stage where somebody has to build the views first. The record is the product, and it arrives assembled.

Can we put this in a board packet?

That is what the editions are for. Every report and record page is designed as a printed artifact — clean on Letter and A4, controls hidden, captions, dates, provenance and data labels kept, page breaks between figures. Dated issues are sealed, so a figure you cite in July's minutes still resolves to the same numbers a year later. Exports are yours.

Will this be used against our pilots?

The platform is built so it can't be used that way well. Tail numbers are masked by default,Masking is the default everywhere a tail number could appear — lists, charts, share cards and printed plates alike. Identifiable views are the exception, not the rule. registrant names are never shown, individual profiles live behind opaque identifiers, and every page states that scores are descriptive aggregation — not a determination of safety, legality, or fault. Aggregate views are always the default, and masking requests are honored.

Is this an enforcement or noise-complaint tool?

No, and the report says so on every page. VyCurve exists to build shared understanding — it shows observed, aggregated patterns with their limits attached. Fields that want an enforcement tool should look elsewhere; that is a design decision, not a missing feature.

How is the live plate different from a flight tracker?

A tracker shows you the sky. The plate shows you whether the sky is normal for this field — traffic against what this hour usually looks like, density altitude against its seasonal normal, the runway in use named from two independent signals, and live marks drawn over the corridors your departures and arrivals actually fly. That comparison needs an archive of your airport, which is the part a general-purpose tracker does not have.

Does the approach score measure how loud an aircraft actually was?

No. There is no microphone and no decibel measurement anywhere in the product. The approach score is a geometry-and-altitude proxy — it reads how high and how stable an arrival stayed and how much of it was flown below 1,000 ft AGL, the window where an aircraft is most audible over the ground. It is an educational awareness aid for learning and improving approaches, not professional acoustic monitoring, not an abatement certification, and not a legal or regulatory instrument. Reconstructed tracks carry error, so a score is a descriptive summary, never a verdict on any flight.

How accurate are the altitude and terrain figures?

Honest, with the limits stated beside the result. Reconstructed tracks carry position and timing error, and terrain coverage has its own resolution; the record marks small samples rather than hiding them, keeps incomplete periods visibly incomplete, and publishes what each figure can and cannot support on the methodology page. Where a value is an estimate — a runway assignment, an origin, a touchdown point — the page says estimated and shows the confidence behind it.

Does it work at our field, with our runways and our terrain?

Yes. Nothing is hard-coded to one airport: runways, thresholds, pattern altitude and direction, protected surfaces, thresholds for review cues, and the local-day boundary all come from the deployment's own configuration. Single-runway fields, crossing runways, and fields in a valley all get the same grammar applied to their own geometry.

Who owns the data and the report site?

You do. The report site is published for your field, exports are yours, and if you leave, you keep the archive and the sealed editions. VyCurve does not sell or share your field's data.

See your field's own climb report

A demo takes thirty minutes: we walk through a live report, the awareness map, and the privacy model — then, if you like, we stand your field's own record up and let it make the case.

What happens next

  1. We reply within two business days to set a time.
  2. The walk-through uses demonstration data only — nothing about your field is collected before you ask us to.
  3. If you want to go further, your field's own site comes up within a few weeks — assembled, on all four surfaces, with masking on from the first page.

Thank you — your request is in. We'll reply within two business days.

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