Wade Hasbrouck writes:

"The general rule I was taught for the 172 is, provided you haven't 'creeped
in on your downwind', once the landing traffice passes your wing tip, you
can begin your turn to BASE, and it works out just about right..."

Ah, now I am far less confused!

Now, how are you looking at the traffic when you try to check if it
has passed your wingtip?

Kind of hard to see landing traffic pass your wingtip while ON base, and if
you did, that would probably be a big indication that you just overshot your
turn to final... :-)

I'm very good at undershooting and overshooting final (albeit in a
flip-of-the-coin sort of way). I only have difficulty aligning with
the runway.

And for some reason, I always seem to drift slightly left just as I'm
coming up on decision height. I don't know what does this. The
engines are usually near idle, so it doesn't seem like it'd be a
sudden surge of torque or anything. And it seems improbable that the
surface winds are _always_ blowing to the left.

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