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Climb & descent planner
Top of descent, descent rate for a 3° path, and climb gradients in ft/nm and percent.
The 3° path
A 3° descent loses about 318 ft for every nautical mile. Divide the height to lose by that to find where to start down, and multiply your ground speed in nm per minute by it for the rate of descent. Pilots round this to 3 nm per 1,000 ft and “ground speed × 5”.