Here’s a little tip for any PPL students which should help make things easier in the circuit. When flying circuits around your airfield, you can either judge the headings to fly by visually assessing your position in relation to the runway, or you can calculate the headings to fly by adding or subtracting 90 degrees dependent on whether it’s a left or right-hand circuit.
Judging the heading visually is probably what would be recommended by an instructor as it allows you to fly circuits for a runway that you’re not familiar with. Using the numbers, however, is another option for any perfectionists out there - or perhaps as a check that you’re circuiting the correct runway! Rather than having to calculate the headings by adding or subtracting, it’s quicker to just look at the directional indicator (DI), note your heading, and you can easily see and fly to the heading that’s 90 degrees away from your present heading. So when you’re turning onto another leg, just glance at the DI and note the heading 90 degrees away that you need to fly to. Then you can roll out on the heading with a bit more certainty.
As I said it’s just a little tip but hopefully it will come in use to somebody!