by beaky » Mon Apr 11, 2011 11:30 am
Not a CFI, but I am a pilot who prefers to begin my final descent at a point and airspeed which will allow me to glide to my intended touchdown point without power if need be. To be honest, I tend to come in a bit high at first, but with flaps, spoilers, or slipping, one can steepen the approach without exceeding the desired airspeed or descent rate.
Of course, such "tricks" should not be necessary, if you know the glide characteristics of the plane and have a good idea what the wind is up to.
And in the end, landing a bit long or having to go around is better than risking coming up short... as my glider guru says: "Better to roll into the trees beyond the runway at 10 mph than to crash into the trees before the runway at 50 mph." ;D
Granted, this is not an option with some aircraft, but in, say, a 182, every time you "drag it in" you are asking for trouble. Even a slight loss of power could make all the difference in such shallow approaches.
I see pilots doing this all the time- I guess they were taught to maintain a certain throttle/prop setting during final, so they come in shallow to stay at or below the target airspeed. That shouldn't be necessary in any plane that will glide 1 mile from 500-1000 AGL (which is most of them). Not surprisingly, the pilots I know who fly gliders do not seem to do this, even when they are flying twins or other aircraft that have fairly high approach speeds. But you don't need glider time to figure out how to do this, nor do you need to extrapolate any customized formulas from the POH... you just need to experiment and note the results.