i decided earlier this evening i would do a longer flight, and spend some of the in-flight time reading the ATC manual. So i plucked some of my old stomping grounds..

Anchorage (PANC) to Unalaska aka Dutch Harbor (PADU). 788 miles. It seemed like a challenge and it'd be fun, so I load up and roll out of Anchorage. After a few simple navigation mishaps I was on my way southwest towards Unalaska. Here are the various screwups encountered during the flight.

1) I chose a spitfire, it was the ozzy influence. The thing didnt have enough gas to make it so i ended up switching midflight to a King Air 350, a more likely plane to be found in that neck of the woods anyway.

2) My route missed some of the major (a CTAF is major in that area) airports so i was just licking my finger to find out the weather.. I missed having King Salmon in range by about 10 NM.

3) I did not learn about autopilot until i was about 300 miles into my trip. This is a good feature for steady en-route flying.

Those were relatively minor errors.. then came the major mishap.. my descent/landing into Dutch Harbor airport. First things first.. I was at 23,500 feet and didnt start my descent until about 30 miles in.. if i were carrying passengers i dont think they'd like that steep of a drop. I pulled up the weather freq in Dutch Harbor to find it was another glorious overcast day in Dutch Harbor. Ceiling was 200 feet. Now.. I have only successfully landed in this sim maybe 5 times up until this point.. and they were all in agile planes like the spitfire and corsair.. and they were all bouncing down the runway most of the time. if you load up the jet ranger in dutch harbor and scope the landscape.. i was coming in from the north, which means i would have had to ride a mountain on my descent. with a 200 foot ceiling, this is not good. especially with me behind the controls. so what ends up happening is i descend descend descend and try to come up under the clouds and just ride the lightnin at 180 knots 200 feet.. but of course, i had set the pitch for my descent, so when i tried to pull up it was like trying to drive a rollercoaster and i crashed into the ocean.

ill just quote the late great albert king here..

if it werent for bad luck baby, i wouldnt have no luck at all.

Landings are a matter of practice, practice, practice.........
as far as your decent, in the Jets we generally use the 3-1 rule.     exp; you were at 23,000' ----23 x 3 = 69---- start your decent at a 69 miles. Or you can take your ground speed for a reference if you want to do things the hard way.
At FL230 I think your 0 wind ground speed in the KingAir would be around 300KTS. That's about 5miles-per-minute. If you average a 1800fpm decent(23,000 divided by 1,800), that would equate to 12.7777 minutes. Multiply this by 5(for 5 miles-per-minute), and this comes out to 63.8 miles. Now you probably see why we just use the 3-1 rule.

I've never heard the 3:1 rule, but now that I have, sweeeet.  Thanks OTTOL!

Just remember, that this dependent on a constant descent rate. In other words, if your hand flying, don't omit the VSI from your instrument scan. In the Lear we use 2000FPM as a base figure. Tailwind, headwind, or a changing groundspeed
with altitude will alter your required rate of descent. But you simply recheck your figures as you descend. In the example; 23,000' =23x3=69 or 69miles, if when you get to 20,000 feet 
your DME or GPS indicates 50 miles, your'e 10 miles behind the profile. Increase your descent rate by 500 feet or so. Just as packercolinl said, you will have to cater your descent rate to the particular aircraft you fly.

Nice work on the 3 to 1 rule..  I tried it while going to Rio, and still couldn't see that Jesus statue...