You've got a good understanding of it..

The only "tools" I'd add, are the understanding that V-best-glide (for whatever your configuration) will obviously eat up the most ground, so obviously, any deviations (up or down) from that speed will steepen the approach...

Example.. coming in high, you could pitch for near Vmc (minumum controlable airspeed) and steepen the approach considerably.... OR .. Pitching for the highest airspeed availble (top of the white-arc when flaps are deployed), will steepen it too.

I prefer the latter, as hovering near stall-speed less than 1000agl makes me queasy (almost as queasy as slipping turns to final) , a significant wind-shift can erase your margin for error.

Grant06 wrote on Apr 10^th, 2011 at 7:56pm:


You'll get into a problem spot when you mix slipping and flaps.. depending on the airplane, of course.

While going against pulblished recomendations.. you can surely slip during a steep approach with flaps deployed.. we've all done it.. but the perils of my afformetioned wind-ship, become catastrophic. A high-winged airplane with flaps deployed is already "blanketing" the elevator.. a wind-shift at that time can render it utterly useless 

As for dumping the flaps just before a flare ? That depends on your experience-level, and confidence. If you wanna be brass-tacky about it.. a landing that would have you doing that, was a go-around before you got to that point. 

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."   


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.

Splinter562 wrote on Apr 12^th, 2011 at 1:56am:


Thanks for that. Kind of what I was looking for. In other words put my brain on the approach abeam instead of on final. Turning can be used to adjust, not just flaps, gear, slipping.
Thanks.

I try to base things loosely to when i was doing a lot of gliding.

Assume you have no guide to what your height should be: In the glider we were taught to try and get you final height such that you do your finals on half spoiler/airbrake, that way if you were slightly out or have wind shear you could retract spoiler and extend the glide and vice verse put more out if you were heading  for a what would be a go around in a powered aircraft with no spoiler and you weren't going for the 'cross controls' type of approach.

If your low and have to use lots of throttle then a failure there is bad, at least if your high and no problem you have the go around option.

What the guys are saying about 180 power off is energy management, have a go starting with straight in landings on idle.