Bruce Greeff wrote in message ...
What I am disagreeing with is practising landing with no drag controls other
than side slip, and holding the slip into the flare. Knowing that you can do it
in an emergency is one thing, doing it as a matter of course is not.

So it was a nice sunny day with no lift here in CO, so I took another
pilot up in the L-13 for some fun. Temp was about 60F and wind down
the runway at around 10 mph. Our airport elevation is 7000' MSL.

Tried a few slips at altitude, and entering at a bit under 50 KIAS the
ship flew very nicely with full rudder and the low wing still well
above the horizon. Stalls were nonevents with a very noticeable
reduction in sound level before the 'break' which involved the nose
going straight forward and a slight drop. Overall, no big deal.

Entered downwind at around 600' and this was actually too low to fly
the pattern in a slip all the way. Used a slip on the turns to base
and final, then a slip the last 150' or so of altitude. Flared just
beyond the approach end, touched a bit farther than I would have with
spoilers and got stopped less than 500' beyond the threshold.

My friend then repeated the performance, again using less than 500' of
runway.

I then decided to turn final at a "normal" height and did some
slipping S-turns. Got to the same flare point as before but with
about 5 knots more airspeed, so flew along sideways as I began the
flare. DIdn't realize how low the tail was until it tapped the ground
and dropped us in a bit sideways. Side load was no worse than some of
my students trying a X-wind landing. We used about 1000' of runway
this time, but I never touched the wheel brake, either - as I was
aiming to stop where we did.

-Tom