BB wrote:
As fun as the high parasitic drag maneuver is, I wonder if anyone has
ever actually used it in combat. Has anyone been so flustered and out
of synch to get monstrously high in an off field landing, then had the
presence of mind and skill left to dive to the ground at near VNE,
aiming several hundreds of yards short of the intended small paddock
with fence at the far end, and had it work? The mental attitude that
gets to the problem seems incompatible with the attitude needed to
pull this one off. If you don't aim short enough in the dive, you just
crash into the far fence at really high speed. But I'd be curious to
hear a "it worked for me" story.

In reality, I almost always have too little altitude rather than too
much when I'm trying to sneek into a field. I did use this sort of
technique with my Ventus a couple of times to get over trees and into
short fields, but it had trailing edge dive brakes that would allow me
to hold 60 to 65 knots in a dive, then round out, slow down, and plop it
in. There is no way I could make that work in a Duo, or most other
gliders...

Marc