As I look back at the incident, which mangled a brand new ASG 29, I
ask myself, as anyone would, what I could have or should have done
different.

I was giving a field check to a new (rated) club member and after we
turned final i remarked "nice, perfect height, perfect distance". Five
seconds later I couldn't see the rwy because of the tree tops above us.
The only thing that saved our bacon was that we had enough speed to make
the rwy.

Reminds me of a story of where a Shorts pilot hit a micro burst on
approach and fire walled the throttles - mandating a very expensive
teardown and inspection of the engines. At the "inquest", he was asked
"why did you push the engines to 120% of their rated power"? The
response was "because I couldn't push them higher".

Tony V.