Excellent article and excellent thread.
John, I am curious to hear your opinion about using higher MC vs degrading the polar (aka bug factor) for safety as some do instead or in addition.

Ramy

I don't think using the bugs setting to calculate glides in real time
is that helpful. I never know what percent bugs means.

I do think it would be useful if our instrument makers could allow us
to input lift or sink. I'd like to input, "MacCready 3, 500 foot
reserve, and 100 fpm sink." Or when doing a final glide in Uvalde,
"MacCready 3, 500 foot reserve, and 100 fpm lift." (Clearnav has a few
emails from me on this!)

This simply shifts the polar curve up and down by the given lift and
sink, and would be easy for them to program.

For contest final glides, by keeping track of average netto in the
last few legs you could have an idea of lift/sink to be expected on
final glide, and then bump up / be cautious accordingly.

For safety reasons this would be very educational. You'd see directly
just how disastrous small bits of extra sink can be on your
glideslope. I also think many pilots would find it easier to take the
advice "assume 200 fpm sink all the way to your safest landing" than
they would to take the advice "input Mc 10 into your glide computer."
The former sounds reasonable, the latter outlandish based on cross-
country experience, yet they are the same thing.

Good point -- I'll add this to the article.

John