On Friday, February 17, 2017 at 3:45:08 PM UTC-6, Dave Walsh wrote:
At 19:16 17 February 2017, wrote:
Then there is always the Marty Eiler special: Full spoiler, point
the nose
at the ground, go VNE to 5 feet off the deck. Even accounting
for the float
in ground effect, it uses up gobs of altitude.

The Vne approach is an interesting idea that I won't be trying
without 6000 feet of runway available! How do you get rid of
all that speed 5 feet off the ground? It must produce an
incredibly long float?

When I took the glider acro course at Estrella back in the early 90s, one of the "party tricks" was to dive at Vne to the deck on entry to downwind, then fly the whole pattern in ground effect - you had to climb to turn base and final - aiming to be near the approach end of the runway, 10 ft over the desert, at about 60 knots. Then you just cracked the spoilers and landed.. Interesting, to say the least!

It did teach you that once in ground effect, a little speed would take you a LONG WAY.

Helps to have an airport out in the middle of nowhere (then); at my local field there would be too much dodging of houses, water tower, trucks on the interstate, etc..! (although I have tried it in Condor and it still works).

Kirk
66