On Saturday, February 18, 2017 at 8:35:49 PM UTC-8, Eric Greenwell wrote:
wrote on 2/17/2017 11:16 AM:
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.

John Cochrane.

Any video links to this technique? Heard of it before, don't doubt it works, just like to see it. No, I'm not going to teach it to myself.

The technique is simple and easy to learn. Just don't start out with the
extreme version John related! Basically, you are just increasing the
rate of energy/altitude loss by 2 or 3 times normal by using full
spoiler at high speeds. Try this for starters:

-enter the pattern at least 1000' AGL
-fly the pattern all the way until after you've turned final...NO
spoilers or sideslip
-continue down final without spoilers or side slip until it seems you
are almost too high to get down to your aim point with full spoilers
-open the spoilers fully, point the nose down until you are going 80-90
knots (but NO MORE than the max allowed speed for your landing
configuration - flap setting is the usual thing limiting the allowed speed)
-When the angle to your aim point looks about right for a half-spoiler
approach, pull the nose up gradually to maintain that angle
-when your speed drops to the desired speed on final, retract the
spoilers to one-half
-proceed with a normal landing

Use the technique a few times, and it won't seem very extreme at all.
The altitude loss is very rapid with full spoiler, gear down, and high
speeds, and it's very effective at dumping excess altitude.

--
Eric Greenwell - Washington State, USA (change ".netto" to ".us" to
email me)
- "A Guide to Self-Launching Sailplane Operation"

https://sites.google.com/site/motorg...ad-the-guide-1
- "Transponders in Sailplanes - Dec 2014a" also ADS-B, PCAS, Flarm

http://soaringsafety.org/prevention/...anes-2014A.pdf

The "fast and dirty" approach works better, the dirtier you can get. On a flapped glider, full landing flaps and spoilers, point the nose down and you pick up some speed, but you lose energy much faster.

There are landing sites where this makes a lot of sense (including the one at which I fly). One reason is you are flying through the gradient and boundary layer turbulence at well over stall speed and can withstand a 40 knot gradient without stalling.

On my ASH26, this works really well. On the Duo Discus I owned and flew at the same site, not so well - wasn't dirty enough in landing configuration to lose the energy.