"Vaughn" wrote
that's what they teach their
students because they don't know anything else.

Actually there are many reasons, some of them may be found in the SEL PTS.

True. I oversimplified. Far be it from me to suggest that the FAA
isn't a big part of the problem - it is. Some of the stuff in the PTS
is garbage. It's getting better again, though. Real slow flight is
back - for several years, slow flight was redefined as 1.2 Vso. Steep
turns were redefined to 45 degrees and I see no hope of change there.
The 180 to a landing is back in the commercial PTS though, and that's
a plus.

Another is that airports with lots of light aircraft training end up
with huge "follow the leader" patterns.

Ah, yes - the "everybody is doing it" argument. Actually, I do
understand - sometimes the safest thing to do is just grit your teeth
and do it the same way everyone else does it. Only when I learned to
fly I was taught that when the pattern is strung out that way, you
hold your altitude until you reach power-off gliding distance of the
field, then reduce to idle and glide in.

Come to think of it, the FAA has changed landings since our trainers were
designed. Vaguely 20 years ago, there was a sea change in the way landing
technique was taught because someone in the FAA decided that normal landings
would be accomplished with full flaps.

Well, that makes sense to me. As far as I'm concerned, the normal
landing is made with full flaps. Anything less is a special case - a
reduced-workload training exercise for an early presolo student,
strong crosswind in an airplane where flaps reduce rudder/elevator
authority, that kind of deal. Otherwise, why accept the higher
touchdown speed with its attendant risks, extra wear on tires and
brakes, etc?

The normal technique that is taught
these days (at least in a Cezzna) is the first notch on downwind, second notch
on base and full flaps on final.

And there's the problem. What's wrong with a clean downwind, two
notches on base to adjust the glide, and then the rest on final when
it looks right? I was taught to land that way. In fact, I was taught
to land a Cessna by bringing the power to idle abeam the numbers and
adding flaps as necessary to control glideslope. Might have had
something to do with the fact that my primary instructor flew gliders
too...

This adds so much drag that you either do a
high (and or tight) pattern or you must drag the thing around the pattern with
power. Guess which one they usually teach?

Right - because that's all they know. They really don't know enough
about flying a tight high pattern to teach it.

In a multiengine turbine airplane, what they teach is actually the
right thing to do. Those engines take time to spool up, so you dirty
the plane up, keep the engines spooled up, and for a go-around you
clean up the plane - this way you can get a climb going before the
engines are fully spooled up.

The problem is, we're flying light piston airplanes.

Michael