Power-out spot landing techniques?

Cub Driver wrote in message . ..
Don't you lose the "dirty spot" when you're slipping?

I have my students come out of the slip every once in a while to
recheck their "dirty spot".

Andrew Gideon wrote in message ...
ls wrote:

The cheezy way to do it is to just dive a bit until the
glideslope flattens a bit and then resume your approach airspeed (although
not cheezy in my aircraft type which is incapable of slips - that's pretty
much my only option). Don't do this on the checkride or even with the CFI
on board - they'll slap you upside the head and with good reason. The much
better way is to use a slip or, if you're sure you have it made, adding
flaps, to accellerate energy dissipation and get you on glideslope without
building up too much airspeed.

What about slowing below best glide, but (obviously {8^) above stall?

In the old days CFIs taught the students to enter spins, first one
way, then the other. Each spin was recovered after only about 45
degrees of rotation. The resulting maneuver looked like a falling
leaf, thus the maneuver was named the "falling leaf". You could
probably lose your CFI ticket for teaching that now.

-Robert, CFI

Stefan "stefan"@mus. INVALID .ch writes:

Ever heard of such a thing as a polar curve?

Details, please.

e.g. http://home.att.net/~jdburch/polar.htm

I meant details about why you posted the question. That is an
interesting site, though -- thanks.

People don't tend to go into that much detail for powered flight,
probably because we're so heavy (relatively) and moving forward so
fast that we tend to blast through updrafts and downdrafts too quickly
do much with them.


All the best,


David

--
David Megginson, , http://www.megginson.com/

at the higher speed, you also close with the threshold sooner, so
there's less time for the plane to descend. 700 fpm is 700 ft/nm at 60
kt, but only 525 ft/nm at 80 kt. If you start two miles back even with
no wind, you'll end up 350 ft higher over the threshold with the 80 kt
dive than you would with the 60 kt mush.

Sounds like you just proved that the faster you go, the greater your
glide range. :-)

use the best glide speed

Best glide is a clean speed; with gear down, an aircraft will have a
greater glide range with a slower speed.

David Megginson wrote:

Ever heard of such a thing as a polar curve?

Details, please.

e.g. http://home.att.net/~jdburch/polar.htm

I meant details about why you posted the question.

It wasn't a question. It was a hint.

Stefan

What about slowing below best glide, but (obviously {8^) above stall?

No reason why that wouldn't work either. A friend of mine uses this
technique in his Citabria from time to time. I don't like to do this in my
airplane, though, because roll control becomes very heavy and slow (due to
yaw stability) at low airspeeds.

If, on the other hand, you're having to hold too low of an airspeed to
keep the landing point from moving up, you don't have enough energy to
make it there and you're going to come up short.

This I don't follow. If the spot is steady, you're going to make the spot
at your current speed (assuming you're holding that speed, of course).

Right. But, as I said (look again at the paragraph above), if the spot is
moving up and you don't have the energy to keep it from doing so, you're
going to come up short.

LS
AC fun racer 503.

- Andrew

In rec.aviation.student Andrew Gideon wrote:
ls wrote:

The cheezy way to do it is to just dive a bit until the
glideslope flattens a bit and then resume your approach airspeed (although

What about slowing below best glide, but (obviously {8^) above stall?

Here is a page that discusses both of the above techniques (from John
Denker's excellent online book on aerodynamics):

http://www.av8n.com/how/htm/power.ht...-energy-stunts

Neither is usually the best method of glide path control but it never
hurts to have more tools in your toolbox.

Boris

In rec.aviation.student Stefan "stefan"@mus. invalid .ch wrote:
Bob Noel wrote:

get a glider rating.

Spot landing a glider is fairly trivial whith those spoilers which let
you adjust the glide angle from 1/40 to 1/7 or so without slipping.
Those spam cans have way more momentum and no spoilers. Of course you
can slip them.

There's also no altitude penalty for closing the spoilers once you
have them open so you can continously adjust them during the approach.
This makes them work more like a throttle than flaps. Push the lever
forward to go further, pull it back to go down. :-)

Boris

In rec.aviation.student David Megginson wrote:

People don't tend to go into that much detail for powered flight,
probably because we're so heavy (relatively) and moving forward so
fast that we tend to blast through updrafts and downdrafts too quickly
do much with them.

Not necessarily. A common technique that the glider towplanes use is
"thermal on tow" which just means they circle in any updrafts along
the way. This improves their climb rate considerably, even if the
updraft is too small and they have to fly in and out of it.

Another example is flying through a strong downdraft. Knowing what a
polar curve looks like at least in principle tells you that it's much
better to speed up and get out of the downdraft quicker rather than
try to outclimb it at Vy. This can be a life saver in the mountains.

Regards,
Boris