Landing patterns

Edward Todd wrote
Got my ticket in '76. The first landings I was taught in a C-150 were no
flap, no power landings. Pulled the power abeam the numbers and set up a
glide at 70 mph.

And there is a good reason to learn that way - it reduces complexity.
You don't screw around with anything after the downwind abeam point.
You set throttle to idle, pull carb heat, trim to the correct
airspeed, and after that all you do is fly the airplane. Obviously
your instructor understood the concept of starting simple and moving
to the complex. I'm sure you learned to do full flap landings at some
point - but flaps are additional complexity you don't need while
learning to fly a pattern and land. On top of that, the flare becomes
less critical since the sink rate is reduced.

Unfortunately, most of today's instructors don't really understand
this. They start the student doing landing procedures that involve
multiple power, flap, and airspeed changes in the pattern. Each of
those changes requires a change in trim. The result - the student has
too damn much to do. His airspeed control goes to hell (because with
all those configuration changes the plane is perpetually out of trim)
and he just doesn't have enough time to simply fly the plane.

So what happens? Power is added and the pattern is made wider to slow
things down and give the student more time to do everything that he
doesn't really need to be doing yet. Accelerated stall becomes a
concern because the student may not be able to tell that he is pulling
back too much - he's gotten used to flying out of trim. On top of
that, the student is still fumbling for throttle, flaps, and trim -
and is late making power reductions and flap additions, so the pattern
gets even bigger. The instructor spends his time reminding the
student to perform the "procedure" instead of watching his flying.
Everything is worse.

Michael