For sure this has to be the best forum to ask.
Cessna 182 P , Horton STOL and VGs on top.
I know is not the best STOL but is decent.

Im a low time pilot 230hrs of those about 180 in the 182.
When I try short field landings I approach at 60 to 63 mph the typical wistle the 182 makes at that speed is a great information for me telling me the speed.

If Im coming flat the plane starts to sink a bit and I have not much room to drop the nose and gain speed, so I add power, nose rises stall beeps for a while and ended in a landing with power ON and kind of rushed.

Coming steep seems better I use a lot less power until the flare , then I cut power, but then the sink rate is fast so I end up pulling the Yoke all the way for a very high nose attitude landing also feeling rushed and not smooth.

Im making this landings and they are being short 500 , to 700 ft, but Im not precise , or smooth and feels rushed with the last minute corrections of power or pulling yoke all the way.

What is a technique to do this smoothly?

Here is a video Im aproaching at 60mph wasnt bad but you can see the flare is inmediate as soon as power is cut because is starting to sink.
I didnt used the brakes so it continued rolling.

steep
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_-A6ZKjRwYM[/youtube]


shallow
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f4IIxic4s3s[/youtube]
(it didnt end being short really.)

motoadve wrote:
Im a low time pilot 230hrs of those about 180 in the 182.

If Im coming flat the plane starts to sink a bit and I have not much room to drop the nose and gain speed, so I add power, nose rises stall beeps for a while and ended in a landing with power ON and kind of rushed.

Coming steep seems better I use a lot less power until the flare , then I cut power, but then the sink rate is fast so I end up pulling the Yoke all the way for a very high nose attitude landing also feeling rushed and not smooth.

but Im not precise , or smooth and feels rushed with the last minute corrections of power or pulling yoke all the way.

What is a technique to do this smoothly?

In my opinion for what it's worth you're doing very well and are absolutely on the right track. There are 2500 hour pilots that are not doing as well as the landing you made in the first video. For 180 hours in type and 230 total you are doing very well.

There are plenty of people here who have more STOL experience than me... you will likely hear a lot of opinions. But if you are practicing and skill-building for real off-road and real short strip work, then you will be using the power-on approach in the first video often. Real STOL work is NOT "smooth" very often. And it will always have some part of it that is "rushed" if you're doing it right. If you had 15 seconds of leisure time between the flare and the touchdown then you are by definition NOT getting anywhere near the full capability out of the airplane. The closer you are to the maximum capability of the airplane, the closer the "events" and actions of the landing (or takeoff) get squeezed together.

So I feel very confident in saying that you are working in the right direction, and continuous practice will start getting you more and more precise (as far as the power-on landing in the first video). Again for 180 hours in type you are doing remarkably well. I am certain the gray hair on this forum will agree.

One thing I saw clearly is the difference in touchdown location between the first and second videos. In the first video you cut the power and flared immediately, and touched down very close to the end of the runway. The second landing you had five or eight seconds of floating and dissipating energy, and you landed ten miles down the runway. Those hundreds of feet that were un-used absolutely cannot be wasted in many many places.

The problem that caused this is extra speed on final and the nose-heaviness of the 182. The Cessna's huge flaps will allow a steep, slow approach. Except when you do it really slow your timing has to be perfect to get the flare right so you don't hit hard. There are some places where you will want to use the steep "gliding" approach because of terrain. Also it is a lot safer in the event of an engine problem. So you will need to develop a technique for doing the steep power off approach and making a safe landing "on the spot" and not floating down the runway.

The technique I use for this type of approach is foreign to a lot of pilots, so PLEASE try this at altitude first before you do it close to the ground. I'm not kidding, this is serious crap that can bend an airplane or worse. What follows is my own technique which works for me when the situation requires a steep power off approach. I'm sure the "peanut gallery" will start in on me for this!

You can do a steep gliding power off approach with full flaps, at about 5 or 7 miles an hour above the flapped stall speed. This would be down in the mid 50 mph range in a 182 I think (I have a 172 which is different weight and speed). At this low speed and high descent rate, you DO NOT have enough available lift reserve and/or elevator authority for a quick flare near the ground. The airplane will "pancake" and be damaged.

You aim for a spot about 100 feet before the touchdown point during this steep power off approach. You should be feeling like you are standing on the rudder pedals and about to crash short of the runway. You're descending steeply, which means you can fly this approach when landing over hills and ridges and tall trees. Your steep descent angle is actually your safety margin, if you get hit by gusts and low altitude shear your nose is already down and your wing has all the washout (twist) from the flaps to fight tip stalls and spins. Although it looks pretty wild, you're a LOT safer than if you were hanging on the engine with the nose up when you get hit by gusts or carb ice!

At about 100 or 150 feet AGL, you have to LOWER the nose and gain another 5 or 8 miles an hour. Now you're pointing at the ground 150 or 200 feet short of the touchdown spot. (Little children start crying and insurance companies start sweating... Gophers and small animals scurry into their burrows, preparing for your crash... The local villagers reach over to cover the eyes of the children, lest they witness such a terrible impact) But you need this extra speed for stopping the descent rate.

At 25 feet (even lower after you fine tune the technique and get used to it) you flare the airplane. You will not have a tremendous amount of extra time. Remember, if you have extra time you have not gotten the most out of the plane.

The 150 or 200 feet (depends on a lot, figure this out by practice at altitude) that you were "short" of the runway is now used to bleed off that extra few miles an hour that you needed for the flare authority. So when you get the timing right, you hit the touchdown spot at minimum speed, and you did not have to "waste" precious runway length bleeding it off like what happened in your second video clip.

The end result after all these gymnastics is that you can do a steep approach with a few added margins of safety compared to hanging on the engine, and when you get the timing right you still hit the same spot at a slow speed for a precision landing. ANOTHER safety margin you have is that you did this approach without power - so if you get hit with a gust or low altitude shear you have all the power available, instead of having already been using it to "hang" the airplane with the nose up.

In fairness you will ALWAYS be able to get a little slower and hit the spot a little more precisely by using the power-on technique than the steep glide. But you give up a lot of safety, and "hanging on the engine" can only be used where you have flat ground off the end of the runway. I would guess that there are more "real world" applications for the steep glide than the "dragging it in" method, but I would have to yield to the pilots who have more experience in any particular environment on that question. All I can vouch for is that I have used the steep technique myself in several different types of aircraft and it offers some valid advantages for some situations.

Read Sparky's info on spot landings and short field landings. He covers the principles very well.

Clarifying: you have a flaps down descent at 5 mph above stall, at 150' you lower the nose to build air flow over you elevator, and then flare to landing? wouldn't the nose down acceleration point lead to a decrease in your angle of approach resulting in less threshold side obstacle clearance?

I am intrigued and will give this technique a try.

Thanks for the explanation.
I have gone with a couple of my instructors and they didnt like it going that slow.
3 of them none felt comfortable with the slow approach, but where happy with the landing.
This is my reasoning to approach at 60mph.
I can do slow flight at 40mph even less , level so with 60 mph and descending and a bit of altitude I have some margin. Is this right?

About your technique , sounds good, but 25ft high for the flare isnt it too much?

I would suggest that if you want to get comfortable with short strip flying it is good to get comfortable at going slow. I am our company's instructor, and in the first flight with every new company pilot I cover the airspeed indicator, load the plane to gross (about 1100 lbs) and we spend a half hour flying with the stall horn on, clean and dirty, 30 degree banked turns clean and dirty and a descending dirty turns to left and right. I am a big believer in flying the plane by attitude and feeling because most of the 206s up here have been crashed at least once and so the airspeed indicators aren't really reliable (neither really are the stall horns but you can feel the rumble).

We serve a village three or four times a day that has a 200' cliff on one end of the curved 1600' runway with the village on the other end. The only way to make the landing is a slow airspeed, fairly steep bank to landing, usually when we are fairly heavy, pretty much everything your PPL instructor told you not to do. you can see it if you look up Nanwalek, AK on youtube.

motoadve wrote:Thanks for the explanation.
I have gone with a couple of my instructors and they didnt like it going that slow.
3 of them none felt comfortable with the slow approach, but where happy with the landing.
This is my reasoning to approach at 60mph.
I can do slow flight at 40mph even less , level so with 60 mph and descending and a bit of altitude I have some margin. Is this right?

About your technique , sounds good, but 25ft high for the flare isnt it too much?

Yes it is too much, but not by much. The reason is that your descent rate is very high (power off and still a little low airspeed). It takes a little longer for the elevator to pitch the nose up for flare, and you aren't making a lot of lift so it doesn't happen instantly. 25 feet is less than a wingspan, and your descent rate as you dive to pick up speed can be something like 1000-2000 feet a minute. So you're only talking a few seconds from 25' to pancake.

So my idea is for you to practice it at higher altitude first so you know for sure how the airplane behaves, then do the slow steep approach and see what works for your skill and your airplane. Also, the weight of the airplane will change all this greatly. In a light solo 172, I can do a slow steep approach, then unload it and dive, then yank back on it at 10 feet and land safely. But it would be different with two or three people on board, or heavy cargo, etc. The 182 is heavier and takes more room to change direction, so I was adding in some fudge factor. The cost of doing this too low is very high (pancake crash) and so I think you must start out conservative and work your way into whatever the sweet spot is for a 182.

The big point I wanted to make is that if you are going to do real STOL work you will have to be proficient at several different techniques. So there will be times when you need to hang it on the prop, drag it in with the stall warning honking, and cut the power to plop down on the spot. You have little or no safety margin when doing that, whether at 40 or 60 miles an hour. But if you need 800 feet to land at gross, and your strip is 810 feet long, then you will have to use that technique. This is why they use that technique at the Valdez STOL competition, but it is common knowledge that the techniques those same hotshot bush pilots use out in the "real world" are different.

On a normal everyday landing for fun at my home airport, I use all 40 degrees of flap and a steep approach power off at 60MPH or less, aiming at a point 100 feet short of the numbers. 60 mph is pretty far above the stall speed in the 172, and so that leaves plenty of energy for a brisk flare with no diving at the last minute. Using this technique, I can usually hit the numbers at 40 indicated, because those huge Cessna flaps bleed off energy very fast. So the extra 15-20 MPH I'm carrying on final only requires 100 feet or so of "float" before the touchdown point.

This is much safer and less risky than the slow steep approach. Whenever you have that extra little room (before the touchdown point) to bleed off the speed, then I suspect this approach is the way to go. You get all the safety benefits of the steep approach (nose down, more resistant to gusts, better terrain clearance, ability to retract flaps and glide to the runway if the engine coughs), and you can do without the last-second Kamikaze dive. Matter of fact, for safety's sake please allow me to change my previous recommendation and recommend you start practicing this method before you get into the real critical version where you're descending "behind the curve".

EZFlap: I have tried to think this through but can't noodle it out. If you approach high at power off 5 mph above stall, and then at 200 feet, lower the nose another 5-8 mph to regain elevator authority to avoid the pancake, what is the reasoning behind the initial power out stall + 5 airspeed?

One of the factors for ground roll (which in the end a short field landing is all about) is touch down speed. With this technique your touch down speed would be the same if you flew your full approach at stall + 10 to13 that you get at the end of your acceleration noseover. The steeper approach angle of the stall +5 is negated by the need for space in front of the threshold to burn off the energy incurred by the noseover.

In other words why not just fly the approach at stall+10 to 13 that you reach at the end of the noseover, and not have to worry about the timing of the noseover to avoid the pancake effect?

Also, any lower time pilots trying this should remember that if you screw up the timing of the noseover, a quick squirt of power will save your a$$ from the pancake effect.

I am off today but will be able to play with this technique tomorrow.

Slow, Slow and slow!

You must fly the airlplane slow. This is a SHORT field landing.

Would be cool if you could mark your landing area in 100' increments and see just how far your actaully rolling. The video makes it look like your rolling more the 500-600', but, it is a video and hard to tell.

If I am going in somewhere short, I like to be slow and hearing that horn blazzing. But, you need to fly it like that to knowwhere the plane actaully will drop. Practice slow flight first. Also, your not looking at your airspeed indicator, Its a feel. If your looking the airspeed, your past your landing.

We were all just having this conversation the other day. Fly high, practice this and look at the ASI but when its actual and your low and slow make certain your hitting your mark and go on feel.

Would you guys mind explaining to me why nobody mentions slipping as a means of increasing descent rate without necessitating flying at such marginal airspeeds? Using the examples above, why not just slip at 60 mph and maintain your target just short of where you hope to touchdown? I've no experience with anything other than my S7 but I can drop it like a stone and I find that pretty helpful.... apologies if this is a dumb question...

Slipping is mandatory on many occasion. Not a silly question at all. It just needs to be practiced a lot before actually using it. "wing low" "nose low". My pops use to say.."wing low nose high...you die"

In my opinion, and you get exactly what you paid for it... Fred Potts has probably the best written descriptions of operating on the backside of the power curve, and using ground effect to make short, stable, slow landings.

Spend a few bucks and order up his book:
http://www.fepco.com/Bush_Flying.html

He can get a wee bit full of himself, but he has been there and done that for many, many years, and he's a voice of experience that you may want to listen to.

Gump

Headoutdaplane wrote:In other words why not just fly the approach at stall+10 to 13 that you reach at the end of the noseover, and not have to worry about the timing of the noseover to avoid the pancake effect?

Also, any lower time pilots trying this should remember that if you screw up the timing of the noseover, a quick squirt of power will save your a$$ from the pancake effect.

Thanks for the reply. Yes it's strange, and it originally came from experience flying sailplanes where you do not have the ability to go around. But if you take an open minded look at the reasoning behind the strangeness there are some advantages.

The benefit of the power-off approach method (from my point of view) is that you maintain as much altitude as possible for the longest period of time, without building up a load of speed where you don't want it. Altitude equals options in many many cases. If you are flying over or around terrain into a short strip, then the more distance you have above the ground... the less effect that wind flowing over or around that obstacle will have on your approach. You will be above more of the "eddy currents" and micro-shears associated with the terrain or obstacle. That adds safety IMHO.

In the case of an engine out, the more altitude you have the better your chance of retracting the flaps and gliding to the runway. An engine out during the nose-high power-on approach leaves you with far fewer options and far less time for doing anything. The people who drag the airplane in on the prop for a half mile, 20 feet over trees or rocks, are taking a huge needless risk in my opinion. Even without a mechanical engine failure, a pilot hanging on the engine thrust slow above a forested area will be up sh** creek if a few birds take off from the trees right in front of him, when they hear the airplane coming. A hard turn away from the bird by the pilot is much more likely to stall a wingtip at a very unforgiving point.

The higher altitude also gives you much better visibility of your landing zone.

The question about sideslips is valid, except that many Cessna aircraft are placarded against slips with full flaps. The placard says "avoid" but I have no idea if that means the airplane truly suffers control loss or just buffet/vibration issues.

Once again, I believe that it is a little more precise and a little shorter to use the low approach with power, when every last foot counts. But that technique involves a level of risk that may not be necessary in many situations, and that technique cannot be used with obstacles. I'm not an Alaska pilot, but even way down here in wacky weirdo Los Angeles we know that the Valdez contest landings would be a whole different story if there were trees or wires at the end of the runway.

The only real justification for the wild nosedive version of the power-off approach maneuver is that it would enable you to get over obstacles or terrain close in to the runway, allowing you to hit the ground as close as possible to the obstacle. Meaning, if you had a 100 foot treeline or a small ridge right before the touchdown point, having the steepest descent angle possible when passing this obstacle yields the closest touchdown point. But you also don't want to have extra speed at touchdown either (fly slow, as correctly pointed out by others).

So how else could you get a very steep descent over a close-in obstacle, and not build up too much speed on the way there, and not be already using up your safety reserve of thrust (making it unavailable for emergency)? Having the entire thrust from the engine available for emergency (or to soften the pancake when your timing is off as you mention) is indeed the single biggest safety-side benefit to the power-off approach.

Another benefit is that you are gaining speed and flying nose down right at the point where the typical low altitude wind shear or surface gradient problems occur. A power-on approach at slow speed, with the nose up, encountering this sudden loss of indicated airspeed due to surface gradient... would be a hard landing at best and likely a bent airplane. Using the power-off technique, if you fly into this wind gradient or a little ground shear, you have full power available if you have to yank back on the yoke to stop the plane from mushing into the ground.

Also, I have to admit that there are many others (Sparky Imeson, FE Potts, et al) who have many many more thousands of hours doing this type of flying out in the far corners of the world. If there is some technical reason that my technique is not workable, or something that makes their methods safer or more effective, I will stand corrected when I see how or why. All of this needs to be practiced at altitude first, and worked towards the ground slowly. Nobody go off and try this with a full load of orphans in an over-gross 185 in icing conditions at 12K DA just because smart aleck EZ Flap said it works.

aktahoe1 wrote:Slipping is mandatory on many occasion. Not a silly question at all. It just needs to be practiced a lot before actually using it. "wing low" "nose low". My pops use to say.."wing low nose high...you die"

and this is where knowing your airplane and it's limitations makes the difference between good performance, and great performance...

FWIW, If slipping is required, in my airplanes I will pull the nose just as high as required, right up to but short of the stall. Letting the nose fall through in a slip negates the whole purpose of the maneuver...

I am going to go out on a limb and guess that the implications here are fear of spinning close to the ground?

Has anyone here successfully spun their airplane out of a slip (without forcing it)? I am curious which airplanes will do this...Most of the airplanes I have tried it in (admittedly not many), simply won't do it. Simple flying 101 says that in a proper 'slip' the top wing is going to stall first, bringing you to wings level and nose down, read:unstalled... has always worked for me, although I know it is not the case for all aircraft... conversely in a skid, the bottom wing stalled first, tucking you down and under, and around you go... I have not met a cub that will spin out of a slip without very aggressive forcing...

Behind the powercurve...I guess people that are afraid to fly there only use the engine to land... next time you fly over to JC, heck... los angeles for that matter, check out all the in opportune places you fly over, that an engine failure is going to result in a bad day... all of a sudden the 1-3 minutes of relying on your engine, isn't going to seem like all that big of a deal...

motoadve, your flying looks fun!
x3 (or wherever we are now) on Fred Potts



Take care, Rob

Like Rob, I have not flown an aircraft that will spin from a stall in a moderate to aggressive slip and I have done this a lot in aircraft from Cessna 210's to Pitts to high performance sailplanes. Rob's analysis is correct and the control locations (top rudder) are anti-spin, i.e., top rudder against the inside stalled wing. A release of back pressure is usually all that is necessary to get the airplane flying again. I too hold the nose up throughout the slip. Nose-low reduces the effectivenesss of the slip in addition to causing real problems when you "kick it out". Some high performance aircraft (Pitts, RV) will spin to the "outside" if you hold aggressively hold top rudder while recovering past wings level; something akin to a snap roll. However, you would have to be pretty brain-dead to allow this to evolve.

My experience and experimentation in slips is considerabIe: In addition to 20,000+ towplane landings in Pawnees and Cubs, most of which employed very aggressive slipping, I owned and put about 250 hrs. in a 50:1 sailplane that only had drag chutes for glide path control and 95% of the time I used slips to get the thing on the ground.

This is a good topic. I learned to fly in gliders so I probably slip more than most. I am sure different aircraft perform differently in a slip but airspeed management is critical to all. I may have some skills to work on but a flat approach is the easiest way for me to botch a landing.

In an antique light airplane without flaps (T-craft BC-12, DCO-65, Champ, Luscombe etc.) if you do a forward slip with the nose down or nose level... when you let it out of the slip to land you accelerate in ground effect like a wet bar of soap and you just lost minimum 500 feet of runway.

The correct technique to getting a precision STOL/SPOT landing in the T-craft is to slip it hard, nose up, all the way down final, flare it while still in the slip, wait until it is just about to stall sideways and groundloop, and at the very last second or two let it out of the slip still nose high and it will plop down.

If for some reason the T-craft stalls in this descending nose-up slip, simply releasing the controls for 1/4 of a second will result in a perfect return to level un-stalled flight. Guaranteed.

However, "precision landing in a T-craft" is an oxymoron.

EZFlap wrote:

motoadve wrote:
Im a low time pilot 230hrs of those about 180 in the 182.

If Im coming flat the plane starts to sink a bit and I have not much room to drop the nose and gain speed, so I add power, nose rises stall beeps for a while and ended in a landing with power ON and kind of rushed.

Coming steep seems better I use a lot less power until the flare , then I cut power, but then the sink rate is fast so I end up pulling the Yoke all the way for a very high nose attitude landing also feeling rushed and not smooth.

but Im not precise , or smooth and feels rushed with the last minute corrections of power or pulling yoke all the way.

What is a technique to do this smoothly?

In my opinion for what it's worth you're doing very well and are absolutely on the right track. There are 2500 hour pilots that are not doing as well as the landing you made in the first video. For 180 hours in type and 230 total you are doing very well.

There are plenty of people here who have more STOL experience than me... you will likely hear a lot of opinions. But if you are practicing and skill-building for real off-road and real short strip work, then you will be using the power-on approach in the first video often. Real STOL work is NOT "smooth" very often. And it will always have some part of it that is "rushed" if you're doing it right. If you had 15 seconds of leisure time between the flare and the touchdown then you are by definition NOT getting anywhere near the full capability out of the airplane. The closer you are to the maximum capability of the airplane, the closer the "events" and actions of the landing (or takeoff) get squeezed together.

So I feel very confident in saying that you are working in the right direction, and continuous practice will start getting you more and more precise (as far as the power-on landing in the first video). Again for 180 hours in type you are doing remarkably well. I am certain the gray hair on this forum will agree.

One thing I saw clearly is the difference in touchdown location between the first and second videos. In the first video you cut the power and flared immediately, and touched down very close to the end of the runway. The second landing you had five or eight seconds of floating and dissipating energy, and you landed ten miles down the runway. Those hundreds of feet that were un-used absolutely cannot be wasted in many many places.

The problem that caused this is extra speed on final and the nose-heaviness of the 182. The Cessna's huge flaps will allow a steep, slow approach. Except when you do it really slow your timing has to be perfect to get the flare right so you don't hit hard. There are some places where you will want to use the steep "gliding" approach because of terrain. Also it is a lot safer in the event of an engine problem. So you will need to develop a technique for doing the steep power off approach and making a safe landing "on the spot" and not floating down the runway.

The technique I use for this type of approach is foreign to a lot of pilots, so PLEASE try this at altitude first before you do it close to the ground. I'm not kidding, this is serious crap that can bend an airplane or worse. What follows is my own technique which works for me when the situation requires a steep power off approach. I'm sure the "peanut gallery" will start in on me for this!

You can do a steep gliding power off approach with full flaps, at about 5 or 7 miles an hour above the flapped stall speed. This would be down in the mid 50 mph range in a 182 I think (I have a 172 which is different weight and speed). At this low speed and high descent rate, you DO NOT have enough available lift reserve and/or elevator authority for a quick flare near the ground. The airplane will "pancake" and be damaged.

You aim for a spot about 100 feet before the touchdown point during this steep power off approach. You should be feeling like you are standing on the rudder pedals and about to crash short of the runway. You're descending steeply, which means you can fly this approach when landing over hills and ridges and tall trees. Your steep descent angle is actually your safety margin, if you get hit by gusts and low altitude shear your nose is already down and your wing has all the washout (twist) from the flaps to fight tip stalls and spins. Although it looks pretty wild, you're a LOT safer than if you were hanging on the engine with the nose up when you get hit by gusts or carb ice!

At about 100 or 150 feet AGL, you have to LOWER the nose and gain another 5 or 8 miles an hour. Now you're pointing at the ground 150 or 200 feet short of the touchdown spot. (Little children start crying and insurance companies start sweating... Gophers and small animals scurry into their burrows, preparing for your crash... The local villagers reach over to cover the eyes of the children, lest they witness such a terrible impact) But you need this extra speed for stopping the descent rate.

At 25 feet (even lower after you fine tune the technique and get used to it) you flare the airplane. You will not have a tremendous amount of extra time. Remember, if you have extra time you have not gotten the most out of the plane.

The 150 or 200 feet (depends on a lot, figure this out by practice at altitude) that you were "short" of the runway is now used to bleed off that extra few miles an hour that you needed for the flare authority. So when you get the timing right, you hit the touchdown spot at minimum speed, and you did not have to "waste" precious runway length bleeding it off like what happened in your second video clip.

The end result after all these gymnastics is that you can do a steep approach with a few added margins of safety compared to hanging on the engine, and when you get the timing right you still hit the same spot at a slow speed for a precision landing. ANOTHER safety margin you have is that you did this approach without power - so if you get hit with a gust or low altitude shear you have all the power available, instead of having already been using it to "hang" the airplane with the nose up.

In fairness you will ALWAYS be able to get a little slower and hit the spot a little more precisely by using the power-on technique than the steep glide. But you give up a lot of safety, and "hanging on the engine" can only be used where you have flat ground off the end of the runway. I would guess that there are more "real world" applications for the steep glide than the "dragging it in" method, but I would have to yield to the pilots who have more experience in any particular environment on that question. All I can vouch for is that I have used the steep technique myself in several different types of aircraft and it offers some valid advantages for some situations.

In my opinion, we need a maximum word rule on the form for posts. Or is this off the topic?

Tim

Here we go again....

Seems like you guys are discussing a side slip and not a forward slip.

In the 182 and the 180 I like the wing low and nose slightly low for the forward slip. Also having the aircraft trimmed out to the feel you like. Of course then we get into configuration. Flaps, no flaps, etc. The side slip I prefer for X wind landings. Almost like a crab. Again trimmed out etc. You can keep the speed you like in both slips with proper trim and throttle reduction.

As said, here we go. This one is going to get interesting. Skylane get out your popcorn!

Good discussion.