Boofhead,
coming back to your original posts, the main points of which I've tried to list below,
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They do not know how to get onto a correct glidepath and canot maintain one even if they recognise it. The particular bane is the student (and some of these guys/girls are commercial pilots) who lets the nose come up approaching the runway and loses speed, then has to dive for the runway or drops on in a partial stall.
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I am only talking about the last 500 feet. And only for students or people having trouble with landing approaches.
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Speed can vary a little. Later on, speed becomes more important but initially I tell my students that so long as they are plus 10 and minus 5 let it go.
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As I've already posted, in the gliding community we teach elevator for speed, brakes for ROD. This is standard practice in our discipline and I appreciate that it is not always taught this way in power flying but I believe some of the issues you raise would be reduced by using the "traditional" method.
The first thing we teach is speed control on the approach. An appropriate approach speed is nominated and that is the speed required on the approach - not plus 10 minus 5 knots - the nominated speed. Clearly there will be some variance but the option is never offered - if you offer it, the student will take it and add some as well. At this stage it doesn't matter where they land (the instructor will be using the brakes initially anyway) - without the ability to fly a steady approach speed any reference point in the canopy will be up and down with the frequency of Paris Hiltons pants. Next we teach how to adjust the position of the reference point using the brakes for ROD.
Most people will recognise that in times of stress or danger a student pilot will want to pull back to avoid hitting the ground - getting them to push on the stick to recover from a deep stall or spin highlights this. Translate this to the scenario when pilots are moving back on the stick and losing speed as they approach the runway. By being in the habit of controlling speed with elevtor and correct monitoring of the airspeed the tendancy to ease back will be resisted. A common comparable phenomina in gliding is a field landing into a upward sloping field. The picture looks totally wrong and every instinct is to flatten the approach to make it look right, followed by the inevitable stall/spin/accident report/bodybag etc.
The other advantage that I consider for any pilot is that one day that fan on the front may stop turning. If you learn to rely on it to maintain approach speed, when the sh1t hits and the fan does stop, a pilot is faced with using an unfamiliar method at a time when workload is high and he needs less problems not more.
I totally agree that spot landings should be a matter of course and that is what we teach. Every pilot I fly with including the junior ones consistently land within a fuselage length of the takeoff point and often more accurately. After a particularly long day flying personnel around I flew with a power instructor who had never flown in a glider. When we landed, he commented about his amazment that all the pilots had finished every flight that day where it had started from at the launch point. He finished by adding that a lot of power pilots couldn't manage that consistancy. Clearly you are not the only one who gets frustrated at sloppy flying, and as we all know the flight only ends when the wing goes down.
I am sure that someone (I wonder who?) will tell me that I don't know what I'm talking about but I don't need to justify my theory or flying skills on this forum, I do that with my CFI.
What I have explained is:
how we do it,
why we do it and
why it translates into the power world, even if only on the GA kit.
Air Marshal or Airman, jet jockey or desk jockey they get taught the same and fly the same or they get the same debrief telling them why it's wrong
regards