Originally Posted by
longer ron
Most of us actually read the thread title TCAS
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John Farley's thoughts on forced approaches
Correct....thoughts on forced approaches. And I am sure if any of us were having a discussion with him about forced approaches, he would be much more interested in your opinion on forced approaches instead of hearing well deserved accolades.
Originally Posted by
Pilot DAR
This is why I train, as John's passage later validated for me, to store extra speed in a glide. Unless you need to stretch your glide to make it to the coast, or over the mountains, choose a spot closer, make no attempt to stretch the glide, and get it down well. With the extra speed stored, you can either spend it to prefect your flare, or dump it out at the last minute as a sideslip, or more flap extension. 'Worst is you land long. 'Better than landing short on a forced landing!
The information provided by Farley is interesting but I believe that it is directed more towards single engine jets with high wing loading rather than your typical single engine general aviation aircraft. I base this statement on mention of a 30 to 40 degree nose-down pitch. I have not read his book(please no harsh statements, I just finished one of three Winkle books I have).
So the question is..... is this applicable(or somewhat applicable) to a typical single engine piston trainer. His statement(from your quote) appears to me to be a consideration for flare capability which is why I posted that link to the article about high drag ultralights which appears to have the same issue, possibly for different reasons.
Obviously, each forced approach(Americans use a different term) is a different situation. Extra airspeed during the glide can set up a situation where one has wasted their energy. One could have a field in sight fairly close and chosen it over a further away field and then subsequently discovered that their first choice is unusable but they wasted their energy and the second choice is now too far. Be careful when giving away energy unless you are sure that you will never wish that you had it back again.
Landing short is not always worse than landing long, it just depends on the situation although it does increase the likelihood of the instinct to get very slow while stretching the glide to enter the picture. My personal preference in an engine out forced approach scenario where one has a somewhat marginal but reasonable field to use and not much else with typical damaging stuff at both ends of the field is to be close to the appropriate glide speed with some extra energy carried onto short final in terms of a bit too much altitude. I do this by targeting a flare point 1/3 down the relatively short runway while on-speed.
The reality is that the average pilot has a good chance of not being in the perfect position when approaching short final and will either be a bit high or a bit low(if you are grossly high or low, then you screwed it up and are on your own). We know stretching the glide has large risks in terms of a stall so being low is best avoided whereas being on speed and intentionally a bit high allows that sideslip that you mentioned earlier to be used, possibly quite aggressively if aircraft type allows and it can be extremely effective in some types. However, if I end up being slightly off my 1/3 touchdown point I will be targeting close to the threshold allowing the normal approach speed to still work.
Bottom line....perfect setup is best, sideslip is good, stretching glide is bad. The superpilots do the first one. Average guys like me are capable of the second and occasionally end up doing the unintentionally doing the first. Superpilot wannabe's frequently end up doing the last.