ab,
You seemed to have missed the earlier point made by me and Happy Jack that a high performance (power) aircraft will be much closer to the runway at 900' WHEN the engine fails. A high performance (low drag) machine will not need to be so close.
MattCollins,
I am staggered that you were trained to do a 180 and get back to a runway from 300 - 500'. Even in a good glider you wouldn't do that unless you had enough speed to complete the turn without losing height.
Its too late to do the maths accurately but a 180 degree turn in your average spamcan at 70kts is going to take about 20 seconds. At a typical sink rate of 1000 fpm, that's 300' you've lost, just in the turn.
Last edited by pulse1; 9th Oct 2006 at 06:29.