Skylark
The point you make is very powerful because one can see the kerb in a car at close distance and therefore understand one's position relative to it, allowing appropriate action to be taken easily.
Visualising a descent profile in one's mind facilitates the same action - I wouldn't suggest that anyone should try to drive a light aircraft down final like an airliner where half a degree of attitude pitch is critical to performance, but having a mind map of the approximate altitude "gates" (e.g. turning from base, 1, 2 miles out) has always been helpful to me.
This is rule of thumb stuff,not science.
As the instructors say pitch and power equals performance.
If you know where you should be on the profile and then set the required pitch (via the ASI, I agree, in a light single)and the power setting for the rate of descent rewquired, then it helps to stabilise the approach.
The primary focus can be on the visual cues such as the shape of the runway and the position of the numbers on the windscreen etc.
I don't know how many hours you have - I'm not trying to start a competition
- but I have going on for three hundred and probably both you and I have enough experience to interpret the cues and fly off the ASI only once in the circuit.
However, I still find a "sense" check from time to time to be reassuring and if I fly an unfamiliar type of aircraft, understanding the "triangle" of final is very good in the early period where flying becomes less intuitive for a while.
Anyway, some of the planes I have flown certainly could have benefitted from some Feng Shui, but didn't appear to follow those rules!
Happy Landings
[ 19 August 2001: Message edited by: Final 3 Greens ]