By the way how many of you here have used T effect to increase range during long over ocean flights?....... I have.
Aha! I KNEW there would be someone here old enough to remember when it was T-effect.
As long as we are sharing flying experiences what was your longest flight as a pilot flying the thing, mine was 19 hours and 10 minutes.
Eleven hours and some change...but that's too long. Three hours is a lot better. We do eight hour legs all the time, and back to back legs with a tech fuel stop in between...but that's where a light airplane shines...not enough reach to go those kinds of distances. One to three hours is a lot better for me.
Going a long stretch like that gives a lot more meaning to the thought of someone like Lindbergh doing his 33 and a half hour flight...alone. That's a long time to not stand up and go visit the gentleman's room.
If I had an engine failure I would prefer an aircraft with the lowest stall speed and the lowest sink rate. A great glide ratio doesn't help a lot if that glide ratio is achieved at 120 knots. An aircraft with a low stall speed and sink rate will usually fare better in an off-field landing.
Touching down with minimum vertical speed is essential for an off field landing...but that's really nothing to do with glide ratio. Let's face it, even the space shuttle manages to land without winding up like a pancake, and it doesn't exactly have a stellar glide (just starts a little higher than most). Arresting the descent rate to land, with or without power...is just another landing. If you think about it, it's the same thing you do on every landing. Even in the 747, we land power-off...it's no different than landing a piper cub.
Sooooo...it's not the descent rate in the glide that determines how you'll touch down...that's just a matter of the distance you'll glide.
So far as the descent rate, most students are never taught that two basic glide speeds apply; one is the "best glide" speed, which is essentially what we're talking about in this thread. That's the speed at which the aircraft moves forward the farthest distance for a given amount of altitude lost. There's another equally important speed to consider, however, and that's minimum sink. Minimum sink speed provides the slowest descent rate, or more practically, the longest time aloft. It's found at a slower speed than best glide, and roughly speaking approximates the sea level best angle of climb speed for most light airplanes.
Best glide approximates the sea level best rate of climb speed. The speeds don't exactly coincide, of course (best angle and best rate are functions of available power--that's engine power for some--and change with altitude as available power and propeller efficiency change), but close enough.
Minimum sink is the speed to use when you want to stay aloft as long as possible, to troubleshoot a problem, communicate a position, etc. When stretching a glide as far as possible isn't important (it isn't if your landing site is below you), minimum sink may be just what you need to have time to prepare for the landing.
When you get to the bottom of the glide, of course, it won't matter what speed you used in the descent so far as the angle and descent rate...only that you arrest it (flare) to land.