It's nice to see a useful tread on pprune!
The VNAV path indicator is quite nice sometimes, but still very much a garbage in, garbage out device! I keep telling myself I'm going to put a post-it over it sometime to force myself not to be so lazy! I really like the half of the CAS equation - will try that one tomorrow..
As quite a newbie to this, I'm still trying to perfect my "holy grail" descents into the less busy airports with idle thrust from TOD to gear down - needless to say some days are better than others, e.g. Rwy05 today in STN, they generally need us to get down quickly to 3000ft on the downwind leg, but then you are cleared to 2500 which is platform altitude and quite a few track miles away. I know using vertical speed and say 200fpm is still technically a CDA, its still using quite alot of thrust and therefore fuel than idle.
I've been told to go min clean, which is fine, but what about these exact 180kts and 170kts to 5 miles etc, e.g. Today Flap 1 was 185, does it make a big difference? I've heard the +/- 10kts being mentioned but also heard that isn't the case, and with the enhanced Mode S, can some of the radar controllers see what speed we've selected on there?
Sorry for a million questions!