Ando1bar, I can understand teaching a stabilised approach but at 318ft/nm (3deg) in a 172 at 1.57nm at 500ft thats a ROD of 344/min. That seems very shallow, surely it would be better to do the norm and aim for 1 at 500 and go down at 542.
Agreed
Ando I know your position and I respect your comments. But Zoomy is 100% correct in saying that a Cessna 172 Is not a space shuttle. Sure there is a small - very small percentage of your students that will go straight into an aircraft above 5700 but the majority wont. Fly a 172 how it is meant to be flown.
Agreed also.
Which I why I have said in previous posts in this thread:
We're trying to teach skill sets from the beginning they will use throughout their career and introduce the concept of standard operating procedures. Of course this is adapted to the aeroplane and common sense applies.
We're not doing anything ground breaking in a C172. In fact someone flying our planes a page or two back posted an image of what is flown. I also mentioned:
Given the busy training environment we don't end up as far as 1.57 from the aim point turning final, more likely a bit over a mile. This still allows a good approach angle while maintaining a bit of power to control the speed. The aim of the game is to prevent a low power, fast, steep descent to land - if the student does this on their flight test they will fail.
Ecovictim, you asked:
I think answering the above, with an unquoted explanation from the ops manual, will finally put a rest to this argument. This is now essentially all it has come down to, your final position.
Here you go:
An approach is stabilized when the aircraft is:
a lined up with the landing runway
b established on 3° glidepath
c in the landing configuration at Vref +5 / - 0kts
d descending at less than 500fpm