Originally Posted by
douglas.lindsay
I'm intrigued - my gliding instructors have taught me to turn final at 30 deg but my power instructor wasn't keen on anything above 20 deg. Is there a difference between gliders and power here, or just different traditions? Anybody any idea? Any books I can read that explain a bit more?
Anecdotal evidence (the best sort according to Dogbert) is that many power instructors are either wannabe airline pilots or are training novices with the expectation that they'll want to fly big jets with passengers in them. In either case passengers don't like it when their airplane banks steeply, ergo, power pilots tend to do gentle turns. Compare this to glider pilots who will sometimes fly at bank angles up to 60 degrees in order to stay with a small/tight thermal. I know that PPL's often express discomfort when a tight turn is demonstrated in a glider but once they realise that it doesn't cause the glider to fall out of the sky they do actually start to enjoy it :-)