The only L188 I flew was the sim to get my airline job. Ended up in a single engine ILS with no visual with another check airman pulling the fire handle on my last engine at DH. I passed. I can imagine with all those big props at idle the drag but am impressed with the FL300 story. We played the same game in the 737. Leaving cruising altitude you couldn't add power or use speed brakes. At 1,000 feet spool up and land. Most of the time it worked but you had to play winds and weight to make it work out. ATC sometimes interfered but usually not. It was really fun into SFO because of the Boulder altitude and speed restriction. We sometimes asked ATC to drop the rock to do the 1,000 ft spool up with the higher speed at Boulder.