You've only flown light two and four seat aircraft haven't you?
Seriously for the record, I am a CFI-Glider (as well as CFII and CFI-ME) so I'm not afraid of making power-off landings. For your future reference, the further up the aircraft weight and performance ladder you go, the less viable your "power off in the pattern" as SOP becomes. You will discover this for yourself when you finally get to fly some larger than a 208.
I had a sim instructor try it once and flamed out all of the engines on me. His bet was whether or not I could make the airport, my question to him was which runway did he want me to land on. You need to learn that what cowboys do in a 208 or a clapped out King Air jump plane doesn't always translate to appropriate day-to-day SOP.
You won't see many competent pilots doing it in a Bonanza, Mooney, 206, 210, etc. You won't see any pilot doing it on any type of IFR approach.
I'll buy that. In the sim, you can try anything, nobody gets hurt, and maybe you learn something valuable. But in a real airplane? Kinda like doing engine cuts at liftoff in Part 23 light twins.
the 206 and 207 is EASY to glide and land power off, at least the U206/io550.
Currently I reduce power to 1500 abeam and then do not touch power until short final, where power goes to idle. I thought of modifying that to use ~1700 abeam, then reduce to 1500 after established on final, reducing to idle on short final.
Does this violate the stabilized approach rule?
Was the above scenario considered when you wrote this?
This is really the best argument I have heard for throttle to idle abeam the numbers on every approach. Making sure you can make the runway at every point in the pattern seems like a bogus reason to me, unless you also plan every flight so that your route keeps you within gliding distance of a runway at all times. I have never seen any convincing reason to think that engine failure is likelier in the pattern than elsewhere (except for carb ice, which is mostly preventable).
evidently I "fail" on almost every flight
Same goes for shortfield and softfield landings and takeoffs - even if you never fly off of short or soft fields. Even in the jets, I'll occasionally practice a short field landing - but only when we're empty. You've got to keep those skills up, you never know when you might have to draw upon them.
I agree totally. I have just been focusing for a couple of years on other aspects of aviating -- instrument skills and learning the whole IFR thing. And I've been neglecting other parts of my flying skillset. And that is about to change.
Because you need to be able to do both - power off and long final power on. Unless you fly out of a private airport where you are the only one who will ever be in the pattern, sooner or later, you are going to have to keep the power on, extend the downwind and make a non-power off approach. If all you ever do is the traditional power off 180, then when the time comes that you have to alter your approach, it is going to be alot more challenging for you than it needs to be. Also, the time may come that you move up in the food chain and start flying bigger, heavier, higher performance equipment. Power off approaches from the pattern aren't generally good ideas in twins and many HP singles.
Perhaps challenging wasn't the best word. The issue is more with developing a set pattern or habit that you can screw up when you are forced to change your routine. Way too many pilots have forgotten to put the gear down or otherwise improperly configured the airplane because they were used to a set way of doing things and were forced (either by traffic or the tower) to do something different.
Having watched lots of spot landing contests where anything goes, and flown with a lot of pilots, I would say that the average weekend pilot's proficiency in putting the plane on a particular spot on the runway isn't where it should be. So, it must be more of a challenge to the average weekend pilot than you think or they'd be doing better.
I have no excuse. I can count on one hand with leftover fingers the number of solo flights since getting my tix
Since I fly instrument approaches some 30% of the time anyway (and usually straight-in instrument approaches), I doubt seriously that I'm in any danger of forgetting how to fly power-on approaches. And I agree that you need to know how to do both kinds of approaches, and should practice both regularly. But when flying the pattern, as opposed to long straight-in finals, I don't see any reason not to make power idle abeam the numbers your SOP -- once you have energy management down well enough that you can stabilize your approach at pretty much any point.
You fly a retract right? As I said earlier, where I see people get into trouble is when they have a rigid routine and being forced to mix it, can screw up their routine - bad things can happen (like gear ups). Nothing wrong with making a power off 180 your standard approach, but you should not be bound to it.
