On Wednesday, May 4, 2016 at 8:54:50 AM UTC-4, krasw wrote:
maanantai 2. toukokuuta 2016 15.49.11 UTC+3 Jim Kellett kirjoitti:

snip

Interesting. I've not flown the Duo very much, and never when I really needed a steep approach, so I can't contribute to any discussion of the peculiarities of that ship. On the other hand, I teach only in G-103s and K-21s, having given up teaching in Schweizer iron entirely about ten years ago.. (For sure, a forward slip in a 2-33 is seriously effective at losing altitude, so no argument there!) And, yes, I wss surprised to learn some years back from a colleague who'd been flying in Europe about their practices of full spoiler/increased speed approaches - my first reaction was that it would get really busy in the cockpit at the roundout and touchdown to transition to a slow speed touchdown, but when I tried it, it turned out to be surprisingly easy and really effective.

Well, not all gliders are the same. I've heard the sentence "I teach this useless thing only because it is required in XXX" too many times. It is required because it is probably very important thing in *some gliders*, not all of them.

I've landed out old Duo couple of times and newer X model (with tiny flaps) too. Every single landing had to be done with full sideslip on final, and required field length was scary compared to light single seaters. I would not sign off anyone to fly Duo without excellent sideslipping technique. Good method is to tell student to fly the whole approach without airbrakes until at treetop height.

The method described to students above leaves the pilot with no options if sink or wind change occurs. It is outright dangerous and should not be taught.
It teaches a habitual low sight picture that is certainly not what students should be learning. They need to learn to make steep approaches with optimum energy management.
UH