On Friday, October 19, 2018 at 12:30:44 AM UTC-7, wrote:
Well, the "right answer" is probably not as clear cut as that. For example, the French "blue book" (the official glider training handbook in France) has stated for years that on final, you have to adjust the glide slope by changing the pitch of the airplane and you have to control the airspeed with the airbrakes. That is the exact opposite of what had been taught by the former editions of the book, and there was a storm of protest from most of the "old school" instructors when this was introduced.

The last issue I possess (issue 10) still uses wordings that stress the primary use of pitch to get to the right slope for the final approach, while using the brakes to keep the approach speed constant.

During a flight instructor course at Saint-Auban, we had to be able to apply this method. It works, but is certainly less intuitive than the classic approach. The main problem is that in every other fase of the flight, we don't normally use the airbrakes and are thus accustomed to control the speed by altering the pitch. It seems stupid to change that habit on finals.

That's probably why even in France, most instructors seem to go back to the classic approach when teaching in their club. So do I...

Very interesting, thank you much for sharing! I think I will stay with stick for airspeed and airbrake/throttle for glideslope, works in fix wing or rotor wing.