On Oct 22, 9:23 pm, Alastair Harrison
wrote:
I had this demonstrated to me by a very experienced instructor in a K13.
He had me fly a deliberately high and close in circuit until it was
clear that we'd be a long way up the field, even with full airbrake.
Then he took over and performed the 'energy dumping' manoeuvre, which
involved opening full brake and pointing the nose at the ground.

It all happened rather fast and was not unalarming, so my recollections
are not exact. However, I'm fairly sure the speed never exceeded 80kts.
Certainly the ground approached very rapidly. One moment we were in a
gross overshoot situation and the next moment I was concerned that we
might impact the ground before reaching the boundary wall. We came out
of the dive, popped over wall and settled on to the ground for one of
the shortest landings I've seen. I remember being surprised at how
quickly we lost the excess speed. Pulling out of a near-vertical dive
(at least that's what it felt like) with full airbrakes seems to scrub a
lot of energy very quickly.

Once, when I was still pre-solo, with a 15kt headwind, I felt unsure
of the K13's penetration, so I deliberately turned onto finals at
about 600'
only just outside the airfield boundary. Given that its a 6000ft
landing strip,
there wasn't exactly a problem with overshoot, but there would have
been a walk.

However the instructor told me to get to 75knots and apply full
airbrake.
It felt like a 45degree dive into the ground - somewhat exhilarating.
I got serious groundrush at (I guess) about 100ft and consciously
started to pull out the dive. Very quickly I was satisfied that I
wasn't
going to hit the deck, and so returned to the roundout and pleasantly
short landing.

Overall the speed was always more than adequate for the windshear
conditions, and the plane lost height and stopped remarkably (to me)
quickly. During the debrief neither the instructor nor I was
concerned about my reactions during that manoeuver. There was
more discussion about how much deeper it would have been
sensible for me to go in K13/15kt.

Would I recommend it? Of course not!
Would I do it again? Yes, if it seemed that was the only course
of action, or if I was more skilled.