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Chapter-9 Approaching to Land-V20_Sport Pilot Handbook 8/30/2021 4:40 PM Page 18

9-18 Rod Machado’s How to Fly an Airplane Handbook

Power Off and High on Final Approach

Full Flaps
Extended

2
Flaps added,
glidepath is
now steeper
1
Aircraft is too high
and will land long

Fig. 19

before you get the landing spot properly dialed in. Even 1
when you nail it, wind conditions can change on the way Airplane is high and is going to
land long unless flaps are used
down, so keep checking. And remember to trim the airplane
after you’ve made any change in power.
The second case is when you are high on final approach
with the power already at flight idle. You’re powerless to fur-
ther reduce power, but you’re not out of options. You
have two choices to help you descend. You can ei-
ther forward slip the airplane, or you can add
flaps or you can even do both, if that rings your
chimes and wiggles your wings (assume your
POH approves of slipping with flaps
extended). We’ll talk about
slips in the next chapter, so 2 Touchdown point here
let’s add flaps to increase with flaps full applied
the drag and steepen the
descent rate (Figure 19).

When the airplane is Flaps applied and the nose
high on final approach, lowered to maintain 1.3 Vso
there are three options
available to you to help increase your rate of de-
scent. You can slip the airplane (to be discussed
soon), you can add flaps or you can slip with flaps as
long as this is approved by your airplane’s POH. When
adding flaps, you’ll want to lower the nose to maintain the desired airspeed
and you’ll want to use 1.3 Vso (the new approach speed based on the
airplane’s reduced stalling speed with full flaps applied. Fig. 20