MTpilot said:
Pitch for airspeed, Power for altitude.
When you are flying straight-and-level, do you make constant little power changes to control your altitude? I thought not, you pitch slightly up and down to control the altitude, don't you?
When you are cruising along, controlling the altitude with pitch changes, and you want to slow down for a pattern entry or holding or something, do you start pitching the nose up to slow down before you power back? I thought not, you power back first, don't you? See? See how you are pitching to the altitude and powering to the airspeed. You fly like that, I know you do. We all do.
Now, when you get on final, you're gonna tell me it all changes? Now we reverse the process? That is so confusing! Why you gonna do that? I mean as long as we are making power approaches, the power still controls airspeed and pitch controls altitude, or descent rate/angle.
Yes, if we are power off, then the airspeed is controlled by pitch. In a power off glide, or a full throttle climb, pitch controls airspeed. But that's the only time. It's also true when you are truly in the area of reverse command, but that doesn't happen in most light trainers, when you use the POH recommended short-field speeds. If you slow to a true short-field approach speed of about 1.2 Vso, then you are in the area of reverse command,ie. increased pitch increses drag more than lift, and a pitch up will not produce a decreased descent rate, but wil increase descent rate.
But...back to a normal approach...you have excess speed which will transfer to lift with an increase in pitch. Of course this produces a decrease in speed, so power is applied to keep the speed up.
The advantage of this method of controlling speed and altitude is that it is consistent, and you have much more precise control of your glidepath if you control it with pitch. Point the nose towards the aiming spot on the runway. If you encounter a heat thermal on final and you see the airplane rising, point the nose down *BAM the airplane is still going towards the spot...but, oh yeah, we gotta get the throttle back to keep the speed down....
Now, with the other way, you encounter the heat thermal and see the airplane rising, but also you see the airspeed increasing, which it will do in a thermal, and if you are trained to control airspeed with pitch, your knee-jerk response is going to be to pull back onthe elevator to control speed and *BAM you just blew the approach by going too high. Yes you'll get the throttle bak because of altitude, but it is probably too late, you will most likely gain altitude which is harder to lose than an increase in airspeed.
Also, think about how you control airspeed and glideslope on an ILS. Do you make constant little power changes to stay on the glideslope? I hope not. Yes, some people do. The ones who are taught and carry-on with the "pitch to the airspeed and power to the altitude" myth.
But you can make a much smoother ILS if you set the power and forget it. Pitch to the glideslope needle and allow the airspeed to fluctuate +/- 10kts.
Do the same with your visual approaches.
