I had a couple of questions about how you manage flying in uncontrolled airport traffic patterns. I have observed the majority of pilots flying extended patterns that offer no chance of reaching the runway in the event of an engine failure.
I remember as a student pilot, the instruction was rather "paint by numbers"...when you get to this point, flaps down to x, when you get to this point, flaps down to y...and so forth. I never understood why it was done this way other than simply trying to load a series of steps into muscle memory which worked most of the time. I knew of a student pilot who came up short on final when they lost the engine and decided to add flaps as they had been shown over and over...the additional drag was all it took to come up a bit short...they lived to tell, but the aircraft was pretty banged up after landing in the weeds a stone's toss from the end of the runway.
Years later, I found that much tighter patterns that would allow gliding to the runway from just about anywhere in the pattern felt better/safer. More recently, I flew with an instructor who began teaching me what he called "high energy" patterns that had the engine at idle with only occasional bursts of power to keep the engine ready just in case... Come into the pattern with enough energy to make the runway assuming the engine would quit. This is accomplished with either more altitude, or more speed.
My question to this very experienced and diverse group is how to best use these techniques when the majority of pilots are flying bomber patterns. Is it ok to cut inside someone who is on a multi-mile final as long as you have communicated your intentions to them prior to doing so? I can see that a high wing/low wing collision would be a greater risk if they are not at the same pattern altitude...what other considerations are there? Thanks in advance for any thoughts on this subject.
I remember as a student pilot, the instruction was rather "paint by numbers"...when you get to this point, flaps down to x, when you get to this point, flaps down to y...and so forth. I never understood why it was done this way other than simply trying to load a series of steps into muscle memory which worked most of the time. I knew of a student pilot who came up short on final when they lost the engine and decided to add flaps as they had been shown over and over...the additional drag was all it took to come up a bit short...they lived to tell, but the aircraft was pretty banged up after landing in the weeds a stone's toss from the end of the runway.
Years later, I found that much tighter patterns that would allow gliding to the runway from just about anywhere in the pattern felt better/safer. More recently, I flew with an instructor who began teaching me what he called "high energy" patterns that had the engine at idle with only occasional bursts of power to keep the engine ready just in case... Come into the pattern with enough energy to make the runway assuming the engine would quit. This is accomplished with either more altitude, or more speed.
My question to this very experienced and diverse group is how to best use these techniques when the majority of pilots are flying bomber patterns. Is it ok to cut inside someone who is on a multi-mile final as long as you have communicated your intentions to them prior to doing so? I can see that a high wing/low wing collision would be a greater risk if they are not at the same pattern altitude...what other considerations are there? Thanks in advance for any thoughts on this subject.