Tri-pacer pattern speeds

[Tnathan]

Well if I recall the original question was from a guy putting a CFI in his tripacer and wanted to have a recipe to help not have surprises.

It’s good advice to say take it up and get a feel for what she will do. That honestly is where they should start. Go do some slow flight, stalls etc to get a feel for the plane. From little engines and big wheels to big engines and little wheels, not to mention different props, vgs, and wingtips. Different pacers can fly very differently.

I was more responding to the fact that everyone so far had had two notches of flaps and that seems counter productive if your goal is to reduce vsi, which was the original question. I get my technique leaves extra energy in the system which has pluses and minuses. Doing a power off three point at just over stall also has pluses and minuses. You mentioned the pluses but some of the negatives are: potentially big descent rate, loss of aileron control/pitch control, susceptibility to crosswinds=ground loops. I was kind of embarrassed with my technique which uses power because the old timers that taught me thought you should do every landing like an engine out. Power is a crutch. But I ran into a CFI that stepped up to flying a king air. I told him I like carrying power into ground effect. He said that’s how they taught him to fly the king air. The goal of the landing is to not wake up the paying customers. I have the same goal with my passengers. Seems to make sense to me to use what you have to get the result you want as long as you know what it’s costing you.

But, if I lost an engine, landing off airport or stuffing it in a back country unimproved short strip, I would throw in the flaps and slow the thing down for the reasons you mentioned. I prefer having a variety of tools in my bag.