Originally Posted by
JustFlyIt
Interesting perspective. My experience although not extensive like flying an airliner relates more to using flaps to control the degree of lift during landing and takeoff. This thread relates it nicely:
https://aviation.stackexchange.com/q...n-to-use-flaps
We used the flaps to control the rate of descent, not so much over all air speed although the changing of stall airspeed in relation to the degree of flaps was always interesting. In the end, I gave up flying and enjoy sailing much more!
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let me share something that hapened to me on real airplaines 35 years ago,. I was 16 years old and learning to fly airplanes. I had a good experience on real gliders alrready and was familiar using speedbrakes to control the glide path. I was in a small cessna 150. This little thing like his big brother the cessna 172 has enormous flaps deflecting a lot and producing a LOT of drag ( to me they are overdimensioned). The cessna 150 I was flying had something I never saw again on a plane after that. The electrical proportional flaps were controled by a two position swith (up/down), the down position had quick release and you had to hold your finger on the switch until you reach the desired flaps angle, but the UP position had NOT, meaning that when you select up position you have to return the switch to neutral if you want to stop the flaps retraction.
I duno remember the circumpstance, but one day I ended up in long final with full flaps forced to apply lot of power to stay on the glide.. I decided to go against the golden rule telling "never retract flaps during normal approach". I slightly pushed the flaps switch up because I wanted to reduce my drag a bit but i simply forgot how this stupid switch work. and the flaps retracted entirly If my souvenirs are correct I losted something like 300 feet before I reagained the control of the rate of descent. fortunatly I was high on long final.
I never forgot that lesson and I NEVER use flaps to control a glide path.
on the glide with a jet I have my rules wich are
SPEED IS controled by power
RATE OF DESCENT is controled by attitude