Glide Landings ['Dead Stick'] #70

Glide Landings ['Dead Stick'] - or what does happen if the engine stops ? [by Vince]
I`ve got so used to trying to make my landings as gentle as possible that the last 100 have nearly all relied on a bit of power to sort things out at or before the flare. Anyway now that I have occasional access to 300 yds elsewhere instead of my own 150 I`ve decided I really ought to practise my forced landings.
This means fully throttled back, glide and flare. Well I've only done two that I can justify as such and despite my wealth of experience they were not brilliant. Having set it up at 800 feet I soon found that I was falling very short of the chosen threshold and had to apply power to pull forward then glide again [This happened on the 2nd approach too] It was not enough to get the hedge just below the nose then nose down and glide, speed fell away from 50 mph and I had to start again, eventually getting about 52-53 mph with throttle off and zero flap. It felt steep and I had to press on maintaining just about the same until flaring at the last moment, the ground was gentle upslope calling for an attitude change of maybe 45 or 60 degrees. Without the propwash over the elevators, or the inertia from mass to overcome the rapid drag increase it fell out of the air about a foot up,--an Arrival !
I taxied round and went off for another try. This time after a bit more adjusting I set the glide at 60, it felt like a 45 degree dive, the flare still happened very quickly, although taking more distance it rolled on a bit better and I opened up to go around and went home for a skippety 5mph X wind. So there, despite the best climb speed of ~47 mph, I need much more than 50 for the glide, so can't use flap. I didn't see the VSI so don't know what that said, probably in excess of 900fpm descent and & landing happened so quickly I didn't have time to pop the flaps to 1/3 as the speed fell below 50. Better luck next time. Vince.