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Old 10-20-2020, 07:59 PM
  #31  
JamesNoBrakes
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Joined APC: Nov 2011
Position: Volleyball Player
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There are good arguments on both sides

Clean, closer to approach speeds you'll fly in bigger aircraft, especially if you try to fly it fast.

Dirty, have to manage configuration changes, speeds, workload, etc. You'll be doing this in big aircraft too.

Popping out partial or full flaps at MDA/DH, unstabilized approach, can probably work just fine in a slow airplane, but a bad habit for bigger and more complex aircraft, but could be helpful for shorter fields.

I don't really see a "right" answer with what you should do in a lighter aircraft. As said before, they land clean or at partial flaps just fine. If I took students to a class B airport, I'd tell them to fly it clean and keep it fast, that way we'd get the least amount of complaints from ATC, but slowing up and putting in configuration changes, especially in the more complex light aircraft, was good for workload management, especially when flying NP approaches and relating altitude to lose to distance to go. The one thing I didn't like doing was changing configuration upon breaking out, I was always of the mind that you should already be configured and at speed, but chopping to idle at DH because you're at 115kts in a 172 isn't stabilized either...
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