Yeah but that'll take time away from reading the USA today or even worse my psp. (yeah right you know I cant afford one of those.)

But seriously rick thanks for posting some since up here. As new of a pilot as I am I still like to keep it old school. It only took me one leg to relize the flight director and fms won't do everything for you.

Someone correct me if I am wrong, HOWEVER:
A VDP (or PDP) is mostly used on an INSTRUMENT approach, no?
If you are doing a non-precision approach, you might want to know how close you can be to the runway, and start down (once you see it: i.e. Visual Descent Point) without overshooting it, and having a "stabilized approach".
Simply put, you wouldn't want to start down from your MDA once you see the runway AFTER the VDP (PDP), because then you might be "diving" for the runway (unstabilized). Better off staying at the MDA til the MAP, then try again, or go somewhere else.

Actually just looked at The AIM.
Too long to qutoe some stuff, but look at Chapt. 5-4-5 under VDP, and also pilot considerations for non-precision approaches.

Vdp calculated from the runway threshold by assuming a tch of 50' and working backwards...and ensuring all altitude restrictions on the profile are met...allows for a constant path descent on approaches with many steps..my carrier adds 50' to the mda when calculating a vdp..the vdp then becomes MDA and MAP at the same point published MAP is often much too close to continue to touchdown in a stabilized fashion within the TDZ...

Canpa Canpa Canpa

CANPA rules!!! dive-drives are a thing of the past