Yep, I get it. We are, after all, experimental pilots, and all of our airplanes are different. I applaud the OP for making this test comparison, and becoming familiar with his airplane. There is no FAA approved POH, like there is for a certified airplanes, and we have to come up with our own set of abnormal procedures for dealing with whatever happens. However, there should be a place on an approach where you can select full flaps and still make it to the runway if there is a loss of power, and that should be understood by whoever you allow to fly your airplane - even if it?s only you. This should be a part of phase 1. Am I going to go to the ground if I have full flaps and my powerplant quits at altitude - like when practicing approach to landing stalls? Well, if I still have a battery, I would like to dump the flaps to give me some more time, but if that isn?t possible, it would be good to know (through testing) how far I can glide in my present configuration. I doubt many of us have ever tested that. We do at least one landing, usually with full flaps, every time we go flying, so it would be good to know what your airplane can or cannot do if we have a power failure. I was trained, many years (decades) ago, that you never are beyond gliding distance from a landing surface while in the traffic pattern. I know they don?t teach that anymore, but I still subscribe to it if the traffic pattern permits. If the pattern is full and you have students turning base at 3 miles, then you have to compensate and use power all the way to the runway - but I don?t like it much. I select full flaps when I know I have the runway made. When I?m alone in the pattern I turn base just barely past the perch, and I use flaps to manage the descent. If my engine fails past this point, I may not even know it until I try to taxi to my hangar if I didn?t get some sort of EFIS warning.
