Jose,
To be clear, I totally respect Nate for bringing his perspective on landing with full flaps. It is something I did not consider in my decision to use 20 flaps but it is now thanks to him. Nate is also right about Drivers, Pilots and Aviators. I can usually recognize these three but I guess I am not good at recognizing trolls.
Kevin
Thanks Kev, I was never intending to attack anyone, just pass along stuff I'd learned. And apply it to stuff I've seen.
The Flap 20 thing is really popular in the 182, but it has consequences that are somewhat "hidden". The landings feel nice, under control, all that, but folks do forget to get good at slower, too.
If you want to get a real feel for it, if CAP flies 182s where you live and you're a member who trains for scanner in the back, you really get to see a wide variety of pilots and their landing technique from a seat where you can't do much about anything. Ha.
It's eye opening on the faster landings how squirrelly the aircraft is, because you're in the back and any poor rudder technique is amplified. You get to enjoy the higher (not dangerous mind you, just higher) lateral loads as nosewheel pilot's feet tend toward the "not quite but good enough for this airplane" mode and your really feel it back there.
It's also something I suppose as I get more time in the same types, one gets to see from the right seat, teaching... you're hyper aware of control inputs by students, if for no other reason, for self-preservation. Ha. But you get to see it in the same types, even the exact same airplane, by more people than most folks fly with.
During the multi training, I did a few back seat ride alongs to observe both instructor and student behavior also, as long as the student was okay with another pair of eyeballs in the back and doing a new W&B... heh. I tried to be "useful ballast" and mostly stayed quiet other than traffic calls, and took notes.
My instructor likes showing CFI candidates people at different levels and I hope to do more observing when he's got some newer multi students. The most interesting thing from the back seat is watching just how much pilot induced "turbulence" there is, especially if the student is under the hood.
Good to know for the eventual CFI-I... an awful lot of squirrelly approaches were induced by the yoke version of "light stick stirring" in a stick equipped airplane. It's just normal... person is trying to get a feel for the control inputs, but if they'd just freeze their hands, it would have mellowed out a lot for them. Interestingly, it didn't matter if it was Private, Commercial, or ATP candidates, either... all did it to some extent.
Observing multiple pilots in the same aircraft, is a neat plus of the move from thinking about how to fly, to thinking about how to teach flying. You see a lot of minor (not safety) mistake "patterns". I highly recommend it, even for folks who don't plan to go the CFI route.
Many of us, especially with our own aircraft, or in my case, co-owned, have only seen the same two or three other pilots fly for years and years... and if not co-owned, only see our own performance.