The N-teenth time

It's been a few weeks, so for the N-teenth time we must admonish pilots landing our gliders to renounce the low flat minimum-spoiler approach as impractical, inconvenient and needlessly risky. If you learned from us we taught you to fly the pattern so as to have hundreds of feet (not tens!) on final. From there you should need half spoilers or more to get down early – and stay down. Otherwise you make it unnecessarily difficult for yourself, and frankly everyone else too.What happens time after time is folks open spoilers on downwind leg where there's really no need to be lower, and then keep falling further below ideal height as they turn base leg. Instead of CLOSING SPOILERS early and restoring a healthy glide slope they carefully stay with the failing plan and end up scary low, vulnerable to sink or wind gradient, needing to retract spoilers near the ground (or even slow up!) just to reach the runway. Then there they are in ground effect with minimal drag, the worst possible configuration for a precision landing. If they try to land short that way the potential of a bounce or several, and another busted wheel or two is uncomfortably high, and if they try to land daintily the flare might go on for another quarter mile, an unduly hazardous foot or two from safety. Oh you'll probably get away with it, most people usually do.  Unless the air moves or something. But at best this method leaves you far down the runway, where Academy staff now has to schlep ASAP and drag you slowly back. Meanwhile, you'll have not practiced vital short-field skills but reinforced sloppy execution instead.Our recommendation is to fly flat approaches in your aircraft if you think you can afford it, but with Academy birds, please honor our efforts to make this service available and land the smart way!Thanks!