Well said. ?The single most accurate information as to whether the wing will fly or stall, and tell you best climb, best glide, is Indicated Airspeed. ?
I would disagree that gps speed, or anything else is as relevant, even in calm air, for approach and landing.? What does gps tell you? How fast over the ground? So what. I operated from high density altitude airports, my plane indicated the same speed at liftoff and in climb as at sea level, but I was charging doen the runway much faster, and used 5x as much runway to lift up! I suppose the gps said something, but so what, until the ASI said 65, I wasnt going anywhere. ? Maybe I am missing some point here? For short field ops, I would practice my stalls at safe height to see where the safety cutoff is ASI, then conduct short field ops on a longer runway (in calm winds) and determine what my plane and skill level can repeatetly and safely do in terms of feet of runway. That would decide for me the shortest runway to use. Sent from my T-Mobile 4G LTE Device --------? Indicated airspeed is simply a "reference" number to fly by.? It is a factor of how dense the air is that's rammed in to the tube
