I'm not sure about that one. I had problems with engine out landings a lot initially in this sim, but have gotten used to it. I think most of the reason why is that when i lose an engine i get kind of excited and tend to try to "get it down" on the runway, and probably just come in with too much speed. I've been trying to manage my energy and airspeed from a ways out lately, and with slipping, flaps, and gear, can usually get it slowed down now. I know how in the heat of battle, or after damage I sometimes forget to manage E as well as i should and end up blasting over the threshold with too much speed, just happy to have made it, and end up rolling off the end.
As for prop drag in a engineless aircraft in AH, im not exactly sure how it's modeled. Here's how it is in the planes i've flown though, for those who are interested...
It depends on a lot of things. In a real single engined plane with a constant speed prop, like the Cessna 182, when you loose the engine, the prop goes to fine pitch because of several factors.
First of all, the prop is windmilling, which forces the oil pump (which powers the propeller pitch changine mechanism) to keep working, which causes the constant speed prop to keep functioning. Since the command rpm( as set by the prop lever and governor) is invaribly higher than the engine is allowing the prop to turn, the pitch tries to flatten out, and allow the engine to run faster. This simply causes more drag, and since the governor does not know that the engine is off, functions as if the engine was running, but the prop was at too high of a pitch angle to allow the rpm to reach the set level. To reduce drag on a single engine aircraft with a failed engine, you can do two things.
1. Slow the plane to the point that the prop stops, and hence the blades stall, which actually reduces to total drag component on the propeller. The pitch also flattens beacuse there is a spring that reduces the pitch at this point since there is no hydraulic pressure to counteract it. Once it stops, the pitch stays flat, and the prop will generally stay flattened until you dive to a much higher speed to get it spinning again.
2. Pull the prop back to minimum RPM which will increase the pitch on the blades, and reduce the rpm and drag. The prop will keep spinning, and the engine driven oil pump will therefore keep supplying pressure to the pitch changing mechanism, which will keep it in a course pitch. the prop is still unstalled, but the high pitch and low rpm mean that it's absorbing much less energy out of the surrounding airstream than a flat, unstalled, fast spinning propeller.
In my commercial training in a Mooney M20E, we did a lot of engine out practice, and once the instructor even pulled the mixture and cut the engine while we were flying at about 5000 feet AGL. The prop kept turning, and he told me to notice the glide angle, and get a feel for it. He then pulled the prop knob all the way out, and the prop slowed, and i noticed quite a reduction in drag and the airspeed climbed substantially at the same flight attitude. We did not try stopping the prop and getting the blades to "stall" but i have seen a video about this with a Cessna 182, and the person int he video demonstrated that the lift/drag went from around 9 with the prop windmilling to about 12 with the prop stopped. That is quite a reduction of drag by stopping the prop, and I'm guessing that the reduction by going to course pitch with a windmilling prop would be a similar amount. It made about as much difference as dropping the gear would. (again just guessing, but i'll bet it's within 25%)
Now, in multi engine aircraft, the props are usually designed so that they they can be made to "feather" after a failure. This is simply because the assymetric thrust makes it so that the aircraft already handles badly without thrust on both sides, adding drag to the failed engine side just makes things worse, and increases the Vmc (airspeed for minimum single engine controllability) for the aircraft. When flying a Cessna 310 of a friends a couple of years ago, we had already reduced mainfold pressure, and we were pushing the props forward for the "GUMP-Gas Undercarriage Mixture Prop) short final check. i mean the glide ratio went through the floor! In fact, we sort of used the prop levers as brakes during final since the props created so much drag in the fine pitch mode. I'd guess that without power and with the props feathered, the drag would be a lot less, but I don't have any numbers to back it up.
For what it's worth
