flaps

IMHO, full flaps are called for on a normal landing...it is only when gusts
or crosswinds raise their ugly heads that lesse deflections should be used.
The goal is minimum speed at touchdown, and you are depriving yourself of a
huge energy sink.

Spend an hour or two landing on the numbers with the stall horn squalling.

Bob Gardner

"Kobra" wrote in message
. ..
Aviators,

My wife and I flew to Williamsburg (JGG) in our 177RG on Sat. and stayed
until Sunday.

On base at Williamsburg I noticed that the airspeed was really high. I
raised the nose and pulled some power. I had 20 degrees of flaps in and
that is what I usually land with. On final the airspeed was just coming
out of the green and touching the white arc with only 15 inches manifold
pressure. On short final I dropped the last 10 degrees, but despite that,
man I came across the threshold like a bat-out-of-hell.

The runway was only 3000 feet, but somehow I got it down and stopped after
heavy brake burning. I just figured I used some really bad technique or
picked up a tailwind.

I looked at the wind sock and it was stone dead and limp.

On my pre-flight for the trip home I found out why all this happened.
Sometime after lift-off to JGG the flaps went TU. I had no flaps on
landing and I never noticed!! I can hardly believe I don't consciencely
or unconsciencely look to see if the flaps are deploying. Why didn't I
notice that the flap indicator didn't move or that the plane didn't change
pitch or that it didn't push me against the shoulder harness as usual. I
just didn't catch the fact that no flaps came out.

Now I had to get home. I called my mechanic and he said it could be many
things (it wasn't the breaker). He also said I was a complete wimp (he
used a different word that began with a p) if I couldn't land that plane
without the flaps on our 3,500 feet of runway.

I took off and started to ponder the situation:

No flaps
No daylight with 3 miles vis. in haze and mist (ASOS said 10 miles but no
way could you see more than 3 miles)
No landing light (it burned out two weeks ago)
No wind (so no headwind to help slow the airplane's ground speed on
landing)
and I've done a grand total of two no-flap landings in my life. One with
my primary CFI and one during my check out when I bought the plane. Both
during the day with a headwind.

Well, obviously everything went fine and I exited on the second taxiway
off 19 at N14, my homebase. I landed as slow as I could, but the nose was
so high that seeing ahead of the airplane was almost impossible.

I used runway 19 because runway 1 has trees on the approach and I wanted
to come in as flat as possible.

Anyway...how many different things can cause this? Where should I start
looking?

I also recommend that everyone do some no flap landings each year.

Kobra