flaps

Kobra,

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.


He's damn right!

Seriously and without trying to offend or anything, I think your post reveals
a ton of problems.

First, the flaps. For a no-flaps landing you add maybe 5 knots to your
approach speed. That's less than a 10 percent increase in speed, which results
in less than a 20 percent increase in distance. From a quick google search, a
standard rollout for the 177RG is 730 feet, total distance over the 50 feet
obstacle is 1350 feet. With an additional 5 knots, if you come anywhere close
to a 3000 feet roll and require heavy breaking, as you describe, you REALLY
need to work on those landings (the normal ones, not even the short-field
variant). You should be able to stop in well under 1000 feet with no flaps
every time you try. Even giving any thought to a 3500 feet runway being a
problem indicates a serious problem with pilot training, IMHO.

As others have posted, this is just one of the many problems your post
indicates:

- You seem to have been WAY too fast on final. Yet you don't seem to have gone
through enough trouble-shooting to find the (rather obvious) cause. You didn't
go around with so many things not "going right", either.
- You seem to have little to no familiarity with your plane in slow flight,
especially without flaps.
- You seem to have more or less included in your planning the possibility of
flying at night, yet you let the landing light go unrepaired for a long time.
- You pondered the potential difficulties of your landing AFTER taking off,
IOW in the air.

IMHO, a serious re-evaluation of your decision-making process in connection
with piloting would be a very good idea.

--
Thomas Borchert (EDDH)