Verifying flap retraction

"BTIZ" wrote in message
news:jBzUc.105612$xk.30749@fed1read01...
roger that.. and on the touch and go.. flaps up.. look over both shoulder
for movement or "verify both up".. then power up..

BT

Exactly what I've been taught as well.

Jay

Hey, that was the primary reason why I bought a 1965 airplane - manual
flaps. Love 'em...

In article , C J Campbell
wrote:

Most of the problems that I have had on Cessna 172s have been with flaps. I
agree that pilots should verify flaps up on touch and goes.

Cessna used to have manual flaps. Why did they ever go to this flakey
electrical system in the first place?



--
David Herman
N6170T 1965 Cessna 150E
Boeing Field (BFI), Seattle, WA
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
Visit the Pacific Northwest Flying Forum -
http://www.smartgroups.com/groups/pnwflying

In article ,
"C J Campbell" wrote:



Yes, perhaps that is what it means. However, takeoffs with more than 10
degrees of flaps are prohibited. If you go around, the expanded procedures
say to raise the flaps immediately to 10 degrees. Then, when a safe altitude
and airspeed are reached, raise the flaps the remaining 10 degrees slowly. I
am speaking here specifically of the S model, though the discussion applies
equally well to others.


On the 180, 182, 185 and 206 20 degrees flaps are used for takeoff.

With the 172s I've flown the go around/balked landing procedure was
flaps immediately to 20 then further retraction in increments.

--
Dale L. Falk

There is nothing - absolutely nothing - half so much worth doing
as simply messing around with airplanes.

http://home.gci.net/~sncdfalk/flying.html

On Wed, 18 Aug 2004 01:00:01 GMT, Roger Halstead
wrote:

The old Hershey Bar winged Cherokee 180s also used the Johnson bar.
It was the only plane where I could raise the flaps and actually
shorten the landing roll. The electric ones are just too slow.

I took Damien Del -- well, I took the Andover NJ "bush flying" course
last year. He taught this technique in the Aviat Husky. (Also flying
in ground effect over the corn stubble short of the threshold, then
dumping the flaps just as you reach the grass. Voila! 250-foot
landing!)

I had a bleeding knuckle after a couple hours of this.

all the best -- Dan Ford
email: (put Cubdriver in subject line)

The Warbird's Forum www.warbirdforum.com
Expedition sailboat charters www.expeditionsail.com

On Tue, 17 Aug 2004 16:21:42 GMT, "Roger Long"
wrote:

Yes, the little metal bar moves. I'm going to put painting it red on my
list. Still, looking at a big thing out side the plane as opposed to a
little thing down on the panel seems safer to me.

If you can train yourself to hear the noise, that's probably as good as
taking a look. It's easy to miss the absence of noise though as my friend
found out.

This wasn't taught to me, but since normal takeoff in a Cessna 172 is
with flaps up, I thought it would be a good idea to verify that the
flaps were in fact up before powering up for the "go" part of the
touch and go. So I do that every time: Land, or "arrive" on the
runway, snap the flaps switch to up saying "flaps up" in my mind and
sometimes out loud, then verify that they are both moving up and power
up when they get stowed.

Corky Scott

Yes, the little metal bar moves. I'm going to put painting it red on my
list. Still, looking at a big thing out side the plane as opposed to a
little thing down on the panel seems safer to me.

If you can train yourself to hear the noise, that's probably as good as
taking a look. It's easy to miss the absence of noise though as my friend
found out.

This wasn't taught to me, but since normal takeoff in a Cessna 172 is
with flaps up, I thought it would be a good idea to verify that the
flaps were in fact up before powering up for the "go" part of the
touch and go. So I do that every time: Land, or "arrive" on the
runway, snap the flaps switch to up saying "flaps up" in my mind and
sometimes out loud, then verify that they are both moving up and power
up when they get stowed.

Corky Scott

So what do you guys do in a 172, going into a short field, and having to abort
when you're in the flare? Consider a deer in the runway, or something like
that, that makes a go round the attractive choice? Will the airplane climb at a
couple of hundred feet a minute with 30 degree flaps? If it does, why are you
concerned about verifying flap retraction? Doesn't attitude, rate of climb,
that sort of thing, tell you everything you need to know to fly the miss? The
question I'm not asking very well is, how does knowing the flaps are not going
up change anything you're doing as you throttle up and go to best angle or rate
of climb airspeed? This is not trolling, I'm trying to understand the issue
better.

As a side note, the old Mooney Rangers had manual gear retraction, a great big
Johnson bar between the seats. The trick was, after takeoff, to retract the
gear with a little forward pressure on the yoke -- they'd suck right up, at the
cost a few hundred feet a minute of climb rate for 5 seconds or so. If you ever
watched a Ranger take off and wobble all over the runway heading, you could be
sure the pilot was stuggling with that damned bar, it felt like a 100 pound
curl if it wasn't done right.

Also, gear up landings were very rare, that great big thing was right there
against the panel, and besides, if your arm didn't hurt or your knuckles
weren't bleeding, the gear was probably still up.

Those airplanes had hydrolic flaps, you pumped them down, if I recall
correctly, and they 'bled' up smoothly.

Rangers also got carb ice in an instant. I seem to have a memory of the egt
right on the yoke, and that was a great indicator of icing. But I've other
memories of the clock being there.

Getting old does things to my memory. Someone will probably be telling me they
didn't have hyrdolic flaps or something.

..

I'm not generally one to take my own advice (knowing the source as I do) but
I decided to make an exception in this case.

I took our 172 N (160 hp, 1966 lbs as loaded) out up 3400 foot density
altitude and set up in approach configuration with 20 degrees of flaps. When
I reached mid flare speed, I put in full power. Trimmed as for my usual
landing (I trim at midfield and leave it alone as I like a bit of pressure
on the yoke to work against) there was enough pitch up that speed could
bleed off pretty fast if you were flying by yoke feel and not really on top
of it.

If you are one of those who trim all pressure off on short final, you'd have
even more yoke pressure to deal with. 500 fpm climb was achieved pretty
quickly but at enough lower airspeed that the climb gradient would be a
concern in a marginal situation.

I climbed up 2000 feet without seeing any significant drop off in vertical
speed. The plane was quite controllable and easy to handle once some nose
trim was rolled in. Then I set it up again with 30 degrees of flaps.

There was more pitch up with 30 degrees and the need to hold the nose down
to pick up airspeed. It took a long time for the airspeed to come up to
where I could establish a good climb rate. A mid length runway would
disappear real fast. Once I had the speed, I could get back to 500 fpm climb
and had no trouble doing a climbing turn up another 1000 feet. You wouldn't
want to be doing this in a tight spot among hills though.

With 40 degrees of flaps, the plane didn't climb at all when the throttle
was pushed forward. A slight relaxation of the yoke as you might do when
starting a go around with that much yoke pressure caused the airspeed to
drop instantly. Pushing the nose over to build up speed created an immediate
20 foot sink followed by a painfully slow building of airspeed. I must have
used up a couple of short field lengths before I got enough speed to work
into a climb and had to roll in a good bit of nose trim.

250 fpm was the best climb I could manage. There was a noticeable buffet at
60 knots and dropping the nose didn't change the airspeed much. I was able
to climb 500 feet and turn but it would have hair raising with terrain
around.

If you lose flap function at the 40 degree setting going into a short and
obstructed field, you are going to have to make some very rapid lifestyle
choices. Go into the tree trunks at the speed you can slow down to in an
emergency abort or into the softer tops at 60 knots might be the two best
picks. You have two seconds to make up your mind.

Flap failure at 30 degrees in these conditions would be still be enough
excitement for any day.

This is one of those things that makes you realize how much is sometimes
riding on toy quality components assembled in third world countries by bored
workers. If there is any doubt about your flap function at all (just being
in a post 1976 Cessna could qualify for that) aggressive slipping with 10
degrees of flaps into tight fields has a lot more to recommend it than I
thought previously.

--

Roger Long



"Roger Long" wrote in message
...
One of the more experienced pilots in our club scared himself climbing out
of a touch and go during which he didn't notice that the flaps had frozen
at
20 degrees on our 172.

I've been investigating the flap system on Cessna's and am impressed how
easily a bit of fluff or corrosion in just one switch can let the flaps go
down but then fail to retract.

This leaves me convinced that CFI's and all of us should be drilling in
the
glance over the shoulder to verify retraction on all touch and goes and go
arounds. Practicing climb outs from minimum airspeed with all flap
settings
is a very neglected part of airwork and probably as important to safety as
doing stalls.

--

Roger Long

Roger Long wrote:

There was more pitch up with 30 degrees ...... You wouldn't
want to be doing this in a tight spot among hills though.

Or anywhere close to max gross, I bet.

George Patterson
If you want to know God's opinion of money, just look at the people
he gives it to.

"Roger Long" wrote:
This is one of those things that makes you realize how much is sometimes
riding on toy quality components assembled in third world countries by bored
workers. If there is any doubt about your flap function at all (just being
in a post 1976 Cessna could qualify for that) aggressive slipping with 10
degrees of flaps into tight fields has a lot more to recommend it than I
thought previously.

Years ago, when I was doing my instrument training, I was on a night IFR
flight with my instructor when we had a partial electrical failure
(lights got dim, radios started getting scratchy, no transponder)
shortly after takeoff. We canceled IFR and headed back to the field.

On the way back, we discussed the fact that we might have enough power
to put the flaps down, but not enough to pick them back up if we needed
to do a go-around. We had plenty of runway, so decided to do a flapless
landing.

On downwind, my brain went into automatic mode and selected 10 degrees
of flaps without even thinking about it. I immediately realized what I
had done, and we decided to just leave the 10 flaps and land like that.
We landed uneventfully.

It amazing how you do things at an automatic level, and even when you
make a conscious decision to do something different, often times you'll
go ahead and do the usual thing anyway, without even thinking about it.
If I was in a similar situation again, I'd probably put a "INOP" sticky
on the flap handle, to remind myself not to use it. Remember the scene
in Apollo 13 where one of the astronauts taped a "NO!" sign over the
switch which fired the LEM disconnect pyros to make sure he didn't hit
it by mistake?

Dale wrote:




On the 180, 182, 185 and 206 20 degrees flaps are used for takeoff.

Up to 20 degrees. You don't need them at all if you are light or the
runway is long.