flaps

It is hard to miss Cessna flaps either. I have to admit to wondering
where Kobra mind was during that landing. Full flaps in any Cessna I've
flown is simply hard to ignore, but I haven't flown a 177.

Matt,

Yes, you are correct, when the flaps DO deploy it is noticeable. The flaps
on the 177 are large and effective. It's when they DON'T deploy that it can
get past you unnoticed in a busy cockpit. How many times have you flow a
Cessna that the flaps failed to set? Probably never. So most of the
readers here have no idea how they would or wouldn't notice the failure.

If I was a CFI I think I might occasionally pull the flap breaker and see
how many students catch the situation and at what point.

AAMOF I will throw that out there to the CFI's...let's do an experiment.
Pull the breaker when the student isn't looking and have them fly the
pattern for a landing. Post the results on how many did and didn't
understand the problem. If they catch it, at what point did they realize
that no flaps were out? I'd be interested in the results.

Post the results here under this post "flaps".

Kobra

Peter Clark wrote:
The intent of the limitation - flaps have to be working - is obvious.
They don't say you have to actually use them, but they do have to be in
working order.

There is some logic in this. All the Cessna AFMs I've seen (i.e. for
various flavors of their piston singles) have nice detailed performance
charts showing how much runway you need to land with various combinations
of weight, temperature, elevation, wind, and phase of moon, but the numbers
always are for full flaps. There is NO data on how much runway you need
without flaps, therefor there is no way you can comply with 91.103 which
requires that you familiarize yourself with the takeoff and landing
distances.

Now, you know, and I know, and every body hanging out in the airport coffee
shop knows that you can land a 172 with no flaps on a 2000 foot paved
runway without any problems (assuming you know what you're doing). But,
that doesn't count when it comes to determining if the airplane is
airworthy. Remember, airworthy is a state of paperwork, nothing more,
nothing less.

Kobra wrote:
It is hard to miss Cessna flaps either. I have to admit to wondering
where Kobra mind was during that landing. Full flaps in any Cessna I've
flown is simply hard to ignore, but I haven't flown a 177.

Matt,

Yes, you are correct, when the flaps DO deploy it is noticeable. The flaps
on the 177 are large and effective. It's when they DON'T deploy that it can
get past you unnoticed in a busy cockpit. How many times have you flow a
Cessna that the flaps failed to set? Probably never. So most of the
readers here have no idea how they would or wouldn't notice the failure.

Just once, but I noticed it instantly, and I was already pretty busy
flying an instrument approach into OSH of all places after having lost
my alternator. When I noticed the alternator light come on about 20
miles out, I turned off everything but one navcomm and the transponder.
However, once on short final, the old habit kicked in and I put the
flaps down even though I was on battery power alone at that point. The
flaps made it about 5 degrees before the battery gave up the ghost
completely. I said "crap" and then proceeded to land the airplane. No
big deal and it was instantly obvious that the flaps hadn't deployed
even with my mind a little preoccupied.

Matt

Matt Whiting wrote:

Just once, but I noticed it instantly, and I was already pretty busy
flying an instrument approach into OSH of all places after having lost
my alternator. When I noticed the alternator light come on about 20
miles out, I turned off everything but one navcomm and the transponder.
However, once on short final, the old habit kicked in and I put the
flaps down even though I was on battery power alone at that point.

It's amazing how that works, isn't it?

Years ago, when I was working on my instrument rating, my instructor and I
had just taken off on a night IFR flight and were having trouble checking
in with NY Departure. The radio's were scratchy and they weren't getting
our xponder, when we noticed the panel lights dim. We told NY we were
returning home.

On the short flight there, we discussed the idea that we might have enough
battery to get the flaps down and not enough to get them back up if we
needed to go around. We decided to do a no-flap landing.

Exactly the same thing happened that you described -- habit kicked in and
without even realizing what I was doing, I reached out and put the first 10
degrees of flaps in on downwind. It's just hard to break the habit.

"Andrew Gideon" wrote in message
news
On Tue, 10 Jul 2007 10:43:10 +0000, kontiki wrote:

I hardly ever land with full flaps unless its a short field.

Why? Unless I've some reason to do otherwise, I'll make every landing as
slow and short (and precisely where I want to touch down) as possible.
It's all good practice, and the slow part is being gentle on the airplane.

I'll often only drop the full flaps on very short final, as I dislike
dragging it in. But they're all the way down when I'm landing.

Of course, now that I think on it, I've only 30 degrees of flaps.

- Andrew


What I don't understand is how the original poster didn't notice there was
no pitch change or re-trim required following application of the missing
flaps. It is almost 2nd nature to reach for the trim wheel right after
selecting flaps in a Cessna so why didn't the poster notice that he didn't
need to retrim?


--
Jim Carter
Rogers, Arkansas

"Longworth" wrote in message
ups.com...
On Jul 10, 9:37 am, Tina wrote:
It also seems you planned a nighttime arrivial with a known burned out
landing light.

Tina,
My understanding is that landing night is not a requirement for non
commerical flight

==============
Sec. 91.205 & 91.507
Powered civil aircraft with standard category U.S. airworthiness
certificates: Instrument and equipment requirements.
............................
(4) If the aircraft is operated for hire, one electric landing light.
==============
During my training, my instructor had me landed with and without
landing light at night. I actually found it was easier to land
without landing light.

Little mistakes have a way of compounding themselves. You may want to
sit in a quiet place and think about your go - no go criteria for a
while. The two best outcomes of all of this is you made a safe trip,
and you have an opportunigy to make future trips safer.

Although I generally agree with your statement. I find your
comments to be somewhat condescending. I do not know Kobra
personally but I have read quite a few of his postings. He is an
experienced pilot who is always willing to share his experience be it
good or bad for all of us, pilots, to learn. I don't think that he
needs to be told 'to sit in a quiet place and think....' !


Hai Longworth


I agree with Tina, at least about re-thinking the sequence of risky
decisions that were made. The landing light was only one of those decisions.
The failure to notice trim adjustments not being required while extending
flaps, the failure to push the go-up lever and reconsider the approach, etc
are all risky decisions. Tina was pointing out that this flight was a series
of those events. It is ironic that the AOPAs Flight Safety Foundation
program this year is focused on breaking the chain of events (bad decisions)
that lead up to accidents. Kobra was skilled enough to force the final
result, but he kept throwing away his safety options along the way. Things
could have turned out much differently, and then we'd all be berating the
press for its one-sided coverage of another mishap; but that's another
thread...

Most likely your instructor had you land without the landing light as a
non-standard event that would be possible if the light burnt out while in
flight. I seriously doubt that an instructor would encourage any student or
pilot for that matter to intentionally depart for a flight after dark
knowing the landing light was inop.

I'm also willing to bet that most instructors teach students how to
go-around in the event the landing doesn't look or feel right, which Kobra
noted was the case here.

Nothing about this chain of events should be construed to be normal
practice. Tina is correct that we can all learn from this example of how
events get strung together and can lead up to a very risky situation.

--
Jim Carter
Rogers, Arkansas

Roy Smith wrote in
:

Peter Clark wrote:
The intent of the limitation - flaps have to be working - is obvious.
They don't say you have to actually use them, but they do have to be
in working order.

There is some logic in this. All the Cessna AFMs I've seen (i.e. for
various flavors of their piston singles) have nice detailed
performance charts showing how much runway you need to land with
various combinations of weight, temperature, elevation, wind, and
phase of moon, but the numbers always are for full flaps. There is NO
data on how much runway you need without flaps, therefor there is no
way you can comply with 91.103 which requires that you familiarize
yourself with the takeoff and landing distances.

Now, you know, and I know, and every body hanging out in the airport
coffee shop knows that you can land a 172 with no flaps on a 2000 foot
paved runway without any problems (assuming you know what you're
doing). But, that doesn't count when it comes to determining if the
airplane is airworthy. Remember, airworthy is a state of paperwork,
nothing more, nothing less.


The POH for the 1977 C172N Skyhawk (D1082-13-RPC-1000-9/89) has
exactly one landing table, on page 5-21, marked "Short Field". This table
ONLY shows landing distance based on max weight of 2300 lbs. In Section 4
"Normal Procedures" on page 4-19, under "Normal Landing", the POH states
"Normal landing approaches can be made with power-on or power-off with any
flap setting desired."

An interpretation of 91.103 requiring that you know how much runway
you need to land or your not airworthy combined with the information
provided in this POH implies that you can never legally land a 1977 C172N
uless you are at max weight, doing a short field landing, full flaps, and
have the capability of inflight refueling (or some other means of ensuring
fuel burn doesn't reduce your weight below max) during the landing!

I guess no one has ever landed an airworthy 1977 C172N!


--
Marty Shapiro
Silicon Rallye Inc.

(remove SPAMNOT to email me)

"Roy Smith" wrote in message
...
Peter Clark wrote:
The intent of the limitation - flaps have to be working - is obvious.
They don't say you have to actually use them, but they do have to be in
working order.

There is some logic in this. All the Cessna AFMs I've seen (i.e. for
various flavors of their piston singles) have nice detailed performance
charts showing how much runway you need to land with various combinations
of weight, temperature, elevation, wind, and phase of moon, but the
numbers
always are for full flaps. There is NO data on how much runway you need
without flaps, therefor there is no way you can comply with 91.103 which
requires that you familiarize yourself with the takeoff and landing
distances.

Now, you know, and I know, and every body hanging out in the airport
coffee
shop knows that you can land a 172 with no flaps on a 2000 foot paved
runway without any problems (assuming you know what you're doing). But,
that doesn't count when it comes to determining if the airplane is
airworthy. Remember, airworthy is a state of paperwork, nothing more,
nothing less.

Since the '60s, '70s, and '80s models showed no flap landing data, and flaps
were considered optional this question really boils down to what the POH
says for the particular aircraft being flown. Students learning at busy
commercial airports almost never used flaps as a normal procedure.

Of course we taught recovery from fully developed spins to instructors back
then also. Isn't it interesting that some modern aircraft could be
considered out-of-service for inop flaps, but only a few years ago they were
very optional. I imagine that today a DER or FSDO inspector would have a
stroke if we used all 60 degrees we had on the old O-1s or rolled on a wheel
landing with them at zero.

--
Jim Carter
Rogers, Arkansas

"Bob Gardner" wrote in message
...
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



....but not in front of American, or Delta, or any of the others that need
100+ knots across the fence.

There are way too many folks taking an absolute position on this topic.
Flaps or no flaps depends on a whole lot of variables with wind being only
one of them.

Kobra however was intending on making a partial flap landing that was going
in the ditch, but he didn't catch the clues until later. That's the point we
should take away from this story.


--
Jim Carter
Rogers, Arkansas

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:

I would fire that mechanic and never take my aircraft back to him. He talked
you into flying an aircraft with a known problem that was un resolved. You
had no idea why the flaps did not work, the "breaker was not popped" so you
had no idea if the problem was electrical and if it could impact the rest of
the aircrafts electrical system. You knowingly had problems in the traffic
pattern and landing because you did not know the flaps were not working, and
yet you took off on a night cross country in marginal weather to a
relatively short runway based on your mechanic calling you a "wimp".

A Cessna 310 just crashed into a house in Florida with an on board fire
caused by an unknown ignition source.. was it electrical? Who knows, they
may find out or they may not.

Yes the aircraft can be flown safely without the use of flaps. Flaps were
disabled, are they required? The aircraft was certified with flaps. I had a
situation where the flaps failed in the extended position after landing. We
, read mechanic and I, determined it was the flap switch. With the aid of a
trusted mechanic, friend and FAA DAR and with the approval of the home
flight school where I rented the aircraft. we were able to bypass the
switch, and electrically charge the flap motor to raise the flaps. He
promptly issued a ferry permit to allow me to fly back to home station for
repairs to the flap switch with the flap motor circuit breaker pulled,
limited to day VMC, luckily I was alone on the trip as ferry permits
normally are single pilot no pax operations.

JMHO

BT