flaps

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