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