Verifying flap retraction

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.

On Wed, 18 Aug 2004 17:21:19 GMT, "G.R. Patterson III"
wrote:

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

This has stuck in my mind..... hehe.

"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?

My Flap position indicator indicates up or 40 degrees with a mediocre
degree of accuracy. Anything else is on its whim.
So check the flaps? You bet - every single time.

As to Rogers suggestion to slip into short fields, it's a good one.
Anything that makes us practice and perfect basic manouvers can only be
good.

Tony
--

Tony Roberts
PP-ASEL
VFR OTT
Night
Cessna 172H C-GICE



In article ,
"Roger Long" wrote:

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.