jangell said:
I don't know about everyone here. But in many emergenices I'm not going to have the time to be looking at a checklist. I'm probably around 1,500 AGL and don't have all kinds of time to be trying to read something.
The military does a much better job of handling this in their flight manuals than the civilian world does in their POH's. The military divides the emergency procedures into immediate action items (printed in
boldface type, and thus often referred to as the "boldface procedures") which the crewmember must have memorized cold, and the follow-up items which the crewmember reads from the book once the situation is under control.
For example, the F-111 boldface for engine fire in flight is:
Throttle - OFF
Fire pushbutton - DEPRESS
Agent discharge switch - UP
(Yes, over 18 years after my last 'Vark flight, I still know my boldface.)
If an engine fire light comes on, you do that right away, without reference to the printed checklist. Then, there are another dozen or so steps to be accomplished once the immediate actions are completed and the crew pulls out the checklist to read them.
Civilian pilots can do the same. For example, the engine failure checklist for a single should probably include a memorized section (the famous "glide, grass, and gas" items), followed by a more comprehensive list of things in the printed checklist to be accomplished once the immediate actions are completed, assuming you're high enough to do that without compromising the emergency landing. On the other hand, the emergency procedures for troubleshooting a single alternator failure in a twin need not be memorized -- you have alll the time in the world to pull out the checklist and do the items from it rather than potentially flawed memory.
The key, then, is for you to go through the EP's in your POH, and identify those which require immediate action (for which you should memorize the steps which must be accomplished immediately), and those which do not, with which you should merely be familiar and plan to pull out the book if they happen.
BTW, as a side note, in the fire boldface above, the last step was changed from "actuate" to "up" in the 1970's due to some confusion. The Agent Discharge Switch has two positions -- up, which discharges the fire extinguisher, and down, which tests the fire lights. Needless to say, crews move the switch to the "down" position at least once every flight to test the lights before engine start, and in some cases, periodically in flight to be sure they still work. Well, a crew had an engine fire in flight, cut the throttle, pushed the fire pushbutton (which closes the firewall valves and positions the extinguishing agent valve to the correct engine), and "actuated" the switch -- down, to the test position they always used. Needless to say, that did not put out the fire, and the boldface was thereafter changed to remind the crews to push it up, not the usual down, if a fire occurs.
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