Every fly with flaps down?

[RhinoDrvr]

I don't have a Sierra, but thanks. I think my entire flight manual is 6 pages.

My bust, I thought we were talking about a Sierra in the initial post.

 

[noobJohn]

I may have done this. If I did, what clued me in was the sight picture on climbout. Certain view of cowl vs. horizon == Vy. View would be different with flaps deployed. Hypothetically speaking of course.

 

[zaitcev]

My first flight instructor taught gear up, flaps up, power back, prop back as a 1000 foot checklist from my first Piper Tomahawk flight.

Tommies had adjustable props?! Wow.

 

[ChemGuy]

Haven't left the flaps down yet. But I did notice a rather anemic climb in a 172 a few months ago. Started checking throttle, mixture, carb heat, etc. Then I noticed we were on the left mag only. Doh. Didn't get back to both when doing run-up. Now its a second glance at mags after run up.

The one thing I was glad of about that situation and from reading what most people here said was that you noticed something wasn't right and started looking. I was mad at myself for being on wrong mag setting, but at least I didn't fly that way very long.

 

[kenjr]

I did it on my PPL checkride. I fly a Cherokee 235 in and out of airports with 4-5k foot runways so I pretty much never use flaps on a takeoff. My first takeoff on my PPL checkride was a short field so of course used a couple notches. I was talking my DPE through my first leg of my XC and at one point he finally says, "Is there anything else that you need to do?". I know he's not asking for nothing so I'm freaking out looking all over the cockpit...down at my checklist...finally realized the flap handle was still up. argh!

Not a great way to start - but luckily I finished strong.

 

[RhinoDrvr]

Tommies had adjustable props?! Wow.

Nope, this was a fixed gear, fixed prop standard 112HP Tomahawk, but his reasoning was that eventually at some point I'd likely fly something more complex so building the habit early of working a prop / gear would be beneficial.

 

[redtail]

and forgetting to retract full flaps in a 172 on a T&G (which is obviously more dangerous, and one reason I prefer to do taxi backs).

Did that as student on a T&G. Scared the crap out of me

Never forgot them ever again

 

[Jim Logajan]

I don't care for electric flaps - somehow during a recent long cross-country flight I must have lightly bumped the flap switch in the C-152 I was flying, which put in a few degrees of flap. Probably had it down for 5 or 10 minutes before I noticed it. Was a WTF moment. No detent between 0 and 10 degrees seems to make for an easy inadvertent deployment (at least in my one incident.)

I suspect the power cables I decided to run to the GPS and Zaon on top of the instrument panel were a contributing factor. Difficult to find a way to route cables there without interfering with some instrument or control. And both devices need a good view of the sky, so that is the only place for them. I prefer providing them aircraft power over using their batteries if I can arrange it.

 

[iflyvfr]

Yep, I did it on my checkride too! I was on downwind and nonchalantly reached over and cleaned up the final 10* of flaps, hoping the DE wouldn't notice. If he did he didn't say!

But for 50 miles not noticing the flaps hanging out? Then I realized, "this must be a post for the low-wingers."

I have done some seriously dumb stuff, which I daren't repeat here, because I overlooked something. But it always goes back to use of the checklist. This is why I often tell myself that if you get interrupted during your preflight, start over.