Do not raise the flaps all the way up!

glpilot

glpilot

Pre-takeoff checklist
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GLPilot
Well, the only close call I may have experienced that turned out to be a great lesson learned for me, and it may not even have been a real close call but at the moment it gave an anxious feeling, was on my first real go-around.

Few weeks before my checkride I was working around the pattern. The wind was giving me a good work out that day. 6 TnG's that day and when I was done, I was actually exhausted.

ANYWAY, after doing several go-arounds in practice this was the first time I really needed to GO-AROUND because things just did not look right.

I announced to the tower that I needed to go around, I pushed up the flaps, full throttle, close carb heat, and.. UH OH... WHAT THE? I'm not flying well here.

I RAISED THE FLAPS ALL THE WAY UP. I lose lift and for a moment there I thought I was going to touch down off the runway.

Luckily I leveled off and kept it level close to the ground until I could at least get to Vx.

Lesson Learned: Raise the flaps one notch at a time in the aircraft I fly when doing a go around.
 
ouuch. The other common one is to forget they are fully deployed. "Dang this thing won't climb!"
 
Flaps up and THEN full throttle? Wow. I learned the other way around.

Full throttle, positive rate of climb, flaps up one notch, increase airspeed, flaps up another notch, increase airspeed, flaps up full when at Vy (or Vx depending on comfort level with terrain/obstacles).
 
Brian Austin said:
Flaps up and THEN full throttle? Wow. I learned the other way around.

Full throttle, positive rate of climb, flaps up one notch, increase airspeed, flaps up another notch, increase airspeed, flaps up full when at Vy (or Vx depending on comfort level with terrain/obstacles).
Click to expand...


Brian, you are correct. I fly better than I type stories :)
 
Power first, then flaps. With the Cessnas that I fly, you can go to 20 degrees right away. This means one notch for the new birds, but two for the old ones. Note, also, that sometimes you can even leave 10 degrees in if you want a better angle of climb.
 
GLPILOT - Good thing nothing bad came of this. I had a friend do the same thing and he did end up touching down off runway and it shook him up enough that he hasn't flown since. Ufortunatley I don't think he will fly again.
 
wangmyers said:
Power first, then flaps. With the Cessnas that I fly, you can go to 20 degrees right away. This means one notch for the new birds, but two for the old ones. Note, also, that sometimes you can even leave 10 degrees in if you want a better angle of climb.
Click to expand...

What's fun is the different ways Cessna has done the flaps switch over the years. Our C-172H moves the flaps up or down as long as you hold the switch in the direction you want to go. Separate guage showing their position. The C-172N has a switch you place where you want the flaps to go and they stop when they get there. Then, the C-172M I flew in Hawaii last year had a switch like the C-172H, except that the switch didn't return to the center off position automatically when you let go. I found that the hard way when executing an aborted landing after bouncing at Kalaupapa. Flipped the switch to dump some of the flaps after firewalling the throttle and the flaps kept right on going up. I had a sinking feeling I hadn't experienced since I was a student pilot and pulled a similar stunt. Really embarrassing with a strange CFI in the right seat and my wife in the back. Didn't touch back down, no harm, no foul. Proper go around? Cram, climb, clean. Firewall the throttle. Positive rate of climb. Flaps 20. More speed. Ease the flaps up. Keep climbing. :)

Ghery
 
This is one reason I love the manual flaps. Very easy to raise and lower, and there's no mistaking when they're all the way down--you've got the Johnson bar poking your elbow. The notches are very very easy to find by feel. You just push the button to release, then let go when it's disengaged and the flaps find the next notch on their own. In the past, my mistake has been to do a T&G and forget the raise the flaps on the G. The manual flaps make correcting that mistake NOW very easy.
Judy
 
Hi

Not that I am any expert, but I've been told by my CFI - full throttle first. then carb heat. stabilize, then flaps slowly come up - one notch at a time.

(I hope I remembered this right)
 
Full Power first.

Take out 10 degrees of flaps (full flaps = 30, so configure plane for 20 deg).

Positive rate of climb.

Gear up.

Remaining flaps.

At least for my plane..... (setting 20 degrees of flaps essentially gets my plane into short-field configuration)
 
judypilot said:
This is one reason I love the manual flaps. Very easy to raise and lower, and there's no mistaking when they're all the way down--you've got the Johnson bar poking your elbow. The notches are very very easy to find by feel. You just push the button to release, then let go when it's disengaged and the flaps find the next notch on their own. In the past, my mistake has been to do a T&G and forget the raise the flaps on the G. The manual flaps make correcting that mistake NOW very easy.
Judy
Click to expand...

Yeah, that's what the Arrow has. 0, 10, 25 and 40 degrees. As fast as you want between them. None of our Cessnas are as old as yours ;) so they all have electric flaps.

Ghery
 
I don't see it as being all that scary to touchdown again, on the runway, with no obstacles, in a good attitude, under control and all that. Other situations may not be so much fun.
Oh and the orig poster's experience is why you don't go raising the gear until you are sure you are flying away.
 
wangmyers said:
Remember to get the carb heat off, too.
Click to expand...

Depends on the plane.

On my turbocharged, there is no carb heat, and we don't use alt-air in the pattern. I do have a carb-air-temp gauge, and it's not under 100 degrees very often :confused:
 
That happened to me on a night cross country during my initial training. It was summer so for a night flight we couldn't leave until about 10pm. Well, about 3 hours and many landings at three airports I was pretty worn out, needed to go around so flipped the flaps up without thinking. Sure woke my CFI up.

Mark
 
I had the flaps stick down on go around, once, at a short field. My wife loves to remind me that the manual flaps in "her" archer don't cause that problem like the electric flaps in "my" skyhawk.

That was an interesting pattern to fly, with full flaps in, knowing I had to nail the landing the next time that I had botched the last time.

Jim G
 
grattonja said:
I had the flaps stick down on go around, once, at a short field.


Reigle? My instructor out of LNS use to take me there to practice T&G's in the 152. As a student 1,900 ft. wasn't much when your use to LNS. Good practice though.
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Anthony said:
grattonja said:
I had the flaps stick down on go around, once, at a short field.


Reigle? My instructor out of LNS use to take me there to practice T&G's in the 152. As a student 1,900 ft. wasn't much when your use to LNS. Good practice though.
Click to expand...

Fortunately most of my training has been on 2400 feet at Smoketown. I gotta admit, though, that first final approach, over the road, with big trucks going by, at Reigle was pretty scary. Then to have the flaps stick on the go-around... Let's just say there was a good bit of learning that day.

Jim G
Click to expand...
 
With the Beech I fly Full throttle and trim off pitch. Raise flaps to 10; establish climb to best rate; Raise gear at safe altitude. Inner gear doors will create more drag and reduce climg, if retracted too early. Finally raise rest of flaps.

John J

C-33 Debonair owner
 
It's power first for all aircraft in a go around. Touch and goes are not good trianing for doing a go around. On a touch and go most pilots raise the flaps first then add power and push in the carb heat. If You do touch and goes over and over then muscle memory takes over. Now a plane pulls out on the runway infront of you, and you raise the flaps first. On touch and goes just add power first and then faps before you lift off.
 
Happened to me once when flying with my instructor in a C150. I added full power first, fortunately. Scared the crap out of me. I was really fatigued that day, even before the flight, and learned a valuable lesson about pre-flighting myself in addition to the airplane.
 
judypilot said:
This is one reason I love the manual flaps. Very easy to raise and lower, and there's no mistaking when they're all the way down--you've got the Johnson bar poking your elbow. The notches are very very easy to find by feel. You just push the button to release, then let go when it's disengaged and the flaps find the next notch on their own. In the past, my mistake has been to do a T&G and forget the raise the flaps on the G. The manual flaps make correcting that mistake NOW very easy.
Judy
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Ha! Funny you should mention that. As a student pilot, my first go-around was with my instructor in a Cherokee 140 at a narrow, short runway with trees off the end. We're low and slow, full flaps, he tells me to go around. OK, we've talked about this, right? Full throttle, carb heat off, and drop the flap lever to the floor.

That was fun. We did clear the trees though.
 
Oof. I didn't even notice the necropost. Too bad threads don't automatically lock after a year or so of inactivity.
 
Full power (and carb heat in at the same time… in a Cessna my palm pushes the throttle and my thumb pushes the carb heat). Get a positive rate of climb (with 30 or 40 flaps you'll have to get some flaps up first), and only then contact the tower.
 
DaleB said:
Oof. I didn't even notice the necropost. Too bad threads don't automatically lock after a year or so of inactivity.
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I still say it would be nice if the title changed color or something after some time period of no activity. OTOH that might not help much since a significant portion of inadvertently resurrected necrothreads occur when someone new to the forum chimes in on a subject dear to them and those folk wouldn't know what the unusual color signified. But at least it would give notice to the rest of the members piling on.
 
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I learnt this lesson in one of my very first flight lessons. My CFI showed me what happens, when you raise the flaps all the way up on a safe altitude while simulating a go-around. The reason why he showed me, was that I wanted to get rid of the full flaps directly after adding full power while on low altitude (he told me before what to do, but for some reason I couldn't remember... :rolleyes:)

That experience was so impressive :hairraise::yikes: that it will stick forever and I am glad that he showed me. I think it is one of those experiences you read and hear about but having experienced it yourself is way better...:yesnod:
 
spiderweb said:
Remember to get the carb heat off, too.
Click to expand...
In my Skyhawk C-172L, one hand can cram throttle and carb heat simultaneously. For some period I did have a problem with the electric flaps in that when taking hand off the lever, whether UP or DOWN the flaps didn't always STOP. Thus it was important to visually check the flaps when changing. That was a mechanical issue, not a design factor, and a new flap switch took care of the problem.

HR
 
Reminds me of sitting in the right seat on a flight. The Left seat'r had a bad one going from the downwind to base turn. But, he was doing a good job of recovering. We ended up calling the GA, and he went full power, Carb Closed, and we were hovering. I let him know I would work the flaps up (The early Cessna with the up down, no notch configuration). We got pretty close to some trees on the departure end, but brought it around for a successful, and nice landing. The good news, you made it. The other good news, you will never forget it. These are those always learning moments... Welcome to the club, we have good snacks!
 
glpilot said:
Well, the only close call I may have experienced that turned out to be a great lesson learned for me, and it may not even have been a real close call but at the moment it gave an anxious feeling, was on my first real go-around.

Few weeks before my checkride I was working around the pattern. The wind was giving me a good work out that day. 6 TnG's that day and when I was done, I was actually exhausted.

ANYWAY, after doing several go-arounds in practice this was the first time I really needed to GO-AROUND because things just did not look right.

I announced to the tower that I needed to go around, I pushed up the flaps, full throttle, close carb heat, and.. UH OH... WHAT THE? I'm not flying well here.

I RAISED THE FLAPS ALL THE WAY UP. I lose lift and for a moment there I thought I was going to touch down off the runway.

Luckily I leveled off and kept it level close to the ground until I could at least get to Vx.

Lesson Learned: Raise the flaps one notch at a time in the aircraft I fly when doing a go around.
Click to expand...


haha funny you mention this... My flight instructor today told me to do a go around and i did the very same thing... and I immediately knew that was the wrong decision... luckily I had been pushing the throttle all the way in at the same time but still... I looked over and told him i knew the error of my ways... and he knew it too
 
I never yanked the flaps all the way up in a go-around, but I did once try to leave them all the way down in a 172M in 2500 DA. Didn't go well, though I finally got out of ground effect when I yanked them halfway up.
 
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