That’s a lot of stuff happening on the runway. I could not be a member of your club. It would drive me nuts.
Not a lot of choice, where I am. Still, and I know I’m not experienced, I have a very good attention to detail and see a lot of things wrong with the checklists. Just one example, pre engine start they have one pulling mixture to idle-cutoff, then checking fuel is at both, then throttle back and then forward 1/4”, then fuel shutoff to “ON” (that last one I just have to accept as Cessna also uses this wrong terminology. Seriously, as a programmer it just falls naturally to me that something called a “fuel cutoff valve” when ON, means fuel is cut off. When off means fuel is free to flow. It’s in the name! But that I just have to accept). To me this is just weird. Why not think “flow” where you start at the beginning and position, so much easier to think “fuel tank, then cutoff valve, then misture, then throttle”...it’s natural. Is there a possible reason to be so all over the place?
I bet a lot of checklists are like this, but I notice that in some sections they get very specific, while others it seems to be leaving out things that are “obvious”. Like pre start we set the parking brake. Later on before taxi, they never mention release parking brake. We all know we have to, but why is it missing if they put it in in another previous checklist?
Also, as I mentioned elsewhere, at engine startup they have “watch oil pressure and if not in the green in 30 seconds turn off engine” followed by set RPM to 1000 then, “lean engine”. But the POH says you should lean by going to 1200 RPM and adjust for max rpm. The very next section is “warm up checklist” and it’s first item is set to 1000 rpm and lean. At first I tried to figure out if they had tried to make each section modular.
So when the run up checklist ends with no mention of learning, I’m supposed to think “well, I’m preparing to taxi now so I should redo the taxi checklist”. But no. According to instruction that isn’t the case.
for experienced folk this must seem stupid, that I’m hung up on semantics and just need to use common sense, by I am gettin very mixed messages, CFI pounds in that “just follow the checklist”, and yet the list is incomplete. So I just get the message that it is a game. I don’t like that. I like to know the logic behind what I’m doing, but it seems like either I’m “not at the level” of learning that yet, or else it’s as incomplete as it seems.
Let common sense rule. In this situation, the aircraft on the ground should announce he/she is holding position for takeoff, yielding way to the aircraft on short final. However, there are some lessons to be learned in getting into this situation in the first place.
- The aircraft back-taxiing on the runway should not be dilly-dallying on valuable real estate by going through the pre-takeoff checklist while on the far end of the runway. Do this before taking the active runway if there is no place to do this off the end of the active runway, in order not to tie up the runway unnecessarily.
- The aircraft on final should have made a position call before "short final" to allow aircraft on the ground to time their taxi and takeoff operations. Even if doing a 15 mile final in lieu of a standard pattern entry, at least give a 10- and 5-mile final call to help others coordinate with you.
Courtesy, safety, and common sense, folks. Being adamant about who is "more righter" is how one is going to bend metal some day.
If you are going conduct pre-takeoff checks at the end of the runway, you should be facing approaching traffic or turned 90 degrees to approaching traffic while doing so and until starting your takeoff roll. If you are pointed down the runway while doing pre-takeoff checks with your tail toward potential conflicting traffic on final, you were not trained properly to maintain adequate safety awareness. The last thing you should do before any takeoff roll is to look toward the final approach course for any aircraft on final. A NORDO on final would create a potential mess if you don't look.
These all make sense to me. I will definitely ask next time if we can do the pre takeoff before entering the runway. I seem to recall we have. That is another thing, it seems like this adherence to strictly following the checklist is sometimes overridden, or at least not consistent. It’s confusing sometimes to me.
