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.
Most GA checklists are a disaster. Your observation is correct.
The problem the CFI faces is that only the manufacturer checklist is a legal document required to be on board. So we have to teach to use it.
For personal aircraft (including mine) you’ll see owners completely re-write the things so they make sense. The problem is, if you have to take a checkride in your aircraft some examiners will appreciate that effort and others will say to use the legal document. Catch-22.
And then you have airplanes like mine where an STC modified the manufacturer checklist but didn’t provide reprints or addendums like you’d see in today’s manuals, so you get forced to print your own to even make the aircraft legal.
The newer AFM format in newer aircraft is a hell of a lot more comprehensive and designed better to be modified by things. The old POH stuff in older airplanes is a complete cluster...
The good news is that you see it. Lots of people don’t analyze and notice the errors of omission and steps in the wrong order or section.
Many 141 schools and other schools DO just re-write the things to get them concise and organized well for normal ops, and emergencies. Even just color boxing certain procedures makes a world of difference on where your eyeballs should go.
The only thing I say to anyone who wants to mark up a checklist for themselves with new things is that to keep it legal only add things, never delete anything out from the manufacturer’s wording. I’ve seen folks add things like checking and setting up their iPad that didn’t exist when the POH was written in 1975.
It helps them be consistent, and that’s all anybody is really looking for. If you do it consistently one way it can be made into a flow and the checklist remains a checklist instead of a do-list.
Is your instructor teaching you flows? An example of this might be the Cessna emergency checklist for an engine failure. If you start on the floor at the fuel cutoff (check both or fullest tank in stuff without a both setting) and work your way up and then all the way to the left you’ll get everything.
Fuel cutoff, straight up and slightly right ... mixture rich, now go left, prop, throttle, carb heat ON, keep going left past the yoke, mags (the one is missed all the time), if you have one boost pump on, and the other one people miss, primer In and locked.
With good flows you can do everything needed nearly blindfolded. Then the checklist is checking to see if you did it all.
Don’t get too hung up on the awful checklists... until you’re flying something new enough to have an AFM. Almost all POH era lists suck.