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WARNING: Don’t Takeoff With Full Flaps!
After a couple weeks without flying, I decided this last Friday to get some air time. My flight training for the day ended up being very short due to some unfortunate complications.
Taking off on a hot day, uphill, with little wind is trouble
The flight training today was in the Cessna 150, N66589. I ended up getting things pre-flight ready, listened for the weather, and went on to the taxi way. Listening to the weather, I found that the winds were fairly calm and in the direction to the south, so I chose to take off out of Twin Oaks in the direction of North. The winds were quite calm and the direction north is uphill so I found I didn’t have enough power in the Cessna 150 to be able to take off. I quickly pulled back the throttle and got off the runway to take off in downhill to the south. My first take off was great, though it had been quite a while since flying a Cessna 150 so the lack of power threw me off.
I ended up deciding to stay in the flight pattern and do a landing right away. The landing was nicely timed, and adjusting the controls to land went fantastic. The landing was very smooth.
Flying with flaps is trouble!
I headed off the runway and found another aircraft about to take off. I decided to just follow suit and get behind him for the takeoff. He flew on out and I prepped for my own.
I took off down the runway and realized it was a tad bumpy; however I didn’t think much of it and began my assent into the sky. I found however that the plane just would climb. I checked to see if I left the carb heat on or if I didn’t have full throttle. Neither of these conditions were the case. Before I had time to check much else I heard my tail numbers called on the radio and the announcement that my flaps were in. I took a look and to my surprise and realization, I found I forgot to raise my flaps after my landing. As soon as I found things out, I began raising the flaps making sure I didn’t do it too quickly and dip down into the earth. Thankfully I didn’t have full flaps in on my landing; I really could have caused some structural damage to the plane, and if the worst case happened, myself!
A short day is a good idea
I flew the pattern and ended up landing, and getting the plane parked. I was quite thrown off with this mistake and realize that I MUST follow my checklists. This was a scary lesson that could have caused some major damage, therefore, something I will not forget anytime soon.
All in all, it was fun to get out and fly again, but for the next flight, I need to remember to plan ahead, think things through, and follow my lists.
What have you done lately that scared the s**t out of you?
Leave your thoughts in the comments!
Logs:
Flight Time: 0.5 Hours
Landings: 2June 7, 2011 / Jason / 5
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5 thoughts on “WARNING: Don’t Takeoff With Full Flaps!”
Hey this is awesome.
Excellent story. I like the pictures. Did you also take the pictures Cessna Takeoff and Cessna Flaps?
Great post, and I found it specifically because “a friend of mine” did the same thing (though with full flaps). A 172 will take off, at least from a touch and go, with full flaps at a low enough airspeed not to damage the flaps, but performs pretty horribly (the takeoff is more like a ballooning up, not the gentle tug you normally have to do to get it off the ground). It is very similar to doing a go around with the flaps out, where you must apply full power, control the ballooning, and gently ease out the flaps in stages.
From the search results I found, it appears to be a right of passage during solo cross country flight. Just like you, I will certainly never make that mistake again.
My very fist solo, on like my third takeoff, I was so excited to go, I didn’t realize I had my flaps all the way down until I was turning onto the runway. After crapping my pants even more because of this, I retracted them and continued on.
Just was doing research on this for an incident many years in my past. My early lessons were at Hyde Field, Md. I was flying Cessna 150’s. As I recall, the elevation was 247 ft.
The plane would do a go around with full flaps at 60-70 mph. I had done this more than once with an instructor aboard and nothing seemed amiss.
Flash forward 9 years. This time I am in Oklahoma on a hot day. I blew a touch and go and firewalled it, expecting the usual climb performance. This time, the plane just settled back down, at 70 mph. I had run out of runway and the perimeter fence loomed large, it finally got high enough to clear that 5 ft chain link fence. I was flying, but not gaining altitude. About then I realized the flaps were down. I was so low as to be fearful of the configuration change and loss of even a few feet when raising the flaps.I finally horsed it into shallow climb, sucked in the flaps in steps and got out of there.
I went higher, and tried the same configuration and airspeed in a go-around scenario. In level flight, firewalled, and 70 mph, the VSI showed a descent. The plane finally climbed around 55 mph.
Big lesson learned about density altitude that day. There was something somewhere I remembered reading about becoming a volunteer, unqualified testpilot when getting into situations like this, and I had attempted an experiment of no importance to anyone!