Preflight, Start-up, & Take-off Checklist

[AR Dave]

I don't know what kind of discussion this is going to bring but I'm game. It is time to update my laminated checklist. The old ones have scribbled notes on them and also I find that I do things different than way back. I need it simplified with just key words. My exterior preflight used to include each wing, each tire, each fuel sump. But I now go over the entire plane and then double check with the checklist to make sure I havn't forgotten anything. Please feel free to suggest adding something I'm missing or straighten me out. Maybe someone will get something out of this, perhaps me. On these list, I have one word in each item underlined for quick scan, but I can't seem to do that here.

Exterior Preflight:

Check magneto switch “OFF”
Check fuel shutoff valve “ON”

Fuel - Clear fuel strainer and wing tanks of possible water and sediment.
Check fuel quantity / make sure caps are on tight.

Check tires for proper inflation.

Check control surfaces for freedom of movement and security.
Check aileron for freedom of movement and security.
Disconnect wing tie-down
Disconnect tail tie-down
Check oil level. Do not operate less than 6 quarts.
Check propeller and spinner for nicks and security.
Check carburetor air filter for restrictions by dust or other foreign matter.

Inspect static opening for stoppage.
Check Pitot tube opening for stoppage.
Check stall warning vent opening for stoppage.
Check landing lights for condition and cleanliness.

[zero.one.victor]

Kick the tires.
Light the fire.
GO!

Eric

[AR Dave]

BEFORE STARTING ENGINE

Fuel Valve – ON BOTH
Seats, Belts, and Shoulder Harnesses – Adjust and Lock
Radios, Electrical Equipment – OFF

STARTING ENGINE

Record Time – Fuel Management
Mixture – RICH
Carburetor Heat – COLD
Master Switch – ON
Prime – As required
Throttle – Open ¼ inch
Propeller Area – Clear
Brakes – Hold
Ignition Switch – Start
Oil Pressure – full pressure in 30 secs.
Throttle - Adjust 600-800 rpms 60 secs / 800-1000 rpms 3 –5 mins.
Strobes – ON, Transponder – ON, Radio’s – ON

[AR Dave]

BEFORE TAKE-OFF

Cabin Doors – Latched
Flight Controls – Free and Correct
Elevator Trim – Take-off
Fuel Valve – On BOTH
Brakes – Hold
Throttle – 1600 rpm’s
Magnetos – neither to exceed 100 rpm drop or 75 differential between the two.
Carburetor Heat – Check rpm drop.
Engine Instruments and Ammeter – Check
Suction Gage – 5
Reduce Throttle
Flight Instruments and Radios – Set
Set Directional Gyro

TAKE-OFF

Wing Flaps – 0 to 20 degs
Carburetor Heat – Cold
Mixture - Rich
Climb Speed – 75 to 80, 60 with 20 deg flaps

[4583C]

Dave
Check out this link from Matt Hagg's webpage http://www.geocities.com/punkin170b/Checklist.html. The work has already been done!! I found the link to his web site on TIC170A home page. Paul

[russfarris]

While I wish I could be as succint as Eric's response, I guess I'll expand on checklists, and the real purpose of them.

Back around the Jurassic age in aviation, they didn't exist. The airlines themselves didn't use checklists widely until just before World War II. Airplanes like the DC-3 and Lockheed Lodestar were complex enough to
need some reminders to get things done. The military during World War II
had so many low-time pilots in the system that checklists became "worklists" ; so complete in every detail that even your grandmother would be reminded to adjust her seat and fasten her seatbelt.

The airlines continued this for many years, right through the 1970s. I believe it was United that went to the philosophy of a checklist that would only cover the "killer" items - things like flaps, trim and take-off data. That has continued with the airlines to the present day. Most of you would be shocked at how short a checklist I need to get an Airbus A-320 from point A to point B.

A checklist shouldn't be an instruction manual on how to pre-flight an airplane, start an engine or run one up. It should be a short, to the point reminder to check the things that could be a real safety of flight issue. I realize that most of you aren't professional pilots, but I would submit that a checklist that only covers the essentials is more likely to be used, and gives you more time to look for traffic and think about the big picture.

Since talk is cheap, here is the checklist I have developed over six years and 600 hours in my 170.

Before Take-Off

Cowl - Latched (I added this after distractions caused me to take-off TWICE with one side un-latched!!!)
Flight Controls - Checked
Trim - Set
Fuel Selector - Both
Altimeter/Clock - Set (Clock not a killer, but I put it in there anyway, to remind me to wind it - guess I'm not consistant!)
Doors - Locked
Mixture - Rich
Runup - Complete
DG - Set (no biggie VFR, but sometimes I depart IFR and a turn the wrong way would be embarassing!)
Transponder - On/Alt (OK, not a killer item, but I live under Class B airspace.)

Before Landing

Fuel Selector - Both
Mixture - Rich

Notice I didn't list carb heat - that should be automatic for a pilot with this engine before a power reduction out of the green. I shut it off on short final, in case of a go-around...the 170 needs all the help it can get!

This is a simple airplane guys, and all it needs is a simple checklist, not an instruction manual. One 170 pilot I know disagreed with me about this quite a bit. It seems once he tried to start his 1949 A model with the ignition switch off while people were watching. He felt that if he had used a checklist, reminding him to turn the ignition on before start, he might have been spared the embarrassment. To me, this summed up everthing wrong about using a checklist as an instruction manual, instead of a safety of flight backup.

Well, that's my thoughts on this...Russ Farris

[AR Dave]

Well I'm a BIG proponent of checklist, but that's because I missed an item one time and it cost me a BIG amount of $$$. Guess I should add that story to the "My Scariest Moment" Subject. I still have a wife and children that fly with me, so I don't mind double checking myself.
Maybe I should have started this post with something different like, I knew a guy one time that missed checking his ________ on preflight, he drug a concrete block tiedown 30 miles to Palmer, AK. Not me, it was a float plane

[Dave Clark]

Russ you're right on

Preflight - everyone should be able to do that with no checklist

The classic checklists:

Cigars - controls instruments gas attitude runup secure (set belts, doors)

Gumps - gas undercarriage mixture prop speed

Then I do a postflight - Bugs - just clean them off

I think it's whatever you're comfortable with. If I fly frequently it's all automatic, if I'm away from it for a while then I go slower and use the above carefully. It seems my most overlooked item if I'm rusty is the aux electric fuel pump. Both turning it off for cruise and turning it on for takeoff.

[GAHorn]

It requires some mental expansion of sub-items but the checklist forced into our brains at BAe to be used on any/all models was:
Pitch Trim
Trim Tab
Flaps/Lndg Gear(which they really called "undercarriage" but I changed it.
Pressurization (which would by necessity include cabin doors/windows and environmental systems)
Flight Controls
Radios/Radar
Engine/Flight Instruments (which by necessity would include engine/systems runups/checks as well as elect. system checks)
Ice Protection
Transponder
Fuel Valves, Quantity, Balance

This same checklist could be applied to all phases of the flight. I've since used it on every airplane I've ever flown and sure enough, BAe was correct. It works regardless of aircraft or model. (sure took some work to memorize the first time, but then it became pretty easy after some use.)

[zero.one.victor]

I was trying to be funny with the kick the tires, light the fire line. I actually do have a engine-start/pre-takeoff checklist. But I find that CIGARS works just as well. My landing checklist is short & sweet--fuel both, mixture rich,carb heat,Vref 65-- but GUMPS works just as well. Preflight is just a matter of walking around looking things over-- I think that checking for control locks, tiedowns, missing wings etc is pretty automatic, therefore I don't have a pre-flight checklist.
I got a good laugh a few years ago-- there was an episode of Discovery-Wings about women flight instructors in which my friend Andy Troia appeared as the dauntless (instrument & commercial) student at some gal's flight school. They filmed him supposedly preflighting his B model 170. Well, it looked more to me like a washrack annual as he crawled around under the airplane, attempted to squeeze his whole head thru the inspection door in the cowl, etc.-- really put on a show for the camera (IMHO).

Eric

[mrpibb]

The way I look at it when it comes to check lists is that you have two ways about it. One you have a TO DO list which will hit on every item and switch position and so on or, Two a flow check list that my tailwheel instructor and my friend/airline captain got me in the habit of doing. I have been a A&P for about 25 years, 18 of them with the airlines. I'm qualified to taxi the whole fleet and before we got these new ground movement vehicles to move airplanes around without taxing them I used to do about 5 to 7 taxi moves a day. We have a taxi check list which is a to do list that entailed about 120 items just to taxi the aircraft, I have noticed that the pilots complete checklist was on a folded 6x8 card of about 25 items. After a few years of moving aircraft I unofficially came up with a flow pattern because I noticed that the engineers that designed the things were kinda smart and laid the panels out you could start at one end and move to the other and hit all the pertinent systems. It took a quarter of the time to do a pre taxi flow. However when we got our new 777's I went back to the complete check list do to the infrequency that I taxi it and unfamiliarity of the cockpit layout. Now back to good ole 09V, when I first was getting my endorsement I had just gotten my private with 1.2 pic in a 172. I made a checklist of epic proportions that would make any liability lawyer smile, but two years have gone by and 180 hours later I now flow. My walk around stays the same, as with a/c maintenance there is no shortcut, but in the cockpit my flow starts when I'm seated, door open I scan across my lap with my hand continuing to the pass seat to the pass door ( I have checked my seat belts flap fuel and trim, pass seat belts and door) from there I move across the panel from right to left stopping at the mag switch ( I have checked switches, throttle, mixture carbheat prime and radios), master switch on yell clear, or is it contact? a successful start I reverse flow ( i have checked radios, primer, carb heat, switches, mixture, throttle, passenger didn't jump out) ending back with my door opened which is now shut. My predeparture flow starts when I throttle up to 1700 rpm, from the mag switch moving across the top of the panel, down to the lower part of the panel back across to the fuel pres gauge. I throttle back wiggle my toes and butt check my clock and with passenger " any question's comment's or concerns?".
As with anything probably in a few months or years I'll do things differently, what can I say It"s human nature, Thats why there is a four page checklist in the seat back.

Should be flying today but it's to darn muddy!!
Vic

[N2865C]

As a student I was also taught to use what my instructor called cockpit flow for a checklist using CIGARS and GUMPS, starting in one corner and working around the cockpit. A good trick that stuck with me is to touch every gauge and item as I went past them, it makes it much harder to miss something. He would have me pull out the checklist after I had checked everything to make sure I hadn't missed anything until I was familiar with the aircraft. After a while it becomes second nature. My preflight involves starting at the left brake and looking at and touching every item that can affect flight in the same order every time .It works great most of the time. Just don't ask me about the time I landed and looked out the window to see my wing tip hanging down by the nav light wire
jc

[GAHorn]

Cockpit flows work really well if all the crews who fly the airplane are all diligently trained to the same standard of performance. SWA taught/used flows in the Type-rating course I took from them. It worked real well in the airline/training environment where everyone left the cockpit just like everyone before them did.
Of course things work much better when you are the only one who fly's the airplane. Get another someone who left the cockpit mis-configured and all bets are off. (Like coming out of maintenance or after a differently trained pilot last flew it.)
I'll never forget the time my FO (Adrian) and I had brought an airplane out of maintenance and found just about everything in the cockpit out of order or misplaced. It had been a really bizarre re-configuration excersize just to get it to the runway for takeoff.
During the climb we were puzzled over an airplane that climbed more slowly than any other airframe in the fleet. We were getting on up into the flight levels about 80 miles down the road and the airplane wasn't climbing nearly as well as all the rest did. The chief pilot was on the jumpseat and didn't respond to our observations. (He might have been daydreaming, or maybe he just didn't know enough to comment. He didn't fly the line often enough to really stay current.)
When I asked him to walk back to the rear crew-wardrobe to check my bag and see if I'd remembered to pack a flashlight for this night-time ferry-flight he left the cockpit grumbling about the task... Adrian then quizzically looked over at me and pointed directly at my flashlight which was laying beside the center console.
I nodded to him....and then glancing back to make certain the chief pilot had his head buried in the wardrobe closet....I reached over and gently raised the flaps from the takeoff position to the full up position!
Adrian just rolled his eyes.
We both still laugh over it when we have a beer together and think of the event.

[russfarris]

George's story reminds of one of my own. We had an O dark thirty departure in the trusty Fokker F-28 (a 75 passenger twin jet that looks like a DC-9, slightly smaller.) It was the co-pilots leg as we climbed out from wherever in the pre-dawn darkness. Right away he commented that the airplane didn't feel normal to him - it was very heavy on the controls. We started looking around the cockpit, and then I found the reason. Someone had turned off the hydraulic power switches to the flight controls - we were flying in manual reversion! No wonder it was heavy on the controls! They are never turned off, except during a hydraulic failure,
and believe or not it's not a checklist item (I just looked in my old F-28 Manual.) It wasn't a maintenance station, so the culprit remains unknown...Russ Farris