Does a checklist make a bad pilot a good pilot?

[Colonel]

Checklists are a matter of religion with pilots,
and you don't mess with religion.

It seems to be a matter of faith that:

1) anyone can fly an airplane (commercially)
2) a crappy pilot with a checklist is going to fly well

If you disagree with either of the above, the
villagers come after you with torches and
pitchforks.

I have not made it a mystery that I fly more
wildly different types (nosewheel, tailwheel,
monoplane, biplane, single, twin, flat piston,
radial, turbocharged, supercharged, geared,
turbo-fan, turbo-jet) than just about anyone
else in Canada, and I don't use checklists in
[i]any[/i] of them. 

Never have, never will.  And I have a perfect
safety record, after 44 years.  Coincidence? No.

If someone, for example, needs a checklist
to ride a motorcycle, and wants to ride it into
a busy intersection, head down reading a
checklist, I will advise them that they are
not competent to ride a motorcycle on the
road yet.

Similarly, if you need a checklist for normal
ops, you are not competent to fly an aircraft
yet.

I do not think that a checklist magically converts
a bad pilot into a good pilot.

I do think that a checklist often makes a good
pilot fly badly.  You know, with his head down,
not flying the aircraft, not looking outside for
traffic.

Next time a checklist baby lands gear up, or
has a mid-air collision, think about your
religion, and how it's working for you.

[Chuck Ellsworth]

Same here, I use an old Military memory check list HTMPFF......ect.that covers all the needed items you need to confirm in most any airplane I  have ever flown and I would venture to say I have flown more different airplanes than most pilots here.

Like the Colonel I have yet to lose control of one yet.

So it would seem that you actually can fly airplanes safely without being a slave to a written check list.

Or rather some of us can.

[Rookie Pilot]

I think a good pilot who is one who can plan, anticipate, be well ahead of the airplane, is smooth, deliberate, and consistent with control movements and cockpit flow. 

I only use a before entry (start) checklist -- I copied it from MAF friends -- with a bunch of kill you items on it as a double check.

Cowl plugs, covers, fuel, oil, all doors secured -- like the little doors ect -- trims set, ect. Occaisionally it has helped me recall to double check an oil cap, cause a missing or loose one of those would wreck your day, if not noticed. 

After start for a long time now I never look at the checklist, and the only thing I occasionally forget is takeoff time, since about 30 seconds and three items after run up I'm ready to go. (Flaps, mixture, lights)

If it's got (enough) clean oil and fuel, trims are right, and all control surfaces move, and all the caps and doors are buttoned down, chances are the flight will start off well, I figure.

Can do run ups in my sleep and I know by heart the right temps for each cylinder on the JPI,  they are all different and if really off I'd know it. Helps to fly often, and do certain tasks while waiting for the engine to warm anyway. 

Think I could now fly a lot of simple planes without a checklist but complex pressurized stuff / or deiced ect. I know nothing about, so I'd need one for those. Don't know generators and on / off either, ect. 

[Colonel]

re: "complex" airplanes ...

Jets are the easiest and simplest aircraft
to fly, despite what nonsense people will
spew at you, for their own strange reasons.

Hardest thing with a jet is to avoid a hot/
hung start.  If you can start it without
overtemping it, you are off.  Hint:  nose
into wind, and plenty of volts to max out
the starting RPM.

There is no runup with a jet.

Before takeoff, all I do:

Canopy locked
Flaps set
Trims neutral
Boards in

And off I go.  No prop or mixture or cowl
flaps or boost pump or CHT or oil temp to
worry about.

Just remember to always get prist, to avoid
plugging up the FCU.

I can do a type rating on a guy in one day,
if he listens to me (rare) and reads the flight
manual and is familiar with the systems before
he shows up, and is a decent stick.

[Rookie Pilot]

Is pressurization automatic or need fiddling? Just curious. What about temp management in a turbo? Anything different?

Thread drift, you do see some interesting things when you watch others fly.  We've met, I've been to your very nice field, and my home runway was lengthened to almost as long as yours, although your paving job is much nicer.

You wouldn't want to race your bike up CZBA 32.  Ripples and heaves and dips.  I offset my takeoffs the runway is crowned so bad.

And for that (giant) length -- I land and turn off barely more than halfway, hardly touching the brakes --- could be less but I get lazy too unless on on the 2000' cross runway--- and - brakes cost money -- I saw -- rather heard -- a pretty little fast single, loudly, repeatedly screeching the tires as he rolled past my hangar. I'm near the end, and yes, I looked. He was able to stop -- man he must have been howling in to use all of our runway. In perfect weather.

[Colonel]

Pressurization is simple.  What you need to know
is how many thousands of feet of cabin differential
you can get with that airframe.

Let's say it's max 11,000 feet of differential.  I
like to run max cabin pressure (lowest altitude),
so if I'm at 15,000 feet the cabin pressure will
be 4,000.

If I'm at 10,000 feet I might pressurize down
to 2,000, which is an easy 8,000 foot differential.

Not rocket science.

Again, I am really disappointed how shitheads
in aviation try to make this stuff so much more
complicated than it really is, to make themselves
look like master of some arcane art that you can
never comprehend.  Blech.


PS  You really don't do much with the temperature
in a turbine.  You watch it closely during the start,
but that's about it.  Really old jets like the T-33,
you can't jam the throttle forward at low RPM -
they can over-temp - but anything built in the last
50 years will have a very sophisticated fuel control
unit (FCU) which will allow you to bang the throttle
back and forth at any RPM without any ill effect -
the FCU is very smart and will carefully meter the
correct amount of fuel for the RPM, etc.

Once you have idle RPM (40 to 70 percent, typically)
life is good.  Just keep feeding kerosene to it, don't
compressor stall it, and don't feed it full of pigeons
and life is good.

One really nasty failure mode of a turbine is if there
are cracks in the blades, they can break in flight and
if you are unlucky, fly out of the engine - called an
"uncontained failure".  Don't do that.

Anyways, jets are so easy and simple to fly.  Just learn
how to start them, and learn how to control your airspeed
on final.  Some people "get behind" the airplane which
I have trouble comprehending - I find 250 knots really
boring.

[Colonel]

re: CZBA

I built a hangar at Burlington in 1980, which I
guess makes me a newbie to aviation compared
to the internet experts.

I don't remember the runway being that bad -
I guess it's deteriorated over the years.


PS  Brake pads and discs are actually remarkably
cheap - I change them, all the time.  Tires and
tubes are incredibly expensive - admittedly I only
buy Goodyear FC III.  Puck o-rings and 1506 are
also really cheap - I got through those all the time,
too.  Must have used a couple cans of 1506 this
weekend.

You don't want to get on the brakes too early
and flat-spot a tire!  If the pressure isn't all the
way up, you can even rotate the tire on the rim
and shear the valve stem.

I keep trying to tell people that they really don't
need brakes on little airplanes, except perhaps
for runup and for turning out of wind.

[Rookie Pilot]

They widened it, and it was a lousy job. Huge crown in places. Used to takeoff on the new centreline, and literally the crown was yanking my airplane to the side. Now I use the old centerline - paint is still there -- and it's fine. But it's not flat by any means.

I hear screeching of tires all the time, people hammering the brakes. It's almost offensive. I believe in treating your ride gently.

[Colonel]

people hammering the brakes

Idiots are approaching much too fast.

I regularly land in 800 feet, with no brakes.

[HiFlyChick]

Flew today.
Used a checklist.
Does checklist use make a good pilot a bad pilot?