whether you have manual or electric flaps is a big part of the discussion. A manual flap handle is an awesome feature. It's like having another control input for not only finding the setting that provides the most lift but also being able to add the right amount as the plane slows or as it flies off the ground. It can be used to tighten up a steep turn too.

Electric flaps are less responsive and they don't connect your hand with the control of the flap directly and there should be some expectation that the effectiveness of adding and subtracting electric flaps on landing and takeoff configuration is diminished and so a flap setting is often desired and less distracting.

I think everyone should be thoroughly familiar with landing with no flaps and reduced flaps (especially in crosswinds) and be able to add or subtract them with confidence in flight. I've seen a lot of robotic operators of airplanes that live by the numbers and the checklist (a very safe practice), but a little instinctive understanding makes for better stick and rudder (and flap) handling skills.

If you have a mentor or a flight instructor teaching you, do what they tell you to do until you get your ticket. The PTS and the expectations of the DE are all you need to know in that phase of training.

I was taught early on to make no flap landings but I specifically remember being admonished for cleaning up the airplane too early (on landing roll and just before touchdown) back then. A practice I feel confident about now and still do.

There were a few aircraft that had the same handles for both gear and flaps. Poor design. I think there were even a few that had the positions reversed. In retracts, I'd agree that by and large it's a good idea to get to a lesser workload time to move levers. That being said, as previously stated, I think you need to be proficient enough to use the tools you have when needed. Personally, I retract them 99%. But there is the occasional landing where I need 100% of my focus outside and on those landings, they can wait.

Headoutdaplane wrote:http://homernews.com/homer-news/local-news/2015-10-30/pilot-error-caused-2013-era-crash-ntsb-says

thought he was pulling up the flaps on roll out.

I don't pull up flaps to shorten my landing but I do pull them up as I roll out, I have done it on many a 135 checkride.

Got busted on a 135 check ride in a C337, As I was told at the time, You don't do anything until you are off the runway!
No radio change, no flaps 1 hand on the throttles and one hand on the Yoke.
Foolish me, I did not argue with him and we went out and made a trip around the circuit and landed, passed that time?
Just sayin, personnel experience, flunked one other check ride when I changed tanks first in a 185, instead of turning to the airport? Had 3 miles of straight road in front of me!!! Didn't argue that time either, just went out and did it again, turn to the runway, then changed tanks! Passed??

I don't want to get into any arguments over my advice to the OP. My reasoning is that I have the impression that the OP is a relative newbie, and developing good habits is part of the training process. Once a pilot has enough experience, certificates, etc. to be called an old hand, then I don't have any problem with his/her decision to retract flaps whenever he/she thinks it's appropriate. A thousand or more hour pilot should have developed feel for the airplane by then, but a 100 hour newbie pulling up the flaps during the landing flare or immediately upon touchdown--no, I think that's pretty unwise.

I stand by my statement that the vast majority of non-fatal aviation accidents occur during the landing phase, because of loss of control. As I said, whether that's always because of being distracted by doing other things other than maintaining control isn't clear from the NTSB reports, but I'd guess that plays a large part. I was taught, and then I taught, that there's plenty of time to do all the other things after the airplane has been safely taxied off the runway, so concentrate on the landing and the rollout, and leave everything else alone.

But again, that's for the newbie or the "fly by rote" pilot, not for the experienced old hand who knows the airplane. Then do it as you see fit, so long as you maintain control in the process.

Oh, incidentally, when I took my first 135 ride, the examiner didn't say anything about my flap usage, as far as I recall. I remember that ride pretty well, probably because it was my first one, but I don't recall any discussion about flaps. Of course, that was almost 40 years ago, so there could have been--senioritis keeps me from remembering all the details of long ago.

Cary

I have the impression that the OP is a relative newbie, and developing good habits is part of the training process. Once a pilot has enough experience, certificates, etc. to be called an old hand, then I don't have any problem with his/her decision to retract flaps whenever he/she thinks it's appropriate. A thousand or more hour pilot should have developed feel for the airplane by then, but a 100 hour newbie pulling up the flaps during the landing flare or immediately upon touchdown--no, I think that's pretty unwise.

This is not Studentpilot.com, peeps usually have flown a a day or maybe even two, before arriving on this site. The bold text was added by me, because I really wonder how much BS could possibly be packed into a single post.

Some landing sites require the dumping of flaps right upon or even before fully touching down. I had less than 100 hours when being exposed to Altiports in France. Applying your logic, this should have either never happened, or 100% of my landings would have been go-arounds. We have all seen more than our fair share of these glorious 1000+ hour pilot wonders, dead. I suppose a pilot with a ton of certificates is probably a bit less dead than a simple private pilot?

For the OP: If need to, say it out loud: "My hand is on the flap lever/ handle" and give it a quick glance to be totally sure. You should not play with fields which task-saturate you completely. Get on top of your game with short field and soft field operations and let the landing site shrink as you gain experience and learn the tricks of getting in and out of extremely short fields. Better yet, practice going in and out of challenging fields with someone who will recognize when you are behind the plane (task saturated).

In airplanes with electric flaps, the process of dumping them isn't a matter of a second and requires good timing.

Touching the wrong handle is (IMO) a simple matter of task saturation and lack of focus resulting from it.

Cary wrote:I don't want to get into any arguments over my advice to the OP. My reasoning is that I have the impression that the OP is a relative newbie, and developing good habits is part of the training process. Once a pilot has enough experience, certificates, etc. to be called an old hand, then I don't have any problem with his/her decision to retract flaps whenever he/she thinks it's appropriate. A thousand or more hour pilot should have developed feel for the airplane by then, but a 100 hour newbie pulling up the flaps during the landing flare or immediately upon touchdown--no, I think that's pretty unwise.

I stand by my statement that the vast majority of non-fatal aviation accidents occur during the landing phase, because of loss of control. As I said, whether that's always because of being distracted by doing other things other than maintaining control isn't clear from the NTSB reports, but I'd guess that plays a large part. I was taught, and then I taught, that there's plenty of time to do all the other things after the airplane has been safely taxied off the runway, so concentrate on the landing and the rollout, and leave everything else alone.

But again, that's for the newbie or the "fly by rote" pilot, not for the experienced old hand who knows the airplane. Then do it as you see fit, so long as you maintain control in the process.

Oh, incidentally, when I took my first 135 ride, the examiner didn't say anything about my flap usage, as far as I recall. I remember that ride pretty well, probably because it was my first one, but I don't recall any discussion about flaps. Of course, that was almost 40 years ago, so there could have been--senioritis keeps me from remembering all the details of long ago.

Cary

So you have to have 1000+ hrs to be a seasoned pilot and have a feel for a plane? I take exception to this. Everyone learns differently and some people catch on quickly. I don't know it all and am still learning every time I fly, but I was landing on 200' rock bars with my Citabria at 250TT.
The OP is flying a C152. Pretty docile plane with not a lot going on on rollout. Yes you have to fly all the way to the hangar and just because a plane is docile doesn't mean we should get complacent, but we add flaps while setting up for landing, so is it that much harder to drop them after landing? Or like MTV says, right in the flare. Practice it at a big strip, find what works for you, and go have fun. That's how most of us learned to have the fun we have.

jjbaker wrote:Touching the wrong handle is (IMO) a simple matter of task saturation and lack of focus resulting from it.

I think there are a lot of factors that can lead to this beyond a high workload and distractions. Unfamiliar aircraft. Unfamiliar cockpit layout. Night vs day when muscle memory hasn't been established. Undoubtedly there are many others.

The one I see often is fatigue. Inexperienced or experienced, no one is immune. When you're tired, hands can reach for things your brain didn't intend. Even when doing actions you've done a thousand times. Outside of the 121 world it doesn't get talked about much, but is definitely something to consider before you fly and to be aware of while flying.

A1Skinner wrote:

Cary wrote:I don't want to get into any arguments over my advice to the OP. My reasoning is that I have the impression that the OP is a relative newbie, and developing good habits is part of the training process. Once a pilot has enough experience, certificates, etc. to be called an old hand, then I don't have any problem with his/her decision to retract flaps whenever he/she thinks it's appropriate. A thousand or more hour pilot should have developed feel for the airplane by then, but a 100 hour newbie pulling up the flaps during the landing flare or immediately upon touchdown--no, I think that's pretty unwise.

I stand by my statement that the vast majority of non-fatal aviation accidents occur during the landing phase, because of loss of control. As I said, whether that's always because of being distracted by doing other things other than maintaining control isn't clear from the NTSB reports, but I'd guess that plays a large part. I was taught, and then I taught, that there's plenty of time to do all the other things after the airplane has been safely taxied off the runway, so concentrate on the landing and the rollout, and leave everything else alone.

But again, that's for the newbie or the "fly by rote" pilot, not for the experienced old hand who knows the airplane. Then do it as you see fit, so long as you maintain control in the process.

Oh, incidentally, when I took my first 135 ride, the examiner didn't say anything about my flap usage, as far as I recall. I remember that ride pretty well, probably because it was my first one, but I don't recall any discussion about flaps. Of course, that was almost 40 years ago, so there could have been--senioritis keeps me from remembering all the details of long ago.

Cary

So you have to have 1000+ hrs to be a seasoned pilot and have a feel for a plane? I take exception to this. Everyone learns differently and some people catch on quickly. I don't know it all and am still learning every time I fly, but I was landing on 200' rock bars with my Citabria at 250TT.
The OP is flying a C152. Pretty docile plane with not a lot going on on rollout. Yes you have to fly all the way to the hangar and just because a plane is docile doesn't mean we should get complacent, but we add flaps while setting up for landing, so is it that much harder to drop them after landing? Or like MTV says, right in the flare. Practice it at a big strip, find what works for you, and go have fun. That's how most of us learned to have the fun we have.

Nah, you don't have to have 1000+ hours--I just pulled that as a figure in which most folks would have pretty good experience and feel for their airplanes. You're absolutely right, seasoning varies from one pilot to another, so that one might be a fine pilot very soon after being certificated while another might still be a doofus after many hundreds of hours.

But indeed we do have some newbies on this site, and I assumed (perhaps erroneously) that the OP is a relative newbie with not a lot of experience or airplane feel yet. Considering how many inadvertent retractions occur annually (lots!), there is certainly something to the "whoops, I pulled the wrong handle" problem. My advice to the OP still would be to not develop an ingrained habit that might easily cause him to become one of those, in the event he transitions to a retractable.

Cary

As I noted in another thread, this is a good reason to get a thorough checkout in EVERY airplane you fly, administered by someone who knows the aircraft type well.

As to using 135 checks as a metric, are we to also assume that pilots should not install/remove seats as well? That was a big issue at one point in AK. There are a lot of things in 135 ops that really don't improve safety.

MTV

If rolling out on a narrow strip or if there's obstacles, I'll usually get stopped before reconfiguring anything though. But FWIW on bigger wider more open strips I'll generally put the flaps up on rollout, as well as re-setting the trim to the takeoff position. Now with the 180 I also open the cowl flaps, usually after the flaps but before the trim. Maybe not the best habit to get into but I have no intention of buying or even flying a retractable gear airplane so raising the gear handle instead of the flaps isn't an issue.

On several occasions with my last airplane (C150TD), I raised the flaps during the flare to a 3-pointer, if I'd come in a little too hot and get too much float. I almost always landed with flaps 40, so easing them slowly up generally shed enough lift to get me down on the ground. I almost always wheel land the 180, and haven't yet had to raise the flaps on landing.

MountainFlyerN22 wrote:I fly a Cessna 152 with electric flaps, and on landing I retract the flaps on rollout (not directly after touchdown but shortly thereafter).
In my thinking this reduces lift therefor helping my braking by transferring the weight to the wheels and making the aircraft less likely to balloon if there was a gust, it also makes goarounds easier because the flaps is in/near takeoff position (0-10 deg.)
This is relatively easy to do as my hand barely has to come off the throttle to flick the flap switch up with my finger.

Recently I flew with someone else and he mentioned it was not good practice to retract the flaps.I would not normally let this bother me but I vagly remember reading the samething somewhere....can't remember where, but it was not a POH nor was it aircraft specific,something the FAA put out maybe?

Anyway I thought I'd ask what you guys do and what advice you might have.
I know that this may be different in aircraft with manual flaps,still interested in hearing what you do.


Note: I don't fly off anything short or unpaved (rental agreement stuff) so I don't realy need to retract the flaps.I do like to practice though.

You stand little to gain by retracting flaps on rollout.

Your plane has good short field landing performance but requires a much longer take off roll, and has a shallow climb angle.

Therefore anyplace you can leave will be easy to land at and stop without additional measures like changing the flaps.

Dumping flaps on landing does shorten rollouts but the utility is with higher performance STOL planes in more extreme circumstances.

Also if you wind up in a Bonanza someday (I fly a Beech also) the same muscle memory to dump the glaps will retract the flaps and put you on a very expensive belly and prop...

Mountain Doctor wrote:

MountainFlyerN22 wrote:I fly a Cessna 152 with electric flaps, and on landing I retract the flaps on rollout (not directly after touchdown but shortly thereafter).
In my thinking this reduces lift therefor helping my braking by transferring the weight to the wheels and making the aircraft less likely to balloon if there was a gust, it also makes goarounds easier because the flaps is in/near takeoff position (0-10 deg.)
This is relatively easy to do as my hand barely has to come off the throttle to flick the flap switch up with my finger.

Recently I flew with someone else and he mentioned it was not good practice to retract the flaps.I would not normally let this bother me but I vagly remember reading the samething somewhere....can't remember where, but it was not a POH nor was it aircraft specific,something the FAA put out maybe?

Anyway I thought I'd ask what you guys do and what advice you might have.
I know that this may be different in aircraft with manual flaps,still interested in hearing what you do.


Note: I don't fly off anything short or unpaved (rental agreement stuff) so I don't realy need to retract the flaps.I do like to practice though.

You stand little to gain by retracting flaps on rollout.

Your plane has good short field landing performance but requires a much longer take off roll, and has a shallow climb angle.

Therefore anyplace you can leave will be easy to land at and stop without additional measures like changing the flaps.

Dumping flaps on landing does shorten rollouts but the utility is with higher performance STOL planes in more extreme circumstances.

Also if you wind up in a Bonanza someday (I fly a Beech also) the same muscle memory to dump the glaps will retract the flaps and put you on a very expensive belly and prop...

The problem with that logic is that ANY pilot can easily use the entire runway on a takeoff......But, there are times when a pilot on landing carries a wee bit more speed, and/or turbulence messes with him a bit, such that using the entire runway on landing isn't quite as easy.

A Bonanza and a 152 are very different airplanes. Much is made of so called "muscle memory". Personally, I have always preferred to use my brain......

MTV

I'm a newbie to back-country operations (at least in airplanes - over 1400 hrs in helicopters, with at least 50% of it "back-country ops"), so I actually appreciate BOTH sides of the discussion. I've learned a lot, despite the "sniping" back and forth.

For now, I think I'll hold off on going anywhere that I would actually NEED to dump the flaps to land successfully - at least until I've got a LOT more experience in my airplane and with off-airport operations. There are plenty of other challenges for me, before I "graduate" to that level of operations...

Everybody has their own thing.

Flaps are a control to be used as appropriate!

As for being a "bad habit" to raise the flaps or "busting a check ride" or a low time pilot not being able to handle raising the flaps on roll out???

I seem to remember something in the cessna flight manual saying to raise flaps after touchdown for short field to increase brake effectiveness!


As a pilot you have lots of variables on any given landing and it is wise to be able to use your plane to its full capability!
Some times retracting flaps would be appropriate sometimes not.

On most landings I leave them down. It helps aerodynamically slow the plane thus saving brake pads.
Sometimes you need to retract. If you retract on a tailwheel plane while wheel landing you will be planted on the runway!
In the desert SW in the summer you will get all kinds of whirl winds, crosswinds changing in a matter of seconds.

Again it depends on what you are doing.

Who would have thought that flying technique is full of opinions based on personal experience, something which can vary widely? /s

Little disappointed though to see some attitude appearing here. Nobody's elbow or asshole is that precious that you should eschew friendliness or be reduced to bring a dick about it.

Somebody here once commented that flaps are just another control surface, and are used to fly the airplane. How you do that is up to you. I end up using them, often dynamically, in many phases of flight, including observation/circling.

For the record, I often retract flaps on rollout, but not always, using both levers and switches. Been a newbie for a really long time.

Mike Olsons kazoom experimental cub had a flap dump switch on the stick. Not sure if they were hydraulic or what but I guess you hit the button and they retracted instantly.

This topic is almost as bad as the tail-ski discussion (or something like that) .

After reading thru the posts here and on the other threads and experimenting a bit with the aircraft, I've come to the conclusion that it pretty much depends on the situation.

On gusty days or if I bounce,I'll probably pull the flaps in. I've also found I can land quite short by simply holding the nosegear off and taking advantage of aerodynamic braking.

However I'm constantly changing my techniques as I continue to learn.

Pops Dory showed me his flap set up at JC this year, even better then Kazooms, it (as I recall) was linked to the throttle, so throttle back and the flaps go up, like right now, super quick. Spring loaded, hydraulically controlled with 1/4" poly line, once the valve was opened the spring snapped them up.

Speaking for myself, I land so slow raising the flaps isn't going to make much difference, I'm done flying, and don't usually use much brake anyway. But that's probably because I am landing almost always up some pretty good slopes. I did use a lot of brake yesterday on a landing, but eased off once I remembered I was on the skis True story.

The last time the retracting flaps post came around I fussed about it indicated one was landing too fast. That wasn't really fair since I seldom had good brakes. I had to land slow and using full flaps, if I had them, because they helped me land slow and helped me slow down after touchdown. If we pull all the way back on the stick, at touchdown, and come back off, we are going too fast.

Just another point of view.....

Just finished a MEL commercial Checkride in a Seneca. Here the book calls for dumping the flaps for a short field landing. The examiner expected such. Of course, it is a large Johnson bar flap handle and a small electric gear switch. Would be hard to confuse, but in other aircraft not so much.....

When learning to fly Cherokee sixes for a living in Kodiak I was taught (and still use) a high speed approach followed by dumping the flaps and rotating at the same time. This plants the aircraft on the ground firmly while approaching at a higher speed than normal. Very useful if you have long(ish) runways but unpredictable gusty winds and windshear. Also useful in gusty winds with a floatplane to get it to sink in and stick to the water.

In many aircraft, raising the flaps will drop the tail. This can also be useful. In a 180 or 185 I will generally not raise the flaps when landing on rough until later in the rollout to help protect the tailwheel. But if it is soft, dumping the flaps immediately is good form, and if it's just a bit softer than you thought it may keep the greasy side down. I know one pilot who used this technique to keep a 185 upright while landing very shortly in the mucky tundra after a fuel starvation incident.

Dumping the flaps on a 206 will help protect the nosewheel in rough or soft fields. And it doesn't take very long to figure out the timing on electric flaps. Some don't even mind them at all! All systems have their weak points. I have seen electric, manual, and hydraulic flaps all fail at one point or another.