Originally Posted by
LAWings
No sir, not always. When there was one, I would sometimes find it wadded up under a seat. And sometimes it's not, or at least doesn't seem to be, for the specific airplane bein flown. In fact, I brought a copy from my original school with me (personal copy printed from pdf. The ones at the school were laminated and remained with each aircraft.), and he said "Wow that's pretty nice. You can use that one."
I was for a C172S G1000. The plane we were flying was a C172R.
Have you read the ACS? Has your instuctor read the ACS? You will not pass an FAA check ride without conspicuous use of a written checklist.
ref
https://www.faa.gov/sites/faa.gov/fi...s_change_1.pdf
There is no issue with using flows to configure the aircraft but if you don't follow up with a checklist you will fail. Of course you don't refer to a checklist if the instructor asks you to climb, descend, speed up, slow down, but you do need to for pre-flight inspection, before start, after start, before takeoff, after takeoff. before landing, before shutdown, after shutdown, and for emergencies. With experience in a non-complex aircraft almost all of these can be handled by mnemonics and/or flows but that will not work for an FAA checkride.
Edit to add -
There is a big difference between teaching someone to fly competently and teaching someone to pass a checkride. Some instructors are good at one and some good at the other. You need an instructor who is good at both.