I am gonna slow down a little to make sure I don’t miss anything out – don’t wanna look unsafe!
Wrong attitude. You don't want to
be unsafe, not you don't want to
look unsafe.
Here's my story of hurrying through a check list the other day. We survived. Others haven't.
The club 172 checklist says to check that the fuel selector is on "both" three times, once in PRELIMINARY, once in INTERNAL AND PRE STARTING and once in PRE TAKE OFF.
Over the top, surely?
Er, no, it turns out, the third occurrence of this check is in fact vital.
On finding that the aircraft had enough fuel for 2hr15, when I needed 1hr30 plus reserve, I decided to refuel. I did all the external and cockpit checks before taxiing to the fuel pump, because I wasn't going to go to all the trouble of refueling an aircraft if it were to turn out to be U/S. So, checks done, I taxied to the fuel pump, and shut down according to the check list ... including setting the fuel selector back to RIGHT.
After refuelling I "obviously" didn't need to repeat all the checks I'd already done ... so ran quickly through the first parts of the check list making sure I repeated everything important ... or at least thought I did. So it was a bit of a shock to find the selector still on RIGHT when I got to the third occurrence of the fuel selector check during the PRE TAKE OFF checks.
Now, for this particular flight we would have survived anyway, as the entire flight to the destination could have been conducted with the contents of one full tank leaving plenty to spare, and I've have gone through the check list again anyway for the flight home. But I've just been reading The Killing Zone again, with its stories of people who killed themselves and their passengers by getting the fuel selector wrong ...
So:
* Thank you to whoever put that check in the check list three times.
* I will in future be much more careful about deciding to skip bits of check lists that don't need doing again because I just did them ten minutes ago.
* This was also an "unfamiliarity with the aircraft" problem, as most of my flying was on the 152s with a different fuel selector regime, and I've only done a few hours on the 172s.
* I must somehow get into the habit of checking the fuel selector in my FREDA checks (yes, I've just looked, it is in that section of the club check list too, but again I got into my FREDA habit on the 152s where the selector lever was never ever moved for anything).