Sunfish,
I confess to having had the engine go silent on a 150 after lining up. Pushed the throttle in too fast. Embarrasing to have to tell the tower, but it started first try and I was more careful afterwards.
I've had something similar. I had to wait quite a while to backtrack, and suddenly the engine died. I taxied back to find out what was wrong, and got a very, very informative impromptu lecture on the differences between Continental and Lycoming engines.
After that I started leaving the carb heat on until I'd lined up. The problem with that is, sometimes I forgot to push it in. Not that it seemed to matter much in the C150 with one person; we just climbed a little more slowly, that's all. But I now have a new routine before take-off - after power checks, carb heat out, then pre-take off checks, then carb heat in. Then just give it a short blast of carb heat prior to lining up; I won't forget it, since it hasn't then been on long.
One thing's for sure; since I started flying the C150, I'm a lot more aware of RPM, how the engine sounds, and noting immediately if all just doesn't feel quite right. Which can only be to the good, of course. But I can't help wondering if the higher accident rate for the C150 over the C152 isn't due to pilots transferring from one to the other without knowing all of the above.
