OK - I'll promise to try a DR400
This many users can't be wrong!
I understand your point, John - early on in my training I was caught out leaving the oil filler cover unlatched on a C152 because it was freezing cold and I was in a bit of a hurry to get warm. It flipped open in flight. As it sits edge-on to the airflow no harm was done but I felt like a right plank and learned to slow-down and be more thorough!
But my concern is not so much with my checking of the a/c but whether I would actually be
able to spot, say, the fractured spar that was the result of the Robin striking the hay bale in the AAIB report earlier in the thread. It is pure conjecture, of course, but perhaps that pilot made a thorough check of the a/c following the incident and satisfied himself it was undamaged?
It's a rhetorical question, of course. There's no way you could spot a fractured spar (or similar) on a walkround and I understand the statistics for this kind of incident are very low. It's just this kind of possibility, however remote, that would keep me flying tank-like spamcans!
I must be getting risk-averse in my old age
Hersh