You obviously did very well. But there is one thing that I think you can learn from this situation what will doubtless apply many other times in your flying career.
You forgot to retract the flap, following a stressful incident, that wasn’t yet over. The accident reports are filled with pilots who forgot to put down landing gear because someone cut them up in the circuit, and pilots who crashed after running out of fuel in one thank, because they forgot to switch tanks while trying to deal with a radio failure.
This happens to experienced pilots as much as student pilots.
The real lesson here, isn’t “not to forget to take up the flaps next time” but rather to recognise that if you’ve had a stressful or unusual event, that you are very exposed to forgetting something. So you compensate, by taking the first available opportunity (in your case probably when you’d set course for your new destination, and you’re now flying straight and level and things have calmed down for a bit), to recheck everything about your aircraft and your plan. The funny thing is when you get this moment of calm, you have a tendency to think “All is ok now. I’ve done well with that and can relax for a few minutes while I think it through further.” But actually, given you’ve already made your plan and are executing it, you’d be better using the time to follow either a checklist if there is an appropriate one, or just spending a few minutes checking everything for something you’ve likely forgot.
These things are usually forgotten after something stressful, not in routine operations.
Learn this lesson now, and it will serve you well into the future.
And by the way, it doesn’t have to be an emergency. If I find myself having departed a very busy airfield and terminal area, where I’ve been ‘working my ass off’ then once things calm down, it’s time for a routine check to see what/if I’ve forgotten anything important.
Colm
I think you did excellent – as stated higher up this would have been a perfect exam flight, and earning you the highest recommendation from the jury/examiner.
That you forgot the flaps is very understandable. You were low-experienced, so that the phenomena weren’t obvious, and you were under high stress. Very correctly you focused on primary requirements – aviate/navigate/communicate – with the flaps being, in your particular situation, much less relevant. Next time you forget them, something will tell you, either stress in some muscle or unusually poor performance or the need to trim very very much.
Great job.
I frequently forget flaps up. Sometimes I forget gear up, especially on a stressful occasion.
One notices eventually… Especially heading south out of Wangen Lachen 
I admit to having left out one stage of flaps twice. Once on my first (short) solo cross country, and once on a departure in New Mexico where I was worried about arriving before night time with lots of headwind en route and crosswind on arrival, and some active military areas etc. On the second occasion, already on climb-out I was scratching my head why the plane climbed so sluggishly. But only noticed 5-10 min later. Makes you feel like an idiot. :) One piece of advice when you notice in cruise that you forgot the flaps is not to immediately raise them (which is only natural, we want to correct our mistakes immediately), but to first slow down the plane and then retract the flaps. This is because even though it may not be stated as a separate limiting speed in the POH of most small airplanes, the flap operating speed is often more critical than once they are out.
Maybe less relevant on a C152 with one stage of flap, though.
What this has taught me (hopefully) is like Colm stated, once things calm down, to throw in an extra flow to check if I forgot anything.
I did my first x-country solo yesterday. I am trying to force myself to say the after take off checklist (and the before landing checklist) out loud now every time so I don’t forget anything. In the Aquila A211, the lists are quite short anways:
AFTER TAKE OFF CHECKLIST:
:-)
mh wrote:
Lights OFF
Engine Instruments GREEN
Fuel Pump OFF (if applicable)
TRIM(!)
Eyes OUT
Really? I like MedEwok’s checklist a lot more!
“Engine Instruments Green” is not a checklist item – looking at the engine instruments is part of the periodic instrument scan which is done all the time, not just after takeoff. “Trim” is just another control like yoke and rudder pedals. Those are not included in any checklist either. “Lights OFF”, well, personally I always leave the lights on all the time wherever I fly in an airspace with VFR traffic (in line with SOPs of almost anything that usually cruises above FL 100). On our trainers they were all changed to LED lights, so there is not much power drawn. And “Eyes Out” is also not a checklist item for me, this is normal operation when flying VFR. At any time, not just after takeoff.
* TRIM(!)
Another one of those useless checklist items. You could just as well say “fly the airplane”…
It’s not a CHECKlist anyway, it’s a flow. If you want to minimise the checklist, leave it out completely. Flaps down won’t kill you and you should be aware of your speed anyway.
mh wrote:
It’s not a CHECKlist, it’s a flow.
OK. But then I don’t understand why everything in that flow comes before “eyes out”! I would put “eyes out” first and all the rest at the appropriate time.
