Originally Posted by
Scaley
Personally in a single seat aircraft I have as much in memory as possible, and get the checklists out primarily in an emergency to double check I haven't forgotten anything. Having said that memorising things comes naturally with practice and repetition, so unless it's stuff you have to memorise I wouldn't make that a priority at the start.
What do you really need to memorise:
1) The boldface bits at the start of the important emergency procedures (most of which are totally obvious)
2) FENCE / ops check
3) Tanker pre-contact checks (unless you can fly the pre-contacts and read a checklist at the same time...)
I'll add if I think of anything else, sure some other will chip in! My feeling is the main time-sink when people start flying in the group is actually learning the formation flying skills, not the checklists.