RE: Why we do pre and post-flight inspections
As I was taught- there are Five 5-like your fingers - functioning things/controls to check before take off:
1) elevator
2) ailerons
3) rudder
4) throttle
5) Open antenna
The closed antenna was a harsh lesson I saw somebody else learned on his plane when there was signal enough for checking 4 controls.
take off.
then the signal was too weak and no time to understand what's wrong.