To Ron:

My heartiest congratulation on saving the one thing most difficult to
rebuild .... yourself. My deepest sympathies on the loss of your lovely
machine.

To All:

I made Ron's mistake once in a Piper Archer. I failed to remove the pitot
cover prior to an IFR take off. Whoops. I soon realized what I'd done but
just kept on flying and flew to my destination with little trouble, BUT, as
DJ Molny so correctly points out, one must have a sense of how one's plane
should be acting when a single data input, in this case airspeed indication,
doesn't agree with all the other reference items.

Many years ago I arrived at a small grass field near my home minutes after a
Mooney had departed in low IFR conditions. The pilot failed to remove his
pitot tube cover, lost control, drove nearly straight into the ground and
was killed. The local FSDO has a large picture of the crash with the
aircraft still burning and the pitot tube cover clearly flapping in the
breeze at the end of the wing.

I have one suggestion, which sadly would likely not have helped Ron, that
just might save your bacon someday. Use a pitot tube cover made of light
minimally durable material. If you take off and suddenly realize you've made
the error of leaving the cover on ...... turn on the pitot heat and burn it
off. It just might work.

Ted Stanley - ATP