This week we continue our chat with two awesome DPE's! Our own Wally, and special guest Pat Brown. The guys tell us many of the common checkride mistakes they've seen, and how you can avoid them!
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00:01
Behind the Prop Intro
Clear Prop. SR73 Cherokee number two following twin traffic three mile final one trolley Bravo Makesford in Runway two five going four mile.
00:10
Nick Alan
This is behind the prop with United Flight Systems owner and licensed pilot Bobby Doss and his co host, major airline captain and designated pilot examiner Wally Mulhern. Now let's go behind the prop.
00:25
Bobby Doss
What's up, Wally?
00:26
Wally Mulhern
Hey, Bobby, how are you?
00:27
Bobby Doss
I am fantastic as always. This week is part two of common errors on checkrides. Last week we talked about everything up to the passenger briefing. We did some preparation stuff. We did some oral stuff. We had our guest, Pat Brown in the room and we have him back this week. Welcome again to the show, Pat Brown.
00:46
Speaker 1
Thank you very much and pleasure to be here always.
00:49
Bobby Doss
So, lots of learning, lots of comments and feedback on last week's episode. We love it. Keep us engaged. This week we're going to talk about everything from the passenger breathing on. So the. The Daytona 500 was just a couple of weeks ago. Let's go ahead and start our engines. What do you think, guys?
01:09
Wally Mulhern
Yeah, let's go. Clear prop.
01:10
Speaker 1
Clear prop.
01:11
Bobby Doss
Clear prop. Anyone ever not say that?
01:16
Speaker 1
Not for me. They're pretty good about that.
01:19
Wally Mulhern
Yeah, they are.
01:20
Speaker 1
But.
01:20
Wally Mulhern
But what I do see is I hear clear plop, you know, and then, you know, I say, you know, give it a second. If there's someone out there, you know, give them a little time to run.
01:31
Bobby Doss
Yeah.
01:32
Wally Mulhern
All right, so clear prop. Maybe look out there and then, you know, just give it one potato, two potato, and then start that engine again.
01:40
Bobby Doss
Not a little out of context, but I remember my CFS says, you ever thought about looking right behind the plane before you start it? Because. And I just never really did as a young pilot, but he said, clear prop. Look the back window because you're about to blow a lot of wind that way. Yeah, you don't want to knock a guy off a ladder back there.
01:56
Speaker 1
Right, Exactly.
01:57
Bobby Doss
All right, so we've cleared prop and we're going to start the engines.
02:01
Speaker 1
Oh, please, God, please don't start the engine at 2,000 rpm, please.
02:05
Bobby Doss
Yeah, please leave it there. We're in my. We're actually in my office right now, which. The weather's bad again today, so there's not too many engines starting, but I can hear everything out there. The 45 seconds of cranking, the 2000 RPMs for three minutes while they're working on checklists. Please, please don't do that. All right, so let's go, guys. What do you think? Are there common error starting aircraft.
02:30
Wally Mulhern
Absolutely. Absolutely. I mean, you know, a lot of airplanes, if you dig in the PoH have several start procedures. They probably have a cold engine, they probably have a hot engine, and then they probably have a. Maybe you have a flooded start procedure. And they're all significantly different. And the bigger engines usually have more, you know, difficulty, if you will. I, I know my Saratoga until I really got to know the airplane. I mean, if, if the engine was shut down for 30 minutes, it was going to be a bear at a start. If it was shut down for five, ten minutes, no problem. Shut down for three weeks, no problem. But when that. Or maybe you want to shut down for maybe an hour. So it was kind of like a, a warm engine. That was, that was the tough one to start.
03:23
Wally Mulhern
I've finally, after owning the airplane for about five years, finally I've got it figured out.
03:29
Speaker 1
Takes a while. Sometimes I see the same thing, you know, with engine starts almost always cold morning, cold start. They just don't give it enough gas.
03:42
Bobby Doss
Right.
03:42
Speaker 1
And they wonder. And we said, we sit there just cranking the engine and cranking into starter, and, you know, oil's getting scraped off the cylinder walls and things like that. Or they, or it'll be a hot start and they'll treat it like a cold start. And it'll start, it'll flood, and it, you know, it'll want to catch. And then it backs off to that same old sound like it's either not got enough gas or it's got too much gas. And, and sometimes you hear the engine. There's a particular sound that the engine, particularly carbureted engine makes that is a dead giveaway on a flood. And it's kind of. I don't know if I can make the sound, but it's kind of like a, kind of a sound, a burping almost sound. Yeah.
04:24
Bobby Doss
Gulping.
04:24
Speaker 1
Yeah. When you hear a gulping sound, that's kind of what it is. And when you hear that's a dead giveaway. It's flooded. And yet what they keep doing just. They'll stop for a second. They'll say, okay, what should I do? Oh, let me give it some more gas. And then again, I'll give it a couple of more shots of the accelerator pump. And it's just. Now it's just worse. And then I've had, a couple of times, I've had mechanics at various flight schools come running out saying, you know, what's wrong? What's wrong with the airplane start? And I have to say, back off. This is a checkride. They've got to figure it out themselves. I'm not going to let them ruin the engine, but they got to figure it out themselves. Never had to stop a checkride because they couldn't get it started.
05:01
Speaker 1
But oftentimes on the debrief, there's quite a discussion about what happened and how we could have avoided that.
05:09
Bobby Doss
Yeah, it's something I don't like to listen to from in here too often because it's a lot of money and it's a lot of time and you got to know how to start engines. We've done entire shows on that, so we won't belabor the point. But it is something that is a technique that you have to learn over time. And the only point I'll make, I guess is a hot engine doesn't need six pumps of primer. No, it's not going to help the cause at all.
05:33
Wally Mulhern
So.
05:33
Bobby Doss
Right. All right, so we've got it started. We take a deep breath. We've got the engine started. This is probably where I would think the applicant really gets into pic mode and they're trying to do the right thing. So what comes next from common errors, gentlemen?
05:51
Speaker 1
Well, you want to go?
05:53
Wally Mulhern
You can go.
05:55
Speaker 1
Who's will be pic right now? Well, all right, so we're taxiing out to, let's say the run up area. There's a center line on the Runway. It's there for a reason. And they're either weaving all over the place trying to set their DG or their HSI or tune frequencies or something like that. Taxi is for taxi and the center line is there for a reason. So that's what you should be doing. You should be paying attention to taxiing and staying on the center line. That's a real common error.
06:31
Bobby Doss
Yeah, yeah. There's a problem here on this taxiway Yankee by our school where there's a lot of cars parked. And I think we've maybe created a monster by deviating just a little bit and teaching people it's okay. Which could create a really bad habit somewhere else where they think they can deviate and clip something. Right. I mean, that center line is technically, it's supposed to be the farthest point from either side of that, that taxiway for sure.
06:58
Speaker 1
So it. Well, from an obstacle clearance perspective, if you're on the center line, the likelihood of you hitting something with your wingtip is certainly not none, but it's significantly Reduced. And, and yeah, that, you know, I don't know the answer to your situation, but that, you know, you're kind of tacitly teaching them normalization of deviation.
07:21
Wally Mulhern
Yeah, yeah.
07:22
Bobby Doss
I just think it's a problem.
07:24
Wally Mulhern
Right. And what I would, what I have seen is if you're taxing out, maybe the obstacle that you see is on the left. So your tendency is to fl. To taxi a little bit right of the center line, but your eyes are to the left, but you're going right.
07:45
Speaker 1
Yeah.
07:45
Wally Mulhern
So what could go wrong here? Right, Right.
07:48
Speaker 1
Yeah.
07:49
Wally Mulhern
I'm gonna say just that. Initial call up to ground control, you know, you call up such and such a Tower, Skyhawk 123 Bravo Charlie @ such and such a flight school, like to taxi for takeoff or run up or whatever the appropriate verbiage is for your airport. You know, if ground does not answer you and then you call them again and they don't answer you. At some point you got to look in the mirror and say, maybe I'm the problem. And very likely your volume is down on your radio or your headset. A lot of these airplanes, I know the ones that have the Garmin 430s and the 530s, there's a little RX that lights up when you are receiving. So if you're receiving and you're not hearing anything, you're probably the problem.
08:47
Wally Mulhern
This just happened about, I don't know, a couple of weeks ago with a young man and he made about four calls and then he finally figured out what the problem is. And, and I kind of jokingly said, I said, well, you got to call them now and they're going to be pissed at you because you've just stepped all over all kinds of traffic on the ground control frequency. And they were, they let him know that they were not happy with him. But you know, at some point you just got to swallow your pride and go for.
09:13
Speaker 1
It. And that's assuming that they're tuned to the right frequency because it could be a wrong frequency.
09:17
Wally Mulhern
Too. Yes.
09:19
Bobby Doss
Yes. Audio panels. I'm sure that's an issue. That's a big deep. Well, dive into. But let's. Okay, so we've taxied. What about. I think I was as training beat into that. We had to do these crosswind controls and all these other things. Right. Expecting some demonstration of that even in a 2 knot wind day or only in a high wind day? Or only when it's.
09:44
Speaker 1
Required. I guess I want to see that they're aware of.
09:47
Bobby Doss
It.
09:47
Speaker 1
Right. You know, if they're aware of it, you know. You know you're kind of giving us the extremes here. A two knot day. Sure. If it's a calm wind day. I don't really care if it's, Even if it's 2 knots off the nose. Just an awareness that you know, we've got. We don't have much of a wind. But I'm going to go ahead and put the controls in the right way and they're demonstrating that they're.
10:10
Wally Mulhern
Aware. Good. Yeah, good.
10:12
Bobby Doss
Point. I guess really the next phase of this would be the run up. Anything to talk about in the run up from a commoners.
10:20
Wally Mulhern
Perspective? You know, I, I think one thing that maybe we see a lot of. Well, I won't say a lot, but occasionally you do see issues with spark plugs, foul plugs. And so at some point we do have to go through a cleaning procedure. A lot of airplanes have procedures for it on the checklist. I know one flight school has it on their plastic checklist in the airplane. So it's just a matter of just going through that checklist for the cleaning procedure for the spark.
10:55
Bobby Doss
Plugs. Yeah, I don't think I was versed in that really Well. I don't think if it would happen to me, I don't think I'd have done a great job for sure. So run up pretty much the checklist. We follow through on that next. We're ready. We're ready for departure. Radios. What's, what's the next big common era? If.
11:13
Speaker 1
One. Well you know, I mean Wally probably does more check rise out of control field towered fields than I do. I do a lot of them out of non towered fields as well. And, and I don't, I guess I really don't see a lot of real common errors on that. Typically I'll start off with a short field takeoff. That's kind of my go to first takeoff. And once again I come back to really to holding the center line. That particular takeoff, you know, can be problematic if they don't have the proper crosswind corrections in there. They don't get enough right rudder in there. Holding the center line is probably the big one on that.
12:01
Bobby Doss
One. Do your applicants seem to take the Runway a.
12:03
Speaker 1
Lot? Oh yeah, yes, that I was really gonna, I was really gonna avoid pet peeves on radio work because that's an entire one by itself. And we've actually talked about that in a previous podcast, the three of.
12:17
Bobby Doss
Us. I couldn't.
12:17
Wally Mulhern
Resist.
12:18
Speaker 1
Sorry. Because I'm gonna say, if they say taking the active, I'm gonna say first of all, where are you taking it and when are you gonna bring it.
12:24
Wally Mulhern
Back? It's funny bringing that up because I, I just had this discussion less than five day or about five days ago with a, a young man on a checkride and he was a CFI getting a multi engine rating and were at a non controlled airport. And, and that's what he kept saying. He says we're taking the Runway. And, and that was part of the debrief. I was talking about standard phraseology. I go, I go, I says, I, I think I said, I've got a lot of experience. I, I said what I thank you man, as you're taxing out onto the Runway. But I says, I'm not a hundred percent sure what you mean by that, even me. So I, so why don't we just say we're departing Runway.
13:02
Speaker 1
Whatever. Yeah, yeah. And then I got the famous last call yesterday on another check ride. Guy was turning out and he said last call and it was a great check ride. I mean it was on a scale of 1 to 10, it was a 9 plus. And we're sitting down afterwards debriefing and I said so now I'm going to get to pet peeve time. And we got to the last call thing. It says just don't say.
13:24
Bobby Doss
That. Yes. Yeah, not necessary. Taking up radio.
13:28
Speaker 1
Time.
13:28
Bobby Doss
Yeah. So we'll assume private.
13:30
Speaker 1
Here.
13:31
Bobby Doss
Yeah. What, what's happening on the short field? What do we start seeing common problems in this phase of.
13:37
Speaker 1
Flight? Are we talking about short field takeoffs or.
13:39
Bobby Doss
Landings? Short field takeoff, sorry. Yeah, we're just taking, we're, we've just took the Runway. We're departing on 17 right. Short field. You've given the guidance to demonstrate the short field takeoff. Do we start seeing common errors this early in the.
13:55
Speaker 1
Checkride? Sometimes they'll forget to put the flaps down. Yeah, but there are some airplanes that don't require flaps for short field takeoff, depending on whether it's going to be over an obstacle or not over an obstacle. So the applicants that are really sharp will ask me before we taxi out, do we have an obstacle or not? And that's a, that's good on the CFI for telling them.
14:16
Bobby Doss
That.
14:17
Wally Mulhern
Yep. And I do question a lot of applicants will say because typically what I do is a soft field takeoff on the first takeoff, and they're in a position maybe in where we're in a. We're doing a run up, not right at the Runway, and they're going through there before takeoff checklists. And it mentions flaps. They'll. They'll say, well, I'll get them at the end at the Runway. And. And I just. I'm thinking, why. Why are. Why not. While it's on the checklist, why not set them right now can we taxi over to the Runway with flaps 15 or 25 or whatever?
14:58
Bobby Doss
Why? It's got to just be bad technique being taught, is my assumption for.
15:03
Wally Mulhern
Sure.
15:04
Speaker 1
Right. Yeah, it could be. And you know, you mentioned soft field and takeoffs. There's an. There's another one where that left turning tendency and, you know, the P factor and all that will take the airplane off the left side of the Runway because you've got a lot of back pressure and that nose starts to come up and boy, if you don't get that right rudder in there that. I see that a lot in soft field takeoffs. Again, I know I sound like a broken record talking about holding the center line. But every single takeoff and landing in the acs, in the skills says, holds us. And paraphrasing. But holds the center line or maintains the center lines up with the center line, touches down longitudinally aligned with the Runway without side load on the gear. I mean, that's.
15:49
Speaker 1
Every single landing says that, and every single takeoff says holds the center line or some verbiage to that effect. So. So I see.
15:56
Bobby Doss
That. Long ago I heard a DP tell me that the applicant said, well, he was close. That's not what the ACS.
16:02
Speaker 1
Says. Close only counts in hand grenades and.
16:05
Bobby Doss
Horseshoes. Yeah, on the.
16:06
Wally Mulhern
Acs. Yeah, I would. I. Well, I'll say the applicant. I. I will facetiously say, are you a taxpayer? And of course, they look at me and they say, yeah. And I say, well, as a taxpayer, you bought the entire Runway, not just the left side. We can use the whole thing. In fact, why don't we just put it down in the middle so we're using the left side and the right side equally. Equally. Oh, I like.
16:31
Speaker 1
Exactly. I'm gonna steal that.
16:32
Wally Mulhern
One.
16:32
Bobby Doss
Okay. All right, so let's just jump to the list. Let's. What. What are some of the big common errors you guys see on. On private checkrides? Maybe we'll have to do a part three on instrument.
16:44
Speaker 1
But. Oh, yeah, really?
16:45
Bobby Doss
What. What is the. The private errors that we need to share with these applicants that are out there.
16:51
Wally Mulhern
Listening. Well, you know, with mine, the first thing we do is we start out on the cross country phase. And I, what I tell them is I say, okay, tell me when we get to our checkpoints and tell me how we're doing on time. Are we a minute ahead or on time or whatever. And typically the first checkpoint that most people have is top of.
17:16
Speaker 1
Climb.
17:17
Wally Mulhern
Okay. Now foreflight gives that to you if you're using foreflight. But people, top of climb is not a checkpoint. Okay. Checkpoint is to make sure we're on course. And you're gonna hit top up climb at some point we're gonna hit it, we're gonna get top of climb. It doesn't tell us, you know, they'll say, okay, we're at our first checkpoint, it's top of climb. And we're, you know, they may say we're right on schedule. And I'll say, well, we are we on course? And they look at me kind of crazy because, so although again, foreflight's going to give you, do you as. As a checkpoint or a waypoint or whatever you want to call it. But it's not really a.
17:59
Speaker 1
Checkpoint. No, it's not. Had that happen.
18:01
Wally Mulhern
Yesterday.
18:02
Bobby Doss
Yeah. And if you're not understanding to the listener that's not in the room with hand signals and all, we really need something to see, right. We need a river, we need a set of railroad tracks. We need something, an intersection of two freeways to say something. At least I'm going west, not east, because you're going to get top a climb east just like you would going.
18:19
Speaker 1
West. Great.
18:20
Wally Mulhern
Point. And the other thing about checkpoints is pick a checkpoint that is, no kidding, a given point on the ground. If you're going east and west and you pick a major highway, well, if you can be 30, 40, 50 degrees off on your course, you're going to hit that major highway. So maybe the checkpoint should be the intersection of Interstate 45 and Jones Road. Okay. Rather than Interstate.
18:55
Bobby Doss
45.
18:55
Speaker 1
Right? Yeah, that's a good point. Starting the.
18:59
Wally Mulhern
Timer. Oh.
19:00
Speaker 1
Yeah. Getting to start the timer is a.
19:01
Bobby Doss
Big. That was a problem for me. This sounds like I did terrible on the checkrap. That was always a problem for me, was starting that.
19:07
Wally Mulhern
Timer. Yeah, yeah. We, you know, at the airlines, we have a technique. Before every takeoff, we say lights, clocks and fuel. Every takeoff, most of the time one of the pilots is going to say lights, clocks and fuel. Make sure all our appropriate lights are on which we got a bunch of lights. Both of us start our clock and do we have the fuel that we want to.
19:35
Bobby Doss
Have? So I just started flying a plane that had a transponder that started a clock when I left the.
19:40
Speaker 1
Ground. That was. Well, that's, that's another thing, a great.
19:44
Wally Mulhern
Solution. And most of them do. So that's kind of, that's very nice to.
19:48
Speaker 1
Have. Yeah, yeah, I think that's. Yeah. For us cross country. I think that's probably the big one, the big two, probably. And then there's a diversion. Yeah. And you know, the ACS says that this is a pilotage and dead reckoning thing. And the first question I get sometimes is, well, first thing I see sometimes is they go up to the nearest button on the gps. Well, sorry, can't do that. It's a pilotage thing, a dead reckoning thing. So just. You know, when I was teaching a lot, and I still do, but when I was teaching a lot and preparing for somebody for a checkride, I would tell them, look, the diversion is going to be a realistic diversion. You know, I'm not. The DP is not going to send you to Dallas on a diversion.
20:37
Speaker 1
If we're flying in Houston, it's going to be a weather diversion or it's going to be you're sick in the cockpit diversion or maybe the engine's running a little rough diversion. You're not going to go 75 miles to an airport. What's the closest airport? Be aware as an applicant, what are the airports within a reasonable distance of the course that you've been assigned to fly and have a reasonable idea of the directions to get to those airports. So the diversion shouldn't be. First of all, we're not trying to trick them. I mean, I think that's an honest statement. We're not trying to trick them. That's easy to do. We're not trying to trick them.
21:18
Speaker 1
We just want them to be able to turn the airplane from a predetermined course, give us an idea of the direction to get to the airport that we've asked them to go to or just find an airport that fits this criteria. I might say, I'm not feeling so good. Take me to the nearest non towered public use hard surface Runway you can find. It might be that simple. Right. And. Okay, well, first of all, how do you know it's a hard surface Runway? Well, if they know what the symbol looks like, they.
21:47
Wally Mulhern
Do.
21:48
Speaker 1
Yeah. You know, and if I might say, that has Services. It's kind of have the tick marks on it. Okay, well, that's okay. It tells me now they know what they're looking for and turn me generally in that direction. How long is it going to take us to get there? How much gas are we going to burn? We'll go for a couple of minutes in that direction. It looks like they've got it all together. Fine. We're done. Now the next for us. For me, the next step is we're done with that. Steep turns. We'll do steep turns.
22:12
Wally Mulhern
Next.
22:12
Bobby Doss
Yeah. Okay, so we're probably climbing up or maybe we're already at 3 or 4,000ft at this point. Something like that. Let's talk about steep turns. There's a lot of common errors listed in books. But what do y' all see on.
22:28
Wally Mulhern
Checkrides? The. What I see is in somewhere in the airplane flying Handbook. It, it mentions if you're losing altitude in a steep turn to shallow out your bank. The problem with that is if we go all the way around at 30 degrees, that's not a steep turn. So to maintain a steep turn, we need to, for private pilots, 45 degrees. And so if we go, we start losing altitude and all of a sudden we shallow out the bank and we do the whole maneuver at 30 to 30 degrees. Well, that doesn't meet the criteria of the maneuver. So in and of itself, we have not just completed a steep.
23:17
Speaker 1
Turn. Yeah. Clearing turns. Another.
23:20
Wally Mulhern
Thing.
23:21
Speaker 1
Yeah. Prior to starting, whatever maneuver you're going to be doing is deep.
23:24
Wally Mulhern
Turns. Yeah. And I will say this about clearing turns. I, when I was instructor, I, I always tried to use the phrase let's clear the area rather than let's perform clearing turns. Because a lot of times I watch the applicant doing clearing turns, and it's an IFR maneuver. Their, their head is inside there on heading three six zero. They turn right to zero nine zero and then they turn left to point three hundred and sixty and they go, okay, it's clear. And I said, well, did we look outside? Oh, well, I didn't want to. I didn't want to, you know, miss my heading. Well, why are we doing.
24:00
Bobby Doss
This? There's no ACS standard for heading on a clearing.
24:03
Wally Mulhern
Terminal. Exactly. Exactly. We're, we're trying to make sure there aren't, as best we can, no airplanes out there. And the other thing that, that I see is we do the clearing maneuvers and then we take 10 minutes to set up for the steep turn. So maybe the way to do it is to set everything up for the steep turn, perform whatever checklist you need to do, get to the speed you want to do. Okay. Then do the clearing maneuver and boom, right into the steep turn. Because that's the whole point. We don't want to hit.
24:34
Speaker 1
Anybody. Yeah.
24:36
Bobby Doss
Yeah. Makes.
24:37
Speaker 1
Sense.
24:37
Bobby Doss
Yeah. Is there anything in the turn that you see commonly done? I mean, I was, I'm thinking it, so I'm just gonna say it, but I had two CFIs that taught me during my private. One was the used trim, one was the not used trim. Right. Like, maybe that's not a common error, but one of those would set you up for less success than the other to being a great pilot, in my opinion. But do you all, do you care about that technique or is there an error around that.
25:02
Speaker 1
Technique? I don't, I don't care about one way or the other because there's pros and cons to both. Sure. You know the, the upside to using trim in the steep turn, that you don't have to add a lot of back pressure to make. If you get the right amount of trim in there, you don't have to add a lot of back pressure to make it work. The downside is that when you roll out, you better get that trim out quick or you're going to balloon past 100ft that you're given. And of course, the downside to not using trim is that you better keep enough back pressure in there to be able to maintain your altitude. So it's one more thing to have to worry about.
25:43
Speaker 1
So you're either worrying about it on the front by not using any trim, or you're worrying on a backside because you did use trim either way. But what I've noticed. It took me a while to kind of figure this out as a cfi. I'm sure that did you too, Wally, that the biggest common error besides the great trim controversy. We can do that in capital letters. The great trim controversy is when you're entering a left hand steep turn. The tendency for the Appleton is not to add enough back pressure soon enough. And in a right hand steep turn, too much too soon. Too much back pressure too soon. Just because of the fact you're a parallax on a side by side airplane.
26:24
Speaker 1
That parallax makes you look like you're starting a dive bombing run on some sort of a strafing run or something like that. On a right hand turn, it makes you. It looks like you're in a diving right hand turn and the Tendency is to haul back on the yoke, and before you know it, you've gained 150ft. So left hand turn, not soon enough. Back, back pressure, not soon enough on a right hand turn. Too much too.
26:46
Bobby Doss
Soon. Gotcha. Good tips for.
26:48
Wally Mulhern
Everybody. And I would say also the, you know, I would from a, I don't, maybe this is more of a CFI type thing, but I, I watch the applicant's eyes a lot of time to see where they are. And we're probably inside way too much. I, I, my, I say we ought to be outside about 85%, 15% inside. And I'm just, that's just winging it, you know. But you should be outside a lot more than inside. Now, problem is, here in Houston, a lot of times we have hazy days where there's not much of a horizon and we may be in the clear, but it's, it's hard to, just looks like mud out there. So, you know, sometimes you can't do that.
27:36
Wally Mulhern
But if you do have a very defined horizon and just pick where that airplane that knows that it needs to go on the horizon and keep it there, and guess what? This airplane is just gonna be rock.
27:47
Speaker 1
Solid.
27:48
Bobby Doss
Yeah. The guy that designed it had a pretty good idea how to make it.
27:51
Wally Mulhern
Turn. Yeah.
27:52
Bobby Doss
Yeah. All right. What, what I gotta think. Stalls are.
27:56
Speaker 1
Next. Stalls are slow flight. Either.
27:58
Wally Mulhern
One.
27:58
Speaker 1
Sure. What do you want to talk.
27:59
Bobby Doss
About? Go for it. I don't make mistakes on those. I'm just.
28:04
Speaker 1
Kidding. You just make improvements.
28:06
Wally Mulhern
Right? Yeah, I, I usually start out with slow flight, and what I find is we like to lose altitude on slow flight. And once you get slow, it's going to take a lot of power to maintain that altitude. And, and how much power? Well, the answer is whatever it takes. You know, once you get down around 50 knots or so, whatever it happens to be in the airplane that you're in, you know, you're behind the power curve, and it's going to take a lot of power to maintain that altitude. And, and we're supposed to do climbs and turns in slow flight. And, and so, you know, we're gonna do a few, few minor maneuvers, nothing, you know, too crazy, but we're gonna do some.
28:52
Bobby Doss
Things. I think I mentioned this before we started recording to Wally Pat, you might not have been there, but, you know, as a private applicant, I was scared to death of this stuff. Right. This is hard to do. Y' all are sitting over there drinking your coffee, whatever. None of this is bothering you because you understand everything, but it's pretty hard to think that I can fly this plane this slow and turn 90 degrees and climb 100ft. It's, it's. It's. For the applicant. There's a lot going on. Not that they shouldn't be able to do it, but I'm just saying there's so much going on compared to the master pilot in the room and the airline pilot in the.
29:25
Speaker 1
Room. Well, they make it hard on themselves by, for example, rushing the deployment of the flaps. Oftentimes, I'll see. And they'll pull back to 1700 RPMs or 15 or whatever the number is, whatever they've been taught. And as soon as they're inside the wide arm, bam. That first notch of flaps gets pulled in or put down, depending on what airplane you're flying. And if they're not on top of it, they're going to balloon 50, 75, 100ft right there. Just because. Because the added lift from, you know, from those flaps, and now they're already behind the eight ball. And now they've got to descend back to their target altitude because it isn't plus or minus 100ft.
30:02
Speaker 1
Once you get stabilized in slow flight, it's from the time you start to maneuver, which is the deployment of the flip, you know, the power and the, in the flaps. And so they get themselves behind the eight ball. I just tell them in the debrief, cool your jets, man. Just, just wait. Just, just let the airplane slow down. You don't get any extra points for speed. Here we.
30:23
Bobby Doss
Got.
30:23
Speaker 1
We're. Let's just slow down. And the way I used to teach slow flight was actually throttle back to idle and just apply trim and back pressure necessary to keep from losing altitude. As soon as you're in the. In. In the, in the wide arc, add that first notch of flaps or pull in that first notch and then pull in the second one and pull in the third one, and then push the power up to 1900 RPMs and boom, you're done. And then it's just a matter of adjusting pitch and power is necessary to maintain slow flight. And you might have to add a little bit more than 1900, but in a typical 172 or an archer, that's about what slow flight is. So they make it harder than it needs to be. And the other thing for me is this is a rudder maneuver.
31:02
Speaker 1
This is not an aileron maneuver. If you're told to make A right hand turn to a heading or left hand turn to a heading. Add a little bit more rudder to make that right turn. Back off that right rudder to make the left turn. Just don't let the bank get steeper than about 5 or 10 degrees. There's nothing that says how steep the bank has to be. It just. You just, you're turning. So let the airplane bank. But you know, reduce your right rudder until it's, you know, until you're in the bank on. You want that. Put enough back in to keep getting any steeper and then add more right rudder level out. You can do. If you're doing slow flight properly, you can actually put your left foot on the floor and fly it with your right.
31:36
Bobby Doss
Foot. Yeah, I do remember that. It's been a while since I've been in slow. A slow flight, but probably should go.
31:41
Speaker 1
Practice. Yeah. And then stalls. Yeah, Stalls. Holding, holding that plus or minus 10 degrees on the recovery. Especially in a, especially on a power. Power off stall dirty. When they add power, they forget to take into account the torque and doom the airplane goes off to the left and they don't get that right rudder in there soon.
32:05
Wally Mulhern
Enough. Yeah, yeah. And, and some to take what you were talking about slow flight is take your time with the stall. I mean I, I almost wish instead of calling them a power off and a power on stall, we would call it a landing stall and a departure stall. Because that's what we're simulating, a power off stall. We're simulating a landing and a power on stall. We're simulating a takeoff and a lot of my people and I can't say it's wrong. I don't think it's a great technique. But they pull the nose up and we have this crazy high nose up pitch and it's to get the airplane to slow down and that's. There's nothing that feels right about it. You're in the airplane, you're going, whoa, this is not right. So we're kind of not simulating a takeoff.
32:59
Wally Mulhern
So I say okay, let's let the airplane slow down at a slower rate and then add the power. So we're trying to simulate. Because what we're trying to do is we're trying to learn how to get out of trouble if we really.
33:14
Bobby Doss
Get naturally happens, not artificially make it.
33:18
Wally Mulhern
Happen.
33:18
Bobby Doss
Yes. All of us would artificially feel that if were in a warrior on a Runway pointing straight up in the air, something bad's about to happen. Yeah, but not if we take our eye off the ball and the throttle comes out while we're pitched up at the 30 degrees right or 20 degrees even.
33:30
Speaker 1
Right. Picking up the wing with the aileron. You know, if wing drops, trying to pick it up with the aileron, it'll only make it worse. So again, most. A lot of these things, common errors, are simply misapplication of rudder in a power on stall, a takeoff stall. As Wally was saying, once you get to a certain pitch angle, boy, you better start mashing some right rudder in there, or you're going to lose your 10 degree.
33:55
Wally Mulhern
Heading. Yeah.
33:56
Speaker 1
And. And again. And then. And then the wing drops. Why the wing drop? Well, because the ball was out of whack, you know, so that's. That's those. Those probably two are the two big ones on. On.
34:08
Bobby Doss
Stall. Everybody says they want to be a dp, but I don't see how y' all sit there and just let the. Let people do what they do to y' all in those aircraft. All right, what's.
34:16
Wally Mulhern
Next? We've.
34:17
Bobby Doss
Done. We've done the high work. Now we're turning our ways back down towards the.
34:21
Speaker 1
Ground. Well, we got to get down to the ground. So for me, my. Then for me, the next step is emergency procedures. And we. I do two. One is simulated engine fire, and the other was we actually lose the engine, where I'll reach back and pull the throttle back. And at least for me, it's the checklist again. I'm on something like an engine fire. Most of the time, they'll go through a flow, which is great because you want to starve the engine of gasoline, accelerant or whatever, you know, and get started downhill. But then they kind of forget to back it up with a quick look at the checklist.
35:00
Speaker 1
And the same thing with I've lost the engine, they'll spend an inordinate amount of time either trying to slow the airplane down to their best glide and maybe trying to find a field, and we'll lose 500 or 600ft before they've even began to pick up the checklist. To run the checklist and get the engine started. Seems to me it's probably more important to get the engine started or try to get the engine started as it is to find a good field to.
35:33
Wally Mulhern
Go. Yeah, and I use the driving down the road in a car. Now. Cars are much better than they were, you know, but back in the day, cars would stall. Sometimes you'd be driving on the road, your engine would quit. At least the cars I drove. And without even think about it, your first instinct was reach over the ignition and start that bad boy up again. You wanted to get it going. But sometimes in airplanes, we, you know, we. Okay, engine failure. Okay, I'm gonna go land in that field. I'll go. Why not start the engine up again, you know, or at least let's consider.
36:09
Speaker 1
It. Yeah, yeah.
36:12
Bobby Doss
Yeah. Sometimes there's a lot of things that I think I didn't know when I was a private pilot applicant. But, you know, it could be starved of fuel. It could be a lot of simple things that just get you right back to going perfectly.
36:22
Speaker 1
Normal. Oh, yeah. Switching the fuel. I mean that.
36:24
Bobby Doss
Alone. You don't want to put the plane down in the field for.
36:27
Speaker 1
Sure. And then the choice of fields, oftentimes you can, you know, they have a disadvantage because these are low time. They've got 20, 30, 40 hours, whatever it might. 40, 50 hours, but check ride time, 60 maybe, but they don't have any glider time. And there's nothing wrong with not having any glider time except you get some glider time. You learn how real quickly to pick a good field because sooner or later, if you fly gliders enough, you're going to go down in a field that's not your airport. And I see, in fact, yesterday, again, a great checkride, but the guys chose what was really a freshly plowed field and then lined up perpendicular to the rows when two fields to the south of that was kind of a light green colored cow.
37:08
Wally Mulhern
Pasture.
37:09
Speaker 1
Yeah. So, okay, he would have made the field and he did everything beautifully. So, okay, so there's a debrief fight and we're going to talk about your choice of fields. You know, dark green, probably not good crops in.
37:21
Bobby Doss
It. We've all seen the name of the perfectly green field. Yeah. Just on the other side of a.
37:26
Speaker 1
Runway. Yeah, yeah, we missed the Runway. I, I did.
37:30
Bobby Doss
I. When I was a student, we flew out in the practice area and it was always over a private Runway. And he would pull and I was so lost and confused. I don't know where I was at. He was, I put you over this Runway every time and you've never seen.
37:41
Wally Mulhern
It. Yeah, I actually had it happen yesterday. The, the young man, he picked a field and were going for it and it was going to work, gonna work. And so after I said, okay, let's go around and I said, I said, wow, it's. Look, look over there. Looks Those buildings look like hangars. And he says, yeah, they do. And I go, and there's a big green thing like on, in the middle of the hangars that looks like a Runway. And he goes, yeah, it does. And I go, well, you know why they look like hangarage? You know why it looks like a Runway? Because it is. It's an airport. And he just kind of, we got a chuckle out of that, you know, but, you know, I, I failed the engine at that point anyway, you know, to see if he would see it.
38:30
Wally Mulhern
And, and I get that. I mean, I, I've, I spent a lot of time looking down on, you know, and so I, I've got a lot of experience doing that. And so I'm, you know, there was no ill will with that, but we did. There was an airport right.
38:47
Bobby Doss
There. That's.
38:48
Speaker 1
Crazy.
38:48
Bobby Doss
Yeah. What's.
38:49
Speaker 1
Next? Ground reference maneuvers. We'll talk about.
38:51
Wally Mulhern
That. Let me go back to the engine failure. The engine failure thing. I, one thing I see a lot is forgetting to tell anybody that you're going.
39:02
Speaker 1
Down. Yes, of.
39:03
Wally Mulhern
Course. And, you know, I, I, after it's all over with, I jokingly tell them. I said, well, so here's the headline and the Houston Chronicle tomorrow, Houston, young man crashes airplane in field. He survives the crash but is eaten alive by wild feral hogs. This is because you crashed it and you didn't tell anybody. You know, we've all watched police shows on tv. When a police officer gets in trouble, what's the first thing he does is he calls for backup. So it's something, you know, that we can do. We don't have to even call for it. We have this transponder, and 7700 is a beautiful thing. It's a very powerful tool.
39:52
Wally Mulhern
I actually have an app on my phone where if any airplane in the world squawks 76, 75, or 7700, I get a text and I can click on it and I can go to the flight and I can see the airplane and, you know, follow them along. Follow along with them. I mean, and this is real time. So that 7700 squawk is a very powerful.
40:17
Bobby Doss
Thing. No.
40:18
Wally Mulhern
Question. No.
40:19
Bobby Doss
Question. All right, so back to ground reference maneuvers. Wally, you want to start.
40:25
Wally Mulhern
There? Well, you know, I don't have the ACS memorized, but I do believe one of the first things on there is clear the area. So don't forget, we should be doing clearing turns on ground reference maneuvers. As well. And what I say to the applicant is, I say, let's climb. You know, I usually do this after the. The engine out scenario. So I say, let's. Let's fly the appropriate altitude for ground reference maneuvers. And a couple days ago, a guy says, well, how are you with 2,000ft? And I said, well, I said, let's do what the ACS says. And he says, well, okay, we'll go down lower. And, you know, I, during the debrief, I said, so have you been doing your ground reference maneuvers at 2,000ft? He goes, yeah, well, my instructor doesn't like being down low. And I swell.
41:27
Wally Mulhern
You did it correctly on the checkride. You obviously passed the checkride. But that's just. That's just wrong. The ACS is 600 to a thousand feet AGL, so that's what we need to.
41:39
Speaker 1
Do. Yeah, yeah, that's. That's a big one. And just misplaying the wind on. On ground reference maneuvers. Just misinterpreting, misplaying. Ms. Applying, you know, the controls for what the wind is doing to.
41:53
Wally Mulhern
You.
41:53
Speaker 1
Right. Altitude, holding altitude, that kind of.
41:56
Wally Mulhern
Stuff. Yeah. And the wind is probably pretty close. Probably close to the airport you took off from. But, you know, look around. There's very possibly some smoke that you can look.
42:09
Bobby Doss
At. Smokes. The easy.
42:10
Wally Mulhern
One. Yeah, Smoke.
42:11
Speaker 1
Is. So is water on a.
42:13
Wally Mulhern
Pond.
42:13
Speaker 1
Yeah. You know, that's a big one. And a lot of these kids. Kids, I say a lot of these applicants don't. Don't realize that there are some things that you can look at on the ground. Like, like.
42:23
Wally Mulhern
Water.
42:23
Speaker 1
Right. And there's lots of little ponds around.
42:25
Bobby Doss
Here. Well, at a thousand feet, maybe not 2,000. You might not be able to see the ripples from.
42:29
Speaker 1
2000. You see the ripples at 2000ft. So depending on where the sun is, that's. That's the key there. So, yeah, it's just misplaying the wind on that.
42:38
Bobby Doss
So. So I did feel like once I did my two laps around a point, were headed back. I thought, man, check rides over. I think I've done it. I think I've done it. There's got to be more mistakes. What's left there? What are, what are applicants doing when they're heading back? That may be not to.
42:55
Wally Mulhern
Standards. Well, I, I won't say to standard, but typically, you know, if. If I do all this just right at this point, we're probably maybe 18 miles from the airport, where, you know, I don't like to be, you know, we like to get this thing done in a timely matter. So in a perfect world, I would say we would be about 18 miles from the airport. So at this point, what I tell the applicant is, we're lost. Get us back to XYZ airport. And at this point I will say everything is available to you. Okay, if they want to use their gps, if they want to use atc, they want say, hey, I'm lost, help me out. And at this point I will be atc. And I will say, okay, what, you know, I'll give them a squawk. Squawk 1, 2, 0, 0.
43:48
Wally Mulhern
Okay, radar contact. Turn left heading so and so Airport is 12 o' clock in 16 miles. Advise when you have it in sight is what I will say. But so you know, most of them have. We have GPS in most of the airplanes. So they'll plug in the airport and we head to it and everything's really good. And I'll say, okay, let's go back to such and such an airport and tell me we want to stay in the pattern and do some landings. And I think a lot of them at this point, like you said, Bobby, I think a lot of them maybe go, okay, almost done.
44:27
Bobby Doss
Easy. Guards.
44:27
Wally Mulhern
Dropped. Make well now they forget to. Let's tune in and get the ATIs. Let's go ahead. And as soon as you get that atis, maybe you're not going to call the tower until you're maybe 10 miles out, but there's nothing since we can't start monitoring tower 16 miles out to kind of get a flow for the airport, maybe there's an airplane that's disabled on the Runway and maybe the airport's closed. You know, wouldn't that be nice to know now rather than later? Maybe there's been a wind shift since we took off and we're landing on a different Runway. Maybe your controller that you don't like is working or maybe your favorite controller, whatever, but you can kind of get a flavor for the what's going on at the airport by monitoring.
45:16
Wally Mulhern
So yeah, let's get the ATIs, it's information, Victor, and get ready to call them.
45:22
Bobby Doss
Up. Pat, anything to add to.
45:24
Speaker 1
That? No, not at all. I think that's a great summary of the kind of things that can go wrong coming back to the airport. You.
45:29
Bobby Doss
Bet. Well, we are at 45 minutes, so we're gonna have to wrap up part two of now, maybe a part three series because I really wanted to talk instrument stuff. I can't wait to hear about all of the mistakes common errors, faux pas that instrument pilots make on their checkride day. But until we get a chance to record that episode, let's all keep flying safely and stay behind the.
45:54
Nick Alan
Prop. Thanks for checking out the behind the Prop podcast. Be sure to click subscribe and check us out online@bravethep.com behind the Prop is recorded in Houston, Texas. Creator and host is Bobby Doss. Co host is Wally Mulhern. The show is for entertainment purposes only and is not meant to replace actual flight instruction. Thanks for listening and remember, fly.