A good pilot always prepares for a BAD day. We discuss a few life saving procedures on this week's episode.
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00:01
Behind the Prop
Clear prop SR73 Cherokee number two following Flint 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.
00:24
Bobby Doss
What's up Wally?
00:25
Wally Mulhern
Hey Bobby, how are you?
00:27
Bobby Doss
I am fantastic as always this week. We're tackling a number of things that we've discussed on and off lately. It's really about preparing for a bad day. And that's the title of today's show. I don't think I do it a lot in my real life. I do think I do it a little bit in my aviation life. You're always kind of making sure that, you know, the worst case, right from the takeoff briefing to whatever else, you're really kind of always thinking about the bad day. But I think you've seen some things on checkrides and I've talked to some, to students and there's been a few occurrences lately where we want to share some of these thoughts with everybody about maybe what we should be doing just in case the day's worse than we expected.
01:11
Wally Mulhern
Yeah, you know, I use a lot of sports analogies and I think as a sports fan, let's say your team was the New Orleans Saints and your Saints are going to go play the packers on December 11th and they get up to Green Bay and It's you know, 5 degrees and snowing and the Saints, they don't do very well. And in the post game comments they say, well we practiced all week indoors in the Superdome under climate controlled conditions. We weren't just ready for the cold weather and the wind and the snow. I think as a fan you would look at that and you go, what are you idiots?
01:58
Bobby Doss
Yeah, the forecast was there for sure.
02:01
Wally Mulhern
Yeah, yeah, you're going to Green Bay in December, you know, be prepared for a bad day. And, and that's what we want to talk about here. You know, we fly, it's not unusual for us to be flying around in 45 year old airplanes. A lot of the airplanes that we fly around are, you know, 80s airplanes. That's 40 some odd year old airplanes. And they're good, they're very good airplanes and they work almost all the time, but occasionally they don't work. And one thing I want to bring up is I want to talk about electrical failures and when I say electrical failure, I'm Talking about a failure of the electrical system. We've talked a lot about alternator failures. An alternator failure is not an electrical system failure. An alternator failure. Alternator is a component of the electrical system, and it's certainly a failure.
03:06
Wally Mulhern
But, you know, an alternator failure is a failure of the battery charger. It's just like your phone, unable to charge your phone. It still works. You just can't charge it. But what I want to talk about is a total, complete failure of the electrical system. Everything electrical in the airplane is not working. Now, how are we going to handle that? And as CFIs, can we prepare our students for that maybe a little bit better. And here's a very simple thing that we can do, I think, as instructors. How many times have, for the student pilots or for everybody, how many times have you gone out and taken the headset off and just talked to the person in the airplane without the headset, without using the intercom system? I don't.
04:08
Wally Mulhern
I'm coming up on a thousand checkrides administered, and I don't recall ever doing a checkride in an airplane that didn't have an intercom system. So we've become accustomed to it. We're used to it. But that intercom system is electric. If we have a total electrical failure, you're going to lose the intercom system. And just taking the headset off and talking to the person in the airplane with you is a challenge. And it's just something that we've never dealt with. So maybe Derek Carr is fine in playing in 5 degree weather, but, you know, you probably ought to practice it.
04:56
Bobby Doss
Yep. And I remember one time were flying along and my instructor told me to reach over and turn off the master switch, and I was freaking out. I didn't, of course, I didn't know the systems well enough. Right. Turn the master switch off. And he really was first and foremost demonstrating that the engine would keep running, which is a good demonstration. But I also had the experience of being able to talk without the intercom. And we had to remove a cup from our ear and we had to scream at each other for a little bit. But I at least have experienced it once and know what it's going to be like if it ever were to happen. And I think that's what you're suggesting is go experience these things. Go practice these things before they happen.
05:37
Bobby Doss
It would be much wiser for us to prepare for that bad day, then getting to the bad day and then learning how to deal with it. You're only Going to be your best, worst at the worst day.
05:49
Wally Mulhern
I've kind of done an informal poll of asking my applicants how many of you have done this, and it's pretty much zero percent. Everybody just kind of looks at me and goes, well, we've never done that, so. Well, maybe you ought to do that. Of course, I mean, we don't go out and do it on the checkride. It's not time to mix things up. You know, just how are we going to communicate? And there could be a situation where maybe you still have electricity, but maybe your intercom goes out. So how are you going to handle that? You know, you are. You're going to have to turn the speaker on. You're going to have to listen to ATC via the speaker because the intercom isn't working. So those are some switches and buttons on that intercom that maybe we're not used to using.
06:41
Wally Mulhern
And I think it's very worthwhile to use that. The other thing is, how in the world are we going to navigate with a total electrical failure? And I'll bring this up on instrument checkrides and, you know, sometimes I'll get the answer. Well, the GPS isn't going to work, so we're going to have to navigate using VORs. And then I kind of give a funny look and then they go, wait a minute, Vors won't work. Well, we'll squawk 7,000, 680. Well, wait a minute, the transponder is not going to work. So all this, all these lost com procedures we have in IFR flying, flight elast assigned route and all that good stuff, it's going to be hard to do if you can't navigate. So the losscom procedures that we have in the book really don't take into consideration lost nav.
07:49
Wally Mulhern
And I think probably the most common reason for a total. Well, probably the most common reason for loss com is pilot error. We've flipped a switch or something. But if we eliminate that, probably the next most common reason for a total loss of communication would be a total loss of electrical power. And in that case, you're going to have lost nav as well. So how are we going to navigate? Well, we're going to use the iPad. Legal. Yeah, no, Well, I, you know, it's an emergency, so, you know, I, you know, it's.
08:32
Bobby Doss
You just made me fall into the DPE trap. You asked the question and I answered it without really thinking. My answer was in reference to is it legal to file a flight Plan and use my iPad. That source of a plan.
08:45
Wally Mulhern
Right. Well, I'm happy with all the answers because, you know, people say, no, it's not legal. Okay, well, let's talk about that. Yes, it is legal. Well, let's talk about that. And I'll kind of play devil's advocate with the applicant. But it brings up a good discussion point. That might be all you have. That might be all you have is the iPad. I need to get to XYZ airport and maybe the air. The weather is a thousand overcast and there are towers in the way, so I can't just blindly descend. Maybe I need to, you know, fly an arrival or fly an approach using my iPad. Not ideal, but that might be all you have. And, and I have had a total electrical failure in a single engine airplane and within the last several years.
09:38
Wally Mulhern
But luckily the weather was such that the weather was not a factor at all. There wasn't a cloud in the sky, so that wasn't, you know, that wasn't an issue. But I was on an IFR flight plan and from the time we realized that there was a problem till the time that we actually lost everything was probably about 8 seconds. So we really didn't have time to do any kind of reaction.
10:06
Bobby Doss
That's crazy. That's got to be something that you thought that was a bad day.
10:11
Wally Mulhern
Oh, it was a bad day. Yeah, it was a bad day.
10:16
Bobby Doss
Would it have been a badder day if you were in the clouds?
10:19
Wally Mulhern
It would.
10:20
Bobby Doss
Meaning a worse day.
10:21
Wally Mulhern
It would have been a much better day. You know, I, I got a nice airplane with nice equipment, autopilot, all the nice stuff in the airplane. But, you know, it's like you can have the barbecue pit all ready to go and the stakes there, but if you don't have the ability to light that fire, all that stuff doesn't do you any good.
10:46
Bobby Doss
True that. So you said it on podcasts in the past. Have I, have I or other listeners ever really shot an approach with just their iPad? Really? Again, it's doing that is doing that to prepare for this bad day. It's not using it as the way you're going to start flying or change the way you use the equipment in your aircraft for the planes you're renting. But man, if you're a user of an EFB and you have a device that gives you the ads B traffic and all that goodness of a tight signal, man, why wouldn't you use that to practice a couple times? Just in case. Right.
11:20
Bobby Doss
Maybe cover a lot of stuff up with a safety pilot on a really nice VFR day and go out there and use only the reference to that iPad, just so you can see what things do. Make sure you know how to change the orientation of north up or not north up. Make sure, you know, you like all that stuff just in case that ever happens.
11:40
Wally Mulhern
Absolutely. And let me just throw this disclaimer out. We are not advocating go out in an airplane with no equipment in it and navigate around the world using an iPad. We're not saying that all at all. You know, the, the analogy I use, I will say to, you know, my students or whatever in the briefing room, I says, look, if a bad guy comes in this room to do harm to us, I don't have a weapon here, but I have a pen. And, and I will use that pen as a weapon to defend myself or to defend you. I'm gonna fight back. I'm gonna go down fighting. And that's kind of like, you know, the iPad. Using the iPad to navigate using a.
12:25
Bobby Doss
Pin as a weapon, not a writing utensil. Right. So.
12:27
Wally Mulhern
Exactly. Exactly.
12:30
Bobby Doss
Yeah, yeah. So what about, what's the next thing we're gonna talk about from a standpoint of preparing for a bad day?
12:38
Wally Mulhern
The other thing is, and I ask this on every single one my commercial checkrides. This was the very first aviation related question that my father ever asked me. This would have been in September of 1981. I took my first official flying lesson on August 31, 1981. And so this was a few a week or so, couple of weeks later, I probably had about three hours of flying time on a Piper Tomahawk. And I, I distinctly remember my father saying to me, if you're starting the engine while starting it, and you see flames coming from underneath the cowling, what are you going to do? And the fact that he was asking me this, I knew the answer wasn't abandon the start and get out and run.
13:41
Wally Mulhern
I knew there was more to it because that was, that's kind of the default answer, you know, get out and run. So I went and got my little handbook for my PA 3810012 Piper Tomahawk. And I looked it up. There's a checklist for engine fire during start. And basically what you do is you do pull the mixture back to cut off, but you keep cranking the engine. And different airplanes may have you do different things with the throttle. Some will go full forward on the throttle, fully open, but basically what we want to do is we want to take those flames, we want to suck them in to the engine. We're eliminating the fuel. So we're eliminating one of the three things we need for a fire. We're not eliminating the spark because we're continuing to crank. So the spark is still going on.
14:36
Wally Mulhern
We can eliminate the air, but we can eliminate the fuel. So one of the three things that is required for a fire we've eliminated. And in theory, the fire should go out. Now, my father grew up in the generation of flying big radial engines. He flew constellations, he flew DC3s. And this was, this is just pretty common. This sort of happened every day. And so those guys were used to this. But today, most people aren't aware that this is the procedure. And I say check your POH of your airplane to make sure what the exact procedure is. But by and large, you're going to bring the mixture to cut off and you're going to continue cranking. And I say cranking because we're not starting because we've brought the fuel away.
15:29
Wally Mulhern
We're not trying to start the engine, but we are turning it and we're trying to suck the flames inside and put the fire out.
15:39
Bobby Doss
And obviously this is in every POH and you should be able to know these processes. But it's one of those things that I really do get concerned about. Right. We run these planes all day. We, we probably have 30% flooded starts because we go out there and we read the normal checklist and we still prime or we still use the fuel pump to prime the engine. In a hot engine, that's, that could be a lot of extra gas and it won't take much for one of those to backfire or catch on fire. And you surely don't want someone to get out and watch a plane just burn up because they didn't know how to handle the situation.
16:16
Wally Mulhern
Yeah, yeah. And, and I don't care what your POH says. This, you just have to know this. You have to have this memorized you. And. And worst case, if you kind of have the, of theory behind what your airplane does. And, and again, they're all the same. Theoretically, they're all the same. The individual steps may be just a little bit different, but theory is get the fuel off and continue to crank the engine.
16:49
Bobby Doss
What's the next thing that you've seen on checkrides lately that maybe aren't prepared for enough in case the day goes bad?
16:58
Wally Mulhern
Another thing that comes up is, and I see this on multi Engine checkrides for the most part a multi engine applicant. This is probably the first complex airplane that they've flown by and large, you know, well now to get your commercial you don't need complex time. You can get technically advanced time. So we've, I think we're kind of missing a step. Back in the day you would, you know, you get your instrument typically in a, a non complex airplane but then when you went on a commercial you had to get 10 hours of complex time. And, and the regulations requirements have changed a little bit since then. So what I see is a lack of knowledge about how to manually extend the gear. And this can go back to our very first discussion.
18:10
Wally Mulhern
A lot of the airplanes, if you have an electrical failure, the gear is not coming down. So you know, I will say okay, you know, I'll incorporate this into the electrical failure. Okay, we've had a total electrical failure of the airplane. How are we going to get the gear down? And procedurally different airplanes do things a little bit differently. I do, I do some in a Beechcraft and a lot of times they'll say well I reach behind me and I crank it down. Well that's sort of partially right, but it's not completely right because there are a couple of steps before just reaching back there and cranking the gear down. It's very important like turning the, or pulling the circuit breaker for the gear motor. Now granted if we've had an electrical failure, the gear motor is not going to work anyway.
19:12
Wally Mulhern
So in that scenario it doesn't, it's not really going to matter. But procedurally it's wrong and I think we need to get into the manual gear extension a little bit more and I'll take an informal poll and I'll say well have you ever done this? They'll say no, but we talked about it. Well why not spend an extra 10 minutes a flight in your multi engine training? Most people are going to get you know, say 10 hours. Let's take 10 minutes, 10, 15 minutes and do a manual gear extension. When I, when I bought into a partnership on a bonanza years ago, I went and flew with a guy here in Houston that's a bonanza and Baron Guru and went out and I, I paid him for the whole day. We flew all day and we flew about four and a half hours.
20:10
Wally Mulhern
We, we did some ground and I was a, you know, a very experienced pilot with a lot of time in a Beechcraft Baron. But went out, we did everything, we steep turns, stalls Emergency descent, and we did a manual gear extension. Flew several approaches, several landings, but we did the manual gear extension. There's something to, you know, when it says to pull the gear motor circuit breaker, well, you know, what's it label? Does it. Does the label on the circuit breaker panel say gear motor, or does it say gear actuator? You know, what are you looking for? Be familiar for that with that. Because especially in an electrical failure, you might be. You might want to get the airplane on the ground a little bit sooner. You certainly don't want to rush. You're not going to fall out of the sky.
21:06
Wally Mulhern
But, you know, you've probably lost your fuel gauges, so maybe you've lost track of how much fuel you have. So you definitely want to get the airplane on the ground. And this probably not ideal for this to be the first time that you've tried this procedure.
21:26
Bobby Doss
When I bought the Travelaire, the twin that we use at this flight school, I would, during the pre buy the mechanic, the team at that shop called me down there when they had everything torn apart. So seats out, flooring, pulled up, engine cowlings off, and they was up on Jackson. He showed me the gear working, showed me there was no leaks. He was kind of both teaching me a little bit about the plane and kind of just demonstrating some stuff. And he said, one thing you want to make sure you never do is demonstrate the emergency gear extension with the circuit breaker in, and I want to show you why. So in that airplane, the handle kind of folds to engage, folds out, to engage, folds in, to disengage.
22:11
Bobby Doss
So in essence, what it's doing is it's taking a gear, a shaft, drive shaft, putting it into the motor itself. And the handle will spin when it's. When it's. When the engine or the motor spinning, meaning the motor for the year. And so he pulled that handle out and said, imagine if your hand was in that small little area between that handle and the floorboard. And he put the gear down and that handle spun at around 100. I don't know, I'm going to say maybe 500 RPM. And it would just rip your hand right off. It would destroy it. You would have a nub, maybe some fingers left, but there wouldn't be much left of your hand. And so you can't just reach back there and then someone else accidentally put the gear down to demonstrate something because you might lose your hand.
22:56
Bobby Doss
You got to pull that circuit breaker. You have to know those procedures, and you got to follow that Checklist or you'll be nubless.
23:03
Wally Mulhern
Yeah, absolutely. And it's so easy to do. It's, you know, you talk about it in the briefing room. Hey, we're going to go out, we're going to do a manual gear extension under a no straight stress situation today. I mean, we do it with engine failures. We practice engine failures. I would hope we practice engine failures a lot. And so we practice the big stuff, but let's practice the little stuff. I mean, I, I would hope that we practice, you know, the partial panel stuff. Whether it's a airplane has a vacuum system. We, we have a vacuum system failure simulation. So we do all that. So why don't we add the manual gear extension to that? I think it would be a, a great learning experience.
23:51
Bobby Doss
No question. So we have a hodgepodge of other things that we didn't really know what the heading would be. But we both, we're both older guys now. Today's Wally's birthday, so y' all can give him a little shout out when you listen to the show. But there's this concept or this, I guess, perception that I have that people look at some of these trainers or the art of flying airplanes a lot like driving a car, and they don't have a lot of concern for having a bad day. Like, maybe it's because they've got 200 hours and they've never had a bad day. What are your thoughts on that, Wally?
24:31
Wally Mulhern
Yeah, I definitely, you know, you're gonna, there's gonna be a day. There's gonna be a day. I mean, I don't know how many hours I have, but, you know, 27,000, 28,000. But you know, how much of that is single engine piston airplanes? I really don't know. Probably about 4,000. And I've had one total electrical failure. I've, I've never lost an engine in a single engine airplane. I have in a twin engine airplane. So you could, you can do the odds and say, well, odds are I'm pretty good. But that's not the way to do it. You've got to prepare for that. I, I rented a Tesla for the first time several months ago and the guy at the counter of the rental car place said to me, he said, have you ever driven a Tesla? And I said no.
25:30
Wally Mulhern
He said, well, you're not driving a car, you're driving a computer. Here you go. See you later. That was, that was what I got. And I got in the car and I couldn't make it move. And I felt really stupid. Luckily, there's nobody there watching me. I finally got the car to move and I'm driving it out of the parking lot. I got up to the little booth where you hand them the paperwork and everything. They check everything and they looked at everything. I said, okay, you're good to go. And then I hit the gas and I couldn't get the car to go again. And, you know, there's a big long line behind me. And, and the, the girl at the little booth said, what, you don't know how to make it go? And I said, well, no, obviously I don't.
26:14
Wally Mulhern
And I said, do you? And she said, well, no, I better call somebody. So there was an example of, you know, I didn't get much and I, you know, shame on me for not asking or doing a little research on my own. But having said that, other than inconveniencing some people, you know, it wasn't that big of a deal. Yeah, some people behind me in line or were not happy with me, but nobody got hurt. I think what we have to realize in airplanes is it. It we could get hurt and we could hurt other people. You know, what goes up must come down. So if we get up there, that airplane is eventually coming down.
27:04
Bobby Doss
No question. And I think that's a really good analogy because a lot of what I do see is the system stuff, right? It's. And that's what that was for you and the Tesla, right? It wasn't can you drive or are you a safe driver? That didn't increase your probability of necessarily having a bad day from a driving perspective. But the systems in that vehicle could have caused the bad day. And nothing. There could have been nothing wrong. It was just a lack of understanding how to use those systems to take advantage of what the car was trying to do, which is drive, right? Now, you take that same analogy and you put it into an aircraft and someone decides they're going to fly a G1000 aircraft with not a lot of G1000 times. That could be similar to driving your first Tesla or driving.
27:52
Bobby Doss
Driving a car with a complex gear system that you've never done it, and then having that electrical failure and not knowing that other. The other way to get that gear down, which would be the manual extension and doing it the right way and doing it safely. There's a lot of little things like that I think I see that the easiest one that almost happens on a regular basis is audio panels.
28:14
Wally Mulhern
Oh, yeah.
28:15
Bobby Doss
But Was not very long ago, someone was on a checkride and came inside telling me both radios were dead. Both. Both radios were broken. I said, that's not. That doesn't happen that way. They don't just both break at the exact same time. So I suspect there's something else wrong. What do you think that might be? And this is a person, you see him all the time, that wants to be certified to take and rent these planes alone. What happens if that happens in the air? It was the audio panel, right? It's almost 99.9% of time the audio panel being configured incorrectly. Go out there, flip one switch, and it's. All the radios are fixed again. It's a configuration problem. It's a knowing the systems. It's the knowing the switches and buttons in that aircraft. And there's a lot of them.
29:04
Bobby Doss
In some bigger aircraft, these, not so much. But when one gets flipped the wrong way, it can make for a really freaking bad day.
29:11
Wally Mulhern
Yeah, I think when something's not working, something basic like that, like the radios, the first place we got to look is in the mirror because it's probably operator error. And, and for the experienced airline people out there, you know that, I mean, we've all made that embarrassing call to maintenance to tell them that the such and such is not working. And they'll say, well, have you check this, and you look over there at whatever they just said and you just go, yeah, okay, we're good. Thanks. Sorry. And, you know, there's. There's that moment of embarrassment, but. But you get over it really quickly. So, you know, just, I, I use this phrase a lot. Do the math. I mean, chances of two radios independently failing in one of these airplanes is.
30:06
Bobby Doss
Extremely, extremely slim at the exact same time. Yes.
30:11
Wally Mulhern
Yeah. Yeah.
30:12
Bobby Doss
Maybe not. Maybe not if the alternator quits working and then ultimately the battery drains. But right on the ground, if you're hearing something, it's probably just an audio panel. Yeah. I had an experience actually, yesterday. I was lucky enough to fly up front in a small jet with the single pilot operation jet. I'm learning a bunch. I've been in this jet more than once. I kind of feel good when I'm up there because I kind of know the avionics in it and been up there enough to feel somewhat good about what's going on. And the pilot says, were descending into Houston. He goes, you're not thinking about something and you're going to miss it if you don't figure it out. You got about 30 seconds and I'm running through every mental flow that I can think of about airspace.
31:00
Bobby Doss
And we're on an IFR flight plan. And I'm thinking throttles, I'm thinking light switches, I'm thinking radios, radio numbers, everything that I can possibly think of. And we were getting down to about 10,000ft, Wally. And you probably know exactly what I was going to miss, because I don't ever freaking think about it. What do you think I was going to miss, Wally?
31:22
Wally Mulhern
I think you're probably above 250 knots.
31:26
Bobby Doss
I was. 250 knots. So at about five seconds before we got to that altitude, he said, put the throttles to idle. So I yanked him to idle and he goes, you're going too fast. I'm like, golly, I never have to think about that in a Cessna. Much like maybe don't ever have to think about how to make a Tesla go forward.
31:43
Wally Mulhern
Right.
31:43
Bobby Doss
Something that could really make for a bad day. That, that would maybe be a violation for somebody, not necessarily an equipment problem. But we don't all know what we don't know. And you got to keep challenging yourself to prepare for those things that might sneak up and get you and make a day that was going to be good. A bad day. Anything you want to talk about? Anything else you want to add, Wally?
32:07
Wally Mulhern
No, I think we talked about some good things and we got some more good things coming down the pipe. And just thanks to all the listeners we are. I. The last I checked, I think we're about 200 and what, 225,000 downloads? Something like that.
32:27
Bobby Doss
Pretty close.
32:27
Wally Mulhern
We appreciate the support.
32:29
Bobby Doss
Yeah, I don't think I've ever said it, but we do. If you go to behind the prop.com in the top left hand side, we do have a merchant thing up there now. No obligation, but if you want a T shirt, some people have bought a few T shirts off the website. If you want a T shirt to support the show, go to behind the prop.com, click merchandise in the top left hand corner and grab you a T shirt. I'll ship it out to you as soon as I see your purchase. We would appreciate that and it would help the show a little bit. As always, prepare for a bad day and stay behind the prop.
33:02
Nick Alan
Thanks for checking out the behind the Prop podcast. Be sure to click subscribe and check us out online@brave.theprop.com behind the Prop is requesting 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 safe.