As we congratulate our own Wally on 1,000 checkrides given, we tap his brain and discuss aeronautical decision making this week on Behind The Prop!
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00:01
Behind the Prop Intro
Clear prop 773 Cherokee number two following swim 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.
00:22
Bobby Doss
What's up Wally?
00:24
Wally Mulhern
Hey Bobby, how are you?
00:26
Bobby Doss
Fantastic as always this week. Based on some things you've seen and a huge milestone you have reached, we're going to talk about aeronautical decision making today. Before we start recording, you shared with me that you've done 1,000 check rides. I can only imagine the aeronautical decision making. You've seen over 1,000 check rides.
00:48
Wally Mulhern
Yeah, it was, you know, obviously I keep track of checkrides on a yearly basis just for my, my records. There was a time where to renew our designation we had to provide actual numbers to the faa. And now that we've come into a little bit more of an automatic tracking system, we don't have to do that anymore. But I still keep track of it. And yeah, it was a thousand checkrides. Just actually the last checkride I gave, which thanks to the weather here in Houston, was two weeks ago, so. So I probably had about 12 others scheduled that have all been canceled. And hopefully tomorrow we're going to get back in the air and start certifying some pilots to go out.
01:35
Bobby Doss
We all hope so.
01:37
Wally Mulhern
Yeah.
01:38
Bobby Doss
So we're not just talking about aeronautical decision making. We're talking really about how instructors are teaching aerodynamical decision making. Maybe some tips from your perspective on how we can teach it better, maybe to make it stick a little bit more and maybe ways that we can use techniques to make better decisions ourselves and talk through some of this. So you have a few ideas? I have a few ideas. How do you think people learn how to do aeronautical decision making?
02:07
Wally Mulhern
Well, let me just preface this with if there's so many resources out there nowadays for aspiring pilots or continuing pilots. But there are just so many, you know, electronic resources. There are so many books out there that are really good resources. But I always come back to three main books. And if I were to say to, I believe probably 85% of what we need to know as pilots comes out of three books. And one of them is the Far aim. There's the rules. It's the rule book. We have the Airplane Flying Handbook and then we have the P Hack or the Pilot's Handbook of Aeronautical Knowledge. And in that book, if you look in that book, you pull out the P hack. Chapter one is all about, it's kind of nice to know stuff.
03:12
Wally Mulhern
But it talks about how the different levels of pilot certificates, it talks about the fa, talks about the history of flight. Really, in chapter one, there's probably not a whole lot in there that is absolutely required to safely fly an airplane. So you go to chapter two, which is really the first meaty chapter of the book. It's aeronautical decision making. So the FAA thinks it's pretty important. And what I see as an examiner is a lot of people have never made a decision. They never had to make a decision because their instructors have made the decision. So, you know, as a private pilot, you're required to have 10 hours of solo time. And obviously, you know, when they show up for a private pilot check ride, we look for that. And in some cases we'll see 10 hours.
04:13
Wally Mulhern
And sometimes some cases you'll see a little bit more. But you know, that's 10 hours of supervised flying where, you know, maybe they went up with their instructor, they did three or four landings, and then the instructor got out of the airplane, they went and did three or four landings. So maybe they log one. 2.6 is solo. When they do their cross country, they have to have an endorsement to fly that cross country from a cfi. So they've consulted and they've gone out and flown this cross country. What I find very interesting is when applicants come in for their instrument rating, I'll look at their logbook totals. And by and large, most of them still have 10 hours of solo time or whatever they had when they got their private. And of course, they have the required pilot and command time.
05:15
Wally Mulhern
And I'll ask them about that pic time. I'll say, well, of this 50 hours of pic time, who was in the airplane with you? And most of the time it's all, oh, it was my cfi, but I was, you know, doing the duties of pilot command. Well, you can say that, but it's just not the same. It is just not the same. So now we've got someone who's coming in for an instrument rating and then, you know, the next step is commercial. So here they are. They are now, you know, once they get their commercial, they're legal to go out and fly people around and make money at it. And they've never really had to make a decision.
06:01
Bobby Doss
Yeah, I, I don't remember. I remember the first big decision I had to make, of course, in flying. But I think it was a lacking thing in my early training of my CFI decided if were going. I never was really involved in that decision making. He was a great cfi. I just don't think that were too worried about that stuff in those days. So I remember getting to my private checkride and not being comfortable making the decision about the wins that day.
06:31
Wally Mulhern
Right.
06:31
Bobby Doss
Because I had never kind of knew what I had flown in, but I never had personal minimums. I didn't know what those, what I was really willing to fly in by myself because somebody had always been there helping me make those decisions.
06:43
Wally Mulhern
Right.
06:43
Bobby Doss
My decision making was more along the lines of did he feel comfortable in 12 knots across windows? Because I knew I could just let go. But come checkride day, it was a decision that I wasn't confident in making for sure. And I wish we would have done more to teach me how to make that decision for sure.
07:00
Wally Mulhern
Right, right. You know, one scenario I will give on a checkride is a divert, okay, we need to go to, we can't continue on to our destination because of a medical emergency. I'm having a medical emergency. I am in bad shape. I'm about to die. Okay. So they pick an airport and they head to it. And let's say maybe we're north of the airport and we're heading in toward that airport and it might be 12 miles away. So it's going to take us about, I don't know, seven, eight minutes, something like that. And the wind is three six zero at five knots. And by golly, we're gonna set up for a left down one and turn around and land to the north. And I can't say it's wrong. It's not wrong.
07:59
Wally Mulhern
But usually during the debrief I will say to the applicant, I'll say, did you consider landing straight in? And a lot of times they'll say, well that's a tailwind. We can't land with a tailwind. Okay, well they were calling the wind 010 at 5 knots. Let's look up in the POH to see what a 5 knot tailwind does to us. Oh well, we need 1400ft of Runway instead of 1200ft of Runway, you know, and I will compare that to if we're driving down the road and I told you I was having a heart attack. And we drove up to the hospital and there was the emergency room, we could see the sign for the ER and we couldn't really figure out how to get into the parking lot, but there was an exit only right there.
08:53
Wally Mulhern
Would you turn in the exit and get me to the emergency room? You know, of course, with no cars around or anything like that. And everybody says, oh, absolutely. I would, I'd say, well, okay, so we're going to, you know, break the rule in this case. And I think everybody on the planet would agree that's the right, the right choice to make. Can we land with a tailwind? So have. As CFIs, have we ever taken our students out and, you know, when you're at an uncontrolled airport with nobody around, or even if you're in a controlled airport with nobody in the traffic pattern, what about asking atc, hey, can we turn around and can we land the other Runway?
09:40
Bobby Doss
This tower would let you do it. I know for a fact that, yeah, if you called and organized that they would let you do that for sure.
09:46
Wally Mulhern
Yeah. Now, you know, 360 at 25, gusting to 35. No, I'm not talking about that, but I'm talking about with just a small tailwind, is that a skill that we should be imparting on to our students so that they have something in their toolkit? So now if they are in an emergency situation, at least they've done it and they've. There might be a confidence level. You know, when, if someone came to me, I know you're a big golfer, Bobby. I mean, if someone came to me and said, or if I went to you and said, hey, would you teach me how to play golf? At some point, we're going to be out there at the driving range hitting balls. We're going to be on the putting green. Putting. We're going to, we're actually to learn how to play golf.
10:39
Wally Mulhern
You have to play golf to learn how to make decisions. You got to make decisions.
10:45
Bobby Doss
Well, golf and sports are a great example because, you know, I could teach you how to hit balls on the range, but you're not going to have any decision making at that point.
10:54
Wally Mulhern
Right.
10:55
Bobby Doss
We're going to hit balls on the range. And you might learn that you can hit your 7 on 135 yards, which might not be the quote, unquote average, but until you get to where there's a pond in front of you and you have 120 yards to carry and you have a seven iron in your hand, you're going to realize you can't hit that 7 iron 135 yards anymore because your mind's going to squeeze on you. A little bit and you'll be a little tight and it's not going to get over the water.
11:20
Wally Mulhern
Oh my ball is going in.
11:22
Bobby Doss
The water for sure.
11:23
Wally Mulhern
Or the trees.
11:24
Bobby Doss
If there's no water there, you're not going to hit it. You're going to hit 135. Right. So you got to be putting those situations to make those decisions. And as a rookie golfer, you might choose to go around that lake instead of going over that lake. And that's a really good example of the same things that you would decide to do. Yeah, and I think as instructors, we do use scenario based training, but we don't use it to that next level of really talking through those things, giving those scenarios that are life and death that can, they can't ever create the real stress that you would have in those situations, but they can create some of it. You can, you can emulate those risk factors for sure.
12:07
Wally Mulhern
You have to, you have to put your student under stress because when, first of all, when they get to me in the checkride, they're under stress already. And, and you know, they do things that. Well, they always tell me that they normally don't do this, but today they did.
12:27
Bobby Doss
And, you know, one hour pre flight.
12:29
Wally Mulhern
Yeah, the sample size that I have is. Well, that's the only pre flight I've seen you do, and it took you about an hour. But you, we have to, we have to figure out a way to better stress our students. Perfect example. Okay, so you're walking out to the airplane, you're going to go fly. The weather's fine. All you're going to do is you're going to go out and you're going to do some ground reference maneuvers. Then you're going to come back and you're going to do short and soft field landings. It's going to be about an hour and a half flight or something like that. What about on the way out to the airplane, you say to your student, oh, by the way, yeah, I just talked to Freddy and he just flew this airplane.
13:11
Wally Mulhern
The right fuel gauge is inoperative, but we're going to have them top it off. Let's go and see how your student reacts to it. And I would like to think your student would stop and say, wait a minute, fuel gauge? I don't think we can go with that. Or let's look it up. That's, that's a very viable action. But I would bet if I were to take a straw poll, I would, you Know, if people started doing that, I'll bet the majority of the students would just keep going because you're kind of telling them it's okay and you've made all the decision and the fact that you keep walking, you're making the decision for the student now.
13:59
Wally Mulhern
Yeah, true, you are the pilot in command as a CFI if it's a student, but pilot, but you know, there's a situation of putting your student under stress. Or how about this? We're going to fly across country, we're going to go from airport A to airport B and you actually have no intention of ever making it to airport B. We're going to have to divert and we may divert to airport C, D, E, F, who knows? But the student is not really prepared to go to one of those airports. But that might be what we need to do.
14:38
Bobby Doss
And that's always scary for new pilots to go somewhere they've never been before. So make sure that creates stress. Right, right. You know, you've guided them to the four airports within your practice area, probably. What about letting them, forcing them, diverting them, whatever you have to do to get them to go somewhere that they've never been before. It can both be nerve wracking and a little scary for that new pilot. But the sense of accomplishment that they feel when they do go to that first airport for the first time that they've never been to, that they're making that decision probably is going to be a big win for them as a pilot.
15:15
Wally Mulhern
Absolutely.
15:16
Bobby Doss
What other techniques like this? We used a few examples. Landing downwind, the diversion because you're having a heart attack and maybe picking something. What about. I know you do some equipment failure stuff. I like the idea of the fuel gauge not working. It's in the presence of trying to create a decision for the student. Right, right. I felt like when I was a student, probably an instrument student, it was really the first time I felt like a real pilot because I was making the decision. This was late in my instrument training. My instructor probably had said a thousand times, yeah, we can go in this. Yeah, we probably shouldn't go today. And I just always followed their lead. But I think I started coming to the airport deciding, no, today's the day we're going to go. We're going to fly this flight in actual.
16:03
Bobby Doss
I want to do it and I think we should go. And I know that he and I had enough of a relationship where he would either trust me, I don't think he ever overrode me. And I don't think he ever would have put me in a situation to get hurt. But how often do we guide those students towards the decision we want them to make instead of really challenging them? Do they have a risk plan, a way to make that decision? Are they doing anything to make the decision themselves? Yeah, I get a call the other day. A student called and said, what are the crosswinds? And they were trying to see if it met the minimums for them to come fly. I asked them what were their personal minimums, and their personal minimums were within range. So I told them to come on.
16:45
Bobby Doss
If he hadn't had made the decision about his own personal minimums, I didn't want the school's rules to dictate whether he went and flew or not.
16:53
Wally Mulhern
Right, right.
16:54
Bobby Doss
Should never be letting that happen as pilots.
16:56
Wally Mulhern
Right.
16:57
Bobby Doss
Any other techniques as an instructor that you might have used to put someone in a situation to make a decision to go or not to go?
17:07
Wally Mulhern
Well, I, you know, I just think, I think we need to think out of the box. I think, I think we come into a flight school and maybe the flight schools give their presentation as to why you should come here and train. And I think they may say, we're going to teach you everything you need to know to be a professional pilot if you stay with us. And that's a little bit misleading because some of the people take it to the degree of, well, I can just let common sense go out the window. And that's not the case. That's not the case at all. I remember my first solo happened on December 7, 1981 at 9:17am Runway 4 in Monroe, Louisiana. I took off and the controller said, make right close traffic.
18:04
Wally Mulhern
And that's when I realized I had never made right traffic in my life. I had done left traffic left, especially.
18:13
Bobby Doss
At 20 hours or whatever.
18:15
Wally Mulhern
Yeah, yeah. And I just remember thinking, well, I guess I turn right and right and there's going to be the Runway. Well, actually four right turns. That was only three Right. So I did it. And yeah, guess what? When I turn final, the Runway was in front of me. And you know, that's the thing that my instructor and I kind of had a laugh about. Gee, I've never done right traffic. And for those of you especially who are that teach out of non controlled airports and you know, that may be your, the case, I mean you take your student over to a controlled airport and they get their three landings over there, but it's possible that's Never, you know, your students never done right traffic. So that's something to do.
19:11
Wally Mulhern
I mean, even if you're at a non controlled airport and it is a left traffic airport and there's nobody else in the traffic pattern, let's give them some right traffic and explain to them, you know, hey, it's a little bit differently. So just, you know, force your students to make decisions and go with it. Let them go with it. If they pick, you know, airport C and you really wanted to go to airport D because they had better burgers, well, you know what, just let them go with it. The other thing is, where do your students go on cross country trips? I mean, do you basically tell them where to go? I think that's probably what most of the flight schools do because I see the same places in the logbooks. How about let the student pick? And of course you've got ultimate authority.
20:07
Wally Mulhern
I mean, if they pick an airport that has a 600 foot grass strip, you might want to come back and say, well, no, you're not going there and you certainly have that prerogative to do that.
20:21
Bobby Doss
But what if I sent Houston to o'?
20:23
Wally Mulhern
Hare? Yeah, yeah, probably, probably not where we want to go.
20:27
Bobby Doss
Realistic.
20:28
Wally Mulhern
Yeah, yeah. Or, or you know, Houston to dfw. I mean, that's within range of our airports. Okay. Do you really want to go into DFW on a 172? You're probably going to pay about an 800 landing fee to land there and you're going to pay about $12 a gallon for AV gas. So, you know, let that student make the decision and you know, suppose it's an airport you've never been to. Well, good for the student.
20:59
Bobby Doss
I think there's a lot of maintenance things. As a guy who owns a flight school and sees a lot of maintenance things, I think it's a great opportunity to teach people some tolerances around maintenance. Right. Com2 is not working. Should we go or not go?
21:17
Wally Mulhern
Yeah, yeah.
21:19
Bobby Doss
There's a lot of reasons why I could say I might not go. And there's a lot of reasons why I say I might go. Overcast 2000. I might not take that aircraft. Not got a second nav radio.
21:30
Wally Mulhern
Or.
21:31
Bobby Doss
Maybe nav one's out or sorry, comm one and I've one are out which is my GPS. I'm probably not going to go in 2000 overcast with just one nav radio and one radio. Just no need to go practice that Day in that condition. But then the question says, okay, well, what if my. What if my cdi. Let's just say my attitude indicator is not working. Do we go? Do you want to go? I can see where a perfectly clear day VFR flight might not be a valuable lesson to that student if the attitude indicator is not working. Yeah, but assuming we're working on steep turns or something.
22:07
Wally Mulhern
Right.
22:07
Bobby Doss
Example. But it might be a really good day to teach them how to use the compass.
22:12
Wally Mulhern
Yeah.
22:12
Bobby Doss
If their attitude indicator is not working and it's a somewhat windy day, but perfectly clear, that thing spinning might drive you nuts. They might need to learn how to get a suction cup little thingy to put over it to ignore it. Right.
22:25
Wally Mulhern
Yeah.
22:25
Bobby Doss
There's a lot of opportunity. But if you say, hey, we can go, their biases going to be made. I should. Oh, this guy over here is telling me we should go. I don't know if I should go. That's kind of some of those opportunities we can make or create for our student. Just cover it up and say, do you think this lesson's one you want to do with this instrument not working today?
22:48
Wally Mulhern
Right.
22:49
Bobby Doss
They're going to experience that throughout their training.
22:51
Wally Mulhern
Yeah.
22:52
Bobby Doss
What if the turn coordinator isn't working? What are we supposed to do? The student pilot's gonna say, yeah, let's send it because they want to go fly.
23:02
Wally Mulhern
Right.
23:02
Bobby Doss
But okay, we can send it. I'm willing to go with you, student, but what do we got to do? What are the rules?
23:08
Wally Mulhern
Right. Well, we got to make sure that it's not required. And assuming it's day vfr, it's not. But we have to mark it and we have to disable it. Because most airplanes, the turn coordinator is electric. So I think we have to realize when something electric is not working, we need to really figure out if it's just not working or if there's an electrical issue. I mean, there could be a short. You know, a light bulb is a good example. We have a burned out. We have a nav light that's not working. Is it because the. The bulb is burned out or is there a short going out to it in the wiring which goes right by the fuel tank, by the way.
23:55
Bobby Doss
It might be dripping.
23:57
Wally Mulhern
Yeah, yeah.
23:58
Bobby Doss
Or overfilled. They might not have a problem. It might just be overfilled.
24:01
Wally Mulhern
Right.
24:01
Bobby Doss
That could be a problem.
24:02
Wally Mulhern
Right.
24:02
Bobby Doss
I wouldn't check the nav lights five times on that day. Yeah, for sure.
24:07
Wally Mulhern
So that, you know, there's an example too, you know, you're going out with your student and you know it's a day flight and you throw out. Oh, by the way, the right nav light's not working this airplane. I'll see you at the airplane. You know, maybe see how the student reacts to that.
24:25
Bobby Doss
I try to make it happen a lot, but I know it doesn't happen enough. But I like to create some of these things for people. And an example would be, what if the flap handle just had an in op sticker on it when you were in your 11th hour of flight training. Right. You get out to the plane, the instructor's not out there, you're pre flighting and you see an in op sticker. What would you do in that situation? You'd have to start and it said do not move by order of the manager of the fbo.
24:54
Wally Mulhern
Right.
24:55
Bobby Doss
What do you. Are you going to still pre flight the plane? There's got to be some decision making that occurs there. Right?
25:01
Wally Mulhern
Right.
25:04
Bobby Doss
I think, I think CFIs can create those things that really make people ask questions.
25:09
Wally Mulhern
Yeah.
25:10
Bobby Doss
And if the CFI comes out there and goes, yeah, they're inoperative. I've been flying this plane all day. Do you want to go?
25:15
Wally Mulhern
Yeah.
25:15
Bobby Doss
I think the students got to decide, can they fly a plane with not working flaps?
25:20
Wally Mulhern
Right.
25:20
Bobby Doss
You know, a lot of people don't realize planes exist without flaps.
25:24
Wally Mulhern
Yep.
25:25
Bobby Doss
They, they make planes without flaps. So it's doable.
25:28
Wally Mulhern
Yeah.
25:29
Bobby Doss
But have you ever thought about it? Do you know how to look up the numbers on what a flat, a no flap landing would look like?
25:34
Wally Mulhern
Right, right. And, and some of the airplanes have data for it. A lot of older airplanes do not have data for it.
25:42
Bobby Doss
It's not going to be shorter though.
25:44
Wally Mulhern
Right.
25:44
Bobby Doss
Newsflash. It's not going to take you less Runway. But that might make your slip skills get better. By doing that, you might have to think through things. So let's talk about some techniques. Those were ways you might teach better decision making. But let's just say if we're on our own, what are the techniques we use for aeronautical decision making? Most of us have heard the phrase or the acronym pave, and we probably use PAVE for the pilot, the aircraft, the environment and external pressures. Those probably learn that by lesson five or six. Right?
26:20
Wally Mulhern
Yeah.
26:21
Bobby Doss
Other things that might help us with our decision making or analysis of our decision making. There's a tool called frat. A FRAT tool from the faa. All you gotta do is go search for frat. I think we've talked about this in the past. But it's the flight risk assessment tool. It has a lot of questions, but it kind of takes you from zero risk to extreme risk based on yourself and all those things that are kind of in pave. What, what is a. I know one of a pilot that works for your airline gave me a card once that was on the back of his lanyard and it was kind of, it had a little bit of decision making and it kind of had the debrief on it. Something he probably got in new hire or something.
27:04
Bobby Doss
But it kind of had a, again, a decision making tool at the top. And then the debrief checklist that you would have. What could we do better? What could we have changed different on this flight? You know, this is real world stuff, right? Y' all have to have some decision making before you go.
27:21
Wally Mulhern
Yeah, well, we use it on every flight. On one, the front side is the briefing and the backside is the debriefing. I mean, the first thing we do is we, you know, as a crew, we say, what are our threats tonight? Personal. How's everybody doing? You know, somebody may just say, hey, I just found out my mother has terminal cancer. Okay. So. Yeah, your mind may be wandering a little bit tonight or today. We talk about the environmental, you know, and usually the main thing when we say environmental, we're talking about the weather, but there could be terrain. You know, I take off from Hawaii a lot to the north and to the east is big mountains. So, you know, that's part of our briefing, the environmental and then technical.
28:11
Wally Mulhern
You know, is anything in, anything going on the airplane that we need to, you know, factor in, do we have a anti skid system that's inoperative or the reverser that's going to cause us to use a little bit more Runway on landing when we get to wherever we're going. So, yeah, so we do this and it's done every flight. This isn't just a once a month type thing or once a day thing. Every flight we actually go through and go through all that.
28:46
Bobby Doss
Yeah, I don't think you have to use the frat tool for a few laps in the pattern, but you've got to start learning how to make those decisions somehow in some way. I think our chief does a really good job of teaching people that there's really three scenarios that he thinks about or three colors. It's green, yellow, and red. And everything can be green, yellow or red. We can think about the weather. Is the weather in a green state A yellow state or a red state. And I can say for me when I was flying instrument and in the clouds every couple of weeks in a 182, I would have said 4,000 overcast was all green for me. Would have had no issues taking off in 4,000ft overcast today, not flying as often in IMC it would be a red for me.
29:31
Bobby Doss
I would not feel comfortable. I would not take my wife in that. And so I think it can be the environment or the thing that you're talking about, but based on your currency recency and skill set might change that to a different color. Right. The flaps not working, might be green. If I've done a week of training with my CFI on skids and slips to land and I'd had no issues practicing that. But if I've not done a no flap landing and I'm going into a 600 foot grass strip, I probably need to think about that in a very different light than a 7,000 foot concrete Runway.
30:09
Wally Mulhern
And think about this. I mean we do risk analysis in everything we do. I mean right now we got a lot of rain going on in Houston and flooding and there's street flooding and you know, if someone said to me, hey could you take me to this place? Part of town and it's the other part of town, I mean I'm going to be looking at the flooding situation. Our, is our roads flooded, can we even get there? So we, you know, just driving on the road, we do risk assessment. You know, it's a pouring down rainstorm. Are we going to fly the speed limit or maybe we're going to fly, I mean drive the speed limit or maybe we're going to drive 10 miles per hour slower. Yeah, maybe that's, you know, what we need to do.
30:56
Wally Mulhern
You know one thing I will ask on check guys, I haven't done in a while, but I will, I'll throw out a scenario. I said, okay, you're going from here to there and it's 200 miles away. Okay. And we're going to say it's a two hour flight and there is not a cloud in the sky. Weather is not an issue whatsoever. And we're halfway, we're 100 miles into the flight. We've flown for an hour, we've got an hour to go. And the number two communication radio stops working. It just, it doesn't work anymore. What are we going to do? I'll give them four choices. Answer A is land in a field. Answer B is continue. Answer C is turnaround and answer D is divert. I would like to think that all of us think that A is not a viable option.
31:52
Wally Mulhern
Landing in a field over a failed number two radio is probably not what we want to do. But you could make an argument for continuing turning around or diverting. I probably wouldn't divert, but there might be more and, you know, more information needed to make a valuable assessment. But there's a question just to throw out. When you're sitting at the airport on a Saturday morning and the weather's bad and everybody's sitting around, you're talking and you know, everybody's telling war stories. Just throw that out there and see what the different responses are. You know, a lot of people say I'm going to keep going well, and someone may say, well, I'm going to divert because I'm not sure if it's really a radio problem or a problem with the electrical system. Okay, great thought. Okay. I can't, I can't argue with that.
32:48
Wally Mulhern
You know, someone says, I'm going to turn around, go to my, you know, where I departed from because I know the avionics guy, I can get it fixed, you know, so it's just a discussion. None of them are wrong answers, but just something to think about.
33:07
Bobby Doss
Yeah, I'll tell one story of that because COM2 went out on a plane that someone was renting one time and really they were in Galveston. If you're in Houston, that's about a 35 minute flight. And they said that the radio stopped working and they could smell something. Like an electronic burning smell, right? No smoke, but they could smell something. And they were gonna leave the plane. They wanted me to send somebody down there to pick them up. And I thought, yeah, that plane's gonna be stuck down there for a while. Who knows how deep and wide this goes. But I called my mechanic and he said just see if they can get a Allen wrench and get the radio out, get com two out. And sure enough, they got com two out and they could, you know, smell the radio.
33:49
Bobby Doss
And there was a hint of some smell. And he said, tell them to put, start the place plane and see if the smell comes back. Right. Just turn the master switch on. No smell, nothing happened. He says 99% of time it's contained the radio. Have them go do a run up. If they feel comfortable, tell them to fly back with one radio. And if they don't, tell them to stay and we'll come figure it out. Well, they took the radio out, couldn't smell anything, flew the plane back with one radio and it was not an issue. But if you hear that first, that you smell something that has this burning smell, you might really make a. And now there we're on the ground. So again, all kinds of scenarios where you make different decisions.
34:28
Bobby Doss
But as a rookie fly school owner, I thought were done for. I figured that plane was sitting down there for a week.
34:34
Wally Mulhern
Who knew, right?
34:35
Bobby Doss
But yeah, take the radio out. It was no, it was a non issue. We plugged the new radio in and when they had no issue, threw the other one away. It just. It is what it is. I think every scenario teaches you how to make better decisions because you're put in those scenarios and have to make them, even if you're a fly school owner or a renter of an aircraft.
34:54
Wally Mulhern
Right.
34:54
Bobby Doss
I think the hero book, it's out there. There is a hero book out there for doing all this. And it's the risk management handbook from the faa. Just like the Pilot Handbook of Aeronautical Knowledge, they have a risk management handbook and it's really good stuff. If you're interested in figuring out how you can make better decisions, better aeronautical decision making. This book's 80 pages of gold as it relates to aeronautical decision making. And if you haven't ever reviewed it's a free book. Your tax dollars have paid for it. Just go out to the FAA website, look for their aviation handbooks and you'll find it and can download a copy and should have it on your electronic flight bag for sure.
35:33
Wally Mulhern
Yeah.
35:34
Bobby Doss
Well, tomorrow's gonna be a good day. Hopefully we're gonna get some check rides in. We have five scheduled, so hopefully all five are successful. No matter what you're doing tomorrow, make sure you fly safely and stay behind the prop.
35:51
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 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 safe.