This week we swap some fascinating check ride stories!
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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.
00:24
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 more of a reader digest type show. I think it's a little bit of education but a little bit more storytelling than normal, I think. I always tell people when they say what's behind the prop, I say it's a podcast where we tell stories and teach lessons from behind the prop. So this is more of a storytelling episode. We're actually going to call it check ride Stories. So Wally obviously has done a lot of check rides, over a thousand now. And we talked to a lot of other DPEs. So we're going to kind of tell three buckets of stories today, give you guys and gals something to think about before your check rides and hopefully make you better pilots along the way as well. So what's the number now, Wally?
01:12
Bobby Doss
Do you know the real number, total number of check rides?
01:15
Wally Mulhern
Oh, it's, it, yeah, I could pull it up here. It's probably, I'm guessing a thousand, eighty, something like that.
01:23
Bobby Doss
How many check rides have you taken in your lifetime?
01:27
Wally Mulhern
Oh yeah, a bunch. I, I, I can't even tell that.
01:31
Bobby Doss
That's three digits. I would assume over three days.
01:34
Wally Mulhern
Oh yeah.
01:37
Bobby Doss
So lots of experience one side of these microphones. I personally have taken four check rides, so I'm climbing to catch you. But it's going to be a few years before I get close to your numbers. But I'm going to keep trying.
01:52
Wally Mulhern
There you go.
01:54
Bobby Doss
So let's talk about big mistakes. I think everybody wants to know about mistakes first and foremost. We'll just go right to that right off the bat. We talked about these things before the show, but what's the big mistake, the biggest mistake that you see pilots making on checkrides that we got to eliminate right now?
02:14
Wally Mulhern
Well, I think one problem that we have is, and this is, we're going to go down a hole on this one. But I think the applicant has to understand that the examiner is not there as a co pilot, they're not there as a flight instructor. So the applicant really should be treating the examiner as just a passenger. And where that comes to bite a lot of people is they don't do that. They, they treat me like a, a, you know, a seasoned pilot, which I am. So it's, you know, it's tough. There's a little bit of role playing. But for instance, when I get in an airplane, I don't close the door. Okay. I expect the applicant to make sure the door is closed and there have been checkrides where we've taken off with the door open.
03:20
Wally Mulhern
And most of the time these don't end up in a, in with a, a result that the applicant is happy with. And you know, they'll look over at me and I'll go, why didn't you close the door? I said well it's on your checklist. And, and you, you read that it was closed, but it wasn't closed. And that goes back to the fact that for these more advanced ratings, you know, instrument and above, a lot of these people have, a lot of the students or the applicants, I should say, have never flown an airplane without another pilot or probably a CFI in the right seat.
04:08
Bobby Doss
And they become too dependent on that. They've, you know, probably got in those planes with those fly schools and the doors being closed before they even have the opportunity to talk about a checklist where the door, close the doors on that checklist.
04:23
Wally Mulhern
Right, right, exactly. So, you know, and I always, you know, and of course we're talking about mainly Pipers or you know, maybe in twin engine airplane Beechcraft or something that has only one door. You know, 172 is a little bit easier just closing the door is a little easier than in a Piper because there's, you know, there's two latches. But you know, I will be over animated as we're taxing out. I mean I'll be looking up at the sky and I'll even comment, wow, I got a really blue sky and I'm looking up and the applicant will go, yeah. And we take off and the doors open and you know, they look at me like I got watermelons growing out of my ear. Like, why didn't you close that door? Why? I'm not sure how to do it.
05:29
Bobby Doss
Yeah, I was pretty surprised that's one of the big mistakes because I would just think that would be something that everyone would do. Maybe not in an August day before they got to the whole short line. But you would definitely think that would be my last little button up before I take off to make sure that stuff was done for sure.
05:46
Wally Mulhern
Yeah. And where does that come from? Well, that. That comes from the CFIs doing it. So you CFIs out there. We got any listening? I mean, you. You need to make sure that your student is at least making sure that the door is closed. I mean, it should be a reach over and push the door to try to open it or something.
06:13
Bobby Doss
Yeah, for sure. What's number two? You talked about a particular briefing that is not very well done.
06:20
Wally Mulhern
Yeah, well, I think the. The takeoff or the passenger briefing? Not the takeoff briefing, but the passenger briefing. I think a lot of students, they learn this scripted briefing, and they go through it and they just recite it. And one thing I do my best to do is when they're reciting this briefing to me, which I've heard a lot.
06:48
Nick Alan
Okay.
06:48
Wally Mulhern
And, you know, I do know how to open the door on all the airplanes I'm in. I know where the fire extinguisher is. I know. I know not to run into the propeller. I know all that stuff. So what I do is I do my best to act very uninterested while they're briefing me. And, you know, what I'm trying to do is, you know, when I'm talking to somebody and I'm not on a phone, I'm talking to them, and I'm looking. You know, we're in the same room. I'm looking at them, and I'm getting visual cues, because you can tell. Are you. Are you understanding what I'm telling you? And I would say most student pilots, and when I say student pilots, I don't literally mean student pilots. I mean any pilot that's in some kind of pilot training.
07:46
Wally Mulhern
I don't think we do a very good job of reading your audience. Okay, is this person getting what I'm telling them? Because this is pretty important stuff. And this. This. Take this passenger briefing does not need to go on for 10 minutes. I mean, I think you can hit the important stuff within about 45 seconds. So this isn't something that's. That's. That needs to go on and on, because you're gonna lose your audience.
08:15
Bobby Doss
Yep. Yeah. And you just want to make sure that they know the safety stuff and that they kind of have an idea. I've. I've seen. I've seen people make it fun. I've seen people be way too long winded. I think you're right. Brevity is key. But hitting the hot topics is also important.
08:34
Wally Mulhern
Yeah. And. And, you know, maybe buzzwords, maybe technical words aren't the way to Go. I mean, I hear a lot of people say we're going to keep a sterile cockpit at the critical phases of flight. Well, what in the world does that mean? To my buddy who's an accountant, we're going to keep a sterile cockpit during the critical phases of flight.
09:01
Bobby Doss
I'm thinking emergency room, just so we're clear. I'm thinking of a, a germ free environment where people are wearing gloves.
09:09
Wally Mulhern
That, that's a lot of times I'll joke with them. I'll say this airplane doesn't look very sterile to me. And, and they look. Oh, oh. Well, we're gonna keep unnecessary conversation to a minimum. Oh, okay. Well that makes sense. That makes sense.
09:28
Bobby Doss
So if those are the two big mistakes that are obviously happening on a lot of checkrids and obviously creating bad results for people, what are some of your scariest moments on checkrides, Wally?
09:42
Wally Mulhern
Well, you know, a couple things that come to mind. Applicants on a multi engine checkride, trying to shut down the wrong engine after.
09:59
Bobby Doss
You'Ve already shut one of them down.
10:02
Wally Mulhern
I've shut one of them down. We've got one left and they reach up and they shut that one down. So let's do the math here. Let's do the math. We start with two. I took away one, and now you take away one. So two minus one, last time I checked was zero.
10:21
Bobby Doss
So that was lawn dart in most light twins.
10:25
Wally Mulhern
It does, it does. So that you know, as an examiner, I am, I'm very trigger happy. So if they do reach up and you know, pull the wrong mixture or the wrong whatever, I'm there in a hurry. And that just happened to me, I don't know, within the last few weeks. And so we're gonna go fly again and we'll see how things go the second time. Other than that, it was a really nice checkride.
10:59
Bobby Doss
But that's one of those moments where I assume you're not very disinterested. You're very interested in the process of what's happening.
11:06
Wally Mulhern
Very, very on top of it. You know, that goes back to just simple math. Two minus one. Another thing that happens more than, than I would like it to happen is improper procedures on a go around. I've, I don't know how many different types of airplanes I've flown. I know a lot of people keep track of it and that's a real badge of honor to say. I've flown, you know, 73 different types of Airplanes, I don't know, but I have never flown an airplane to where the procedure for a go around was not first and foremost to add max power. Every airplane I've ever flown, the first thing you do on a go around is to add max power. And so there have been a couple of times where we're out and we're practicing an emergency landing.
12:08
Wally Mulhern
So we're out in the middle of nowhere. We're out in the middle of, we're simulating landing the airplane in a field. So we're down pretty low and I'll say, okay, let's go around. And the first thing the applicant does is reaches over or down and retracts the flaps. So here we are, we're coming in, we're probably pretty slow, you know, in the 65, 70 knot range, and we've got the power back to idle because we're simulating an engine failure. And now we just retract the flaps completely. And, you know, the airplane doesn't like it. The airplane does not like it at all.
12:51
Bobby Doss
I assume the DPE does not like that at all either.
12:54
Wally Mulhern
No, I, and I, I had to apologize to some people for the words that came out of my mouth in both these, the mixture situation as well. I said some things that were probably inappropriate, but they, I think they both understood the severity of the situation. So, you know, again, it we, you know, on, at least on my checkrides, we typically end up doing two, I'm talking about a private or a commercial. We end up doing two go around scenarios. One is on the emergency landing and one is just in the traffic pattern. First and foremost, max power. Unless, I don't know, maybe there's an airplane where you do something differently at first, but I've, you know, from a Piper Tomahawk to a Cessna 172 to a Beach Baron to a Gulfstream G1 to a Triple 7.
13:57
Wally Mulhern
Every one of them was get max power on first. And max power is not only pushing the throttle full forward. If we're in an airplane where carburetor heat is on, max power is the throttle, then getting the carburetor heat off because we don't have max power with the carburetor heat on, then it's time to start working on the flaps, whatever the procedure is for the airplane, maybe, you know, immediately one notch of flaps or flaps, whatever, and then as speed increases, then we slowly get the flaps out. But, you know, first and foremost, it's bang for your buck. How Much bang for the buck are we gonna get by retracting the flaps? Not much. The airplane's still going to come down. We're losing drag by getting rid of the flaps. But if we're slow, we're. We could be in a stall situation.
14:59
Wally Mulhern
So the way I think of it is if I could only do one thing on a go around, what do I want to do? And obviously the, you know, the most bang for the buck is max power.
15:13
Bobby Doss
Wow, that's scary. This slow and low is never a good situation. And to make it worse by just pulling on those flaps is really not that good either. So we've talked big mistakes, we've talked scary. Now let's talk about something near and dear to both of our hearts. And that's kind of the problems with training kind of across the board.
15:35
Wally Mulhern
Let me go back to the go around real quick. Real quick. You know, one thing that I occasionally see is one reason why we want to keep our hand on the throttle during the landing and takeoff phases in an airplane is so that you really don't have to think about what you're doing or what you're touching. All you got to do is push it forward. I just recently I had a young man that came in and he liked to keep his hand on the flap handle. And were in a. We're in a Piper, so it actually had a handle. I go, what are you doing? I mean, where did this come from? And he assured me that he had never done that in his life, that today was the first day he'd ever done that.
16:25
Wally Mulhern
And anyway, we'll see how he does the next time we fly together. If you.
16:31
Bobby Doss
Subliminal. Subliminal message.
16:34
Wally Mulhern
Yeah. So, I mean, the hand needs to be on the throttle so you really don't have to think about what you're pushing or what you're, you know, what you're manipulating. It's just push the throttle forward. Anyway, okay, so I'm sorry, I interrupt.
16:50
Bobby Doss
No worries. That's good stuff. Problems with training.
16:52
Wally Mulhern
There's.
16:53
Bobby Doss
There's some systemic things that occur that make your job difficult as an examiner or keeping what I'll call professional trainers, trainees, people that are trying to go from zero to the airlines, keeping them from becoming better pilots because of some of the. Just the ways that training is working right now. And we wanted to talk about a few of those. So you have. Obviously, we all know if you're in the United States and you're trying to get a Checkride. We all know how precious a checkride slot is, how valuable they are, and how many we would like to have more of to make all of our times easier. And for that, at our school, we got to make sure we take advantage of every opportunity we get. Wally, you told some recent experiences of commercial checkrides and a little bit of weather.
17:41
Bobby Doss
Let's talk through what's going on there.
17:44
Wally Mulhern
Yeah, I've, I'm working with 2,2 Checkride applicants right now who are trying to get a commercial checkride done. And both of them, we've been going at it for a couple of months. Really. One person, we did the ground, we got in the airplane, we had a little mechanical issue so we had to come back and we had to discontinue for that. And then we've been trying to get the stars aligned for his schedule, my schedule and the weather schedule. And we're going to try to complete this checkride here in the next few days. And, and he's coming up on about, I mean we're going to do this about three days before his 60 days expires. But we've had a few weather days where we had one day where the ceiling was called, was being called as 1800 broken.
18:51
Wally Mulhern
And I called him up the morning of the checkride and I said, well, I just got one question for you. I said, are you IFR current? And he said no. And, and my jaw dropped. I, I, I was, I, I couldn't believe it. I said, well, yeah, I said, you know, if, if you were IFR current based on this kind of weather because we checked and the tops were about 3,000. I said we could complete this checkride if you were IFR current, but you're not, so we can't.
19:29
Bobby Doss
And this is a guy who's probably flown with an instructor and other people building time, doing long cross countries, landing at airports. Very often all they had to do was the approaches a hold here and there, like keep their skills up while doing all this other time building flying.
19:46
Wally Mulhern
Yes, yes. And then I've got another guy who we've never even, we've never even met. We've had about five or six checkrides scheduled and the weather has become an issue. And that same day with those same weather conditions, I asked him, I said, are you IFR current? He said well, let me go look. And he calls me back and he says, well, my IFR currency expired yesterday. And I said, well okay, so you're not IFR Current either. And I'm thinking, what in the world is going on? Why are we not staying current? I can honestly say, I mean, I took my first flying lesson August 31, 1981. So I think that comes up on coming up on 43 years for me. I have never not been IFR current. Never. End of story. I have never not been IFR current. I lost.
20:45
Bobby Doss
Because other people made you do it. It's because you chose to stay current.
20:50
Wally Mulhern
Absolutely. Absolutely. So, you know, and I tell applicants when we do an instrument checkride, I say, okay, you now are an instrument rated pilot. Instrument proficiency is a, and this is a phrase I've come up to, come up with. I say instrument proficiency is a highly erodible skill. And especially at the level you are because you know when you just get your checkride, you have relatively low experience. Yeah, you've got 40 hours. But it's gonna, the skills are gonna erode quickly. So you gotta keep doing it. You've got to keep doing it. You know, when you learn to play basketball, just because you're working on free throws or working on that three point shot doesn't mean you forget about dribbling. You know, you still, you got to keep all the skills up.
21:50
Wally Mulhern
And you know, everybody assures me, oh, I'm gonna do this, I'm gonna do this. I'm gonna, I'm gonna stay current. And then guess what, they come back the next day, they start working on Shondell's and lazy eights and they totally forget about our ILS and holding. So it's.
22:11
Bobby Doss
I don't know, it's in the same regards though. You also brought up that private applicants aren't, they don't have the basis for currency. They can't talk about currency. It's not a one liner. You have to understand currency. You have to understand what keeps you day and night current. If we could build that foundation, maybe it would transcend through the commercial. But talk about what's wrong with private pilots ability to define and talk about currency.
22:38
Wally Mulhern
Well, you know, when I was becoming an examiner, many years ago, you have to go up to Oklahoma City to a four day class, which is actually really pretty good. And one thing you do while you're there is you develop your own plan of action, which is the FAA say of creating a document that we use to conduct a checkride. An examiner is required to have a POA or a plan of action for all the checkrides that they are qualified to give. So I have one for private, commercial and so forth. Well, as I'm making my private pilot plan of action, I thought to myself, I says, okay, I'm gonna. I'm gonna start off my checkrides with a softball question. Of course, I want. I want all my applicants to pass. I do.
23:35
Wally Mulhern
And so I would say, you know, one of the very first questions, really, within the first 10 minutes of tell me what you need to have had done to be considered current for this flight. And I thought, I really thought it was a softball question. You know, of course they'll. They'll talk about flight reviews. And quite frankly, you know, I mean, I've been flying for 43 years and I've never had a flight review per se. I mean, as long as you're getting check rides, they count for flight reviews. So I have never. Back in the day, they used to be called a biennial flight review, but now we just call them flight reviews. I've never had just a flight review in and of itself.
24:35
Wally Mulhern
But what I'm trying to say is, what I want to get from the applicant is I need three takeoffs and landings in the preceding 90 days in the same category and class of airplane. And I really thought that was a softball of a question. I mean, when I say that I thought it was okay that this is something that nobody will miss. But a lot of private candidates have a lot of trouble enunciating that they have trouble. They'll tell me, Well, I need three landings in the preceding 90 days. Okay, all right, so you don't need takeoffs. And then I'll get a kind of a look and they'll go, huh, well, how would you land without a takeoff? I said, well, suppose you got a buddy with you, and your buddy does the takeoffs, you do the landings. Does that count?
25:27
Wally Mulhern
Well, a lot of times they end up looking it up and they go, oh, it's takeoff sand landings. So to the CFIs, make sure you're teaching that it's takeoff sand landings. It's not just landings, but the thing that gets most of them is its category and class. So category and class would be single engine land. So if you've got three takeoffs and landings in a. In a Cessna 172, does it qualify for a Piper Warrior? Yeah, they're both single engine, they're both land. It does not have to be in type, and a lot of people struggle with that. Now, is that proficient? I don't know. That's current. Okay. And that's where the pilot in command has to say, you know what? I, I haven't flown a Warrior in half a year.
26:22
Wally Mulhern
Maybe before I go take my family on this cross country, I ought to go out and get a few landings in the Warrior. I think that's great. But from the legality standpoint, currency is three takeoffs and landings category class and the preceding 90 days. And if it's nighttime, those landings have to be to a full stop.
26:46
Bobby Doss
Yeah, it's, you know, as somebody who hasn't been in the books in a while, that's one of those things where I can remember I struggled with category, class, type, all that stuff. But it really is important to understand the currency and I think maybe that would transcend into future training. Last thing that we've, we spoke about this a lot but we both are big believers and we're going to both tell the story. One big problem with a lot of the really big flight schools that don't let people rent planes or experience this decision making on their own because there's always an instructor involved or a time builder, teammate involved that's also going through the school is this thought process of flying for fun.
27:25
Bobby Doss
I now ask it when I interview CFI candidates, they have to tell me how many hours they've flown outside of training. And that's not did along cross country to Florida and back from my 300 plus nautical miles and I had a hamburger. It's the, it's the taking my girlfriend up or doing something else. Right. We both have unique experiences and maybe it's a perspective, maybe it's a grown up thing, I don't know. But when did you have your first passenger, Wally?
27:53
Wally Mulhern
My first passenger was within two and a half to three hours of my private pilot certificate being issued. And the only reason it was 2 1/2 to 3 hours was I had to fly about 100 miles for my check ride, my private pilot check ride. So I had to fly home. But before I left Shreveport, Louisiana to fly home to Monroe, I made that phone call to my parents. I said, hey, I'm now a private pilot. I'll see you at the airport in about an hour and a half and we'll go for an airplane ride. And they showed up and went flying.
28:35
Bobby Doss
And this was before cell phones. That was probably a pay phone of some sort. You put more in it or long distance did apply.
28:43
Wally Mulhern
Yeah, it was probably a collect call. I'm sure it was a collect call.
28:48
Bobby Doss
Well, when you brought that story up and you brought up the fact that a Lot of these pilots, applicants that you're flying with have never had a passenger. They've never gone for the $100 hamburger, just on a Saturday just to have fun, just to make some decisions about flying. I pulled up my logbook with you on screen here in foreflight and looked at mine and my CheckRide was on November 4th and I took my first passenger up, which was my lovely wife Tammy. And I took her up on the 9th of November. I know she, I can remember clearly she was scared to death, but took five days.
29:24
Bobby Doss
It was my very next flight and I knew it was hard for her to take that first flight with a rookie pilot, but it really did introduce her and us to the fact this was the new normal. We could go do things and go places. We flew over our friend's house, they took pictures of us. And in 4 flight, I just showed Wally the pictures of that flight and I showed him that in my comments. It said my very first passenger, Tammy Doss. And I think it was important to me back then to get that done to make sure she was going to enjoy it with me.
29:56
Bobby Doss
But it's one of those things that since I'm a pretty good pilot because I've had to make the decisions of am I going to fly to Austin literally a hundred times and I'd say eight of the hundred I've chosen to drive and not fly because I had to be the sole operator of those controls and decide was it worth the trip and was it safe enough. And when I said no, I just drove. And I think a lot of these young kids, young pilots, meaning young in flight time, don't have the opportunity to do that if they're not working at a school or working with a place where they can rent planes. So seek that out people, if you don't have that chance, you need to fight that decision making.
30:39
Bobby Doss
We know it's expensive, incorporate as part of your time building, but go do something that's not 100% a training flight.
30:48
Wally Mulhern
Yeah, you, it's important to put some sort of stress on yourself. And I'm not saying, oh boy, the weather's bad, I'm going to go out and fly apply today. I'm not talking about that. I'm just talking about put yourself in a situation where real time decisions are going to have to be made. I mean it's, we're recording this on the weekend of the granddaddy of them all. As far as golf tournaments go, the Masters, you know, I, I, I'd be hard pressed to see that there's some golfer that gets out in the fairway. And, and I'm not quite sure how all this works with golf. So I may be speaking out of out online, Bobby, but the caddy comes up and says to the professional golfer, I think this is an eight iron.
31:39
Wally Mulhern
And the professional golfer says, well, I've never used my eight iron. You know, I'll bet that doesn't happen.
31:46
Bobby Doss
I bet they love every one of their 14 clubs in their bag. No question.
31:50
Wally Mulhern
Right? Yeah.
31:50
Bobby Doss
They've used them, they've practiced with them. And I think that's a good analogy on what proficiency, what currency, what being used to doing these things really means. And I think without that challenge of taking a passenger, especially one that's that valuable to you, I. E. Your first wife, I pick on her about that all the time. That we have to be ready to take that and make the right decision for those passengers and feel that little bit of stress, as you said. For sure. Well, with that, we're going to wrap up the show and I'm going to go watch the Masters. But as always, thanks for listening. Make sure that you don't make these big mistakes on your checkride. Make sure you don't scare your dpe and make sure that you fight these battles in training to be the best pilots you can be.
32:38
Bobby Doss
And as always, stay behind the prop.
32:43
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.