We are joined by Hoover from the popular Pilot Debrief Youtube channel. Hoover shares some fascinating stories and talks about all of his success in aviation media.
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00:01
Behind the Prop Intro
Clear prop S73 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 we have a guest, a very interesting guest, another YouTuber that you'll all probably be familiar with. We have Hoover on the show from Pilot Debrief. Thanks for joining us today. Hoover.
00:41
Hoover
Thanks so much, Bobby. I'm glad to be here.
00:43
Bobby Doss
So I was introduced to you by Wally about probably 90 days ago and I've watched many of your debriefs, short in some cases, but very thorough and very interesting to hear and unfortunately see some of the bad that's happened in aviation, both general aviation and some bigger aviation. Tell us a little bit about your background. I know it. But tell the audience kind of where you came from, your history in aviation and we'll dive into some details.
01:13
Hoover
Yeah, absolutely. You know, honestly, for those that don't know me because I'm sure there's a lot of people who may haven't seen the channel. I go by Hoover. That was my call sign in the Air Force. And I'm sure I'll talk more about that in a minute here. But I started off flying the Strike Eagle with the air Force, the F15E. I did that for a number of years. I actually did a exchange program flying the F18 with the Marine Corps for a few years as well before going back to the Strike Eagle. And then I retired after 20 years of service in the Air Force short after that retirement. You know, that was right around the time Covid happened. I planned on transitioning to the airline. So that kind of got delayed for a little bit.
01:55
Hoover
And during that time I did some flying for a part 135 operation which for those that aren't familiar with that's private charter type flying. And that was very interesting and fun. But eventually the airlines started their hiring again and now I fly for a major airline based in the US and around that same time too, I started, well, probably about, I guess about a year after being with that airline, I started transitioning to doing more aviation related YouTube, Stu. And what I try to do on my channel is take aviation mishaps that have, you know, obviously there's a tragedy and there's a loss there, but I look for Ones where there's a lot of lessons that we can learn from that also have some sort of compelling story to share with others. And I just try to convey those lace.
02:43
Hoover
Convey those lessons in a manner in which everybody can understand them. Whether you're a pilot or not. Yeah.
02:50
Bobby Doss
And I've watched one recently. You know, there's no judgment. There's. And this was a female. I think it was her. Her and her dad were in an accident and both perished. And it was. It wasn't about the. The end point. It was really about everything that led up to it. And it. As a flight school owner and someone who's always trying to make better pilots, it really was from the perspective of, hey, let's all take a step back and learn from this and see where we may have caught ourselves in these traps and got lucky and didn't have this bad thing happen. And here we are today. We see what we can learn a lot from her incident and hopefully take some good out of it. So I really appreciated that perspective on it, for sure.
03:30
Hoover
Yeah. I mean, honestly, like, what I. The. The main thing I try to do is I try to take the principles that I learned from debriefing flights as a fighter pilot and apply those to the aviation mishap analysis side. Analysis side of things. And, you know, one of the. The key components of that is you got to take the emotion out of the equation. It's all about trying to get to the lessons learned. And as angry as I might feel sometimes, you know, towards an individual that's involved in a mishap because of some of the things that they're doing that might be reckless or negligent, you know, I try my best to separate that emotion and go like, okay, well, look, there's nothing I can do about that now.
04:09
Hoover
You know, there's no point in, you know, trying to castigate or make fun of that. That individual. Instead, let's. Let's focus on what we can learn and let's. Let's move on from there and hopefully prevent something like this from happening again.
04:23
Bobby Doss
Yeah, the Internet's a mean world, unfortunately, and we've bent some metal at this flight school, and luckily no one's been hurt. But the. The commentation on the Internet, as soon as a plane gets bent, you know, no one knows what really happened. And, of course, we can speculate on what led up to some of those things, but it's. It's never good to start judging a pilot 60 seconds after the first picture's posted. And unfortunately, we Had a vision jet go into the water Runway this week at the airport. And you know, the guy flying it was not a rookie. And something broke on the plane, right, Was, he was along for the ride. And the comments that happened 60 seconds afterwards, you're like, who even thinks this stuff in their brain? Right, but it's real. So let's talk call sign for a second.
05:11
Bobby Doss
Tell us where Hoover came from.
05:15
Hoover
So I'll try to keep this to the relatively short version of the story, but you know, in the fighter pilot culture in the military, you're going to get your call sign at your first fighter squadron. And that's usually going to happen at some point after you become combat mission ready or combat mission qualified. You, you know, and they usually try to tie that in with a deployment of some sort. Well, obviously there's, you know, the time that you spend in the squadron going through those qualification flights and things like that. And they're always looking for something for you to screw up because they want to get some dirt on you so they can come up with a good call sign. By the time it gets to this point, you know, where you have your naming ceremony.
05:57
Hoover
Well, when I first showed up in my first Strike Eagle squadron at Seymour Johnson Air Force Base, I had done the training at the schoolhouse or the training squadron right across the street from the operational squadron. So you walk across the street when you're done with training. And there was probably about a two to three week break during that period. So when I showed up, one of the first things they do is they're going to check all your life support equipment, even though you were just using it. It's a new squadron. Run through everything, make sure everything works and fits. Well. One of the things that fighter pilots wear is a G suit, which wraps around your waist and your legs, you know, zips up and use that to help combat the forces of the G pressures, you know, when you're doing your flights.
06:41
Hoover
And when I put this thing on, you know, my G suit on, it was way too big. And the guy's sitting there trying to fit it to me and he's, you know, and I'm thinking, well, man, like, maybe I lost some weight, you know. And so we start talking about that and the guy starts joking around with me and he's, and he says, well, sir, you know, like, I don't know if I can like, adjust this. We might have to get like a, a smaller one. We might even have to get a female G suit and it just so happened that there was a female that worked in the squadron, a wizzo weapons systems officer that flew in the squadron, who was working in the life support shop too. And she overhears this conversation.
07:19
Hoover
So in the fighter pilot world, as long as 10% of the story is true, the whole thing's true. So she started going around the squadron and telling people like, hey, this new guy that showed up, I don't know if you knew this, but like he wears all of his flight gear, is all female flight gear. He wears female flight suits, you know, because they're more form fitting, you know, and I'm like a really thin guy, so. And, and there's no such thing as like female flight suits, you know, but the way fighter pilots can tell stories, it instantly becomes believable, especially when you don't know a person. And so I would start getting these weird looks from people in the hallway and stuff and then occasionally somebody would ask me, like, hey man, I heard you wear female flight suits.
08:04
Hoover
What's the story with that? You know, and I had no idea where this was coming from. And it went on for, you know, a month or so. And then eventually, you know, like we ended up on the deployment. The call sign Hoover comes from J. Edgar Hoover because J. Edgar Hoover, which I didn't know at the time, I was like, what the heck is Hoover? J. Edgar Hoover apparently was a, a closet cross dresser, you know, and so this is, you know, 20 something years ago that I got this call sign and this was, you know, I know those things are, there's a different perception on those things nowadays than there was 20 years ago. But it was definitely very humorous at the time.
08:48
Bobby Doss
Yeah, that's, I'm sure amongst a bunch of egos and men and all that in the 20 years ago, that was probably a tough hallway chatter to deal with for sure.
09:00
Hoover
Well, that's why I ended up getting a lot more strange looks from people than people actually willing to ask me about it, you know, because that was definitely something that was different.
09:11
Bobby Doss
Back then, so, and not the origin that I thought the name came from. So we'll give that. And I doubt anyone else is thinking that when they hear it as well.
09:18
Hoover
Well, well, the other thing I get is it's people either assume it has to do with a vacuum and me eating food too fast or something else involving hoovering. And then the other one I get is from Animal House. If you're familiar with that movie, there's a character on there, Hoover as well.
09:37
Wally Mulhern
Yeah, that takes me way back. That's back to my high school years. Yeah.
09:44
Hoover
Normally it's gotta be people. Only people of a certain age demographic will understand that reference.
09:51
Bobby Doss
So, Hoover, great story on how you got the call sign. Tell us a little bit about how you go from COVID airline pilot to pretty famous YouTuber.
10:03
Hoover
Well, honestly, like, I've always wanted to make videos. You know, back in junior high school, like I was the cameraman for, you know, football games and things like that and the media for the school and stuff.
10:16
Bobby Doss
And for most of our listeners, that's probably some mechanical device that's got tape in it that's recording. It's not an. The iPhone, people.
10:24
Hoover
Yeah, that was that big, you know, £25, you know, camcorder thing, you know, that you would haul around and stuff. So I, I got started doing that and I, you know, really like, I didn't do much with videos obviously, you know, during my time in the military, other than, you know, work on some deployment videos for the squadron and things like that. And I enjoyed that stuff when I got out of the military. You know, I'd always been a fan of YouTube and different channels and things like that. And so one of the things that I wanted to do is, well, let me see if I can do something involving YouTube.
10:59
Hoover
And when the airlines weren't hiring and I didn't know if I was even going to get a job with the Part 135 company, one of the things I did is I went and I got a real estate license because I said, hey, you know, like I got to do something, right? So I did that as I was applying for other jobs and with the real estate side of things, I was like, well, look, I, you know, I live in Charlotte and there really wasn't anybody doing YouTube videos for real estate in Charlotte, or at least they weren't doing them very well. And that was my original intent with YouTube was I'm going to put real estate videos on YouTube. And so that's how I got started.
11:34
Hoover
And I actually did real estate videos on YouTube for almost two years from kind of right around the time Covid started. And I was even doing a little bit of, as I started transitioning to doing the aviation content at some point during that two year period of doing those real estate videos, that was some boring stuff. You know, just to be completely honest. I mean, I sort of enjoyed real estate, but not really, I mean, not as much As I enjoy flying and talking about flying, and it just wasn't something that I was passionate about. And I eventually, you know, got hired by the airline. And it's like, well, why am I still doing this real estate stuff? I don't. I'm not really passionate about it. But you know what I am passionate about? I like talking about flying.
12:20
Hoover
And one of the last jobs I had in the military was the chief of wing safety at Seymour Johnson Air Force Base. So we oversaw all of the aviation mishaps, the ground safety mishaps, you know, all the OSHA compliance, all that stuff. And I thought, well, why don't I just talk about all this? And when I started the channel, if you go back and look at some of my early videos, my original thought was, well, let me just take some of these air traffic control recordings from. I think VAS Aviation is the channel that has a lot of those on there from live atc. And you can, you know, maybe just try to explain what's happening in these.
13:01
Hoover
Because a lot of times I would have friends or family members, you know, ask me because they hear about a story in the news and maybe there'd be some audio involved and, well, what is he talking about here? What does that mean? You know, so that's how some of my first videos started was. Was trying to break down the audio of what's going on and tell these stories. And then as I started looking at the NTSB side of the house and the accident investigation reports, that's when I really started scratching my head because I realized there's a lot more to this story.
13:35
Hoover
You know, you get this, you know, huge incident, you know, maybe, you know, a couple people die tragically, and you have this final report that's three pages long that's supposed to tell you everything you're, you know, you need to know out of this. And I'm like, well, maybe there's more to this. And then that's what I discovered. Well, the NTSB has a whole docket where they have all of their witness interviews, all of the, you know, the pilot logbooks, everything that they used in that investigation process. And I started reading through some of those, and this is all just something I was doing just because I was passionate about aviation safety.
14:09
Hoover
And as I read some of the docket stuff on some of these mishaps, that's when I was like, this is the story that needs to be told, because people aren't hearing this side of things, you know, and honestly, if you look at some of those NTSB Final reports, you know, they've got the probable cause listed sometimes there on the first page or second page, but it's like, okay, the probable cause might be, well, the pilot died because the aircraft stalled, because he exceeded the critical angle of attack. It's like, okay, great.
14:39
Bobby Doss
Only a pilot would understand that, right?
14:41
Hoover
And, well, and not only that, even if a pilot does understand it, like, well, how did he get in that situation? You know, like what, what happened leading up to that? And then sometimes that final report talks a little bit about that stuff, but a lot of times it didn't. And that was the story I wanted to tell. So as my content started building, I started shifting to that type of story and focusing on general aviation tragedies and really sharing those stories, and that's where we're at today.
15:13
Bobby Doss
Wally knows, obviously, many people that know he's an airline pilot and he finds it interesting. Wally, why don't you tell a story about how non pilots tune in to pilot debrief?
15:24
Wally Mulhern
Oh, I mean, I, I, I, probably the most, I mean, most of my associates, the most people I associate with are pilots. I mean, I'm a airplane geek, and that's kind of all I do, but I hear it all the time. I've got a very good friend who's a lawyer, and were talking on the phone about a month ago, and I don't know how it came up. I don't think were talking airplanes at all. But all of a sudden he said, hey, do you know this guy named Hoover? And I go, well, yeah, Pilot debrief. He goes, oh, man. I listen to him all the time. It's so interesting. You know, I think all of us realize that most people are interested in airplanes and flying and aviation.
16:16
Wally Mulhern
I mean, you go to a Christmas party where, you know, a neighborhood Christmas party, and people find out you're a pilot, and it's just, oh, man. And they, they start asking questions and they want to know, you know, they want to tell you stories about the time that the airline lost their bags sometimes or whatever, or the turbulence and, you know, have you ever been scared?
16:42
Hoover
Do you know I might? Do you know why my flight was delayed?
16:45
Bobby Doss
Yeah, exactly.
16:46
Wally Mulhern
Exactly. Hey, I want to go to Sydney. Can I, how can I get a cheap ticket to Sydney?
16:53
Bobby Doss
Yeah, they want, Hey, I got to share my joke. My supply school's name is United Flight Systems Hoover. And we get a call almost every day to change seats, and I'm like, how did you get our phone number. And why do you think I can change your seats on a United Airlines flight? But it happens every day.
17:10
Wally Mulhern
Yeah, and it's funny because I do a lot of check rides at United Flight Systems, and the airline I happen to fly for has a similar name. And so when I talk to people about going to work, I always have to differentiate. I'm going to United Flight Systems tomorrow. So anyway, so, yeah, I mean, I, I think the reach you have is. I, I don't know. I mean, I don't know if you're able to see who's watching your videos. I'm guessing you can. I don't know. But, you know, I don't know what percentage of your viewers are non pilots, but it's, I think it's pretty significant. And that's what I think is so cool. I mean, most non football fans aren't going to sit down and watch a football game, but you've got a lot of, you got a lot of people watching.
17:59
Hoover
Well, it's, you know, I appreciate that. It's the human interest side of things. I think it's. And that's what I really enjoy about it is because I'm passionate about the aviation safety, but it's the story that goes with it. Right. Like, and the art of telling that story, because I know it's an important story to be told. And I've actually done a couple of community polls and things like that on my channel. And so I know that roughly about 50, 55% of my audience are people that, they're not pilots. They have no plans on being a pilot. You know, they're just, you know, maybe they're an aviation buff, maybe they're not.
18:38
Hoover
But, but there are a lot of them are just people that just like hearing interesting stories, especially because I get a lot of comments where people talk about how they use this sort of debrief methodology in their own line of work. And sometimes it's a first responder, typically it's a lot of first responders that provide that analysis. But then other people will make comments about, like, well, this is not just lessons for aviation. This is lessons for life, you know, and just general common sense when it comes, especially when it comes to risk assessment and risk mitigation.
19:18
Wally Mulhern
Right, exactly. I, you know, one of the very first checkrides I ever gave many years ago, I always sit down with my applicant. I'll say, well, tell me about yourself. And this gentleman told me about himself. I said, well, why are you here? You know, and, you know, why are you aspiring to get your pilot certificate today? And he told me a story and it was very compelling. And, and after the checkride, I said, man, you got to tell the story. And he said, well, people don't want to hear about flying stuff. I said, your story isn't a flying story. Your story is a people story. And he actually wrote it up and he had submitted it to some of the. It was either plane and pilot or flying. And they published it.
20:02
Wally Mulhern
And I thought it was so cool that his story, I mean, we could make a whole show on his story. I don't want to go into that. But yeah, there's a story behind everybody.
20:16
Bobby Doss
So let's talk about the nuts and bolts of a show. Hoover. We've been recording now for about 20 minutes and I think people think that's the effort we put into these shows. Right? You, me, Wally, we've been exchanging emails for months trying to coordinate this. We've had to reschedule multiple times. We've had. I've done my research, Wally's done his research. Right. This takes a lot of effort that I don't think anyone ever sees or hears. And so I'm assuming a 12 minute pilot debrief video on YouTube takes at least 13 minutes to prepare for. I'm just kidding. Like, what is the anatomy of a show? And I kind of am interested. I clicked your NTSB stuff. I've obviously the NTSDB database a lot. Like, how do you pick the show? I'm assuming you look for that story as you mention it.
21:00
Bobby Doss
But talk about the picking of the show and then kind of the anatomy of how you break. What's your work stream like, if you're willing to share some of that to give the audience a view of. You didn't become a famous YouTuber overnight, as you said, it took years. It took two years of real estate videos. Everyone wants to start that show. And it's not just going to happen overnight. Like break that down for us if you can.
21:23
Hoover
Yeah, I mean it's tough. So that's the short answer. But if I end up talking too much, please let me know because I could probably go on for this for a while. You know, one of the things that people might notice from my channel is I usually do not cover recent aviation mishaps. Sometimes I do, depending on how much public interest there is involved and you know, what kind of is happening with that. But one of the reasons why I Don't do that is because I think it's too easy to get into this realm of speculation about what happened, even though all the data and the facts might point us in that direction.
22:04
Hoover
I've learned sitting through enough fighter pilot debriefs that you all of a sudden get in the debrief and you think you know what happened, and then you find out it was something completely different, and you're like, oh, my gosh. And I never want to be the person to make a video that, you know, three or four months later, somebody goes, you were way wrong because of, you know, and this video is kind of an insult now because of what you said, you know, so that's where a lot of my research starts, is I'm not. I don't really focus as much on recent aviation tragedies. I pay attention to them because, you know, sometimes, like I said, I do cover them, but. But usually my research starts with older mishaps. And so to your point, like, well, how. How do you know where to start?
22:51
Hoover
Because there's thousands of aviation mishaps that you can go back over the years and discover. One of the tools that I use for doing that is, honestly, I've got it set up now through my website, but it's. It really had been through people watching my videos, sending me emails saying, hey, can you tell me more about this incident that happened back in, you know, 2003? And this. And here's what I know about the story, right? So I started getting emails like that, and those emails, you know, they started adding up. And eventually I'm like, I can't keep track of all these emails. So that's why I went ahead and created a debrief request form on my website. And so that's what I use today to get a lot of the.
23:36
Hoover
I can get a sense for what people really want to find out more about. And if I get multiple requests for, like, the same mishap, those are the ones that I tend to focus on. The other thing I try to do is I. I follow a lot of aviation channels on YouTube, whether it's, you know, Blanco Lyrio with Juan Brown, just the ones that. From aopa, you know, the Air Safety Institute, you know, things like that and. Or just ones that, like, mentor pilot and other ones where they try to actually just do a recreation of what happened, right? Using some sort of animation stuff. The way some of those people tell stories is very different from the way I tell the story.
24:20
Hoover
So when I watch their channels, I look at some of their older videos to find some of those stories that they've covered. And I look at that and I go, well, is there more to this story that they didn't talk about that I could share that would be more relevant today? Or maybe this is a story that just needs to be told again because it happened so long ago and those lessons are still pertinent today.
24:45
Hoover
So that's where I start the process and how I start narrowing down which videos I might, you know, create from there it is, I mean, it's a several day process because now I'm sitting here for hours, you know, okay, type in the tail number, look up the final report, and then I've got to read through the final reports or if somebody's already made a YouTube video and I got to sit down and watch the whole video to figure out what happened and try to determine if there's more to the story that needs to be told. And sometimes I can't get that from the video. So again, I've got to go read the final report and then I've got to go look in the docket.
25:24
Hoover
And then when it comes to the YouTube side of the house, what I know about YouTube is that it doesn't matter how amazing your story is, if you don't have a good enough thumbnail and a title that makes people curious enough to click on it, then no one will ever hear your story. They just won't, you know, and because I do get, sometimes people complain about my thumbnails, the red arrow that I put on my thumbnails, that's probably the biggest complaint. Like, why do we need a red arrow? Like, we can see the plane's broken, you know, and it's like, well, I have to do that because of how the YouTube algorithm works. Because people that aren't pilots that don't know what's going on or don't see a lot of pictures of aviation tragedies, like, need something to kind of draw them in.
26:13
Hoover
So a lot of times I'll find really interesting aviation tragedies that I want to make a video about. But if there's no pictures of the tragedy, like, then it's, then I have this dilemma. It's like, well, how do I get people curious enough to click on the video to even watch it so I can share this story with them? And if I can't think of a way to do that, like, unfortunately, like, I'll put that video aside and say, well, I, I don't know. How to tell this. I know how to tell the story, but no one would ever watch it because there's nothing for me to do or it's very hard for me to find a way to get them to click on it to begin with.
26:51
Bobby Doss
So and so again, days of work go into it. The production of the video, then the posting of the video. I mean, we have a YouTube channel at the flight school. It's not like you just make the video and post it, right? There's YouTube wants a lot of information. You've got to write good descriptions. If you make one typo, you're going to be slaughtered on the Internet. I'm sure you're. You know how mean the Internet can be. It's.
27:15
Hoover
Yeah, well, not at the faint of heart. I'll share a story about that because I'm not afraid to debrief myself because I know I make errors in my videos, right. And one of the videos that I made, and I think sometimes the audience, you have to keep in mind that, you know, I'm a military guy, right? And I was a fighter pilot. So even though it was a crewed aircraft, you know, I had some. Somebody in my backseat helping me out and playing a vital role in that mission. And after transitioning out of that doing the Part 135 stuff, you know, you've got a pilot and a co pilot, you know, and then same thing with the airlines. You've got, you know, your pilot in command and your second in command, captain and first officer. Right.
27:57
Hoover
So when it comes to general aviation flying, recreational pilots, I never really did a lot of that stuff. And I was never a cfi, a certified flight instructor. I was an instructor in the military. But that's very different than somebody doing that in the general aviation community. So some of that experience as I'm doing these videos and doing my research, sometimes I make them make a mistake about certain assumptions. And there was, there's one video I made where the. It was a flight instructor and a student and they were doing a flight and the instructor had told. I don't know if it was the flight score. The aircraft owner, whoever it was, basically said like, this is my first flight with him, so he is not going to be on the controls for this first flight. We haven't, you know, briefed or anything.
28:53
Hoover
I don't even know who this guy is. I'm just going to fly the aircraft down, pick him up and then go somewhere. And when he flew down, I think it was down to Arizona. He gets there to pick up the guy and it's a student pilot, and he shows up with all of his buddies wanting to go back to Vegas, you know, and now he's put. Put this instructor in a difficult situation because the aircraft is, you know, ends up being overloaded and that sort of thing. And in the flight back, the instructor was in the right seat and the student was in the left seat.
29:23
Hoover
And in the video, I talked about how, like, in my opinion, that was a mistake because, like, you know, from my perspective, I'm like, if he's going to be the pilot in command, he should be in the left seat flying, you know, he's the flight instructor. This wasn't supposed to be a training flight, and. And they crashed right on takeoff, you know, and so I kind of talked about how in that right seat, maybe it's more, you know, sometimes can be more difficult, especially at night, to look over and reference the instruments on takeoff, that sort of thing or whatever. And I got slaughtered in the comments from people that are, you know, longtime flight instructors, like, well, I always do my flights in the right seat, even if I'm not instructing, you know, like, because that's where I prefer to sit.
30:02
Hoover
And I'm like, okay, like, you know, I'm sorry.
30:07
Bobby Doss
I mean, it is common for my flight instructors when they rent a plane to fly from the right seat. But I think because they probably have a thousand hours over there, their sight pictures so locked in on that side that the instruments probably look awkward to them on the other side. But for me, as a guy who just flies recreationally, when I fly from the right side, I feel like I'm crabbing the whole time. And I don't. I don't feel like I have control of the airplane. So I understand the views.
30:32
Hoover
Yeah. But I mean, I make mistakes. And so, like, when I. I'm very sensitive to the viewer comments. So for anybody watching my videos, I may not respond to every comment, but I read almost all the comments on my videos because that helps me do better on the next video. And I mean, that's your opportunity to give me feedback. And, and I. And if I make a mistake and maybe if I title a video incorrectly or people don't like the title or they don't like something about the video, like, I'll. I'll make a comment about it, I'll say, you know what? You guys are right. Like, I messed this up. Let's go ahead and fix it. Let's move forward, you know, I know.
31:10
Wally Mulhern
You know, I know when we started the podcast, when we first started getting emails and I mean, the first few times I clicked on an email, I mean, my heart was pounding because I thought people were just going to say this is garbage. And, and it. For, by and large it wasn't, it was positive. And I was actually a little bit surprised, pleasantly surprised. But it's kind of nice.
31:36
Bobby Doss
And at the same time, we're human. When I get a four star review on Apple podcasts, I'm like, why is it four stars? I work my ass off for this thing, but it's because it's my baby, right? So we are human as well. The Internet can be.
31:49
Hoover
Yeah, well. And I think to sum up the answer to your question about this process involved in stuff, it does take a while. I probably spend generally about a day and a half to two days trying to identify different videos. And then I'll have, you know, three or four different topics that I want to cover in my next series of videos. But the actual research, it's more than just the NTSB docket, because a lot of times I'll find something in the docket and I'll go, okay, there's more to this. Let me see what I can find on the news, or let me see what I can find and maybe comments that people have made on where somebody else did a video on this, you know, so it's all of that research.
32:28
Hoover
And anytime I find something that I can't corroborate, you know, with another source, like, I'm not going to include that in my video. So I'm very careful about what I talk about in those videos. And that process takes a while. And then I've got to, you know, especially like with the Dallas air show tragedy that I recently made a video on, that one took me a long time to make that video because there was, I think, 1200 pages of NTSB interviews and research that the NTSB had I had to read through to go, okay, well, how can I take 1200 pages of interviews and tell this story in about 20 minutes or less? And I think that video, I think ended up being about 24, 25 minutes. But when I originally first filmed that video, it was about 45 to 50 minutes long.
33:22
Hoover
And I'm like, okay, my viewers were not gonna, they're not gonna sit around for that long, even though there was a lot more that could be told. So the process sometimes of making these videos, depending on how detailed they are, it can be like Three or four days just to make one video, you know, and then especially with the editing process, because a 15 minute video, that's gonna take at a minimum six hours to edit, because I've got to watch the video all the way through about a dozen times looking for different errors and stuff like that, you know, so I'm happy to do it. And I think, but I think sometimes people, you're right, they may not necessarily realize the amount of work and effort that goes into that.
34:05
Hoover
And then, oh, by the way, I've still got my full time job, you know, flying for the airlines. I've got three kids, I've got three dogs, you know, I've got kids all the way from high school to elementary school. So we've got sports going on all the time. And it's a constant challenge because I, I definitely, I want to keep doing the videos every week and that's my plan. But it can be a struggle sometimes.
34:28
Wally Mulhern
There's no doubt. You know, I use a lot of sports analogies and I think we could say this is kind of like maybe an NFL football game. I mean, we watch it three hours on a Sunday, but there's a whole lot more that goes into producing that game, you know, from the practice and all that stuff. There's, there's a whole lot of behind the scenes stuff going on.
34:50
Bobby Doss
Yeah, yeah. Wally and I both have full time jobs and we do this every other week. And I mean, I don't think people understand the stress of not wanting to let the audience down. Right. I can almost sense it from you saying, I want to do it every week, but no one knows how hard it is to do this every week and produce this content and get, and make it good content. I think it would be easy if it was crap content, but then there would be no one listening or no one watching. So it's hard to make it good and keep that quality high. And obviously you're doing that. So I guess a little bit. What can you share? My son years ago said, oh, dad, I want to be a YouTuber. And I'm like, okay, you got to start a YouTube channel.
35:29
Bobby Doss
Well, that's hard, dad. We need to make a video. Well, I don't want to make videos all the time. Well, wait a second, son. You want to be a YouTuber? These are the things you're going to have to do. I think he has one video on his YouTube channel and that didn't last very long. But it is hard work. Right. And I don't think anyone Understands that. But can you share a little bit about your statistics, like how many people are watching your videos? I mean, I can look at the video count, but you have to pay. We're statistic junkies on our side, so we know where and how much and give us a little bit of idea of what that audience is doing on your channel on a regular basis.
36:04
Hoover
Sure. So I can tell you right now, I, over the last 30 days, I average about 600,000 views a day. A lot of those, A lot of those video views come from my YouTube shorts, which, you know, still continue to perform today. I actually stopped making YouTube shorts back in January, but I do plan on doing those again for those of you that watch the channel. So expect those to be coming again soon, maybe even this weekend. I've been looking at doing that. The, you know, in fact, the shorts, you know, they do a lot on the channel in terms of the number of views now, in terms of, you know, viewer engagement and stuff like that. Like all of that's going to come from the longer form videos that I create out there. You know, the, let's see here.
36:57
Hoover
My most viewed short has 41 million views right now. And I've got about a dozen or so with over 10 million views.
37:07
Bobby Doss
With the, for those that don't know, that's a massive number. I mean, that's huge. You could have great content and not even get to six digits of views. Right. So that's massive viewer count.
37:21
Hoover
Yeah, let's just say like I, I kind of have a little, I don't know, I have my tricks. I know what I'm doing when it comes to the shorts. But what I found was the people that watch YouTube shorts, it's very different audience. It's the same kind of demographic in terms of age and stuff like that, but it's different audience than the people that watches the longer videos. Because if you're scrolling through YouTube shorts, you know, it's kind of a little bit like TikTok, if you will. So you're on there just for like that entertainment factor. You're not there really to watch a longer video. So that's one of the reasons why I stopped doing that because I wanted more growth and people to focus on the longer form videos because that's really where the lessons are told.
38:03
Hoover
It's, it's very hard to break down an aviation mishap in less than 60 seconds.
38:07
Bobby Doss
Yes.
38:08
Hoover
You know, in a YouTube short. But the videos now let's see, I think I've got, you know, I've got 80, about 85 different videos, long form videos. So I've been doing that since the first video I have on there is back from November, I believe, of 2022. Yeah. In fact the first video that it was, the first video I did on the channel and it took off was the Dallas air show crash right when it happened. So I published that video. I think it was the day after or two days after because it was on November 16th when I put or. Right. Basically right after the tragedy happened. Yeah, so I did that. And then I mean the demographic tends to be, you know, people aren't our age, so 45 and up for the most part.
39:02
Hoover
I've got, it's probably about 50% are within the US and then the rest are all around the world. You know a lot of English speaking countries. But I, I get emails, you know, from all over the place. From South Africa, from New Zealand, you know, from Europe, all over. Not as much from South America, but every now and then people down in South America watching too. So it's crazy. Like this is not. I had zero expectation they would have gotten to this level. It was just kind of like this thing that like, I knew it had some potential, but there's so much aviation content on YouTube when, you know, and there still is today. But when I first started, that was my thought.
39:40
Hoover
I'm like, well, people aren't going to want to watch this or hear this story because, you know, they can go see aviation stories and all these other channels as well. So I don't know, it's just been an incredible blessing to me and it's very humbling a lot of times to get some of the emails from the viewers and to read some of the comments where people share their own story, their own experience, or they talk about how my videos have made them a safer pilot or my videos have maybe inspired them to actually become a pilot because maybe they were afraid and now they've seen some of this stuff and even though it is kind of scary, like they know how to approach risk management a little bit better or at least some things they need to watch out for when they're flying.
40:23
Hoover
So it's crazy and I, I really enjoy it.
40:28
Bobby Doss
How often do you go ahead?
40:31
Wally Mulhern
Well, how often do you step on the flight deck of your airline job and your flying partner looks over and says, hey, are you Hoover?
40:42
Hoover
You'd be surprised. Almost. It's very Rare. And it's funny because, like I went through a whole rotation with somebody and for those that don't know, rotation is, you know, several day trip, you know, with another pilot. We went through this rotation together. It was like a three or four day rotation. And at the end, it was like on the last day of the rotation, you know, we're about to do the flight back home and he's like, do you have a YouTube channel? You know, And I said, yeah. We started talking. He's like, I knew it. Like this whole rotation. Like, I thought I recognized you from somewhere because it's the hat.
41:16
Hoover
Like it's crazy to me how like when people see me without the hat and I have hair, but when they see me without the hat, you know, they don't put two and two together. But I do get asked every now and then in the airport, you know, from other. And it's almost always from other pilots though. Like, I've only had, I had one passenger on a flight where I was doing a walk through back in the main cabin. I was walking back for some reason I can't remember, and all of a sudden I hear somebody yell hoover. I was like, what? And he's like, I knew it. I told my wife I saw you know. But yeah, it's, it's cool. I like it.
41:55
Wally Mulhern
Yeah, I, I get that occasionally walking through the cabin, you know, I'm standing there with my ID hanging around my neck, which says my name, Wally. And someone will look at me and go, wait, you're Wally? Yeah, yeah. No, no, behind the prop. Yeah, okay.
42:13
Hoover
Yeah, it's good, it's fun.
42:15
Bobby Doss
I mean. Go ahead, go ahead.
42:18
Hoover
I was gonna say I, that this is something that I want to do more of, like, is getting out and actually engaging with the people that watch my videos because it's hard to do that in YouTube, you know, because all you have is the comments section. So that's something I'm looking forward to this year. I'm trying to get out to Oshkosh. I think that's going to be a fun time, you know, so if I can make it out there, and I'm kind of junior in my category right now at the airline, so. So if I can get the days off that I need, I know a lot of other pilots want to go to that event as well, but that's where I hope to be. For those of you looking to meet.
42:50
Bobby Doss
Me out in public, fantastic. How else can people find you as we wrap up the show? What URLs, what handles what channels? What can people do to find out more about your show?
43:04
Hoover
The best thing they can do if you want to support the channel is just go to YouTube and type in Pilot Debrief and watch a video and then watch another video. That's. That's really one of the best things you can do to help support the channel. And it's free and it's easy to do. If you're looking to find out more about me and kind of, you know, what I'm doing, or if you want to buy yourself one of these Strike Eagle hats, you can go over to pilot debrief.com so I've just got the website up and running. I'm planning to build that out. I've got some more stuff coming soon on there, but I've got my bio on there, so you can see a little bit about me.
43:38
Hoover
And then if you want to submit a debrief request, maybe something is, you know, you're familiar with the tragedy or maybe you were even involved in an aviation mishap on that website, there's a link to fill out a debrief request form. And although I don't respond to all of those, just know that I look at all of them because that's a big part of my research and trying to determine the videos that I make. And if I do end up making a video on that tragedy that you've talked about, I will send you an email to let you know, because that's important, because you guys, the viewers, help with that. So pilot debrief.com or just pilot debrief on YouTube.
44:14
Bobby Doss
Fantastic. Hopefully hundreds of thousands of our listeners will go support your channel and you'll get some new people in the US and around the world. For all of you listening, go tune into his videos, watch him, and as always, stay behind the product.
44:31
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.