We're back at it with part 3 of our Mock Private Pilot Checkride series. If you've got a 'ride coming up, this episode is tailor made for you!
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00:01
Behind the Prop Inro
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. Been a few weeks. We had a guest on a couple weeks ago and we're gonna now share Mock CheckRide Private Part 3 with all you listeners. Hopefully these will be shows we'll get to share with people for years to come. Wally. To really guide you through the process of what that checkride is going to be like. Using the ACS as our guide to walk you through what you should expect. It's an open book test and too many times I think I see flight students not being prepared. I'm sure Wally's seen students come and not even know what the ACS is. So take heed to these three episodes and make sure you're a good student and a good applicant when you meet your DPE.
01:11
Bobby Doss
We were through everything through Area of Operations 1 and 2 before this episode we kind of were doing the taxi and the takeoff kind of stuff. When we wrapped up episode two or part two of this series and now we're at area operation three communications light signals and Runway light systems for task A. Wally, I can remember memorizing the light gun signals. So I was so afraid my instructor or my DPE was going to ask me what does flashing green mean? What does red, green, red, green mean? Do you, do you conduct your questioning like that?
01:51
Wally Mulhern
I do. Well, no, I, I, I, when we get the light signals, it's within the context of an electrical failure, you know, and I, I'm just going to throw it out there. I mean, I love a softball. I will say, you're coming in the land, you get a green light. What does that mean? You know, and I remember as a young student, I remember my instructor asking me what does a red light and a flashing orange light mean? And I thought, oh my gosh, I don't know this, I've never heard of flashing orange. He said it means the Coke machine is out of Coke and use exact change only these kids will know what you're talking about.
02:41
Bobby Doss
But that brought back many memories for me.
02:44
Wally Mulhern
I know, I know. That's what I was just thinking as I started to tell that little story. I thought people aren't going to know what it Was, I mean, exact change only.
02:54
Bobby Doss
So you couldn't use your iPhone to buy a soda. We used to put coins into the machine and if the orange light was flashing and The Coke cost 55 cents, you had to have two quarters in a nickel or you were going to lose the extra change you put in to get that soft drink out of machine.
03:11
Wally Mulhern
Right, right. And this was before you could even put dollar bills in. Remember, you had to go somewhere to get the change to get the coins. Yeah, yeah. You know, before we even really jump into this, I just want to go back and just reiterate something about area of Operation 2. Almost every task in AOA 2, there's one of the skills elements. It says complete the appropriate checklists. I'm going through it. You know, engine starting, complete the appropriate checklist. Taxi, complete the appropriate checklist. So completing the appropriate checklist is almost for every task. And then when we get into landings, every landing is going to say, complete the appropriate checklist. And I was just, I was talking to another examiner the other day.
04:09
Wally Mulhern
We're, we're seeing a trend and I don't know if this is national or this is just something that's happening in Houston, but this is multiple flight schools. This isn't just one where people are using Gumps as their checklist and they're not using a checklist. And people that is just wrong. You, you have to be in the mindset of using a checklist. Now I get it. You know, in a 172 especially, that's fuel injected. There's not a whole lot on the landing checklist. You know, maybe landing lights and flaps and really that, the, you know, if you don't have the flaps down, it's not, you know, you're going to land just fine, but you're going to get them into bigger airplanes that are going to have props, they're going to have prop controls, they're gonna have landing gear, we're gonna have cow flaps.
05:02
Wally Mulhern
You might, then you get in a little bit bigger airplanes, you might have yacht ampers, you got pressurization, things that you need to do, fuel pumps. There's really important stuff on those checklists. And to the CFIs out there, if you're going out there and you're not using checklists, you are doing your student a big, big disservice. So the basic premise of completing the appropriate checklist, you got to do it. Okay, you gotta have a checklist. Yeah, you gotta have a checklist. And it means don't do it from memory. And, you know, I'll take pictures of the lap of the applicant where they've got the checklist open on their lap, but the landing checklist isn't even visible, it's on the backside. And you know, it's probably not going to turn out to their satisfaction the checkride, when we're starting to see that.
06:00
Wally Mulhern
So anyway, just be aware of that. Using the appropriate checklist. You got to use it.
06:07
Bobby Doss
Yep. And I mean, it is an open book test. Right. And that might seem like really common sense, but if you and your instructor have landed the last 30 landings without going through the before landing checklist and cleaning up the plane and securing the airplane and not using any of those checklists, you're not going to be any better than that on the day of the checkride because it's not in your DNA to do that. And as it relates to light gun signals, if you haven't quizzed yourself, if when you fly at night you don't have them demonstrate the light gun signals, then you're not going to know them and you're only going to be able to memorize them. Yeah, Runway lighting system. I remember being scared to death of all of the different types of that too, but really that was more instrument training.
06:54
Bobby Doss
How much are you dealing with Runway lighting systems during the private checkride, Wally?
07:02
Wally Mulhern
Not a whole lot. I mean, I, I, we do get into the difference in the Runway lighting colors versus taxiway lighting, you know, and that kind of course we, you know, we talk about Runway incursions, we talk about hot spots, that kind of stuff. But you know, we're not spending, we're not hammering that home significantly. And you know, again, I try to put it within the context of the flight that we're taking and it makes it easy for, you know, an afternoon checkride because I usually have them plan the cross country to leave at 3pm and maybe they're making a fuel stop. So maybe we are getting to our destination at night. So we'll talk about things like that. I do talk about what does it mean when the rotating beacon is on during the day and that sort of stuff.
08:01
Bobby Doss
So, so they need to know their stuff. No question. Task B, traffic patterns. This is one. I was giving an orientation this morning at the flight school and talking to people and were, I just picked a lesson which was, I think it was lesson two or three of the, no, it was lesson eight actually. It was A progress check, lesson eight. And the, the reading material was about the traffic pattern. And I was trying to teach these new to be students that doing your homework is the best way to save money in flight training. And this particular student didn't have any lessons assigned to their reservation. They were coming in for a progress check. And I know they're going to be challenged on how to enter the traffic pattern at a towered and non towered airport.
08:45
Bobby Doss
And the non towered airport is going to be the difficult one. And if they didn't read and understand that, they're not going to know it. And the things you need to understand right here are in this acs, collision hazards, distractions, wake turbulence. Then you have to know right of way rules how to enter the pattern like this. I can't stress enough that as we get into more of the technical flying areas, which is where I think students and flight instructors think about the ACS more. The maneuvers and do I do the maneuvers to maneuver standards. It's more about the knowledge and the rules that are going to incorporate the conversation you're going to have with Wally as it relates to the checkride. True or false, Wally?
09:26
Wally Mulhern
Yeah, definitely. And something I would really. Speaking of entering the traffic pattern, this is something that I'll occasionally get from an applicant. And until I was really digging in the acs, I don't know, a year ago or so was when I realized that the ACS is worded this way. So we have recommended traffic pattern procedures. How do we enter a traffic pattern? Do we just, you know, go and enter a right base for Runway 18? No, we're, there's certain things that we are supposed supposed to do. Again, it's recommended, not mandatory. It's a non controlled airport, so it is recommended. However, on the ACS under the skills section under traffic patterns, it tells us that it says comply with the recommended traffic pattern procedures. So really for that checkride to be within standard, they have to do the recommended traffic pattern entry procedure.
10:40
Wally Mulhern
Same with a halting pattern entry on an instrument checkride. That's recommended. You know what, what's the recommended procedure for this holding pattern? Okay, it's a teardrop. Well, could you get there another way? Well, you could, but for the checkride you have to comply with the recommended procedure.
11:01
Bobby Doss
Interesting. Good call out. Which again Captain Obvious here, that's in the acs. If you read the ACS and you know the acs, you would have known that it's an open book test. And, and I, I'm pretty confident we had someone fail a checkride who did not enter it based on the recommended method recently. And they're gonna have to go fly that part of their checkride one more time. And that's a $400 mistake in some cases.
11:26
Wally Mulhern
Right, right. Yeah. And that's why, you know, that's why when I, you know, when you're doing an instrument approach to an airport, let's say you're, it's a non controlled airport and you're flying an RNAV approach. So you're basically doing a straight in, you know, I always recommend that when you're making that call to, on the CTAF, you know, explain everybody you know, XYZ traffic, Cessna one two, three Bravo Charlie on a six mile straight in to Runway 18 on the RNAV approach. You know, and it kind of lets people know. Okay, all right. Someone is out there and they're not really playing by the rules. But now we understand why they're not playing by the rules. They're doing a practice instrument approach and it makes sense.
12:15
Bobby Doss
Yep. Because you would be if you were in the pattern. You're expecting them to cross midfield or enter the appropriate way.
12:22
Wally Mulhern
Yeah.
12:23
Bobby Doss
So now we, those were two sections or two tasks in area of operation three. Now we jump to area of operation four. And this is where I think. Well, I did. Private pilots is all about takeoff, landings and go arounds. And it's a pretty beefy part of what is difficult to be a private pilot student. And there's a lot of information in here. There. Yeah, I'm guessing it's 10 plus pages of just this information. That again will be more of the skills aspect. You're going to fly with them. But man, there is a lot of meat in this area of operation part here.
13:02
Wally Mulhern
So as we're looking at task A, normal takeoff and climb, go down to the skills element. Bobby, what's the first thing on there?
13:11
Bobby Doss
The first thing in the skills element is complete the appropriate checklists.
13:15
Wally Mulhern
Yeah, guess what? That's on every single takeoff. It's on every single landing as well. Okay. Complete the appropriate checklist and it's first on the list. Okay, so we got to complete the approach the appropriate checklist. I think this area of operation is a little bit intimidating in that, you know, it's basically the same information for each takeoff. So task A is normal takeoff and climb, Task B, normal approach and landing. Okay. So C is soft field takeoff, D is going to be soft field landing. So it is again a lot of it is the same information repeated over and over again. But, you know, some of the errors that I see a lot is not landing a Runway center line. And I will, I'll joke with my applicants.
14:17
Wally Mulhern
I'll say, you know, as a taxpayer, you pay for the whole Runway, not just one side of it. And, you know, that's my way of saying, hey, let's, you know, let's land on the center of the Runway.
14:30
Bobby Doss
You did a safety meeting. I don't know if you remember this. Not too long ago, you did a safety meeting somewhere in the last six months. And you and I kind of came up with a plan to kind of trick the instructors. But the big Runway was gonna be closed because they were gonna repave the left side, I think is what you wanted me to say. And were they aware of that? Notam.
14:48
Wally Mulhern
Yeah, right.
14:50
Bobby Doss
Would they only repave the left side, Wally?
14:52
Wally Mulhern
Well, everybody lands on the left side. We don't ever touch the right side. Yeah, yeah. So, yeah, I mean, there's a lot of information in the landing. And it's. As I'm looking at this, it's almost intimidating. I think, holy cow, there's a lot of information here. You know, collision hatter. It's planning for a rejected landing or go around, land and hold, short operations, effects of crosswind, tailwind, wake turbulence, landing surface conditions, you know, landing with a tailwind. And that's something that I, I wish, you know, I've tried to get people, you know, we're in a simulated emergency situation where there's a medical emergency on board our airplane, and the medical emergency is me. I'll tell them I'm having a heart attack. And we might have three knots of wind.
15:56
Wally Mulhern
And by golly, we're not going to land with a tailwind because we just don't do that. And I said, well, could we land with a tailwind? And, well, we'd look up the data. Instead of 640ft to land, we'd need 780ft to land on a 5,000 foot long Runway. So I think that's something that you instructors should have your student do. A day when it's, you know, the wind is 360 at 5 knots, do a couple landings on Runway 18, you know, at an uncontrolled airport, or even if it's controlled, if there's nobody else in the pattern, ask them, hey, can we land downwind, do a couple of downwind landings just to show them? Yes. Is it going to feel a little bit different? Yeah, I guess it is.
16:45
Wally Mulhern
But I think it's something that is good for the toolbox of the students saying yeah, okay, I can land with a five knot tailwind. And yeah, it's not common practice, but you start flying into bigger airports and landing with a tailwind is, you know, is not uncommon.
17:09
Bobby Doss
Well, I think if you land in San Diego, you only land one way no matter what.
17:14
Wally Mulhern
Right?
17:14
Bobby Doss
I mean there's some airports that only have one direction of traffic no matter what you do. And yeah, you don't get to pick the way the wind's blowing at that airport for sure.
17:24
Wally Mulhern
Absolutely.
17:26
Bobby Doss
So as it relates to the landings, you know, I, I think of the checkride because I've been, I'm around a flight school every day, right. Sometimes you guys, meaning you and applicants might go fly and only be able to do the landings because the ceilings are so low or something's a comp, something is accomplishable and some things aren't accomplishable. But do you incorporate these as part of the flight? I'm assuming you don't just go to the pattern normally and just do the three types of landings and then the, or the three types of takeoffs and the three types of landings. I'm assuming you break that up as part of the flight as well. We're leaving, we're leaving normally and we're coming back with a soft field or a short field or something to that effect as a.
18:05
Wally Mulhern
That.
18:05
Bobby Doss
Is that accurate?
18:07
Wally Mulhern
Yeah, I will usually have the first takeoff be some sort of a performance takeoff. It'll either be a short field or a soft field takeoff. The first takeoff out of the box. And you know, I'll tell in the pre flight briefing, okay, our first takeoff is going to be a soft field takeoff and I'll say to the applicant, look, I'll remind you that again in the run up area. I'll remind you again before we're ready for takeoff. So I mean if you forget it's no big deal, but we'll, I'll normally do something like that right off. Right off, you know, right out of the box. I try to do the specialty landings, you know, I, I try to set the student up for the applicant up for success and do those landings as part of a traffic pattern.
19:00
Wally Mulhern
In other words, we're not going to come in from the practice area and go right into a short field landing. Although you could, I mean, you could, I mean there's, it's well within my right to do that. But most short field landings are going to be within the traffic pattern.
19:22
Bobby Doss
So let's assume we're successful in the landing components and we've done good in all of these different types. Obviously there's acronyms in the acs and we really start seeing it more here where we might be flying a specific type of aircraft that requires things. And there's sections that don't apply to us. In this case, glassy water, rough water. Those are only used for airplane single engine C or multi engine C. And that's probably not what you do on a very regular basis, Wally.
19:52
Wally Mulhern
Right.
19:52
Bobby Doss
So we can skip all those areas or tasks that don't apply to our type of aircraft. IEC in this case. Right. So huge section of the. The ACS gets pulled out because we don't. We're not flying that type of a plane. But then we get to area of operation 5 and I hate it. But I really believe this is where people start reading the acs.
20:16
Wally Mulhern
Yeah, Let me.
20:18
Bobby Doss
Good.
20:18
Wally Mulhern
Let me go back to. Let me go back to landings. When as you're going through the ACS and you start seeing all this seaplane stuff, it's real easy to say, oh, I mean I'm looking at it right now. Task G, confined area takeoff. Airplane single engine C. Okay. Can confined area landing. Okay. Glassy water takeoff. Okay. I don't need any of this stuff, but hidden back here.
20:45
Bobby Doss
Oh, I see.
20:46
Wally Mulhern
Task. Task M. Task M is a forward slip to a landing. So that is part of the private. And task N in as a November is a go around. So. So don't get to that seaplane stuff and say I'm done and just jump to the next one. There are two more tasks that we got to cover.
21:07
Bobby Doss
Shame on me because that's what I was doing. I was just skipping it all. I was skimming fast to try and keep in our window of time for this podcast and I really did skip them. And yeah, forward slip is one thing I don't like because I'm close to the ground and it feels a little abnormal. So yeah, we don't want to skip those two components for sure. I try to speak about it all the time. Go around or unable are the two best things that a pilot has in their toolbox. So make sure you use those two tasks as well.
21:35
Wally Mulhern
Yeah, I just, I had to do a go around two days ago on a triple seven coming into Maui. We were turning base to final and a little Cessna Caravan was kind of in our way and they said it wasn't a traditional go around it was abandoned the approach, maintain present altitude and fly heading 020. And then we climbed up 6000, came back and did it again. So, you know, go arounds happen, they happen at all different places within the.
22:10
Bobby Doss
Approach and think that guy or girl knows how much money that costs United?
22:15
Wally Mulhern
Oh, I, I, yeah, I don't know. I, we were, we were watching, we're going, who is this? What, what's going on here? And we're thinking this isn't going to work. And about that time I think the controller said, yeah, this isn't going to work. But anyway, that's all right. We were, I think we're about 45 minutes early, so we landed about 35 minutes early. So.
22:39
Bobby Doss
Awesome. So back to Area Operation 5 Performance Maneuvers and ground reference maneuvers. This is probably where I remember my flight instructor showing me the PTS in those days, the ACs now like this is where I'm afraid people spend their time. And this is, we are more than halfway through the ACS now and there's. If you skip the first half, you're gonna struggle on your checkride. But these maneuvers are where we think about the ACS more. Right? We do. Can I fly to these skill level standards? But this is a small component and I, I don't know if you have the statistics, but out of all the checkrides you've done four digits. Thousands of check rides. Our checkrides normally failed on these performance maneuvers or somewhere else. It's just one or the other A or B, performance maneuvers or somewhere else.
23:33
Wally Mulhern
Somewhere else. Yeah.
23:35
Bobby Doss
And so, and that's because we spend all of our time here and we don't spend all of our time in the other places.
23:41
Wally Mulhern
Right.
23:42
Bobby Doss
It's not about flying as much as it is the knowledge. And I'm going to keep saying that till the day I die. But we have to stay focused on other things. But here we are, we've got the steep turns, we got ground reference maneuvers and it's all about a hundred feet and ten knots. Ten plus or minus ten here and there. Right. But.
24:03
Wally Mulhern
Right.
24:03
Bobby Doss
I think I hear more people not setting up correctly for ground reference maneuvers. When you're out there, I'm assuming you do high work and then low work. Is that your normal M.O.
24:14
Wally Mulhern
Yeah, yeah. Typically we're gonna head out on a cross country, we're gonna cut cover all the cross country elements, which is later on in the acs at some point. You know it for the configuration of the airports that I usually fly out of it's usually more advantageous for everybody to go do the landings at a airport other than the airport that we took off from, just from a control standpoint and traffic standpoint. So, you know, we'll end up at another airport, we'll do all the landings, then we'll take off, we'll go up high. You'll. We'll do the instrument work, we'll do the high maneuvers, maybe an emergency descent down to a lower altitude. We might have a. Lose an engine to do an emergency landing, and then out of that, we'll do the ground reference maneuvers and come back home. That's it.
25:23
Wally Mulhern
I mean, I'm not mentioning everything. There's some other things in there, but in a nutshell, that's how it works. Now, are there times where we're ready to go and we've got weather conditions that might be, I don't know, 2000 broken and, but it's clearing. The weather is clearing. We think that in an hour we're gonna have 3, 500 scattered. So might there be a situation where we start out in the traffic pattern and do all the landings for the first, you know, 40 minutes or so? Yeah, we can do that. So if you, Everything there, we, you know, we just got to be flexible with everything.
26:13
Bobby Doss
Do you, I think I hear students again, back the ground reference maneuver stuff. Do they, do they normally have the information they need in their brain, like the altitude that they're supposed to do these maneuvers at? Do you find people not having that as something they're ready to do? I hear about people picking the wrong altitude at times. Just curious. What's the common errors as it relates to area of operation, five steep turns and ground reference maneuvers?
26:45
Wally Mulhern
Steep turns. You know, I can tell a lot about a pilot by doing steep turns. A pilot that can nail their steep turns, that's a big feather in their calf if they just come in and nail the steep turns. I'm pretty impressed. And I will say that because I'm a person who, man, I couldn't do steep turns probably till I was a cfi. I struggled with them. I really struggled with them. And what I've learned, you know, I've watched thousands of steep turns. Now, you know, one thing that I find is that the applicant is inside the airplane way too much. Steep turns is a visual maneuver. You ought to be outside the airplane, put the nose on the horizon and turn it, and that's Basically the end of it.
27:37
Wally Mulhern
And when I've instructed, when I've had people struggle with steep turns, I just take my iPad, which I have on my lap, I'll take it and I will cover up the entire instrument panel. I'll say, okay, now do a steep turn and I'll let them use the attitude indicator to establish the appropriate bank angle, whether it be 45 or more for a commercial. And then I'll cover everything up and you know, 360 degrees later I take it down and they look at their altitude and they are right on it. Right. I have never had anybody not be able to do a steep turn when I cover up the instruments. And so it just goes to show you that, you know, maybe looking inside isn't the thing that we need to do. We need to be outside.
28:26
Wally Mulhern
The other thing about a steep turn is, you know, for private, it's a 45 degree bank. So what a lot of times I will, you'll see is the applicant rolls into the bank, they begin to lose altitude. So what do they do? They decrease the bank. So now we've done half of this steep turn at 30 degrees. Well, that's not a steep turn. So we have not accomplished the maneuver. So, you know, that's, that's something to be aware of.
29:03
Bobby Doss
On. Is there a common error with ground reference maneuvers?
29:07
Wally Mulhern
I would say the common error on ground reference maneuvers is inappropriate altitudes.
29:13
Bobby Doss
Right.
29:14
Wally Mulhern
I have done many ground reference, you know, I say, okay, let's, and I won't tell, I will not tell the applicant what altitude to go to. I will typically do this maneuver after we've done the emergency landing. Of course we're not going to land, but we set up for emergency landing. I'll tell them to go around and I'll say, okay, let's fly to the appropriate altitude for ground reference maneuvers. And I've had some go up to 1500ft and say, okay, let's find something and do it. Turn about a point or S turns or whatever. And we're doing it at 1500ft. And you know it.
30:03
Bobby Doss
The disapproval says those don't end well.
30:07
Wally Mulhern
Yeah, you know, inappropriate altitude for ground reference maneuvers. And, and they will usually play the safety card. Oh, my instructor says we should do it at this altitude because it's safer. Well, okay, well, maybe it's safer, but it's not the standard. The standard says 600 to 1000ft AGL. It works out in Houston. You know, our airports are 150-250ft MSL. So it works out for us if we just set the altimeter to a thousand feet at about 850, 950ft, something like that. And it works real well for us in Houston. Now the, you know, people at other places, you got it, you got to do the math, but it does say 600 to a 1,000ft AGL.
31:05
Bobby Doss
Yeah. There's still a lot of meat left on this bone, so let's try and hustle through some of this. You know, the navigation stuff I remember for me was pretty simple. I think it's because we spend so much time on our solo cross countries and trying to use in Houston fly following and we're kind of familiar with that stuff. I think the diversion throws some people off. Wally, you're, you've done more checkrides than me. Is the diversion the navigation problem in the checkride or is there something else related to lost procedures or pilotage and dead reckoning?
31:41
Wally Mulhern
The, the pilotage in dead reckoning is sometimes an issue. And what I, what I try to, when I'm instructing, what I tell the people is that the distance to the first point or the time, rather the time to the first point is very, I'm not going to say irrelevant, but it's going to be. You may be off to your first point based on. Well, I was expecting to take off on Runway X and we took off on Runway Y. Or ATC had us fly Runway heading for five miles. So that time to that first point is almost irrelevant. Now from the first point to the second point, now we're locking in and we should be on course.
32:31
Wally Mulhern
So I say make that first point pretty close to your departure airport, you know, within five miles and then your next point maybe, you know, six, eight miles down the road from there. So yeah, it, and you know, again, when ATC has you do things that you weren't expecting, you know, you take off to the south and you're going to the northwest, but they want you to make a left downwind departure rather than a right down when departure, you know, you weren't expecting that. So that time to that first waypoint or that first checkpoint isn't going to be very accurate in that case. So yeah, I, I do see errors in that. People finding, you know, looking at, you know, picking points that aren't very good points to pick at.
33:23
Wally Mulhern
Pick, you know, private airports I think are not usually very good unless you're very familiar with it because it's normally just a piece of grass. Bodies of water can be tricky because if you're in a drought situation, the bodies of water aren't there. If you're in a flood situation, the bodies of water don't look like what they look like on the sectional. Now, if we're talking about, like, the Mississippi river, that's a different deal. But little ponds and that kind of stuff are kind of tough.
33:59
Bobby Doss
So assuming we get through navigation and all that stuff, now we're into the high, really, what I would call the high maneuvers. Slow flight, Power on stalls, power off stalls. I'm assuming this is where we spend a lot of our time with our instructors, and we'll do well in those maneuvers. In general, if you have a big gotcha, please share it. But how do you find. The big question for me is the spin awareness component. Right? How. How are students describing that to you or how good are they at being prepared to talk about spin awareness?
34:33
Wally Mulhern
Well, they, you know, we talk about that in the, you know, the stall, entering the stalls. And I'd say, by and large, the students are pretty good at keeping the airplane coordinated. You know, as long as it's coordinated, the chances of getting in a spin are probably not going to happen. But it's when you're raising that nose and you're keeping it out of coordination. So I think, by and large, the instructors do a pretty good job on that. My complaint that I have more than anything else on the power installs is I see very, very aggressive pitch ups to slow the airplane down. And I think as an instructor, when we're teaching this maneuver, we just have to have a little bit more patience and let them raise the nose at a normal rate of raising the pitch, because what are we.
35:34
Wally Mulhern
What's a power on stall all about? We are simulating basically taking off in the airplane and getting behind the airplane and. And, you know, the nose gets too high and we run out of air speed. Well, when we do these aggressive pitch ups, that's not. Yeah, I don't, you know, we're not learning power on stalls to pass a checkride. We're learning power on stalls to keep us alive. And so let's. Let's kind of simulate what. What we would really do. I hope that makes sense. But these aggressive pitch ups where we're just yanking the airplane back, there's nothing that feels right about that. And so.
36:19
Bobby Doss
Like this section of the ACS under spin awareness, I like that the skills section says, applicant exhibits the skill 2 intentionally left blank so that we're not. We're not trying to go out there and do a stall, Demonstrate a stall. It's more of a knowledge component, for sure. One of the sections area of operation. Now We're Area Operation 8 Basic Instrument Maneuvers. I can remember this being an overwhelming component of my training.
36:48
Wally Mulhern
Right.
36:48
Bobby Doss
Vor navigation was not natural for me. I definitely practiced it a lot, but it wasn't. I wasn't very good at it. But you mentioned straight and level on the last episode being kind of an issue for even instrument students. The. The unusual attitudes were scary for me because I just didn't feel in control. Private students get such a small bite of this stuff. How do you rate, on a scale of 1 to 10, the average private student as it relates to area of operation? Eight basic instrument maneuvers.
37:24
Wally Mulhern
I'd say pretty good. Pretty good. You know, I do like, when I look in an applicant's logbook, I do like to see little spatterings of instrument time. It's just technique, I think when I see someone that has went out and flew for four hours and got three hours of instrument time in one day, I think that's not very good. Because first of all, flying under the hood or flying with foggles on is very fatiguing, I believe. And especially for a student pilot who's working on their private. So I think three tenths at a time, four tenths, two tenths, I think.
38:12
Wally Mulhern
I mean, that's the way my instructor did it with me, and that's the way I always did it with my students is, okay, let's just throw in a little bit of this on the way out to the practice area and mix it up that way. That seems to better. I hate it when I see instrument time on their night cross country. It meets the requirements. But when we take away all their, you know, we're not looking outside. It's like, well, okay, why are we doing a night cross country? Well, we've just taken away part of that so it can be done and it's legal. But I don't think it's the best interest of the student to do that. But yeah, just straight and level. You know, we'll. We'll usually be climbing up. And I'll say, okay, let's put the view limiting device on.
39:02
Wally Mulhern
And I'll just have them level off. Okay, let's level off at 2,000ft. And a lot of times they look over at me like, okay, what now? And I go, we're just flying straight and level. Let's see how that goes. As we're gaining and Gaining and gaining altitude, maybe.
39:21
Bobby Doss
Yeah.
39:23
Wally Mulhern
But down there under our risk management is trimming the aircraft so straight and level. It's all about trimming the airplane.
39:31
Bobby Doss
Yeah, I don't remember the. I don't remember. I remember trimming being hard, but once I figured out, I don't remember obviously it being that difficult. I, I don't think instrument flying was easy because of the, for me, the navigation of your stuff, until I got my instrument rating and things clicked, I really didn't do a great job. And hating unusual attitudes because I think my instructors were extremely aggressive. Also made that pretty unpleasant until I decided to give my instrument rating. And there's more stuff left. But we're at the end of the acs. For all intents and purposes, we're to emergency procedures. And I think much like parallel parking for driving, we spend so much time practicing the engine out procedures, the emergency procedures.
40:16
Bobby Doss
As a CFI and a student, I would assume a lot of this is pretty good, except maybe not picking the best spot or aligning themselves with wins. What's some of the common errors as we wrap up on emergency procedures? Wally?
40:31
Wally Mulhern
Well, one common error is when I ask the applicant for an emergency descent, they think it's an emergency landing. You know, these are two different maneuvers. Emergency descent is, you know, we're up at 5,500ft, we need to get down. Now granted, in most of these airplanes, you know, when I think of an emergency descent, I think I'm in a pressurized airplane at 36,000ft and we just lost pressurization and we need to get down to 10,000ft. So we need to lose 26,000ft in a hurry. The engines are running, everything's fine. We got an electrical system, everything's good. We just need to get the airplane down so that we can breathe. And so that is a maneuver, an emergency descent.
41:19
Wally Mulhern
So, you know, and it says it right here, you know, under the, the skills all the, you know, use bank between 30 and 45 to maintain positive load factors during the descent. Maintain appropriate airspeed. If we need to get down in a hurry, we need to get down. So again, I just think emergency descent and emergency approach and landing are, they're confused because I say let's do an emergency descent down to 2,000ft and people start going through the. Okay, mixture rich, you know, fuel selector on. Fuel pump on. Magneto's on. Attempt to restart. Oh, no, I'm not doing that. We're doing an emergency descent. The engine's just fine. So we see that and then you know, the emergency approach and landing. You know, sometimes we don't pick, we don't pick good spots. I had a applicant the other day and were landing.
42:28
Wally Mulhern
Well, were setting up for a landing and I, my comment to him was, are we going over, are we going under the power lines? And he said, we're going to go under the power lines. And I said, do you think that's a good idea? And so anyway, so we'll see what he chooses next time, if you catch my drift. And then, you know, there's systems malfunctions. You know, again, I talk a lot about electrical failures. Everybody knows that. So if we're in a Cessna, we very possibly are going to do a no flap approach and landing. And then, you know, we're supposed to talk about their emergency equipment and survival gear, which that is usually covered during the brief.
43:18
Wally Mulhern
You know, most students will, or applicants will talk to me about the, you know, we have a fire extinguisher in most of these airplanes and that's really it.
43:31
Bobby Doss
Well, we've spent almost three hours talking about all this stuff in the acs and I would doubt many people spend that many hours in the ACS when they're preparing for their check rides. So it's been a great conversation. If you're going to be a private applicant anytime in the future, you should really re. Listen to all three of these episodes and make sure you read the acs. Understand the acs. It is the guide to your open book checkride with Wally or any other DP for that matter, and you should be very successful.
44:03
Wally Mulhern
Yeah. And I would say don't take these three episodes as you're going through the ACs, because we really rushed through it. This is the CliffsNotes version. You need to read this. I mean, there are many times where I've said to an applicant, I said, have you ever seen the ACs? And I've had, I think I saw my instructor had a copy of it. Oh boy, oh boy. That's, that's usually not a recipe for a good outcome.
44:36
Bobby Doss
And it's a free document. It's a free document. You can download it on the Internet, search acs, private acs, faa, you'll find it for sure. Wally, it's been fun doing these three episodes. I love revisiting all these important details that I don't think about on a daily basis but myself appreciate your time and for all the listeners out there, thanks for listening and enjoy your flying fly safely and stay behind the Prop. Thanks for checking out the behind the Prop podcast. Be sure to click subscribe and check us out online@bravetheprop.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.