Our three part "mock instrument checkride" series concludesthis week, with part three. If you've got an instrument 'ride coming up, listen up as a flight school owner and DPE give you some excellent tips!
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00:01
Behind the Prop Intro
Clear prop 773 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.
00:25
Bobby Doss
What's up Wally?
00:26
Wally Mulhern
Hey Bobby, how are you?
00:28
Bobby Doss
I am fantastic as always. This is part three. We had a animal inflection in part one that made us restart or continue. Part two got a little long and we wrapped it up at the end of area of Operation 3 and today we're picking back up at area of Operation 4 Flight by reference to instruments and we wrapped a couple weeks ago where were talking about it's the approaches and that I think we feel like the most important thing is to be able to shoot a precision approach. And now that I'm quote unquote all grown up in my aviation time, which is still a kid in the real world, 500 hours ish, I'm more worried about a circling approach or going getting to a non towered airport when I'm there.
01:20
Bobby Doss
The ILS is the easy part and I think that's where we spend all this time, the precision stuff and it's really the non precision stuff and the figuring things out. One of the funny times in my life that I got into the environment and was not, it wasn't scared but it's that workload, right? You're in the workload. I was going to meet my dad in Brenham to play golf and I was so excited. It was kind of the first real time I was getting to use my certificate to travel somewhere and play golf. And I was in a Cessna 172RG getting some complex time going over there and I probably didn't do a good job checking the weather, but got about halfway and it was a brick wall of clouds. Golly.
02:07
Bobby Doss
Probably should have checked better, should have done more research here and check the weather. But it wasn't, it was probably broken at best. And I ended up not going, not finishing the flight, Coming back after flying in circles in the practice area for a while hoping it would go away. And when I got back, my instrument at the time instrument instructor said well, what are the cloud rules? I was like what do you mean what the cloud rules are? He said well you're in vfr, you weren't even on a flight plan. What are the cloud rules? And I said well we're in Brenham it's not controlled airport class echo. I said, clear clouds. He goes, why didn't you finish? You could have played golf. You know, you do is avoid the clouds. And there was plenty of room to avoid the clouds.
02:53
Bobby Doss
And I was like, oh, I, I, as a VFR pilot, I'm not even thinking smart enough to be able to navigate that there was no risk, but I was concerned that I would have had to get under it. I was thinking like an IFR student, but I wasn't putting the whole system in play. And I think that's the key here is it's not the finding the glide slope and shooting it and staying on path. It's understanding the entire ecosystem of flying and knowing what part you're in and how to navigate and do it by referenced instruments or maybe not referenced instruments, but understanding the rules for those clouds because I should have played golf that day.
03:33
Bobby Doss
And I hate that looking back, it was one of those lessons learned like I guess so I could have gone down to 2000 and just finished my flight. I wasn't, I wasn't on an IFR flight plan. I wasn't in imc. There was zero risk.
03:47
Wally Mulhern
Yeah, I thinking out of the box is things that sometimes we don't do a very good job of doing. You know, if you get in your car and you're going to go from here to. I'm going to drive to downtown Houston to go toyota center to go to see a Rockets game and I get on Interstate 45 and there's an accident and Interstate 45 is closed. I'm gonna figure out how to go around it. You know, I'm not gonna turn around and come back. I'm gonna figure out how to circumvent the accident and it the same way of flying. I mean sometimes we get locked into. This is what I planned. Well, yeah, that's what you planned, but maybe, you know, maybe it's not going to work out. So come up with a, an alternate plan.
04:35
Bobby Doss
Yeah, and I, I just don't think we practice that enough. I don't think we have the opportunity to practice that enough. I think instructors can do better by creating those scenarios to make us figure out how to get around stuff because I'm pretty sure my designated pilot examiner is going to throw a wrench into my best laid plans on that perfect day. So we're here flying by instruments now. We've taken off. How, how long into the instrument checkride will I be without the hood or without the foggles. When are you going to make me put the foggles on?
05:11
Wally Mulhern
I like to get out of, you know, here at most of the airports, they do check rides out of our delta airports. So they are controlled airports. So I like to get out of the delta airspace. So I'll just, you know, and it's amazing. Sometimes someone will, you know, we'll be at a thousand feet and they'll say, your controls. And I look over, I go, why? And they're, they're putting the foggles on, and I'll let them do it if that's what they want to do. But typically we'll get out of the delta airspace, you know, to where, you know, now instead of one set of eyes looking outside, we got two sets of eyes. And that's when I'll say, okay, you know, I'll take the controls. Let's go ahead and put the foggles on or the hood, whatever we have.
05:58
Wally Mulhern
And, and we'll proceed from there. You know, one, if we're looking at area operation, four task A, it says instrument flight. And I, I look down at, under the skills elements, it says, maintain altitude plus or minus 100ft during level flight, selected headings, plus or minus 10 degrees, airspeed plus or minus 10 knots, and bank angles plus or minus 5 degrees during turn. Is really amazing how many people struggle with straight and level flight. You know, it is listed as a, a maneuver. Straight level flight is a maneuver, and we don't think about that. And how many people go out and really talk about straight and level flight? And usually what, when I see someone struggling and it's usually the altitude that's the problem. Most people can maintain a heading pretty well, but what I see is people struggling with altitudes.
07:04
Wally Mulhern
And I would say 90% of the time, the reason they're struggling with altitudes is because the airplane is not in trim. And I think as instructors, maybe we don't do a very good job of this. And so we teach, you know, we teach a lot of landings. And during landings we're saying, okay, pitch controls, airspeed, power controls altitude. That's fine in a landing situation or an approach situation, but straight and level flight, that's not the way it works. Straight level flight, your trim or your pitch is going to control your altitude. Your, your power is going to control your airspeed. So, you know, I see someone, they, they're climbing, they're climbing. You know, we're at 2400 revolutions per minute.
07:58
Wally Mulhern
And then all of a sudden they, they look up and they're, you know, 150ft high and they immediately pull the power back to 1500 RPM. Now we're going to, you know, 100ft low and we're just, we're searching for that altitude and it's all just because the airplane is not in trim.
08:18
Bobby Doss
Yeah. Again, I give credit to my instructors. They taught me pitch, power and trim from an early on stage and I think that fundamental paid dividends for my flying career. Something was on my Facebook feed in the last 48 hours and it was a guy flying a perfectly trimmed aircraft and he was kind of sitting there with his arms crossed going straight and level across the open country somewhere in a tailed wheel aircraft and had no struggle of that airplane. It was perfectly trimmed. And you might not have autopilot in every plane that you get to fly, but a perfectly trimmed aircraft will fly pretty straight and level in a, as if it has an autopilot in it. Depending on the weather of course, and the change in temperature. But man, you're spot on.
09:09
Bobby Doss
And I think getting the plane to Trent to be in trim is, is a skill to make straight and level work. But these requirements for an instrument rating in the skills section, if a student was going plus 100, minus 100, that's 200ft, 10 degrees left and right and the air speed 110 to 90, you both would be airsick at that point. I mean that is a rodeo in a Cessna 172 or a Cherokee Piper. That is a pretty big swath. If you can't do that, you probably aren't going to be able to hold in a holding pattern either. Right.
09:52
Wally Mulhern
So yeah, and I will say this about leveling the airplane off. I mean a lot of people will say pitch, power, trim. And if were to do this right, it would take about two minutes to say pitch, power trim. Because it's not pitch the nose down power and trim, it's pitch the nose down, wait a long time, then power, then trim. And so it's pitch, power trim. To say that takes us about two seconds. But to actually trim the airplane out, it takes quite a, you know, it takes a lot longer than that. And you know, if you got turbulence involved, you're going to have some little variations. But by and large, I mean you should be able to let go of that airplane and it should be able to do it shouldn't go anywhere. And I see it a lot with my applicants.
10:50
Wally Mulhern
When I say, okay, let's, you know, we get to the unusual attitude part, and I'll say, okay, I'll take the airplane, and they'll give me the airplane. And, you know, I. I immediately kind of let go and I see where it is. And usually if someone is struggling, I can. Right then it's. It. You know, the airplane is. Is going down or going up.
11:13
Bobby Doss
That's why their forearms are so big, because they've been fighting that airplane the whole time. And I think you make a good point. My, My instructor that taught me how to fly, when we did pitch, power and trim, it really was. He kept trying to explain to me, and I remember this vividly, that we want to use the energy we built and we. That we took to get to this altitude. So let's assume we're going to the practice area. We're 1700ft, and I pitch that nose forward. I had this idea in my brain that pitch and power were kind of simultaneously. I was going to change the pitch and the power to kind of level off. But that's not. He taught me.
11:51
Bobby Doss
And I remember learning occurred when he taught me to just level off, get it to where the artificial horizon's stable and let all that momentum continue to build up. We want to get to the practice area so we can practice. And I remember that. Airspeed building and building and building. And then we pulled the power back a little bit. But my attitude never changed. So as you say, I did. I waited and I waited. Then I got the power to whatever book number I wanted. 22, 22, 23, whatever I wanted. And then I'm still level. And then I trimmed it. And that's the trick.
12:30
Wally Mulhern
Yeah. Yeah. So many people now. And. And I. I laugh. I say, well, you're a, your CFI gets paid by the minute. B, you log minutes in your logbook, so we're not in a hurry to get there. You log hours or minutes. Time, we don't log miles.
12:49
Bobby Doss
So.
12:49
Wally Mulhern
So going slow is just fine, but that's maybe not real world, because a lot of times on checkrides, you know, I'm. I'm looking at my watch and I'm thinking, well, I got another one in, you know, in an hour and a half. And at this rate, we're not going to be done for another three hours. So I'll. I will have the applicant. I'll say fly max forward airspeed, which is what ATC will give you if they need you to go fast, they'll say, fly maximum forward airspeed. And some people have never done that. They have never flown maybe at 23, 2400 RPM. They're used to pulling it back to very slow. And, you know, we're flying around about 85 knots rather than 105 knots.
13:30
Bobby Doss
Yeah. Many stories we won't tell all of them. So we're at part task B now. And I hated unusual attitudes as a private pilot. I hated him as an instrument student. And I just never felt like, I just felt like were going to be upside down and we probably never banked more than 10 degrees. But what do you, what. That's got to be part of your fun day when you get to take control of the airplane and do some twisting and turning and some rudder pedal pushing and pulling and what do, what does an unusual attitude look like in a Wally check ride?
14:04
Wally Mulhern
You know, I'm gonna try to get them a little bit out of sorts, so I'm gonna mess the airplane up. I, I will say that many years ago when I was becoming a dpe, this is kind of a fun story. I, the FAA authorized me to go and observe a check ride, and I did. And I was riding in the back of this airplane and went into the unusual attitudes. And, you know, we got way, way over in a bank. I mean, okay, maybe past 60 degrees, maybe. Yeah. And I remember after the applicant left, he did a really good job. When he left, the DP said to me, do you have any questions? And I said, yeah, I got a couple. And I asked him a couple.
14:58
Wally Mulhern
And the last question I had to him, I said, is that really the way you do unusual attitudes? And he laughed. He goes, yeah, I may have gotten a little bit carried away on that one. So, so, yeah, I mean, we try to, we try not to go past that 60 degree mark. But, but I'll get them, you know, and you, you know, I got to be careful about the airspace. We may be underneath a Bravo Shelf and we can't, you know, I can't get the pitch up too high because we may get into some airspace that we don't want to be into, but I do like to get it, you know, I, I would say extreme, you know, 10 degree, nose low or so with the airspeed going up. And I really haven't seen many people have too many problems.
15:47
Wally Mulhern
I think by and large, we do a pretty Good job of recovering from unusual attitudes.
15:52
Bobby Doss
Okay, so the next section is area of Operation 5 Navigation Systems. I think the art of a DME ARC was something that it took me time to learn, but it's something that really teaches you how to control the airplane, how to fly, how to navigate and is a big part of it. So we're intercepting, tracking, navigational systems and we're doing DME arcs. I'm thinking of the VOR environments, probably where we live. There's a couple of published arcs that we can use, but we did many other non published arcs.
16:28
Wally Mulhern
Yeah.
16:29
Bobby Doss
What, what's a common scenario here? And I've told this story a thousand times probably on the show, but you had me do a partial panel VOR approach that I'd never done before and it was very nerve wracking. But if you can do that, you probably know how to fly by the instruments or with the navigational systems. What are you normally typically throwing at your applicants as it relates to task A?
16:54
Wally Mulhern
Yeah, well, a lot of times we will for the Ark. We'll, we'll basically cover that in the briefing room. We do have one published ARC that's a little bit north of here and it's not super convenient to get to, but we'll definitely talk about the concepts of arcs. I, I have given unpublished arcs before. Seems to be a little bit more confusion than maybe, and maybe on my end maybe I'm not given the clearance exactly the way ATC would give it to you. So, so I try to stick with the published arc, but we'll cover that in a briefing. Usually depending on what airport we take off from. If we take off one from one, that's where it's a little bit more convenient. It, you know, an ARC approaches, if we can do it, we'll get it done.
17:52
Wally Mulhern
But we're not going to fly 100 miles to find a published ark.
17:56
Bobby Doss
Yeah, I was thought and maybe you see it differently, but I thought a 10 mile DME arc off of Navasota was never that hard to do. Not that you need to do it, but I always thought it was such good practice to turn 10 and fly for a while and turn, you know, if you can keep that situational awareness going of where you're at in space. I always thought that was a good way for me to keep my head in the game. Right. And it did. By the way, it didn't come easy the first few times I tried it, but once that little thing clicked and I knew that If I turned 10 and flew 10 virtually. It was, it was an easy way for me to make a really good arc and go from the 270 radial around to the 300 radial.
18:47
Bobby Doss
And I just felt like that made me a good pilot, right.
18:51
Wally Mulhern
And you know, I'll tell you the way I was, I, I was, I learned arcs back a long time ago. You know, if you, let's take a VOR and let's say we're in a no win scenario today. So if we're on the 180 degree radial of a VOR and let's say we're arcing clockwise, okay? So we're going, you know, clockwise. So if we're on the 180 degree radial, you know, a lot of times I'll say to the applicant, okay, about what should your heading be? And you can see the wheel start to turn and they now I think as most pilots we ought to be able to say 180 plus 90 is 270. But let's say we're on the 230 degree radial, let's say we're on the230 degree radial and I'll say approximately what should your heading be?
19:47
Wally Mulhern
And they, you know, they, you see the wheels Turning and maybe 10 minutes later they'll come up with 320. And, and I say, you know, 320 is exactly to 90 degrees from 230. And I think we all know that we need to turn inbound a little bit, right? Well, how much inbound? You know, how much inside of that do we need to turn? And so I just make the math real simple. Instead of 230 plus 90 is 320, I just say 230 plus 100, the heading is about 330 and make adjustments like that. I think most of us, you know, if you live in a place where sales tax is about 8%, somewhere in that range, 7, 8, 8 and a half percent.
20:40
Wally Mulhern
You know, if you're in a store and you're looking at an item and you're trying to figure out what it's going to cost. If it cost $80, you're probably going to say it's about $88, you're going to add 10%, right? So we do it in that regime. So why not? You know, this kind of navigation is not an exact science. So when I'm figuring out where what my heading should be on an arc, I either subtract 100 or I add 100. I don't do the 90 stuff. I just add 100.
21:16
Bobby Doss
Great tip.
21:18
Wally Mulhern
And then make sure, you know, if you're on the 19dme arc and all of a sudden you're coming in and it's 19, 18.8, 18.6. Okay, I'm too far in. Okay, so let's either maintain the heading or turn out just a little bit. And again this, that, that would be a no win situation. So add wind to it and there are some other adjustments that you have to make.
21:40
Bobby Doss
So as we're in this phase of now we're tracking. I, I think I know you well enough. I've been around you enough, I've seen enough of your track logs. I kind of know you have a profile or a set of profiles depending on the winds. You're limited. You, you have to do three approaches. I believe is on a check, an instrument check ride and they need to demonstrate circling the land. So you what's the typical profile look like for a normal instrument checkride? Whether it's a Wally checkride or not? What is, what are the characteristics that you have to accomplish at a high level? Forget the areas of operation we're in, but what's the profile of the flight need to be successful?
22:23
Wally Mulhern
What I'm looking for, what I like to do is I like to do a viewer approach, an ILS approach and an RNAV approach. Now so that's three approaches. We have to do three ends of approaches. In other words, how does the approach terminate? We have to do a missed approach, we have to do a landing and we have to do a circle. Now there's a little bit of leeway in the circling. We don't technically have to land out of that circle, but we basically have to get lined up. So you know, and it again, we may be in a, it may be, you know, if we're in a situation where the wind is out of the north around our area, we got to go 55 miles to find an ILS.
23:15
Wally Mulhern
So it might be a day where, okay, we're not going to do an ils, but we're going to do this VOR and we're going to do two RNAV approaches. One of them we're going to use LPV minimums. One of them we're not. So we have the ability to, with a little bit of leeway from that. You know, I get a lot of calls or emails or text messages from instrument applicants and they'll say what three approaches can I expect? And, and I explained to the People, I said, you know, I can't tell you that. And I'm not telling you that to be, you know, hard to get along with or a jerk or anything. But I don't want to tell you.
24:02
Wally Mulhern
We're going to go over to Navasota, we're going to do the VOR Alpha, then we'll go to Conroe and do the ILS 14, and then we're going to back to hooks for the RNAV 17. Right. Because if the winds are out of the north, all bets are off. We've gotta. We've got to come up with a different plan of action. And, you know, there are times where you'll start out on a checkride and it all looks like, yeah, that ILS 14 at Conroe is going to work out. But then we get over there and maybe there's a wind shift. Well, they're landing three, two. So we've got to come up with a, you know, we've got to be flexible. And I tell people, I will tell them in the briefing, this is my plan. This is the plan.
24:45
Wally Mulhern
I plan to go over here and do this and this. You know, I don't tell them where the hold is going to be. I'll tell them that, yeah, we're going to hold at some point today. But I will also throw in there that it's a plan and plans sometimes change.
25:00
Bobby Doss
Yeah. It wasn't very long ago at all that you were administering a checkride at United Flight Systems and you were at an airport and called me on a cell phone and said, bobby, what's going on over there? I don't know if you remember this. It was maybe a month ago and there was a bomb squad at our airport because someone found detonation caps in a hangar. It was the craziest thing. It ruined our day. Ruined your day. There were. You had another checkride and it's. You audible that. And no one can plan for that. And our experiences are going to be different than everybody else's experiences. But how many times can you predict that someone's going to find detonation caps in their hangar and the bomb squad is going to have to come blow it up?
25:54
Bobby Doss
They ended up blowing it up, detonating at all. It became not a huge deal, but the airport was closed for maybe two hours and you called me. And you, I think you then went up and did a few of the landings and still couldn't get back. So you Landed again.
26:12
Wally Mulhern
We went to another airport and then we did a couple of landings at that other airport and then landed because I was anticipating that hooks would open, but it didn't. So that we landed, went back in the FBO and we got the word that it was open. Luckily a sheriff's department helicopter had diverted there as well. So were kind of getting some first hand information from the sheriff's pilots sitting right there with us.
26:39
Bobby Doss
It's hard to explain everything that could happen but people stuff happens and the DPs not in control of what happens. They don't, they can't open and close airports just by their push of the talk, push to talk button. So.
26:51
Wally Mulhern
Right.
26:51
Bobby Doss
So we do these three approaches. I mean it sounds simple but there's a lot that you're observing and evaluating on all of those approaches, right? Yeah, it's the entry to those approaches. It's the precision or the per. The. If there is a turn, how do we enter that turn? Do we vor, do we understand what's happening? I'm assuming there's not a lot of oral components in the air, but we know me and you know, we've talked about it a lot. You're probably going to start going west on a south wind day you're probably going to start going west and the first thing you're going to do is see that S turns over a Victor airway and then it's either going to be good or bad from there. But you go through those approaches.
27:38
Bobby Doss
You've observed a lot of stuff that's in this areas of operations, the navigation systems. You're going to intercept. We've already, we're going to do the unusual attitudes at some point. We've talked about departures and en route and arrival operations. What, what are the hidden things that don't jump out at a student in the ACS that a DP is trying to evaluate on a checkride for an instrument rating?
28:08
Wally Mulhern
Well, okay, one issue that I see a lot is I will give them a heading to intercept a Victor airway and we just happen to have a Victor airway around this area that is called Victor 306. So I will say fly heading so and so intercept Victor 306 to Navasota and about 10, maybe 15% of the time the applicant will turn in, tune in the Navasota VOR and they will put in the 306 degree radial. Okay. Victor 306 doesn't have anything to do with a 306 degree radial. Okay. Victor 300 and six is just what somebody, you know, in Oak City, I guess, or Washington, wherever they name all these airways. That, that's what somebody came up with. Victor 306, the 306. It doesn't, as far as I'm concerned, doesn't have any significance. It doesn't have any do with a radial. So.
29:25
Wally Mulhern
And there's a lot of confusion with that, a lot of confusion with, with that and that that's a head scratcher for me because that's pretty basic stuff. And if you look at the cross country requirements for an instrument rating, it says you must do a cross country FLight using Victor Airways or I think it says other navigation stuff. But you'd like to think at least one leg of the cross country flight, your instructor would have you using some Victor Airways. So people struggle with that. The other thing that I see a lot is there, you know, on that approach that we're going to go missed approach out of, a lot of people never really finish everything. And what am I getting at? I mean, we're flying around to, let's say the second approach is the one that we go missed approach out of.
30:22
Wally Mulhern
We're flying to the third approach and we still got the flaps out. And that happens more often than you'd think. Like maybe just recently to me, like maybe today this happened. And so, you know, we're gonna fly again. So, you know, finish task A before you move on to task B. And, you know, all it takes is checklist discipline. Just do the checklist. If you do your after takeoff checklist or your client checklist, whatever it may be for your particular airplane or your school or whatever, you know, I guarantee flaps is going to be on there.
31:08
Bobby Doss
It's the little things, isn't it? I mean we talk about it all the time, but I think people talk to me. I know you get questions a lot. What's the big secret? The big secret is fundamentals. It's the basics. It truly is. The fundamentals of flying will probably make you a better pilot, make you a better applicant than anything else. So we've done all these approaches, we've done the other three terminations of one landing, one missed, one circling. What about emergency procedures? It's towards the end of the ACs here. We're in areas of Operation Seven now. Emergency procedures. I'm assuming some of this you've talked about in the oral, but what are we going to do as it relates to Emergency procedures in the airplane.
31:58
Wally Mulhern
Yeah, well, you know, I do talk about, we'll talk about lost comm in the ground, but one thing I do, I will talk about in the air. I will say, okay, Cessna one two three Alpha Bravo, Houston, we just had a power outage. We've lost radar. We need your estimate for such and such an intersection. And, oh, man, I get all kinds of answers. And, and, you know, and it may be a vor, maybe we're going to a vor and they'll look up and I'll see that we're 14 miles from the VOR and they'll tell me we're one 14 miles from the VOR. And I say, Roger, say your estimate for the so and so VOR, and that is what ATC is going to ask. ATC wants to know what time you're going to get there.
32:59
Wally Mulhern
So you need to have some way of figuring out, okay, what time is it now? Okay, and, and we want to use universal coordinated time. So, you know, if you, if you got a watch that has that ability or you got the clock in the airplane, make sure you have access to. And then you've got to figure out if. How far away are we? Okay, well, we're 14 miles. Well, how long is it going to take us to get there? And if you've got a 430 or 530 or a G1000, it will probably tell you're, you're five minutes and eight seconds away. Well, you got to be able to add five minutes to the time to say to ATC, okay, we're going to be there at 173 7.
33:51
Wally Mulhern
And that, you know, a lot of times that's an item that we debrief because we really struggle with that. So it's a multi, it's a, it's kind of a word problem. You know, in math. Go back to the elementary school days, everybody hated word problems. It's not just a look at the instrument. So when ATC asks you what your estimate is, they want to know what time you're going to be there.
34:19
Bobby Doss
And that all the math is overwhelming at times. But it's simple. If you know the fundamentals again, you know, Zulu time, you know, are we going forward? Five, are we going forward? Six, is it Daylight savings time? You, this is some of the planning that we should be doing as pilots before we get in the aircraft, if we know we're departing at right now it's 02:30 Zulu time. Right. So we should know that it's going to be 14 miles about seven minutes later than that. Like we should be able to put those two things together and not have to be learning Zulu time at that point. That would be the worst time to figure out what Zulu time is.
35:01
Wally Mulhern
Right. And the other thing is, you know, 120 knots is two miles a minute, 60 is one mile a minute. So if we split the difference, 90 is a mile and a half a minute. So if we're 14 miles away, we're in a typical 172 or a warrior Archer or something like that. You're probably doing a little bit less than 120. You're probably doing about 100. So you're doing about a mile and a half a minute. So 14 miles, I mean it's between seven and 14, so it's about 11 minutes.
35:40
Bobby Doss
I was using your trick there and rounding up to 15 and it 10. Right. I mean we all think a little differently, but use those tricks. If you're listening, pick your trick and know how to figure those numbers out. The one big one, the one. Gotcha. I think we spend a lot of time practicing it. And you pulled a rabbit out of the hat for me. It's partial panel. Partial panel is not that difficult in a steam gauge aircraft or G1000, you're still going to have enough referenced information to be able to fly that approach. The same failure is not going to happen that your CFI demonstrated to you that the DP is going to demonstrate to you. Like you have to be able to understand.
36:25
Bobby Doss
I need some information to be able to shoot this approach and be safe and be able to talk through it or tell the DP what you're doing to be able to make sure they understand you know what you're doing.
36:37
Wally Mulhern
Yes, yes. And you know in our scenario you're gonna have big old stickers or something. Something is going to be covering up the instrument. So it's again, we've said this a thousand times on this podcast with losing in a steam gauge airplane a vacuum pump failure. The probably 80% of the problem is recognition of what I got. And so once you figure it out and know what instruments are not accurate, most people do fairly well. And you know in this scenario that the stuff is going to be covered up. So it's going to be pretty obvious it's not working.
37:13
Bobby Doss
And if you're flying with Wally on a check. Right. It's going to be a big behind the prop Suction cup sticker over one of those instruments. So you're not going to have to figure out which one is slowly dying because it's going to be covered up with the. Behind the prop sticker. No question.
37:28
Wally Mulhern
Right. And, you know, I tell a lot of people, you know, on instrument checkrides, I say, look, the best compliment I can give you at the end of the day is, wow, that was a boring checkride. Because, you know, an instrument checkride, there's a lot of straight and level flight on an instrument checkride because a lot of times we're doing approaches and a lot of it is straight and level. And, you know, you're used to your instructor because so many instructors think that if they're in airplane, they got to be talking, they've got to be teaching. And so they're mouth. They're just talking, talking, teaching, teaching, which is good, but sometimes it gets in the way. I'm not going to be doing that on a checkride.
38:14
Wally Mulhern
There's going to be a lot of silence, a lot of, you know, I'm going to let you do your thing. So just be ready for that. A lot of people have told me at the end of the check ride, they'll say, were you mad? No, I wasn't mad. Why? Well, I don't know. You just weren't saying anything. My instructor, Freddy, he talks the whole time. Well, okay, I'm not Freddie.
38:38
Bobby Doss
Yeah, that's something that I remember experiencing. And I think the big question is, at the end of the day, on an instrument checkride, when I shoot that last approach and I grease the landing, is the check right over? What, what else are you observing and evaluating? From that last landing, when I think we've terminated everything, do I still need to tie down the airplane? Are you still evaluating me at that point?
39:04
Wally Mulhern
I'm probably not going to watch you tie down the airplane. You know, I'm going to, you know, it's. It's either a handshake and nice job or maybe. All right, this didn't quite go the way we wanted it to go. It's going to be unsatisfactory. I'll meet you in the briefing room and we'll discuss. So usually, and I know there's an emotional either excitement where, man, the first thing that applicant wants to do is get on the phone and call somebody or send a text or maybe go throw up or cry or something, but there's a lot of times emotions are, you know, and there have been many checkrides where I have finished and I could tell the applicant is emotionally spent. And usually they've done very well.
40:04
Wally Mulhern
I've had many applicants break down and cry at the end of a checkride where they did well and they passed. And that's when I say, look, I'm going to go inside. You take your time. You take as much time as you need and we'll come in and take care of the paperwork.
40:22
Bobby Doss
That's awesome. It's a big day and every checkride is a big day and you get to experience a lot of them. I am around the fly school when many of them terminate, finish, get, are successful. It's the most awkward thing when someone walks by you after they finish the checkride because you don't know to say congratulations. You don't know if you should ask them how did it go? So I just keep my mouth shut and wait for the news to come out, whatever way that news is going to come out. And we have an extremely high pass rate. So it's normally positive, but sometimes we make mistakes and we have to recover. But it's a learning part of all of this that we do and it's going to make them better pilots if they're not successful.
41:06
Bobby Doss
We have now talked almost two hours, two and a half hours over all this instrument checkride stuff. If you or a student or have friends that are going to take an instrument CheckRide, these are three must listen shows. It is all in the ACS. There are no secrets. Wally's done hundreds of instrument checkrides and gave you every secret you could possibly need to know. We want to thank you for listening. If you think we've earned it, give us a five star review. Wherever you listen to podcasts. Thanks for listening and stay behind the prop.
41:39
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.