Behind the Prop

E168 - Training Nuggets

Episode Summary

Join us this week for a smattering of nuggets that could polish up your training!

Episode Notes

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Episode Transcription


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've put together a number of items and I happen to be in Denver today and you happen to be in Houston, which is kind of the opposite of the norm. You're normally on a jet trip and I'm at home and I'm on a jet trip and you're at home. But I happen to be so high up in the mountains. It snowed all day today. It looks beautiful outside. The Denver Nuggets played a playoff game last night. So we are going to call this episode Training Nuggets. We, we're gonna talk about a whole bunch of things and I'm sure if I have my normal self going I will get us off track even four or five other times. But we're gonna talk about a bunch of things. 


01:04
Bobby Doss
Some of the situational awareness things you've been seeing on checkrides of late, some maintenance issues. We've both seen students and maybe some pilots evaluate incorrectly or maybe not make the most informed decision and we're gonna talk about that. And then one of our listeners named Frank Farrell asked us to talk about some things that him and his instructor are working of climb and top of descent and maybe some planning around those things. We'll try and answer some questions for a few of our listeners and all that and then we'll wrap it up and hopefully put another good pod out on the interwebs for all of you. So Wally, you see many new pilots, many experienced pilots, many 30 year vets that you're doing check airman stuff for. But this week we're going to talk about situational awareness with some of your checkride applicants. 


01:56
Bobby Doss
Why don't you start with kind of what you've seen lately and what you think we maybe can do better as instructors and student pilots and pilots of all flavors to better and have more situational awareness. 


02:09
Wally Mulhern
Yeah, you know something that has come up. I, I've started using a, a different scenario in my checkrides to give my applicants a reason to divert and the, it's been really interesting because the decision making is all over the place and the scenario I give is. Okay, here we are, we're flying along. You look down at your engine instruments and we have high oil temperature and we have low oil pressure. What are we going to do? And my first thought is I'm going to turn the airplane and I'm going to aim it towards where I want it to go and hopefully it's towards an airport. But that's not usually what happens. The, the people, you know, for the first thing that normally happens is they reach down and they push the mixture and they say, okay, we're gonna. Because fuel cools. 


03:18
Wally Mulhern
So I'm gonna enrich in the mixture. Well, that's really not so much an oil temperature thing. That's, that's a cylinder head thing. So, you know, I, what I would like, again, what I'd like to see is them turning toward the airport. If I'm driving down and if driving around in a car and I tell you that, you know, who's, you know, I'm in the passenger seat and you're driving and I tell you I've got a medical situation that requires immediate attention, I would like to know that you're gonna just point the car toward a hospital and get me to an er. And so a lot of times we keep going away from the airport and, you know, maybe five miles. 


04:08
Bobby Doss
One basic thought too, that you just mentioned, that example is if that gas gauge gets below that little orange mark right above the E and the car starts flashing four miles, three miles, everyone that drives a car is going to turn towards the gas station and they're not going to, they're not going to keep going to their girlfriend's house. They're going to turn towards the gas station. 


04:32
Wally Mulhern
Absolutely. 


04:33
Bobby Doss
Sorry, I thought that was a more realistic one that I've probably experienced a few times. 


04:37
Wally Mulhern
No, it is. Because maybe you don't know where the hospital is, but we can all pick out a gas station on the corner. Yeah, absolutely. And we've all probably been in a car where we got a little bit uncomfortable and you're thinking, oh boy, this was stupid in a car again. But, you know, it's just the awareness. And so a lot of times the applicant, they'll pull out checklists again as we're going away from an airport and we start running checklists and that checklist, that low oil pressure checklist will probably say, prepare for a power off landing or may, I don't know, they're all different, you know, but it, you know, what I'm trying to get them to do is, I'm trying to get them to divert. I'm trying to get them to go to another airport. 


05:27
Wally Mulhern
The other thing that we do, let's say we're 4,500ft and we're, I don't know, 15 miles from the airport. What a lot of people immediately do is they descend. And so now we're at traffic pattern altitude, 12 miles from the airport. And I'll usually say to the applicant, okay, if the engine were to quit right now, would we make it to the airport? It. So what I'm going to do is I'm going to keep my altitude because altitude is good in a situation like that. Now, the argument could be made, well, let's put it in descent to get better ground speed and all these, you know, there's not a black and white answer to this. But I'm telling you what I'm doing. 


06:20
Wally Mulhern
I'm keeping the altitude so in case I lose the engine at some point, I can hopefully glide to the airport if I keep it at 4,500ft, you know, I, I can, you know, figure out what the glide ratio is, but I can probably get to the airport if I can just make it a few miles at that altitude. I just remember my, my father always telling me, anytime you're in the traffic pattern, you always want, you won't if you can, you always want to be within gliding range of the airport, you know, so let's not make these huge traffic patterns. 


06:57
Bobby Doss
Yeah. Our chief, years and years ago, before I owned our flight school, had a magneto issue and was able to troubleshoot and diagnose it out in the practice area around 4,000ft. And he switched to one left or right, and the roughness went away. And he assumed that the other magneto was bad. So he's going to stay on that. And he tells the story often because it's one that helps us all think a little bit more clearly, is he knew he was going to fly through three bravo shelves to get back to our airport and declared an emergency and did not care one bit about that bravo shelf, right? He was going to climb while he could climb because his expectation was the other magneto would go bad at any moment.


07:43
Bobby Doss
If he lost the other magneto, the engine very likely was going to stop operating or stop running, and he needed any foot that he had up, he was going to get to use it to get down. And I always replay that in My head all the time. Altitude is your biggest friend in those situations. And so you want that altitude. And it's not about passing a checkride at this point. It's about using all the arrows in your quiver to make you a better pilot, to make you a safer pilot and hopefully get your friend, family member, dpe, flight instructor to a location that's going to make them happier and safer, depending on the situation or the scenario that you're being. You're being evaluated on. 


08:26
Wally Mulhern
Yeah. And the other thing is, you know, when. When the applicant will finally decide to turn toward the airport, their first thought is to reach up to the GPS and put in the name of the airport. Well, I, you know, again, I can't say it's wrong, but my point is, if you know the general direction of where we're going, let's start turning the airplane now and maybe enter that airport while we're in the turn. Okay. And then fine tune it. 


08:57
Bobby Doss
No question. You know, I. I've had. I've gotten to fly a lot of different aircraft, which is not the norm for me. Right. I. For Almost the last five years now, I've flown a 182 exclusively. So it's been easy for me to keep track of things. Remember, air speeds, know my vref in a bunch of different situations. And I haven't had to think too terribly hard because I'm kind of flying that one airframe and one model, but with the type rating. And we just got awarded our new top Hawk airplane from Cessna and Textron. I haven't been in a 172 in a long time, but I got to fly a 172 from Wichita and I was actually nervous because it was just going to be so different. Right. 182 for five years. Vision Jet for the last four months. Get in this slow 172. 


09:49
Bobby Doss
But it was fun. It was fun again, but I had to study. I had to be situationally aware of things like the airspeed. I struggled. I actually bounced my first landing in that new plane, Wally, because 64 knots just seems really freaking slow after you've been flying a 182 in a vision Jet. I didn't feel comfortable at all. But I've flown it a number of times since that first flight and I've gotten comfortable with the airspeed. But. But you have to be aware of those things. You can't land a Cessna 172 at a 182's Vref. It's going to keep flying 76 knots is going to create lift in a 172. And so you've got to learn to trust the book and know those numbers and be situationally aware. 


10:38
Bobby Doss
I mean, I took a couple weeks off from the Vision jet and I am in Denver in the Vision Jet right now. And it's shocking. You know, I can remember being a private pilot student and thinking If I missed 10 days it was like starting all over. Well, you take four weeks off from flying a jet. I felt like I couldn't look or find a knob I wanted touch just because I've been in that 172 and that 182 so much since. 


11:03
Wally Mulhern
Right. 


11:03
Bobby Doss
G1000 is pretty close to G3000, but the knobs are just in the wrong spot to where I wasn't situationally aware like I should have been. But I studied my rear end off this past weekend to get ready for this Vision Jet trip, reworking on my memory items, reworking all that stuff. So no matter where you're at in your training or your pilot career, don't take any of it for granted. Situational awareness is a really big part of what you need to do. And I can tell you a vision jet at 180 knots does not turn as good as a Cessna 172 at 75 knots. I, I might have overshot some turns when I was hand flying this past week and I will do better because of the experiences that I had. But it is really, really critical to be situationally aware no matter what. 


11:53
Bobby Doss
What about maintenance issues on checkrides, Wally? Tell us a little bit about those. 


11:58
Wally Mulhern
Yeah, they're those, these have reared their ugly head here recently. I had a recent situation on a multi engine airplane and the applicant did the walk around and all was good. And so he jumps in the airplane and hops in the left seat and I'm stepping up on the wing and I look down and you know, of course he's got the flaps down and I see a loose wire and you know, I don't fault him at all for missing the loose wire because it was, it just happened to be that the angle that I looked down at it was right in front of me. And I said something to him, I said, hey, we got a loose wire out here. And he goes, oh wow. 


12:51
Wally Mulhern
He pops out and he comes and he looks at it and he goes, he says well yeah, we're good, we don't need that. And said we don't need it. And then he Said, yeah, it's a ground wire. And I just played devil's advocate with him. I said, well, if we don't need it, why do we have it? And, and I think he kind of took something from that and at that point decided that maybe it was something that needed to be addressed, which he did. I, I just, I had a, a young man yesterday and I asked this on all my check rides. I, you know, as we're qualifying the airplane, I'll say, does everything on the airplane work? And a lot of times they'll say, oh, no, the, whatever is. The autopilot is inoperative. 


13:55
Wally Mulhern
Now, this was an older, a really old Cherokee 180, probably close to 50 years old. And he said, well, yeah, the autopilot doesn't work. And again, this is in the qualification phase. We haven't even started the checklist. The checkride, I should say. And he said, well, yeah, the autopilot doesn't work. And I said, okay. I said, is it disabled? He said, yeah. And I said, well, okay, so show me in the logbook where it's documented. And he just looked at me so. Well, it was a real, it was a long time ago. I said, okay, so if it's a long time ago, we don't need to document it. Bottom line is he could not find it documented in the logbooks. Now, again, this is an older AIRPL, so there are 50 annuals. There are a lot of logbook pages that he went through. 


14:53
Wally Mulhern
And after about 45 minutes of him going through the logbook pages, he could not find where this autopilot had been disabled. So we didn't end up doing the checkride. So, you know, just some things are coming up with that. I think most private pilot candidates probably don't see aircraft log books until two or three days before the checkride. That's when the instructor says, oh, by the way, you're gonna have to do this. And this is where everything is, and that's the end of it. So I don't know, maybe a cfis, maybe we could do a better job of documenting or talk showing them logbooks, that sort of stuff. And again, the older the airplane, the more logbooks there are, or logbook entries, I should say, you know, a brand new airplane. 


15:47
Wally Mulhern
You know, it's, you know, I usually ask the applicant to show me the latest annual, and sometimes we're in an airplane that's not, that doesn't have annual. And so a lot of times they're struggling to find that annual when the airplane is only six months old. So that might be something that they know that it doesn't. Doesn't have annual. 


16:10
Bobby Doss
Yeah. I feel extremely lucky that I've been able to fly plane with single digits on the Hobbs Meter. Took my wife up in that new plane the other day and it's at 11 hours. And I said, you don't know how special this is, honey. But not too many people get to fly a plane with under 11 hours on it. Under a dozen hours on it, for sure. How, how you mentioned it. But what should we be doing with logbooks? I think, I think a combination of CFI and student get a little frustrated by this topic. But I own a flight school now. I was a student pilot. I'm still learning every day. I really think it's a huge hole in the training. If you're listening this podcast and you don't know what a 337 is, that's a problem. 


17:00
Bobby Doss
If you fly and you're a pilot, you need to know what a 337 is. You need to know how to find the 337. I can remember as a student pilot when someone told me that I didn't really care. It didn't really matter to me. It's really important. You're going to buy a plane one day. You're going to get in another plane at another flight school or a flight club. You need to look at all the 337. 337 is a major alteration. It's in, it's got to be in the maintenance logs. You might not be flying a plane at a flight school or a flight club. You're going to just jump in a plane and not understand whether or not those major alterations were done correctly or documented. I think we should really try to introduce. 


17:38
Bobby Doss
I think students should begging to be introduced to the maintenance records before they solo. I think they should have at least some level of competency or proficiency in being able to talk about the three major logbooks that I think every airplane has, maybe a couple of the other ones. Some have avionics books, some don't. You just, you should know those maintenance records better than just a skimming over or, hey, Wally took a checkride yesterday and tabbed out the logbook. I'm going to trust he tabbed it out. He passed his checkride. So I'm going to trust that those tabs are correct. And I'm just going to use his. 


18:17
Wally Mulhern
Tabs Well, I, I've, I, there have been many times where I'll say, okay, show me the latest annual. And here it is, 2025 and they show me annual from 2021. And I'll say, okay, so this is the latest annual. Yeah, yeah. Okay, well that was four years ago. Oh, oh, yeah, that's a problem. 


18:42
Bobby Doss
So soapbox on logbooks and really maintenance records in general, y' all really should be at least aware of them and a little bit more in depth to them. I would challenge you all. If you're in a flight school, get there 30 minutes early tomorrow, pick the planes maintenance records that you're looking at and just try to find something that was done to the plane that wasn't a something. That's in your aviate acronym, right? Go find when a tire had to be changed. Go find when brakes had to be worked on or the brakes had to be bled. It might be three, 300 hours ago, but go back and find something, a light bulb that was replaced, anything. And kind of become astute to that. Why was it done? Why did the mechanic write these things in? 


19:29
Bobby Doss
Why is the tire being changed not in the engine logbook? Why is a spark plug being changed not in the airframe logbook? There's just some commonality that you'll start to understand that. By the way, I didn't know any of this before I owned a fly school and had to start paying for all this work. But I think it's part of what a pilot needs to know. You're an aircraft owner, Wally. I'm sure you're intimate with your Saratoga log books, but you probably spend more time asking a mechanic to put more information in there. You want that to be documented. Maybe it's resale value, maybe it's just knowledge and comfort that those things have been taken care of. But you will need to know those books. 


20:09
Bobby Doss
One of the maintenance items that gets me probably weekly or frustrates me or brings me pause are the people that go to the run up area and come straight back and say mag drop was not in compliance. I normally get my first question. What do you think my first question is, Wally, when they say that, did. 


20:31
Wally Mulhern
You try cleaning the spark plugs? 


20:34
Bobby Doss
That's normally the second one. The first one's always what is the, what is the POA say is in compliance? Well, we use 150. Okay. Is that what that logbook says? Well, I don't know. Well, let's go look at the logbook. How much did it Drop? Well, it dropped 160. Okay, let's look at the logbook. This s model says 180. So what was wrong? Well, my Instructor always said 150. Well, I don't know that I would believe that person. I think I would believe the PoH for the airframe that you're in right now. 


21:07
Wally Mulhern
Right. 


21:08
Bobby Doss
But when they know that number, kudos. I high five them and say that's you should know that number for this airplane. I then say, did you try the cleaning procedure? And at our flight school, the cleaning procedures on the back of every clipboard. It's hot, we're at sea level. You got to lean these aircraft. If you don't lean these aircraft when you're taxing, you're going to foul plug. And so we talk it, preach it all the time, but we still sometimes forget it. So you get there's a process by which you run it a little hot, a little higher than normal. Probably an 1800rpm is a normal run up. The cleaning procedure probably says 2200. I think people are afraid of it, Wally. I don't know if you have experience with applicants that seem timid. They're afraid they're going to blow the thing up. 


21:53
Bobby Doss
My mechanic assures me that those planes were built to run at 2,200 RPMs. You're not going to hurt the airplane and you need to lean it and you need to get it really kind of warm and you need to try and get that carbon off those spark plugs because it's not a magneto that's fouled, it's a spark plug that's found. 


22:10
Wally Mulhern
Right, Right. 


22:11
Bobby Doss
I would bet in the last three years we've had planes come back from the run up area that had a bad mag drop ignition test, I'll call it. And one needed a magneto and I'm talking hundreds of these. Normally a qualified pilot, a seasoned pilot, a mechanic can get in them and no matter how bad they're fouled, they can probably get those spark plugs cleaned up and get those things to drop in accordance. We do every 50 hour and every 100 hour these planes are touched and looked at a lot. Those magnetos get out of timing. Somebody's going to notice it and address it. It's normally going to be a fouled plug. 


22:55
Bobby Doss
What happens on a checkride, Wally, if you're in that run up area and the mag drop is a little less than what the outside of the realm of what the PoH is going to allow what do you hear from your applicants? 


23:10
Wally Mulhern
Well, this usually gets addressed in the ground portion because that's a scenario I give them is okay, we're in the run up area and this is what happens. I would say for a private applicant, probably 70% say I'm going to taxi back and I can't say it's wrong. Okay. For a commercial pilot, maybe a little bit less. But you know, I, I, you know, I try to get them to look up the procedure for that. I might say it's about 50. About half of them have dealt with it and they've seen the procedure and, but some of them haven't. I joke that if I ever get to be king of the world, one of the first things I'm going to do is we're going to eliminate the phrase mag check and we're going to call it an ignition system check. 


24:07
Wally Mulhern
Because you go do a mag check and you have an issue. You would assume that it's a magneto problem. But I would say by and large, it's probably not a magneto problem. As you said, it's probably a spark plug problem and it's probably a fouled spark plug. And I, I can't think of, there's probably been a time where we did actually taxi back. But usually what happens is maintenance comes out, they get in and they do the, the cleaning procedure maybe a little bit more aggressively than the applicant did and everything's fine and we just leave 30 minutes later. 


24:51
Bobby Doss
Yeah, I think that's the key is it's not about making people fly something. I would never ask anybody to fly anything they shouldn't or they don't feel comfortable flying. It's understanding that's a common problem and that there's a really common solution. Yeah, it's not dangerous. It's not bad for the airplane. It's, it's just part of aviation. It's actually part of 1980s engines. Right. Like it was probably common, but these, these engines are still running on leaded fuel. There's going to be some carbon and there's going to be some specks of things that are floating around in that engine. You got, you got to clean, you got to know how to clean them for sure. 


25:30
Wally Mulhern
Well, if, I mean, if you go out and you check the oil and you want to, you know, your minimum amount of oil is say six quarts and you got five quarts in there. Well, what do you do? You Add a quart of oil, you know, you don't scrub the flight right. You fix, you fix the problem. 


25:46
Bobby Doss
All right, so let's hit Frank's topics. Frank asked a number of questions. We're going to try to hit most of them. But he said that his instructors having him plan the top of climb for all of their departures for cross country flights and top of the scent for all those flights. And I responded to his email and just said, hey, I don't understand the top of climb piece. I do understand the top of the scent. Top of climb is normally not in the pilot's control and it's never going to be a fixed geographical reference. What are your thoughts on we'll stay the top of climb for right now. What are your thoughts on top of climb, Wally? 


26:23
Wally Mulhern
Yeah, to me, top of climb is worthless. It's worthless. I will ask my applicants as we head out on a cross country. I'll say, okay, where's our first checkpoint? And they'll say top of climb. And I go, okay. And I'll say, okay, your first. The phrase I use is your first real checkpoint. What are we doing with a CheckPoint? We're checking two things. We're checking are we in the right place? Okay, so my first checkpoint is the is or let's say my second checkpoint. If my first checkpoint is top of climb, my second checkpoint is the high school football stadium. Well, we can look down and see the high school football stadium. And if we're over it, well, we're on course. If we don't see it, well, maybe we're not on course. So top of climb to me really means nothing. 


27:12
Wally Mulhern
And as you stated, it's out of your control. I mean, if ATC says, you know, fly Runway heading and you're going the wrong way, well, you're gonna, and you're able to continue your climb, you're gonna get to your climb sooner from a geographical stand miles and. 


27:35
Bobby Doss
Miles from where you're supposed to be. 


27:36
Wally Mulhern
Yeah, yeah. So it's, it's kind of it really. I, I, you know, I know when we put in foreflight and we put, we, you know, we put in, I'm going from here to there, it's going to give you a top of climb. But it really, and suppose ATC says maintain 2000 and that's what happens. 


27:58
Bobby Doss
To us all the time? I think that's what happens to us all the time. We're in really busy airspace with a Delta Shell or sorry, a Bravo Shelf right above us at 2,000ft. And so we're not really going to get to use performance charts to try and get to that top of climb as fast as we can. I think the exercise, if you want one, is to really work through those performance charts and understand different performance characteristics and different climb gradients based on different density, altitude, different weights. Top of climb is not within your control. The times I'm in the vision, Jet, we never get to climb as fast as we want to climb, which is important because it's a huge amount of fuel. But you can't depend on top of climb, right? Ever, in my opinion. 


28:45
Bobby Doss
Now, planning for a descent, completely different ballgame. This is a muscle that takes a little bit of effort. You should take pride in understanding it. And there's a bunch of shortcuts or tricks, but it's really just math, right? And we all know Wally's good at math. Let's talk about the three to one rule, because that's the one everyone talks about as soon as they go to the airlines. But what's the history of the three to one rule and what's it really mean to you, Wally? 


29:13
Wally Mulhern
Well, in big jets, you know, the when do we begin our descent? And it's a function of ground speed. The faster we're going across the ground, the farther out we need to start our descent. So in, you know, big jets that are, you know, true airspeed of 450 knots in that range, we, we say three to one. And that's really not totally accurate, but we say three to one. So it's for every thousand feet we're up in the air, we want to start our descent about three miles. Again, this is without a significant headwind or tailwind. So let's say we're at, let's make the math easy. We're at 30,000ft. We want to get down to 20,000ft. I think we can all decide that's 10,000ft of altitude we need to lose. So 10,010 times three. We want to start that descent about 30 miles out. 


30:23
Wally Mulhern
Now if someone says, well, what's the glide ratio of a big jet? Is it three to one? It's, it's really not. Because you think three miles is actually in nautical miles, about 18,000ft. 6,000ft times three, 18,000. So the glide ratio is really about 18 to one. Okay. But we use three to one now again, and it's a function of ground speed of the airplane. I used to fly freight in a Baron. Beechcraft. Baron. And we, you know, I used to fly planets at 195 knots, so, you know, descending somewhere around 180 or something like that. This is a long time ago. So like my numbers may be off, but I would use seven. I would use seven. So if I'm at 7,000ft and I'm gonna go land at the airport, 7,000 is seven times seven. 


31:21
Wally Mulhern
I want to start my descent about 49 miles out in my Saratoga. 140, 150 knot airplane. I use, I use about four. And it, this is just kind of a, an about, you know, so if I'm at say 11,000ft, you know, I probably want to start my descent 44 miles out. And, and I always add about 10. So really I want to start about 50, 54 miles out or something like that. 


31:50
Bobby Doss
And starting early just makes it a little bit better for your passengers. Right. I think when we're up in that cockpit and we're in control of everything, we put that nose towards the ground, we don't feel any different. But the passengers are like, whoa, right. This is aggressive, right. I think in the 182, which is about 140, 145, you know, I like a 6 to 800ft per minute, right. If I get, if I get more than eight, my wife starts barking at me and says this is uncomfortable. So you got to assume everyone's kind of more benign descent the better. But it's just a mathematical equation and wind plays a big part in it. Much like top of climb is never going to work for you. Every time exactly the same. The descent is going to be very different. 


32:36
Bobby Doss
If you're in your Saratoga and you have a 20 knot headwind, the descent is going to be very different than the 20 knot tailwind. 


32:43
Wally Mulhern
Absolutely. 


32:43
Bobby Doss
You're talking 12, 15% difference in your total speed over the ground. The airport's not going to move with you. The airport's fixed in space. You are the one that's fighting these three dimensional things. So it's not always going to be there. 


33:00
Wally Mulhern
And you should always constantly be reevaluating. It's like you get paid on maybe the 1st of the month and the 15th of the month. Well, you don't just recklessly spend money about the 7th of the month. You're halfway through the month through until your next paycheck. So maybe you ought to be about 50% of your money gone, right? So yeah, you know, so if you start that descent at, you know, your 30,000ft, you want to get down to 20. Well, okay, let's. I'm now at 25,000ft. I'm halfway there. How am I doing? Okay, I'm. I'm right on. Right where I need to be. Or. Or I'm. I'm a little bit behind things. Okay. Maybe it's time for a speed break or increase the rate of descent or something. Yeah.


33:51
Bobby Doss
One of those math problems sneaks up on flight instructors is they want to get to the airlines. You know, they need 100 hours of nighttime, and they always start figuring that out, you know, right around the 1400 hour mark. 


34:02
Wally Mulhern
Yeah. 


34:03
Bobby Doss
Now when I interview people and they have 300ish hours, I'm like you. You know when you need to have 50 hours of nighttime, Right? 


34:10
Wally Mulhern
Yeah. 


34:12
Bobby Doss
No, I just know there's a hundred hour rule. Well, you need to have 50 around 750. 


34:18
Wally Mulhern
Yeah, yeah. 


34:18
Bobby Doss
If you're. But if you don't, you're behind that plan, right? 


34:21
Wally Mulhern
Right. Right. 


34:22
Bobby Doss
To get the hundred hours in the last month of your flight training is not gonna work. 


34:26
Wally Mulhern
Right. 


34:26
Bobby Doss
You won't have enough students that need night. 


34:28
Wally Mulhern
Right. 


34:29
Bobby Doss
Plan ahead, everyone. Situational awareness, maintenance issues and a little bit of planning. Top of climb, maybe not so much. Top of the scent, man. Have a plan, have a strategy. Know some. Know some. Book numbers for yourself on getting down, and it will make your piloting of your friends and family a whole lot more enjoyable for sure. Anything to add as we wrap up? 


34:53
Wally Mulhern
No. No. 


34:54
Bobby Doss
All right, everybody. As always, thanks for listening to our podcast. And don't forget, stay behind the Prop. 


35:03
Nick Alan
Thanks for checking out the behind the Prop podcast. Be sure to click subscribe and check us out online at behind the Prop. 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.