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00:01
Behind the Prop Into
Clear prop SR73 Cherokee number two following twin traffic three mile final one trolley bravo makesford in Runway two five going four mile.
00:10
Nick Alan
This is behind the prop with United Flight Systems owner and licensed pilot Bobby Doss and his co host, major airline captain and designated pilot examiner Wally Mulhern. Now let's go behind the prop.
00:24
Bobby Doss
What's up Wally?
00:26
Wally Mulhern
Hey Bobby, how are you?
00:26
Bobby Doss
I'm fantastic as always. Those of you that know us, we are Bobby and Wally from behind the prop. I own this flight school and he is a designated pilot examiner and we have a room with a number of people in it that came to listen to us live to record a show. And I thought we'd start off by one saying we're going to be at Oshkosh. So if you are listening before we get to Oshkosh, follow us on whatever social media you follow us on and we will let you know where we're at and when we're together and do some meet and greets at Oshkosh. And I thought we'd talk a little bit about the behind the prop history to start. Yeah, our first show.
01:04
Bobby Doss
I don't know how early we recorded our first show, but I think we probably recorded two or three weeks before were going to publish it. We had a lot of names for the show. You remember any of the other names?
01:17
Wally Mulhern
I don't.
01:18
Bobby Doss
What do you have a journal of them? I don't remember. It was something. There was something. Captain was one of them. I don't remember what Captain was, but it was taken and were exchanging text messages and I came up with behind the prop somehow.
01:31
Wally Mulhern
Yeah.
01:31
Bobby Doss
And I want to say 24 hours later we had a logo and we had a website and were ready to go back then we did real good. We would record weeks in advance, have maybe five shows in the can where we would be able to publish those five shows. Today, not so much. Wally, what's the normal average lead time before we start recording that we plan the show?
01:57
Wally Mulhern
An hour. Yeah.
01:58
Bobby Doss
Normally we're on the phone. We're on the phone probably more like 20 minutes before the show, brainstorming. Normally it's something that's happened either in my training life at the flight school or something that Wally has observed on the checkride that maybe made him get scared or his heart rate go up and we talk about those incidents and things on the show. Our first show was October 1st, 2020, so gosh, it's been almost five years now and the first episode, I don't Remember how long it took, but I think for us to get to our first hundred downloads was like maybe three or four weeks.
02:34
Wally Mulhern
Yeah. I'm looking at the data right now. To get to the first thousand downloads took 52 days. Now we average almost 500 a day. Yeah.
02:47
Bobby Doss
If in many days, over a thousand. So the show still grows, which is exciting. Thanks for everybody that does listen. This show that we're recording Today is our 172nd episode. So we have 171 shows out there today, a number of influencers. And one of the things that we agreed to early on was that we would never take on advertisers. So I think out of all the podcasts in the world, we might be the biggest that doesn't still have any advertisers. And it's not something we're proud of now because we wish were making money, but we volunteer to do this. All this is 100% free. We've never made a dime from anybody. We have had a few people fly us different places to do shows, but we've never taken a dollar from many advertisers and have over half a million downloads at this point.
03:39
Bobby Doss
And it's something that we enjoy to do. Wally gets recognized at his corporate or his company job more often as a podcaster than he does as a pilot. And it's pretty cool stuff. So to get us started, and if you didn't know, we are listening to on five continents every day. And we are ranked one of the top 1 percenters in all podcasts globally, which is pretty cool. But that means we're in the top 250,000 shows because there's 25 million podcasts. We're doing something right for all of the five star reviews and things that we have. So if you're into aviation, hopefully you tune in and continue listening to the show.
04:16
Wally Mulhern
You know, and we asked for feedback and we. So far, we've never gotten an email that says the show sucks. And now we've gotten some criticisms. And it's usually technical things. I'll say that at the 14 minute mark, you said that the coefficient of friction of a pavement on wet rubber was this, and it's actually that. And 100% of the time the listener has been right. We've said something wrong, but it's usually a very technical thing. But we enjoy that and it kind of tells us that people really are listening and paying attention to what we say. Yeah. Have we made mistakes? Yeah, we have and we will continue because we are human. But overall, the. The themes of the emails are like, wow. People, either they're just really trying to be really nice or they enjoy what we're doing. So that's kind of.
05:22
Wally Mulhern
Kind of nice.
05:23
Bobby Doss
Yeah, it is. And it's fun to do the show. It makes me smarter. I think I've probably told the story to many of you in the room, but every time I struggle with something, I tell Wally, we need to do a show on it. So not too long ago, when I was in my type rating class, I was doing terrible with departures and arrivals because I don't do many of them in a single engine piston plane. So I told Wally we needed to on the Sunday between our shows or the Saturday between my two weeks of type rating training, I said we got to do a show on stars and sids and I got to do a whole bunch of homework on stars and sids.
06:02
Bobby Doss
And I got really smart on how to do stars and sids and all the rules and regulations around those and made me a much smarter pilot. So a lot of the times it's selfish. I'm doing it for myself or I'm doing it to learn something that I don't know well. And normally it's pretty easy to have a co host that knows most of everything in aviation that can help me through it. What I think y' all like to hear or what the listeners like to hear. If the word checkride is in our show name, it's pretty popular show. I think every show has some hints about checkrides and some content, but. But if the show has checkride in it. So we've learned to try to put that word in as many titles as we can.
06:41
Bobby Doss
Obviously not just for clickbait, but to try and put content out there that people want to listen to. I think if the show has something in it that is accident, emergency or something similar, it also gets a lot of downloads because people tune in, listen to those sorts of things. We don't do any of the speculation stuff like behind a pilot debrief and other people do it, but we've had them all on our show and their contents really good. But we don't really break down accidents or incidents. We normally break down the things that people are doing that make their flight training bad or their checkride experience bad and try and save people a lot of heartburn and pain around that stuff. So I thought I would start by asking Wally a couple questions.
07:25
Bobby Doss
We do have a few microphones in the room if y' all want to ask us a question that we can expand upon, but I thought I'd ask Wally what maybe one of his most unique checkride experiences was to explain to the audience what maybe we don't know from your side of the aircraft.
07:41
Wally Mulhern
Yeah, well, there have been a lot of. Lot of funny moments in checkrides.
07:46
Bobby Doss
How many have you done now?
07:49
Wally Mulhern
I could look it up, but probably 12, 1300, something like that. That's general aviation. And if you go back to part 121, check rides, that's another few thousand 727, 37, 57, 67 and triple seven. But, you know, there have been some funny moments. I've told this story and a lot of you have heard it and I've mentioned on the podcast, but I was doing an instrument checkride for a gentleman one day and it was going really well. We did the first approach and we did the second approach, and were. We went missed approach on the second approach and were heading back to this airport for our third approach and our full stop. And again, it was going really well. There wasn't any doubt where the outcome was headed. And went missed approach up in Conroe.
08:45
Wally Mulhern
And in Conroe they always give you an amended missed approach, which is fly heading two five zero, climb and maintain 2000. So we did that, and tower switched its over to approach. And the guy called up and he said, Skyhawk 123 Alpha Bravo out of 1200, climbing to 2000. And the controller said, 123 Alpha Bravo, roger, altimeter 3014. And my guy, he. He read back, Roger, 3014. And I could see him looking around in the panel as like, what do I do with 3014? And the first thing he saw was the transponder. So he puts 3014 in the transponder. So we're now, we're squawking the altimeter. And he was probably at this point not under the hood maybe, I don't really remember, but. But I started laughing and he looked at me, he says, what? I go, well, that's interesting.
09:53
Wally Mulhern
We're now squawking the altimeter. And he goes, oh, shit, am I allowed to say that?
09:59
Bobby Doss
Yeah, you can. He says, I think you can call your parents. It's okay with me.
10:05
Wally Mulhern
He goes, oh, shit, what were we squawking? I go, I don't know. And then he says, I guess I better tell atc. I go, well, they know, but yeah, you might want to say something. And he calls up approach he says, approach Cessna123 Alpha Bravo. I'm sorry, I'm squawking the altimeter. And the controller was probably a pilot, but you could hear him laughing in the background. He goes, yes sir, I saw that's fine, just stay on the altimeter. Clear for the RNAV1 7 right approach in the hooks. And so we came in and got a big kick out of that. And I mean, that's just. We all make mistakes in flying. At my airline job, we always say there's not a perfect flight, there's a mistake on every flight. You know, that stuff happens. So that was one of the funny ones.
10:59
Wally Mulhern
There have been a couple of oh my gosh, I almost died moments and two of them have been the same thing. And it had to do with the engine out landing. So here we are, we're out in the middle of nowhere and we're simulating an engine out situation and we're lining up for this field or this road or whatever and we're coming in and, you know, we've got the engine pulled back to idle and were coming in to simulate a landing and so we're getting pretty low. And then I finally say, okay, let's go around. And in both these cases, the applicant's first movement was to get the flaps up rather than get the power in. So here we are, we're down around 500ft, maybe doing 60 knots in a Warrior or 172 or something like that.
12:02
Wally Mulhern
And we just went from flaps 30 to flaps 0 without the power. And you know what the airplane's going to do, it just mushes. And so in both those cases there was probably some words that came out of my mouth that I wish I could take back. But you know, in both those cases we made it. We made it. But we had a good discussion about go arounds. And I've never flown an airplane where on a go around or a rejected landing where the first action was not full power, okay, it's power first. If you do nothing else, you can probably survive by just doing power. If you don't, if you leave the carburetor heat on, you leave the flaps down, you can probably survive by nothing more than power.
12:49
Wally Mulhern
And that's another reason why we want to keep the hand on the throttle when we're in close so you really don't have to think about what you're doing. You just push forward and you're going to be in the right position. So that was a couple of scary Moments. Well, I don't want to say scary, but it was. You know, the Pulse goes from 60 to 110 really quick.
13:15
Bobby Doss
Well, Wally's walked in this flight school after a few check rides, White is a ghost and told me we almost bent one of your planes today. He's been sideways on some runways with applicants and early on that used to scare me, but now I'm just kind of numb to it. I expect that he's going to make sure everything's okay on those checkrides, but there's been some scary moments for me too.
13:39
Wally Mulhern
I do remember coming into you and saying, I've got some good news and bad news and which one do you want first? And the good news was we didn't. The bad news is we almost crashed.
13:51
Bobby Doss
Yeah, that was a long time ago.
13:54
Wally Mulhern
And I'll tell you where that came from for the CFIs and everything. This is, you know, we're going to do a short field landing on pretty much. Well, on a privates and commercials. And what happens is we land and people say, simulated max break in. Well, I'm taking a triple seven into Maui on Tuesday, which from our standpoint has a relatively short Runway. It's less than 7,000ft. And I joke with people that I'm going to try that. I'm going to land this 777 in Maui and I'm just going to say simulated max braking and see how that works out. But I think what has happened over the years is we teach our students, whatever you don't touch the brakes because brake pads are expensive. Well, I'm an airplane owner. Brake pads are not extremely expensive.
14:52
Wally Mulhern
At some point we've got to try using the brakes. Now do we need to do it on every landing? No, absolutely not. I'm not saying that. But at some point we need to teach our students how to use the brakes. And this was a situation where the student told me later, he says he's never used the brakes. He has never used the brakes. And I told him, short field landing, I need to see you get on the brakes. Okay, now I'm going to say pretty quick, okay, you can get off the brakes, but I want to see that muscle memory of hitting the top of those rudder pedals and making an application of brakes. There's nothing in the ACS that says short field landing. We just say simulated max braking. I mean, if we can do that, why don't we do that for everything?
15:41
Wally Mulhern
Why don't we say, well, doing stalls is unsafe, so why don't we just get up there and say simulated buffett and recover it. We don't do that. We do it. We do the maneuver. Steep turns, simulated 45 degrees of bank. We don't do that. Okay. I mean, we could just sit in a room and simulate the whole checkride if we're just going to simulate things. But. But why in this case is the norm to land and just say simulated max braking, you know, anyway.
16:12
Bobby Doss
Well, this is where we compliment each other because I do own a flight school and tires are expensive, so the brake pads might not be, but the tires are. And so it's probably my coaching that says, let's don't flat spot those tires. But I do think that there's a technique by which you can do a maximum amount of braking without skidding the tires and maybe also pull full aft and talk about what you're supposed to do. So those muscles are there for Wally, it's mostly about checkrides and DPE stuff and then professional pilot type stuff. Normally for me, I talk a lot about flight training and flight school stuff. What students do correct, what students do wrong. I would say it's probably 30, 70, because we spend more time talking about the bad.
16:54
Bobby Doss
But I would still say everybody that's out there listening, that is doing any type of training, whether it be a full rating like private pilot or it's some flight review or some other add on, like a high performance endorsement. It truly is not so much about the stick and rudder skills, it's about the book work. And I would say every day I end up talking to at least one student or one parent or two parents about a student. And it's normally, well, they probably come in because they're not soloing and they want to solo so bad. The solo is normally not the problem. The landing probably isn't the problem. It's the knowledge about how to get back to the airport or some technical skill that really doesn't have to be done in an aircraft.
17:36
Bobby Doss
And I joke, most people come in here and buy my wife a new pair of black shoes that she does not need this week because they're wasting their money and just giving it to me because they're not coming prepared. And I'm sure you've had a few failures. And it was. How many of the failures are stick and rudder versus knowledge, percentage wise?
17:56
Wally Mulhern
Yeah. I would say of the failures, 15% are stick and rotter.
18:04
Bobby Doss
Yeah. So that should tell everyone it's not about your flying skills normally. And another flight's not gonna do as much Good as another hour in the books, probably. And I know people hate to hear that. They come in here to our orientations or come in and meet the school. And I preach this every day. And they're like, I just want to be in the air. Well, we want you to be in there, too. That's the fun part. But the book work's really the most important piece of it, for sure. Before we go to the next segments, anybody have any questions?
18:33
Speaker 4
Just on the failure rate, you were saying 15%.
18:37
Wally Mulhern
If you were to break it like.
18:38
Speaker 4
Private instrument, commercial, is that consistent or with commercial as a signal or other instrument, it's knowledge, or is it consistent across.
18:46
Wally Mulhern
Does he need to say that in the microphone?
18:48
Bobby Doss
You can just repeat it for me.
18:49
Wally Mulhern
Okay. He was asking what percentage of those. And that 15% that I said was stick and rudder. That's just a wag. Actually, it's probably a little bit higher. Maybe 25%. But the question is, what percentage is maybe private versus commercial versus instrument? I would say six months ago, I would have said that the lowest percentage would have been commercial. But I'm going to change that because I've had a rash of commercials that have had some issues here lately. And I have a theory about that, and I don't. Again, it's a theory. It's just my theory. But of those three, the one that is the highest is definitely. No kidding. It's got to be instrument. There's a lot of stuff to instrument flying. And a good friend of mine, a DPE here in Houston, is a mentor of mine who just recently passed away.
19:54
Wally Mulhern
I just. I had a good discussion with him one day and a phone call, and were talking about different checkrides and failure rates and that kind of stuff. And his comment was, he says, you know, if I'm. If I'm giving somebody a commercial checkride, and I asked them to perform a Shondell for me, and I can tell that it's a Shondell. He says, I'm pretty happy. But with instrument flight, I mean, if you don't know things about instrument flying, you can make dead people, you can crash. And, you know, that's our bottom line. I tell people for our checkrides, I say we have three goals for our checkride today. Number one goal is to not die. Number two goal is to complete the flight or the checkride. Number three goal is to have some fun.
20:50
Wally Mulhern
And if we get all three, it's a great day. If we get two, it's a good day. If we get one, we Live to live another day. And, you know, instrument flying is. It's, it's important. It's important, you know, so. But there's so much. There's so much to instrument flying. And I tell people when they pass their private pilot check, right, I'll usually say, well, what's next? And the vast majority, well, a lot of people will say, well, I start instrument training tomorrow. And I explained to them that in my opinion, again, just my opinion, I'm not so sure instrument flight training is fun, it's rewarding, but it's a lot of work. To go out and fly under the hood for an hour, you know, an hour and a half flight is physically and, well, mentally, it's mentally draining.
21:50
Wally Mulhern
You come back, you feel like chopped meat. And it's just very taxing, at least for me. And for what I see on instrument checkrides, I can see the applicants, the fatigue setting in. So I try to, in between approaches, say, let's take the hood off and let's just fly 10 minutes to the next airport without the hood on, just to kind of give them a little bit of a breather. Because it may take, I don't know, just to keep the wings straight and level. It may take, you know, 80% of your mental capacity with that hood on, where maybe with the hood off, it only takes 20%. So it's not, it's just, it's very fatiguing.
22:33
Wally Mulhern
But instrument flight is, you know, you issue an instrument rating and now that person tomorrow can go put their family in an airplane and they can go fly to an airport where weather is down to minimums. And that's, you know, everybody says, well, I wouldn't do that. I said, well, but you could, and you'd be legal to do that. So, so back to the original question. I'm going to say it's probably, as of Today, it's probably 40%, 50% instrument, 30% commercial, 20% private. And that's just a wag at it right now.
23:20
Bobby Doss
Yeah, that's pretty interesting because that tells me that the private students that are probably the most worried about their stick and rudder skills, normally it's not the stick and rudder skills, it's the knowledge component.
23:30
Wally Mulhern
Right?
23:30
Bobby Doss
And when I get text messages from parents or kids that failed and they think the DP is out to get them, normally, their response on why they failed is like a crystal clear they should have failed. Right? Something very serious, something very dangerous. I think the last exchange I had with a dad was, I can't believe he missed two things. And the DP failed him for that in the oral. And I didn't know what two things they were, but the two things were definitely going to get him killed. One was related to ice and one was related to the wrong altitude and the wrong direction. So pretty big deals to just overlook and say, well, we'll let that go. But it was not about the stick and rudder at all.
24:09
Wally Mulhern
Yeah. And if I were to guess, I would think that those things that person missed in the oral were probably things that were also missed on the knowledge test. So, you know, we look at it this way, the knowledge test. The applicant has the opportunity to demonstrate knowledge on the knowledge test. When we get the knowledge test report, we know the areas where there was a deficiency. So we are required to then ask them questions about that to make sure that it's been fixed. And a lot of times it's not. And that's a huge flag to me if I don't know if they missed calculating takeoff distance on the knowledge test. And then they were supposed to have that fixed by their CFI because they have an endorsement that says that the subject areas found efficient were covered by the cfi.
25:13
Wally Mulhern
So it's supposed to be fixed. And then they come to me and they can't figure out takeoff distance. That, that's like. It's strike two. It's, it's a big flag. It's a big flag. I know some DPs will say, that's, that's strike three. You're done.
25:34
Bobby Doss
Those of you that are in the room, any other questions for Wally or Bobby? And if not, I'm going to ask you all some questions. Oh, no. No questions. No one wants to talk yet. What was the hardest part of your flight training? Give us, give us an idea. Just spit stuff out so we can help address why those things might have been difficult. Go ahead.
25:57
Speaker 4
Mine was just scheduling with tpes, so it was just very difficult to get on the DP schedule. And when I was on schedule, it felt like the date wasn't short. So even if I had a set check run date schedule, that would have been. Could be moved at any moment in, like, the VP's discretion.
26:17
Bobby Doss
Yeah, I think that happens. I think our school does a pretty good job of managing it. I'll let Wally take the thought process, but I give my tip. I get a lot of phone calls from people, too, that say, hey, we can't get a checkride. Probably people in other cities Other states that know that I'm in aviation. What should we do? And I said, well, just send me the text message that. Send me the text message you sent the last dpe. And the text message is always the same. I'm ready. I'll be signed off. Can I have a date? How many of those do you get every day from a number that you don't know?
26:52
Wally Mulhern
All the time I get the. Hey, hey, Wally. I need a checkride. And if I respond, which I try to, but it's usually okay, who are you? Where are you? What kind of checkride are you signed off and ready to go? Oh, well, my name is Joe, coming over from San Antonio. It's ABC Flight school. Yes, I'm signed off and ready to go. And then I will say, okay, may I have your ftn, which is your FAA tracking number, which everybody has. Well, every pilot has. They'll send it to me. I'll go in IACRA and look, pull up their ftn and guess what? They have no application. So I will send them a screenshot of that says no application is available. And I will say, when you are signed off and ready to go, let me know. And I usually.
27:50
Wally Mulhern
And that's usually the end of the conversation. So, you know, we don't work for the faa. We are independents. As an examiner, we. The FAA has oversight of us, obviously. And, you know, I have what's called a managing specialist with the faa, and we're in contact all the time. Every time I make a paperwork error, which happens, I don't know, once or twice a month, you know, administrative type thing, I get a little note from him and I have to go in and fix it. But we set our policies, we set the price. My philosophy is I do not schedule checkrides more than about two weeks out. Okay? So a lot of times I'll get an email from someone that says, hey, I should be done in September. Can I get a checkride between September 12th and September 16th?
28:56
Wally Mulhern
Well, first of all, my airline schedule. I don't even know my August schedule yet. So, no, I don't know my September schedule. So I don't schedule that far out. The other reason is I'm going to say about 35. I'm going to say a third, 33% of my scheduled checkrides don't happen. And usually it's weather. Weather is usually the issue. So if I have an applicant and we schedule a checkride, let's say we get out to the airport and the weather looks good, so we start the ground, we get done with the ground. In fact, today I'm finishing up a young man who, we started his checkride last week and everything looked good. We got ready to fly and we had significant thunderstorms come in to Houston. So we didn't fly, so we had to discontinue. And that was last Sunday.
29:58
Wally Mulhern
So I'm getting him back in six days later. If I scheduled three months out, like some, you know, like I could, if I wanted to, then I'd be telling him, okay, maybe the end of September, we can finish you. So by kind of not scheduling that far out, I can do things like that. Yes.
30:20
Speaker 4
So kind of a two part question. Do you think there should be more accountability on both the DPE and also the student when it comes to checkride cancellations? Because I know in the past I've scheduled a checkride but with two different DPEs for the same checkride because I know one of their dates is going to change or something's going to cancel and change. So I just kind of had one as a backup. And then the second part is so like at this flight school there's the cancellation policy. So it's changed how many students are going to cancel. So I feel like if there was a dollar amount that you charge the student or DP for cancellation, then it would reduce the amount of cancellations.
31:00
Speaker 4
And then the second part is in terms of pricing for checkride because I know the DPE pricing for checkride can vary by like even in the thousands of thousands of dollars. So like the way they charge is just very different.
31:18
Wally Mulhern
Okay, again, so give me the Cliff's notes of the first part of that question.
31:25
Speaker 4
More accountability on cancellations and like charging a cancellation fee.
31:30
Wally Mulhern
Yeah, well, I mean, it's. First of all, you mentioned double booking with two DPEs. That gets under my skin. I don't recall the last time I canceled a checkride. It was probably one of the ones here. And it was a medical issue with me. I was sick and legit sick. I really was. You know, I can't speak for that. It's like, well, the doctor canceled my appointment at the last minute. I mean, that's probably happened. It happened to me just recently. I, I can sit here and say that I don't, I don't do that. Do things happen in life, you know, I had a situation where I had a delivery that was going to be at my house and I really needed to be there to delivery A few months ago. And it's life, it happens. But yeah, I mean, should there be accountability?
32:42
Wally Mulhern
Absolutely. And again, the pricing, you know, at some point I have to look at, you know, I have an airline job. This, if I'm doing this just for the money, you know, I make a lot more money at my airline job. A lot more money and it's a lot easier. And they don't cancel either. So, you know, if I'm scheduled to fly whatever, a three day trip, I know I'm going to make that money with these checkrides. Again, as I said, like maybe 30% of them don't happen and that's part of it. I understand that. So. And as far as double booking, we as the examiners don't like that. And we talk, believe it or not, you know, I'll get a text from someone, hey, does anybody have a checkride with Bob Smith? Yeah, I've got one in two weeks. Well, so do I.
33:43
Wally Mulhern
And then another one. Well, so do I. And so we know two of us are going to get a last minute cancellation. So.
33:52
Bobby Doss
I do say that. I know, I know I've known some DPs that take or offer checkride slots on days that they're on reserve. Right. But I think the ones that I know that do that are very open about that. Right. Like there's a real possibility this is not going to happen. But if you want to pencil it in, we'll pencil it in. And I think that was something that worked for us for a long time and then it just, it kind of went away. I think we've got a system here. But the thing that I tell people all the time is you can get a checkride with a DPE and every time I counsel someone, I think they end up getting a checkride. It's the professionalism of the way the emails or the text messages are sent.
34:29
Bobby Doss
It's really the context that I am ready, I have this type of plane, I'm in this location, I'll do this for you, whatever that means. It's normally the flexibility of the student. Right. Because they are. I can also say I've been around enough with Wally and many other DPs that the money is a lot of money for a checkride, but it's, they are making less money. And if you think about Wally's last Saturday or Sunday where he did that checkride for someone, I think his rate's below $1,000. So let's assume that he did a three or four hour event last Saturday with that person. And got the money and now he's coming back. This time they may not be successful during the flight and then Wally will come back one more time to finish that person up.
35:13
Bobby Doss
So there could be three afternoons of Wally's life that go to that sub thousand dollar payment. And while that doesn't happen every time, it's probably something that's in his mind that he's gonna, he's committing a lot of time and effort. For those dollars that are less than a thousand bucks. To the young men and women that are taking check rides, that probably seems like a fortune. But to those of us that are later in life, that's not that much money in the grand scheme of things to give up a half a day. We were just joking before we started recording. How much did this cost us? We're not making a dime, right? And we. I worked two hours last night, three hours this morning, content time before that, and we're gonna spend six hours on this show that's gonna record for 45 minutes maybe.
36:02
Bobby Doss
And there's Zero Sum Game for us. Right? We love this, we want to do it. But I think that there's a similarity to checkrides, that there's a whole bunch of time commitment that people don't think about that they're losing for sure. So in that text message, if you're out there and you need a checkride and you find the DP's number on the FAA's website, I think the real way to send that email or that text message is to let them know what school you go to, who you are, what rating you're trying to accomplish if you are or aren't signed off. Obviously they're gonna figure it out the second they get your application or FTN number and then your availability. I get this all the time.
36:43
Bobby Doss
I only want to take a checkride on a clear day and I'd like to do it in the afternoon. Well, that person's probably never gonna get a scheduled checkride based on their desire. And a lot of times. What's the earliest that you've ever been asked to cancel because of weather?
36:59
Wally Mulhern
Oh, four or five days ahead of time. Yeah, yeah, we, you know, it's. We got a check right. On Friday and Monday morning I get a Texas, hey, the weather doesn't look good for Friday. What's the plan? What's the plan? I don't even know what I'm having for lunch today. You're asking me what you know, Hey, I may be in a car accident. I may die before Then so let's hope not.
37:26
Bobby Doss
The thought process there is. I think a lot of people want it to be a utopia day, and that's just unrealistic. You're not getting a single engine land certificate to fly only on calm days in perfect weather. Right. So it's not ideal. I was going to ask. So you have a checkride today, a full checkride, I believe, right?
37:46
Wally Mulhern
Yeah.
37:47
Bobby Doss
For this show. What if I was that candidate and I'm not that applicant, but if I was, what would be the one thing you tell that checkride applicant right now that they should do to be ready for that for you today? Like, what's the one home run that an applicant can do to impress the dpe?
38:07
Wally Mulhern
Well, you know, be here early, make sure the airplane's ready to go, make sure the airplane is fueled. I joke that I'm going to be, you know, we're all going to die at some point, but I'm going to be laying on my deathbed and I'm going to wish I had all the hours of my life that I spent sitting at airplanes waiting for the fuel truck back, because that'd be like another year of life. The other one is all the hours I've spent waiting outside the bathrooms at flight schools to get in. But anyway, yeah, I mean, and you know, the other thing is, and we put this in a podcast how to prepare for your checkride.
38:52
Wally Mulhern
You know, one thing that I see a lot is when we are beginning, we haven't even technically started the checkride, but we're going through the make sure we're good to be here. The applicant will have to log into iacra and, you know, your IACRA password expires at some point. I don't, I don't know. What if it's six months, a year, three months? I don't know. But I can't tell you how many checkrides I've sat at where the applicant is now having to reset their password and they're freaking out. And, you know, again, I'm just sitting there and I'm hearing the Jeopardy. Music playing in my head as they're freaking out. I'm not freaking out, but they are. And you can see the anxiety level go up. So, you know, one thing I tell people, you know, they'll say, well, I just logged in yesterday.
39:46
Wally Mulhern
Well, it's on a daily thing, so you need to log in the day of, not the day before, because there's the day that it's going to expire. So, you know, just. And when I walk in and I kind of see everything laid out on the desk in front of me, I usually have the perception, you know, first impression, okay, this is probably going to go really well. And maybe to do all the preliminary stuff is going to take us 10 minutes. We're logged in, we're boom, we've hit the ground running, where with a lot of people, I, you know, you got to ask for everything, and that's okay. I mean, I don't mind doing that. I have my speech. It's memorized. And. But. But, you know, if you just have your ducks in a row, it just makes things smoother.
40:37
Bobby Doss
Do donuts or kolaches hurt?
40:40
Wally Mulhern
They. They do not. Breakfast tacos are even better.
40:43
Bobby Doss
Okay, good to know. Any other hard things that you suffered with in your training? Yes, Abby, go ahead.
40:51
Speaker 5
Yeah, I guess during my training, you said earlier, Wally, there was never a person flight. And I think for me, flight training, my perfectionist mindset that I have is probably the hardest part for me throughout training to overcome. It's really hard when you go up for a flight and you want everything to be perfect every single time, and then you do a steep turn, and it's not perfectly within those ACS standards. I think that perfectionist mindset for me has been the hardest part through training.
41:28
Bobby Doss
So she said that the perfectionist in her makes it very difficult to be confident that she's ready to go for a checkride. What's your take on perfection for a checkride?
41:42
Wally Mulhern
I am listening to a book right now, and it's Rob o' Neill's autobiography. And for those of you who don't know who Rob O' Neill was, he was the Naval Seal on Seal Team 6 who shot and killed Osama bin Laden. And it's interesting you brought this up because he was talking about the. As he was trying to become a member of SEAL Team 6, they did these drills, and they put them in a very stressful situation as best you could in training. They knew it was fake. They knew it was. I won't say fake, but it was training. It wasn't real world. And what they were looking for to invite people to join Seal Team 6, they were looking for people who could make a mistake and let it go and keep going, he says.
42:40
Wally Mulhern
And the people who got rejected were the ones who dwelled on their mistake. And that's what, you know, there's no such thing as a perfect flight. You know, years ago when I was first hired at the airline, 38 years ago, the philosophy, damn, you're old. I know. I am old. The earth was still cooling back then. The philosophy was, let's make these pilots learn everything. I mean, I started on the 727 and, you know, you'd have this four hour oral and then this two hour checkride. And it was intense. I mean, we joked that we had to know how many rivets were on the airplane. All this stuff that just didn't matter. And as an industry, we still kept crashing airplanes. So the focus started, changed a little bit and said, well, wait a minute, we're still making mistakes.
43:42
Wally Mulhern
We're trying to create perfect pilots, and it's not happening. We can get maybe 98%, 99%, but we're not ever going to get 100% because we're human. So now why don't we change the training a little bit to where we focus on error management. And at my airline, we call it threat and error management. So we try to identify the threats before every flight. Okay, what are the threats today? Well, it's a red eye. You know, we're flying in the middle of the night. We've got weather, we've got terrain. You know, we try to identify those things, but we also learn techniques of error management. Okay, an error has been made. Let's manage that error and let's mitigate that error. Okay? Hopefully we don't hurt anybody, we don't break anything.
44:37
Wally Mulhern
And so, you know, the ACS says you can exceed a tolerance in the ACF momentarily. So if you're doing that steep turn and you lose 120ft and you get right back to it, well, hey, okay, all right, you know what? And we're going to talk about it, and I'm probably going to tell you know, you, it's because you're focused inside, not outside. If you get your eyes outside, you're going to nail it. And as a flight instructor, that's what I would do with my students. I would take my paper or book or iPad or whatever and I would cover up the instruments and I'd say, let's do another steep turn. And nine times out of 10, that second steep turn is really good because they're looking outside, they're not looking inside. But anyway, that's kind of a going off subject a little bit.
45:23
Wally Mulhern
There is no such thing as a perfect flight. I'm not expecting a perfect flight. And I tell the people in the brief when we get ready to go fly, we do a flight briefing, and I'll say, perfection is not the standard. We're not looking for perfect. Okay? You're going to make mistakes. If you make a mistake, manage it, that's fine. What do you do? You're driving home, you miss a turn. Okay, well, you go up the next block and you manage it. We do it every day in life. So, again, I keep saying this. There's no such thing as a perfect light.
45:58
Bobby Doss
I suffer from the perfection bug as well as we both know each other. And I think you gave or administers Abby's last two checkrides. Did she. How did she do?
46:11
Wally Mulhern
She did great, but she was bouncing off the walls.
46:16
Bobby Doss
Yeah. I think her skills were there long before she thought she was ready. And I think everybody struggles from that anxiety a little bit. One more flight. I'm not quite there yet. And if they don't hit everything perfect, I think even instructors at times want that, want to see perfection. That's just not possible. I don't. I struggle with an instructor coming back and saying, they did everything today. But Steve turns, we need one more flight. I don't think it has to be perfect. And I think we have a DP sitting here telling us it doesn't have to be perfect either.
46:47
Wally Mulhern
Yeah, you don't. You know, I can remember being observed on a checkride one time by the faa, and. And I was a fairly new examiner, and I, you know, we. We took a break and went outside and. And I said, oh, man, he's. He's really struggling with this. And his comment to me was, well, hey, you only need to make a 70 on the knowledge test. You don't have to make 100 on this. And. And it was kind of a light bulb moment for me. Okay. Yeah, you do. You have to make a 100% on the ground portion of the checkride. No, you don't. Now, we can go back and we say, if you missed it on that knowledge test, you better be pretty doggone good this time, because you've already shown me once that you don't know it or you missed it.
47:38
Wally Mulhern
So when we come back and test it again, we need to have fixed it.
47:45
Bobby Doss
Any other questions, comments, hardships of your training? Yes, Amelia?
47:51
Speaker 5
How do you know? How do you think somebody knows when they're ready for a check ride?
47:55
Bobby Doss
Amelia asked, how do you know? Or how does someone know when they're ready for a checkride?
48:02
Wally Mulhern
Oh, boy. I'm trying to go back and think of my training, and I. That's.
48:07
Bobby Doss
That Was, I would say don't ask the applicant.
48:10
Wally Mulhern
Yeah, yeah.
48:11
Bobby Doss
Normally the applicant's the worst judge of when they're ready for a check.
48:14
Wally Mulhern
Right? Yeah. I think you have to trust your instructor's instincts because you are attached to the instructor. You are going to be a mark on the instructor's record if you go out there and aren't satisfactory. So they want you to do well, of course. I mean, everybody wants you to do well, including the examiner. I mean, I don't. I just. I hate that you didn't pass. I hate that. But you got to do it. You know, I always talk about the drives home, the drive home after the checkride. You know, I'm usually replaying things in my mind and there have been times, and, I don't know, I'm tattling on myself a little bit, but there have been times where I've gone home and somebody has passed, and I kind of think, boy, was that the right call? Was that the right call?
49:12
Wally Mulhern
There have never been a time where I've gone home where somebody was unsatisfactory. And I thought, was that the right call? Okay. I've never questioned my thinking the other way. You know, the ACS makes things pretty easy. There is a standard and it tells us what it is, you know, So I would say trust your instructor.
49:43
Bobby Doss
I think there's a piece in training that I experience with students and parents when I talk to them that the students that think they're ready for a checkride, they're probably more wrong than the people that don't think they're ready for a checkride. And then more often than not, I think the student has knowledge that the instructor in school could never have. And I joke about this a lot, but I think students are lucky a lot of times. And they, they show that they have the skill and they really don't have that skill. I think bor navigation is one where people happen to get the to from flag correct a couple times with their instructor, and the instructor just thinks they got it. The student has to tell us or the instructor, hey, I really don't understand this concept. I don't understand.
50:24
Bobby Doss
I might have got it right, but I don't know it. And I think that's the secret sauce between the student and the instructor. But if you understand the stuff and your instructor says you're ready to go, I think you're ready to go more often than not. Yes, sir.
50:37
Wally Mulhern
I believe that sometimes you're going to.
50:41
Bobby Doss
Run across where a student is strongly Believed they're never ready.
50:45
Wally Mulhern
And you have to convince them that.
50:47
Bobby Doss
They'Re ready for sure, you know, because.
50:49
Wally Mulhern
Like you said, more often than not, they think they're ready and they're not. It's completely the opposite.
50:54
Bobby Doss
Yeah. The gentleman's saying that he thinks the student. There are students that'll say they're never ready. And sometimes you almost have to kick them out of the nest. That was me during my solo phase. Instructor kept. We'd get to the school, we'd take off, we'd do three laps in the pattern. He goes, man, you can solo today. I'm like, not today, man. Not today. Not today. And ultimately, I think when he decided that it was the day, he didn't tell me. We started taxiing back. He stopped, he says, I'm getting out. You're soloing today. And that was the day I soloed. I think it was shocking for me, but I probably never would have done it if he wouldn't have just got out of the plane. Yeah, this was pretty easy because I was ready for a lot longer than I knew I was.
51:35
Wally Mulhern
I think One thing that CFIs could do a better job.
51:39
Bobby Doss
We.
51:39
Wally Mulhern
We need to try to do a better job of stressing our students because they get to me. I. I can't tell you how many times I've heard them say, oh, I've never done that before.
51:51
Bobby Doss
Are they always telling the truth, though?
51:53
Wally Mulhern
No, they're. The bullshit flag goes up in a hurry. You're not. Okay, You've. You've got. I've never done that before. Well, okay. Well, you did it today seven times. You know, I think we. We as instructors have to figure out a better way to stress our students. Let them make some mistakes. And now that's the fine line. Do you let them do a takeoff with flaps 40? That's probably not a good choice. Do you let them enter the traffic pattern the wrong way? Oh, boy. I don't know if there's traffic in the area. Absolutely not. Do you let them go to this uncontrolled airport and be on the wrong frequency? Well, that. That could be dangerous if there are airplanes in the pattern. So do you just jump in and tell them?
52:52
Wally Mulhern
I mean, I've had several instances of checkrides where we started the engine with the chocks in. And I can think of. At least three times it happened. One time it happened where we go out there and we're about to start, and an instructor walks by, and he's really waving at us and pointing to the front of the Airplane. And my applicant just wade back. And then another instructor was going home. He drove by in front of us in a car and he stopped and waved at us and was pointing at the front of the airplane. And my guy just waved back. And then one of the line guys comes out in a golf cart and waves at us. And my guy says, man, everybody's being friendly today. And I said, yeah, it's almost like they're trying to tell us something. He goes, yeah.
53:48
Wally Mulhern
Well, we start the engine and you know, now could I have said, hey, you forgot the chocks? I could have, but what's going to be more impactful for this pilot now? So we start the engine, we try to taxi, and he looks at me and he says, oh, no, I think I know why everybody is waving at us. We got stopped the engine. Did it take us another 10 minutes? Yes, it did. Did the person fail the checkride? Absolutely not. They made a mistake. We've all made that mistake. But I'll bet that person never forgets chocks again. And you know, they got a great story to tell on Saturday morning when they're sitting at the flight school eating donuts and drinking coffee. You know, you're not going to believe what I did on my private pilot check. Right. It's a good story.
54:33
Wally Mulhern
So I think as instructors, we've got to let them make those mistakes.
54:39
Bobby Doss
I think you had your hand up.
54:41
Speaker 4
Yes, this is kind of more so a comment, but a couple weeks ago, a flight school that I've been to several times in Florida, they had four checkrides in the same day with the same dpe. Is that what's like the regulation when it comes to that? I tried searching it up and I saw it said like 3 max in a day or.
54:58
Wally Mulhern
No, there's no max.
55:00
Bobby Doss
So his question was, saw if DP do 4 checkrides at a school in Florida somewhere that he'd been to in the past. Is there any regulations or rules on how many checkrides that DPs allowed to do?
55:10
Wally Mulhern
No, with the exception of CFI initials. CFI initials is one, but it used to be two. Used to be two. They removed that restriction. You know, I allocate four hours for an initial checkride, and I will call a cfii, initial anything, anytime there's a knowledge test involved. I'm gonna allocate four hours for an MEI multi engine instructor or a multi engine. I'll allocate three. Now, it never works that way. Four hours turns into four and a half. So I schedule checkrides at 8am and noon. Typically. Again, like today. Today I'm doing one and a half. I'm doing a, an instrument ride and a full instrument ride and then an instrument flight only. Tomorrow I've got a, a full something or other. A full instrument I believe. And I have a commercial flight only.
56:17
Wally Mulhern
And then I have a commercial recheck which will only be about four maneuvers from a commercial check ride. That was previously unsatisfactory. But as far as the regulation, how many we can do it in a day, there is none. You can do as many as you can. I will. If I'm doing maybe multi engine rides, I'll schedule. Sometimes I'll schedule three. That's a long day. That's you know, 8am to probably 6pm and that's no break. That's no lunch break. That's, that's nothing. That's just going straight through. It's a long day and I walk away and I'm tired and I say to myself I'm never doing that again. Until the next week when we've had some bad weather and they're trying to get checkrides in. So four in a day, four full check rides. I don't see how you do that. Maybe, maybe you can.
57:13
Wally Mulhern
I, I couldn't do it.
57:14
Bobby Doss
Start the oral in the dark at like 5:30 in the morning.
57:17
Wally Mulhern
Yeah, you could. You could.
57:18
Bobby Doss
I guess.
57:19
Wally Mulhern
And, and there's real no restriction. It says we can't fly at night. I'm not going to fly check rides at night. So we. You can do that. But I'm. I'm not going to do that.
57:29
Bobby Doss
So. Abby, he's not doing check rides here tomorrow, right? He's cheating on us.
57:33
Wally Mulhern
No. Wow. Well, but it wasn't your failure. It wasn't your failure either.
57:39
Bobby Doss
Good way to recover their way to recover. Any other comments or questions from the audience, the group? Nothing was hard in your training other people. Nothing struggles. All right, well with that we'll say thanks for coming. We appreciate all of you listening to the show. We got some stickers and things. We'll stick around and answer all your questions and talk more if you want to. But for the show we'll wrap it up. As always, thanks for listening and stay behind the props.
58:10
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.