In this episode of Behind The Prop, hosts Bobby and Wally explore the perils of underestimating weather conditions in aviation, drawing from personal experiences and historical accidents like Delta Flight 191. They emphasize the importance of thorough weather planning, tools like the Windy app, and sticking to personal minimums to avoid costly mistakes and ensure safer flights.
Show Notes for Episode: When FINE Isn't FINE
Introduction to Weather Discussion: Bobby and Wally kick off the episode by sharing their experiences with poor weather in Houston, Texas, highlighting how a seemingly "fine" day can quickly turn dangerous. They discuss the impact of weather on flight training and general aviation operations.
Personal Stories of Weather Mishaps: Bobby recounts a flight where he underestimated clouds during a trip to Brenham, Texas, leading to a necessary turnaround. Wally shares his encounter with rime icing in the Saratoga and how it affected his flight decisions, stressing the importance of early recognition of risks.
Historical Aviation Accidents: The hosts review key incidents, including Delta Flight 191 (microburst crash), Southern Airways Flight 242 (hail encounter), and Braniff Flight 352 (thunderstorm entry). These examples illustrate how poor weather planning can lead to tragic outcomes and underscore the evolution of weather information availability since the 1980s.
Weather Tools and Resources: They recommend the Windy app for visualizing wind patterns and forecasts, originally designed for sailors. Other concepts covered include monitoring pressure changes, temperature-dew point spreads for predicting fog or clouds, and using ADS-B data for real-time weather updates.
Subtle Signs and Decision-Making: Bobby and Wally discuss overlooked indicators like altimeter settings (low pressure signals bad weather), wind gradients, and temperature inversions. They advise pilots to check weather from broader areas and avoid locking into a single source like a METAR.
Personal Minimums for Safer Flying: The episode emphasizes establishing and adhering to personal limits, such as wind speeds, icing altitudes, and fuel reserves. Wally suggests limits for new pilots, including wind restrictions, ceiling/visibility minimums, and landing with ample fuel.
Advice for New Pilots: For those who just passed their private pilot checkride, the hosts recommend focusing on wind, ceilings/visibility, and fuel as core personal minimums. They encourage using tools like the FAA's lapse rate for cloud base calculations and always prioritizing safety over ego.
Key Resources and Concepts Mentioned:
00:00
Behind the Prop Intro
[Intro music and announcer]
00:21
Bobby Doss
Prop. What's up, Wally?
00:21
Wally Mulhearn
Hey, Bobby, how are you?
00:21
Bobby Doss
I am fantastic as always. Today, of all days, has been a pretty crappy day in Houston, Texas. I don't know how many flights we flew, but it's Below ten percent of our normal day at United Flight Systems. I don't know, did you have any check rides scheduled today?
00:21
Wally Mulhearn
I did not. No, I got in late last night from Germany and-
00:21
Bobby Doss
Basically took the day off. Well, there you go. my daughter's in
00:52
Bobby Doss
Germany at a four-flight conference right now, which is pretty cool. She left from Sun and Fun and flew direct to Germany. she's getting to learn what it's like to be all grown up. And, she doesn't realize how cool her opportunities are to be in Germany for her now fourth international trip, but, Maybe she'll ride back with you sometime.
00:52
Wally Mulhearn
Maybe so, that would be cool. It would be.
00:52
Bobby Doss
so today is all about this cruddy weather. We've
01:22
Bobby Doss
done a number of shows on weather. It's kind of a mix between weather theory, weather thoughts, personal minima, and, and honestly, the title of the show is "When Fine Wasn't Fine." I've got a few stories, I'm sure you have a few stories. I, I could tell many stories about other people, but I can remember being in the cockpit all by myself thinking this exact statement. It looked like an easy flight, clear enough skies, right? But by the time I was halfway there, I
01:53
Bobby Doss
knew I had made the wrong call. And my examples are just probably the same examples about dumb, stupid, not thinking and planning mistakes that all I think I've shared it a few times in the past, but biggest one that sticks out to me was I jumped in a Cessna 182 with my golf clubs to go meet my dad in Brenham, Crystal Clear Sky, in Spring, Texas, launched it,
02:24
Bobby Doss
and I'm more than two thousand feet in the air and I looked Oh, there's a bunch of clouds over there. Maybe I should have done some planning, a little bit better flight planning. you're a pro pilot, well, you've never made a mistake like that, have you?
02:54
Wally Mulhearn
that's, I'm, I'm, I'm trying not to laugh too hard. Yeah. yeah, I, I make mistakes on every one of my flights. I have yet to fly a
02:54
Wally Mulhearn
perfect flight. I got A Few years left in the tank, and I'm, I'm trying for that perfect flight, but I haven't gotten there yet. So-
02:54
Bobby Doss
I mean, I didn't, I didn't even think to look at the weather in Brenham, Texas, because I was in Spring, Texas, and there wasn't a cloud in the sky, ten thousand feet, crystal clear. And, man, how many times do pilots make a similar mistake? Normally at the school, people are worried about the, the wins at the school, but
03:24
Bobby Doss
they're going somewhere else. We talk about this a lot, but we gotta think broader, bigger picture, bring it in So for me, on that day, fine was not fine, it was not fine. And there's a lot of examples that we can talk about, professional examples, Delta Flight 191 in Dallas, Texas Plane crashed, microburst. You, that's a personal story for you, Wally. Why was fine not
03:55
Wally Mulhearn
fine that day? Yeah, I, I was in Dallas that day and, I- We, we, the, the company I work for, I think we had an airplane over there having some avionics work done, and I'd flown it in. I wanna say this happened on a Friday, but I flew the airplane in on Thursday night. we, we had a freight contract, I dropped the freight off, and then I went and I took the airplane to the avionics shop, I left it there, I
04:25
Wally Mulhearn
went to a hotel, and I got up the next day when they, they had the, all the work done. And I hopped in the airplane, I wanna say this was at, one of the, you know, one of the outlying airports in the Dallas-Fort Worth area, maybe Me-Mecham Field, if it's, it's probably renamed, it's probably something different now, but anyway, I flew back to Monroe, Louisiana, which is about, three hundred miles, about an hour and a half flight, in a Beechcraft Baron, and
04:56
Wally Mulhearn
I, I took off from the Dallas area, and there was, there was significant weather. And I did a lot of deviating, mostly south. And when I got to Monroe, I hopped out of the airplane, one of the line guys came up, he said, "Did you hear what just happened in Dallas?" And I said, "No," and he told me that Delta had crashed. it was a Lockheed Delta 11, I believe, and, quite a few people lost their lives, flying through a microburst. And so things
05:27
Wally Mulhearn
we can't see, things we can't be aware of, but we can do some planning to solve those. another example from my research, the Sou-Southern Airways Flight 242 flew into hail. Man, hail would be devastating. To a, to an airliner, it'd be devastating to a single engine piston plane. it'd be devastating to a vehicle, like, and a roof. We don't want hail. Hail is very bad.
05:57
Bobby Doss
Right. if you wanna learn more about that one, go read about that one. And then Branna Flight
05:57
Bobby Doss
352 flew into thunderstorms, another tragic accident. It, it kind of boils down to, and, and we have no idea why these pilots did what they did or what, what happened, and I don't wanna speculate, but for me, it was the lack of planning. For others, it's, it's, I think I see more student pilots underestimating what can change. we, we look at one ATIS, one METAR We kind of lock in that that's not gonna be
06:27
Bobby Doss
any different in an hour, but it's probably gonna be different in an hour, especially in Houston, Texas. The, the weather can change to be all four seasons in Houston, Texas. And too often we underestimate winds. There's a million tools out there to help us understand what's gonna happen with the winds. My favorite one is Windy, I talk about it all the time. It was actually an app that was created for sailors, people who sail non-powered boats, and to help
06:58
Bobby Doss
them know what the winds are gonna do. It's a great visual on your computer or on your phone and gives you some ideas of what's coming. Just recently, I used it for golf. There was- There was a front coming through, I was playing in a pretty big golf tournament, and I wanted to know what the winds were gonna be when I got on the back nine. Very useful 'cause I- Needed to know what the winds were gonna be doing to make my plan for that. Same thing for flying, we need to be able to know what's coming. But if it's six knots
07:29
Bobby Doss
of crosswind Wally at 9 AM at, at Hook's Airport. What's the likelihood that it's gonna get less by noon?
07:29
Wally Mulhearn
about two percent. And if it does, more weather flowed through, probably more bad weather flowed through that made the pressure drop to such a level that the winds aren't blowing. I remember a, a smart pilot told me one time, on a clear day, you can assume that it's gonna be very, very bumpy.
08:00
Bobby Doss
I was like, "Well, that's weird, I thought it was a clear day, right? The wind's blowing all the bad weather out of there, and it's probably gonna be really bumpy." What about the ceilings? I think I've heard too many kids, young men and women in my life, wanna go solo and they said, "It's, it's thirty-five hundred at College Station, surely I'll be fine." I'm going to College Station, it's not that far away. If the ceilings are at 3,500
08:31
Bobby Doss
at 3 PM, what's the likelihood they're gonna get higher by 5 PM in this part of the country?
08:31
Wally Mulhearn
Yeah, well, higher by, by 5 PM, it's, I, I would say 3 to 5, there's not gonna be a whole lot of change. No. And if there is change from-- I always talk about the northwest fronts coming through Houston. If I was gonna check weather, I'd be looking like Amarillo Northwest, right? Like what was there four
09:02
Wally Mulhearn
hours ago, 'cause that's what's here probably now or gonna be here in the next couple of hours. I don't look to Florida What's happening in Florida, 'cause very rarely is weather gonna come back this direction. but I definitely don't just look at Hux Airport, right? And so I joke, everybody that's at United Flight Systems learning how to be a pilot right now, they are learning how to be a weatherman, first and foremost. We, all pilots become weathermen. And
09:32
Wally Mulhearn
the one that I know almost got a couple of our students and an instructor a while back is temperature change at altitudes. And it was a cold front. They weren't worried, they left when it was sixty degrees Fahrenheit, but boy, when they got- Just a hundred miles northwest, and a cold front came through, it was freezing and they picked up quite a bit of ice. I think ice scares me the most in a single engine piston plane. Thunderstorms, I'm just
10:03
Wally Mulhearn
not gonna play with, but ice is the, the invisible gaucha that I think we all have to worry about when we think it looks fine 'cause we can't see what isn't fine. Do you have any ice stories in the Saratoga or any of your single engine world, Wally?
10:33
Bobby Doss
I actually do. We, we flew the, Saratoga up to Denver. I don't know, a year and a half ago. and, we got up there and, got
10:33
Bobby Doss
in a little bit of icing, a little bit of, rime icing. I told ATC I needed lower and- They could not give it to us. it was just a little, it, it was probably what you'd call trace icing, but, but there was icing out there, and, I was, w- I, I didn't like it, I didn't like it at all. we never really, really lost any performance or- You just didn't pop the dudes? You just didn't pop the dudes on your way in?
11:04
Bobby Doss
No, no, no, no, I, I'm, I
11:04
Bobby Doss
looked for the button, I didn't see the On me, it, it snuck up on us, and, well, it, I, I probably didn't do a very good job of planning for it.
11:34
Bobby Doss
Yeah, and I- I'm not indi-indicting anyone, but it just is a lesson for everybody listening. It will sneak up and bite you, and when that ice bites you, you can't just undo it if you don't have icing equipment or
11:34
Bobby Doss
anything to help. There's no way it's just gonna come off. And I would be, I would be panicking. If I saw a little bit in the corner of my windshield, I'd be like, "Holy cow, what's going on on the tail? What's going on on the wingtips? Like, I don't know where I'm collecting ice Yeah. Yeah. And, and I will say, you know, these, these three case studies that we mentioned, these all happened a long time ago. I, I know the Delta one, I think was in the summer of nineteen eighty-six,
12:06
Bobby Doss
so that was forty years ago, and the Southern Airways and Braniff were around that timeframe. The amount of information, it's- Well, the Internet, okay? The Internet was not a thing in nineteen eighty-six. the way you'd get your weather briefing, in general aviation is you would walk into a flight service station or call them up on the phone and say, "I'm going from here to there," and, and some guy would, would give you a briefing or,
12:36
Bobby Doss
or female, not necessarily a guy, but somebody would give you a weather briefing, and, it might take fifteen minutes for them to, to give you this, in-depth briefing. And, you know, boy, in fifteen minutes You're writing things down, maybe you're forgetting things, and if you happen to be an airport that had a flight service station, you go in, you could actually get some printouts that would help. But it, we did not have, or back then, did
13:07
Bobby Doss
not have the dynamic information like we have right now at, at our fingertips, our phone, our iPad, whatever. Boy, we can check, you know? I, I sit in check rides and I, I'll say to my applicant, "Okay, we're going from here to there." We're gonna divert to this airport in the middle. What's the weather at this diversion airport? And it's an airport they've never heard of, and within twenty seconds, they're telling me what the weather is, just because they-- we, we have this information available to us, you know,
13:37
Bobby Doss
for flight or, or any Garmin pilot, we can, we can use ADS-B data to, to basically- Paint sort of a, a radar picture. It's not really radar, but it's close enough. And so, man, we have so much available. It's, it's-- and I, I'm not saying, "Well, back in the day, we, you know, walked five miles to school uphill both ways." I, I don't, I don't mean to, sound like that. Maybe I am sounding like that a little bit, but you had
14:07
Bobby Doss
to use an abacus to get the forecast, is that what you're saying?
14:07
Wally Mulhearn
Yeah, yeah, absolutely. You United Airlines or it was Continental back then, we would, you'd go into a room before your flight and the room-- name of the room was called the weather room, and there'd be this, this paperwork packet for you that was, significant, and it would have your forecasts, you'd, you know, note 'em, so it would have
14:38
Wally Mulhearn
everything where now it's all delivered to us electronically, we can update it, and, man, it is The, the information, it's just like the internet, I mean, we have so much information at our fingertips, and that's a good thing, okay? So-
14:38
Bobby Doss
For sure.
14:38
Bobby Doss
yeah. Recently, I was trying to show a few people at the school kind of how I look at the weather using Windy. And they were like, "Oh, well, it looks like it's gonna be low overcast at that time." And I said, "Well, wait a second, there's five different data
15:08
Bobby Doss
sources in Windy. We can pick a different data source." And we picked like Version two of the, of a, of the data source, and it wasn't cloudy, what-- it showed no visible moisture, and then we picked three, and it was kind of between the two, and then we picked four, and it was cloudy again. I just-- these are forecasts I'm not gonna send my family into a forecast. I'm gonna do my due diligence and do better than that. Now, I'm gonna use the forecast, of
15:38
Bobby Doss
course, but kind of like back to A few weeks ago when Brandon Cooks was on the show, "If there's any question, he ain't going. It's a no go." So what are these subtle signs? Part two of this show is, "What are those subtle signs we normally miss?" You, you can't look at, "Well, I only use WeatherBug." Well, maybe that's not the best source. I don't know. I'm not saying anything bad about WeatherBug, but-- and I'm a fan of Windy, but it's not always perfect. I can show you a hundred check
16:09
Bobby Doss
rides that I've watched want to be canceled that- There's a picture on the wall because they finished their check ride that day. Forecasts are not actual weather, they're forecasts.
16:09
Wally Mulhearn
Right, right. And, you know, to me, a-and this is the one piece of the weather puzzle that most of us probably don't pay attention to. I mean, sure, we look at the winds, we look at the ceilings, we probably look at the, the-- We might look at the temperature if it's extreme. but
16:40
Wally Mulhearn
the one thing that we don't re- we, we look at The altimeter setting, we just kinda go, "Oh, okay. " But that might be the best single marker of how the weather is, is the pressure. Low pressure, low weather. High pressure, high weather. And what do I mean by low weather? Bad weather. High weather? Good weather. Low is low, low is bad, high is good. So pressure was hard for me early on. When you say low
17:10
Wally Mulhearn
pressure, are you saying the numbers get smaller on the altimeter? And high pressure, the numbers get bigger on the altimeter?
17:10
Bobby Doss
Well, just, just look at the altimeter setting, yeah. So if, and, and it is really a prevailing alti- Don't, don't, don't use standard pressure as your Standard. That is just a broad based standard, two nine nine two. most places will have a prevailing pressure.
17:42
Bobby Doss
For instance, out in the Pacific Ocean, out in, in, Hawaii, thirty thirty is probably about standard. If, if you got two, altimeter setting of two nine nine two out there, you got bad weather. here around where we are, I'd say the prevailing altimeter is It's probably 3 0 0 0 something like that. but, you know, if you see 2 9 7 2, that's, that's probably pretty bad
18:12
Bobby Doss
weather here in Houston. And so, have you seen pressure drops, maybe from like a morning check ride to an afternoon check ride, and you're like, "Oh, this, this young man or woman has no idea what they're getting into."
18:43
Wally Mulhearn
Yeah, and, and, and it's like you said, I, you know, you can look at the forecast and everything, but I'll say, "Okay, what, what's the weather here?" "What's the weather fifty miles north west?" And we just happen to have, you know, College Station, Texas, is
18:43
Wally Mulhearn
about fifty miles north west of here. Here, maybe sixty miles, something like that. And, and that's a really good marker for me, you know, if I see we got an altimeter setting of three double o five here, and it's, two nine, seven six in College Station, there's a big pressure difference between here and there, so there's gonna be a significant weather change. And if I was a twenty-five hour private pilot student, I would not have understood a word
19:13
Wally Mulhearn
you just said. Like, how do we explain that to people that are listening that, that can translate, What is that? You, you just said fifteen points, so two nine, you know, thirty goes to two nine eight five. Is that something to be concerned about? Is that telling me that the weather's deteriorating?
19:44
Bobby Doss
Yeah, especially if it's, if it's close. I mean, if it's five hundred miles away, that's one thing. You know, we, we talk about gradient. Well, that means there's a significant pressure
19:44
Bobby Doss
change in a short period of time, so it's a, a high gradient. you know, the, the hill- Is steeper, if that makes sense. Okay. A steeper hill. It does. Yeah. Yeah. So, and the, the faster it's dropping, by bigger numbers, the more I should be concerned.
20:14
Bobby Doss
Absolutely. Well, if it's going the wrong way, it, it might be going the right way, and, and you, you can be pretty happy with that. Yeah, so I can-- now I can see solo students saying, "Well, Bobby, it's been-- it went up point o five
20:14
Bobby Doss
in the last hour, surely I can go on the next AEDS." And I'll say, "Uh, we'll wait till the next AEDS," but maybe, yeah, yeah, it can get-- it can get better, no question.
20:14
Wally Mulhearn
Right. But with higher pressure Does produce maybe higher winds, so that could be an issue. Doesn't mean it's just gonna be better, it's just we're getting rid of some of that moisture and some of that temperature change that causes moisture, rain, fog, other things, right? I, we have a pretty strict
20:45
Wally Mulhearn
rule about temperature/dew point spread, and it's because all these engines are mostly carbonated, What, what are your thoughts?
20:45
Bobby Doss
I think you mean carbonated. Yeah, that's what I meant to say, sorry. You, you, you said carbonated, but hey, that's okay. The-- What, what are you-- What are your thoughts on temperature dew point spread? I've had every argument in the world about this one, Wally. W- what should a private student pilot be thinking about as
21:15
Bobby Doss
it relates to dew point and temperature?
21:15
Wally Mulhearn
Yeah, well, that, that spread, the, the, the smaller the spread, the higher the hu- humidity is. So, you know, you, back in the day when you watched the ten o'clock news and the, the weatherman came on and he said, "Uh, eighty-two percent humidity." And I, I, I don't know, does eighty-two percent equate to an eight-degree temperature dew point spread? I, I don't know, I don't know what those numbers are. But having said
21:46
Wally Mulhearn
this, you know, one kind of example I give to my, my applicants, I say, okay, we, My, my, especially if it's an afternoon check ride, I try to use real world scenarios. And so if I have an afternoon check ride, they start at either noon or one o'clock, and I have them plan their cross country to leave two hours after we start the, the ground portion. So we're leaving at two PM local time. And, you
22:16
Wally Mulhearn
know, maybe that first leg is two and a half hours, and then, you know, we'll stop and get fuel and do, you know Get something neat, and then we're gonna fly the last leg, and I will say, okay, the, the temperature right now at our second destination, the, the airport that we're gonna get to about nine o'clock PM, the temperature is twenty-two, the dew point is nineteen. What, you know, are there any concerns for that? Most,
22:48
Wally Mulhearn
most of the applicants, I'd say ninety percent of 'em are pretty in tune. Okay, well, I got, you know, twenty-two, nineteen. Sun's- Going down, it's gonna get cooler. now, m-most likely the dew point will go down, but not, probably not as fast as the temperature. So now if you got a temperature that is equal to the dew point, we're gonna have some, some sort of, visible moisture, fog or, or low clouds or something. So yeah, it, it can cause some problems I
23:19
Wally Mulhearn
think that's the biggest thing I've learned being a pilot about the weather, is that those two things are relative to where we see visible moisture saturate the air, which makes visible moisture, clouds, fog, whatever. And we should, as pilots, all be able to probably calculate the basis of most clouds because of that math. And I challenge people around the flight school 'cause they're learning, I'm trying to help them understand this stuff. If, if the temperature
23:50
Wally Mulhearn
is 20 and the dew point is 18 Where would you think the first chance of seeing visible moisture would be, Wally, as it relates to this?
23:50
Bobby Doss
Not very high. Not very high. Not very high. So if the lapse rate, by the FAA books say two degrees Celsius for every thousand feet We might get into visible moisture at a thousand feet. All right. And that's, that's-- now we might not have that, it might not be humid enough,
24:21
Bobby Doss
but the, the numbers might say it could be. I had, I had this picture, it was a great picture, I've, I've lost it, but I was probably flying back from somewhere around twenty-five hundred feet, and at twenty-five hundred feet, looking through the, the straight ahead, I could not see And it was just very, very small layer, but it was exactly where the temperature and the dew point were the same. And it, it might have only been thirty or forty feet, but it was one of those days where I, I had the picture
24:51
Bobby Doss
and I said, "This is what you could get into, and this is why we won't let you go." Because the temperature and the dew point were equal and the air was becoming saturated with moisture. So it's a, it's a sneaky one that could really bite people, and it- Could disorient you really, really quick. The other one is winds. we've had a couple of incidents where people have been a little bit of metal. no one's been hurt, thank goodness. But on a day where the airport turn--
25:22
Bobby Doss
airport changes direction of landings like three times when you're in the pattern, that might be the sign that today's not the best day to be practicing in the pattern, Wally.
25:22
Wally Mulhearn
W-well, yeah. You've had some really crazy experiences at my fly school with- Students, how bad is crosswind for a rookie pilot?
25:52
Bobby Doss
Yeah, it's, it's, it's probably not a good thing. Now, I will say this at some point, at some point, we've got
25:52
Bobby Doss
to be able to handle, you know, crosswinds to an ex-certain extent. I've, I've been at flight schools where I walk in and I see twelve CFI sitting around and I say, "Well, how come nobody's flying today?" And they go, "Oh, we got a twelve-knot crosswind." And, and I say, "Why aren't you on your phone, on the phone to your more advanced students saying, 'Get out here.'" Get out here. And I, I, you know, maybe, maybe some of the CFIs aren't
26:23
Bobby Doss
confident in their ability. You know, I've got a new airplane, I've got a tail dragger, I, I've got a Saratoga, I've got two airplanes. I, I'd, I'd be I would be fine landing the Saratoga in twenty-five, thirty knots across one, direct crossing. Absolutely fine. that tail dragger? My limit's about five knots right now, 'cause of, of my, you know, you know, so it's, it's, it's, it's a big deal, and of course, I don't, I
26:53
Bobby Doss
don't need to go, so
26:53
Bobby Doss
Well, I think that's a great segue into part three. What are some of our weather decision, weather-proof decision tools that we can make? And personal minimums are at the top of that list, right? If, if you have those and you, you stick to those, that's what's gonna make you a safer, better pilot. So today, I would say if, if I was gonna take a trip and I was gonna take my beautiful wife with me to go somewhere, if
27:25
Bobby Doss
the destination said more than fifteen knots, I probably wouldn't fly. I might jump in the car and go. My car has autopilot as well, but the, the net of that is I don't have to fly, and I have other options, so that's part of my personal minimums. Companies are gonna push pilots to do different things, but If I know my numbers fifteen knots, and I stick to it, I don't say, "Well, sixteen's almost fifteen, so
27:55
Bobby Doss
I'm gonna go with sixteen." Fifteen's the limit. How you, Wally, the tail dragger is one example, but what is your icing number for the Saratoga? What, what would be your personal minimums? How many, how many feet do you wanna stay away from potential icing levels in the Saratoga?
28:25
Wally Mulhearn
Oh, for sure, 2,000 feet. Yeah. And I, I, I probably, this has grown into a fish story where I tell everyone at the fly school, everyone around the fly
28:25
Wally Mulhearn
school, my personal minimum is 10,000 feet. And it's kind of that, just like I'm never gonna go if there's a chance of ice, 'cause I don't have to go, right?
28:25
Wally Mulhearn
you don't have to go either, but you're probably much more astute than me, but ten thousand is the "Quote unquote service ceiling of a Cessna 172. I'm not, I'm just not gonna risk it if I can get to within ten thousand feet of the ice. is it gonna really get me ten thousand feet away? Probably
28:56
Wally Mulhearn
not. But how many stories have we read about people that- Had a temperature inversion, they had super liquid cold droplets that ruined their day, like that's the one story I'm not-- fire and ice scare the heck out of me, no matter what.
28:56
Wally Mulhearn
Yeah, and, a-and it's not just, well, there's no clouds out there. If there are clouds above, that moisture may be dropping. And so it has grown into this fish story where
29:27
Wally Mulhearn
10,000 feet's my number, but I really don't think I would fly to Oklahoma tomorrow if I thought There was visible moisture at ten thousand feet because then I could get drops on me. I just don't wanna take that chance. Is there any personal minimum other than the five knots in the tail dragger that, you think has helped you be a safer pilot?
29:58
Bobby Doss
Yeah, well, you know, in that airplane, I'm not, I'm not flying into a cloud, I'm not flying in IMC conditions, you
29:58
Bobby Doss
know, You know, yeah, there, there's, there's, and, you know, just offhand, I'm, I'm thinking, and, and nothing is coming to mind, but, It's, it's, it's really kind of a, a day-by-day, thought process that goes through. You know, one thing I-
29:58
Bobby Doss
That I have done over the years is, and I, and I'd encourage all of the, the pilots out there listening, understand
30:31
Bobby Doss
the weather in your local area. I know if I walk out of my house And the temperatures are unseasonably cool. Okay? And, and, and that could, that could happen in July, I could walk out and go, "Oh wow, it's not crazy hot. It, it actually feels good out here." But odds are, the wind is out of the north, okay? And so, odds are, if, if I'm going to Hooks Airport, I
31:01
Bobby Doss
know I'm taking off on three five today. Odds are, we're gonna have a significant temperature dew point spread because we're, we're probably bringing in warm-- I mean, dry air from the north. Typically, what we have is, is, you know, when the prevailing winds here in Houston are out of the south, probably, I don't know, seventy-five percent of the time would be my guess, wet and hot air.
31:32
Bobby Doss
Right.
31:32
Bobby Doss
So what do we have coming from the south? Exactly, wet air over the Gulf of Mexico, so we're probably gonna have clouds. I hate to correct you, but you corrected me earlier. It's called the Gulf of America now, Wally.
31:32
Wally Mulhearn
Oh, god, yeah. That's right, that's right.
31:32
Bobby Doss
So You've been a great mentor to me, I think we've become really good friends. What would you tell the person that's listening that maybe pr- passed their private checkride yesterday? What? Now
32:03
Bobby Doss
I'm putting you on the spot, so I apologize, but what three personal minimums would you say they should pick and live by to kind of push their flying career forward as, as, as a solo private pilot, not with an, not with an instructor, not with-- but, in the learning phase, but if I'm gonna go launch a plane by myself, what are those three things you would say, "Hey, this is really important, keep these?" And, and grow them, but keep these as-- I'm gonna keep these as brick walls.
32:35
Wally Mulhearn
Yeah.
32:35
Wally Mulhearn
are you talking about a non instrument rated pilot? Of course. They just got their priv-- They passed their private certificate yesterday.
32:35
Wally Mulhearn
Okay. Well, I would say wind is definitely one of 'em. I'm gonna li-ll-ll-sealing and visibility in another one, and then the last one is gonna be my favorite one, my five reasons, and it's fuel. How much fuel are you, willing to- Land with, and, and I, I, I don't know, I-- This is an un-informal poll that I have, been
33:06
Wally Mulhearn
taking, but I will, I'll ask all my applicants for, you know, on a commercial and, well, even an instrument, commercial instrument and, private, you know, we talk about our cross country, and I'll say, "Okay, how much fuel are we gonna land with?" And they'll tell me in gallons, and I'll say, "Okay, how much is that in minum-minutes?" And- I will ask them, I'll say, "Well, what's your personal, personal minimum for landing
33:37
Wally Mulhearn
fuel?" And I- The majority of people now tell me, "Well, I want, I want an extra fifteen minutes. I want-- my, my personal minimum is to land with forty-five minutes worth of fuel." And, and I cringe, I say, "Man." That's, that's a lot, lot lower than what I'm gonna land with. you know, if, if heck in, in a Saratoga, that's, that's fifteen gallons, but, you know,
34:07
Wally Mulhearn
in your typ- typical Cherokee, or one seventy-two, you're talking about six gallons. I mean, that's three gallons in each tank, that's not very much. No, and imagine if you took off and you sumped the tanks and you just had one drip out of each of those. Like, how, how can you manage that? To me, that's the-- Like you're saying, like Ice, fire, and lack of fuel scare the heck out of me.
34:37
Wally Mulhearn
Yeah. so I wanna
34:37
Wally Mulhearn
land with as much as I can. Sure, there's gonna be times where there's limitations, but much like I don't have to go, there's nothing preventing me from stopping multiple times going on a trip. Like if I'm going to Florida The 182 could probably make it in one, maybe two stops.
34:37
Wally Mulhearn
Yeah. What's the difference in three or four for me and my family? I mean, I can do it, and I probably wanna stretch it Take a bio break for Bobby anyway, right? Like, right. Don't think that's a big, big, big deal for me.
35:08
Wally Mulhearn
My, my rule of thumb is, is two and a half hours. I don't wanna be in the airplane for more than two and a half hours. Now, if, if I do the calculations and I realize I can get there in three hours And, you know, I know I've got five hours of fuel on board, will I probably go for three hours? Yes, I will, but I will also have, a couple of pit stops in mind along the way. And I think that's what's important that I would have never thought of as
35:39
Wally Mulhearn
a younger pilot, meaning younger in my flight time, is that all airports are always open, mostly, unless they're notam'd, but it's not that big of a deal to divert a little bit and stop, even 30 miles out of the way is not that big of a time delay if it's gonna make you a safer, better pilot.
35:39
Wally Mulhearn
Yeah.
35:39
Wally Mulhearn
So w- that trip to Brenham, I ultimately had to turn back and didn't get to play golf. What is your turn back decision? I, I, I was a professional pilot who has
36:09
Wally Mulhearn
these aircraft that you fly in general aviation, with your family. What's your turn back decision while if you're going from here to Monroe, Louisiana? What are you thinking? And when are you gonna decide to come back or stop? Like, you gotta have an ego like the rest of us. You can do it.
36:40
Bobby Doss
Yeah, no, I've, I've made stops. I've, I've been coming back to Houston before and, Stopped, you know, just north of
36:40
Bobby Doss
here, up in, in Lufkin, which is about sixty miles, just 'cause I didn't like the weather in Houston. Hey, we can, we can stop. Heck, I, I, I had to, I could Uber home. It'd be expensive, but I could probably Uber home. And, you know, first of all, okay, you, you stop, you get on the ground, it's a little easier to make decisions in a, a less noisy environment. I get a good Wi-Fi signal, okay, I can really look at weather. First of all, I can go use the
37:10
Bobby Doss
restroom, I can put fuel in the airplane. If I've got fuel, if I've got lots of fuel, I've got lots of options. So, you know, and, and at the, the higher level, I, I can't remember the last time for weather, it, it's been a while, but, we do it, it happens.
37:10
Bobby Doss
Yeah, I think for me, it's, it's the sooner the better, if there's no other way to phrase, phrase it, it's the sooner the better. That
37:41
Bobby Doss
decision that's made in a panic is really gonna be More than likely an unfortunate decision, right? It's gonna be too late. So the sooner you can make it, the better. I told this story recently a couple times flying back from Dothan. I was thinking about fuel when we got to two thousand feet, and I was already noticing the headwind and the math was not adding up, and I was thinking about where we were gonna stop for fuel. If you can make that decision two and a half hours before you need to make it, you're gonna be much better off than
38:11
Bobby Doss
waiting until you get to a point where you're in the, wow, forty-five minutes is like, now I gotta get on the ground. That's way, way, way, way too late. So if you're going to make a decision about turn back or taking a pause in the flight plan that you're on, my biggest piece of advice would be to do that sooner than later, because that's gonna be the easiest time to make it. And yeah, we all have egos. I don't wanna say no, I wanna go all the time, but
38:42
Bobby Doss
I have my lines, they're hard lines, and I'm not gonna, I'm just not gonna push my min-minimums at all.
38:42
Wally Mulhearn
Yeah. Well, we, we, you know, at, at the airline, we joke about this is that the, the person who makes the, the first decision to divert is in pretty good shape, and, because, l-let's say you're coming from the West, you're trying to get into Houston, and you end up diverting to Austin. Well, if you're the seventeenth airplane to divert to Austin, guess what? You're the seventeenth one to
39:12
Wally Mulhearn
get fuel. You're, you're the seventeenth one to launch back to Houston. The guy that diverted first- First, man, he's, he's out there on the end of the runway ready to, you know, push the power up as soon as the weather comes up, so, there, there is something to be said for that. That's a good tip. The sooner the better, will play true no matter whether you're a GA pilot or whether you're a professional pilot.
39:12
Wally Mulhearn
So the next time the weather looks fine, remember your tools, remember your limits, your
39:42
Wally Mulhearn
personal minimums, decide early, trust the subtle signs, pressure is the big one that we don't think about enough, and let's not let fine fool us and get us in trouble. As always, fly safely and stay behind the prop. Thanks for checking out the Behind the Prop podcast. Be sure to click subscribe and check us out online at behindtheprop dot 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
40:13
Wally Mulhearn
for listening, and remember, fly safe! There's no place like
40:15
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