In this episode of Behind the Prop, hosts Bobby Doss and Wally Mulhearn explore the pitfalls of rushing flight training, drawing from real experiences at United Flight Systems. They discuss how unprepared students waste money on ineffective lessons, the marketing hype around accelerated programs, and why most people benefit from a slower, more consistent pace. Bobby shares a story of a student who returned after maturing, emphasizing the need for motivation and study habits to make training efficient and cost-effective. Wally and Bobby delve into practical advice, such as chair flying and balancing life commitments, to avoid hidden costs like failed check rides and burnout. They caution against external pressures and misguided advice, stressing that true preparation leads to better outcomes. This episode serves as a valuable guide for aspiring pilots, highlighting that patience and smart planning can save time and money in the long run, making the journey to becoming a pilot more enjoyable and successful.
Episode Overview
This episode of Behind the Prop, hosted by Bobby Doss and Wally Mulhearn, dives into the hidden costs associated with rushing through flight training. Bobby shares a real-life story from United Flight Systems about a student who paused training due to lack of preparation and motivation, only to return years later with a renewed drive. The hosts explore why accelerated training programs can backfire, how students can better prepare before starting, and the importance of setting realistic expectations for the journey to becoming a pilot.
Key Discussion Topics
The Cost of Unpreparedness: Bobby recounts a conversation with a mother and son at the flight school, where the student had previously quit due to immaturity and lack of study habits. He explains how unprepared students waste money on lessons they can't fully utilize, turning what should be productive flights into expensive review sessions.
Accelerated Programs and Marketing Hype: The hosts critique the misleading marketing of fast-track pilot programs, noting that while the FAA minimum for a private pilot is 40 hours, the national average is around 60-80 hours. They discuss how promises of quick certifications often lead to burnout, failed check rides, and additional costs.
Maturity and Motivation: Bobby emphasizes that a student's readiness isn't just about age but about having the discipline and motivation to study outside of lessons. He shares how a student who returned after a break was far more successful because of personal growth and a genuine passion for flying.
Practical Tips for Efficiency: Wally and Bobby discuss strategies like chair flying, consistent scheduling, and self-study to make training more cost-effective. They stress that flying two to three times a week with proper preparation is far more efficient than cramming lessons without study.
Avoiding External Pressure: The hosts warn against letting friends, family, or online advice push students into rushing their training. They argue that each student's journey is unique, and comparing progress to others can lead to poor decisions and unnecessary expenses.
Notable Quotes
"He took a couple years off, grew up, and came back as a different person. And his training was much more efficient because of it." - Bobby Doss
"Don't try to be the minimum. The minimum is not the standard you want to aim for." - Bobby Doss
"Chair flying costs you nothing and can save you thousands in the long run." - Wally Mulhearn
Takeaways
Rushing flight training often leads to higher costs from repeated lessons, failed check rides, and burnout. Students should focus on preparation, including studying ground material and chair flying, to maximize the value of each lesson. Accelerated programs may work for some, but most students benefit from a steady, consistent pace that fits their lifestyle. Finding the right flight school and instructor who support your individual learning pace is crucial to a successful and enjoyable training experience.
00:00
Behind the Prop Intro
[Intro music and announcer]
00:00
Bobby Doss
What's up, Wally?
00:00
Wally Mulhearn
Hey, Bobby, how are you?
00:00
Bobby Doss
I am fantastic, as always. This week, we're gonna go back to some of our roots here and have a good flight training discussion. We are going to talk about the hidden costs of rushing flight training. I actually had a conversation with a mom and a son today at the fly school. And the conversation was about how they spent so much money and they didn't finish the solo phase. And I looked at everything, and I talked to the young man, and
00:30
Bobby Doss
I talked to the mom, and they were very open. In fact, they were wanting to come back, they wanted to get going again. And I asked the young man, I said, "What, what do you think happened? Like, you're not gonna hurt my feelings, let's, let's, let's talk about it." And he said, "I just didn't study." And I said, "Well, what do you think's gonna be different this time?" He goes, "Well, I've, I've matured two years, I'm graduating high school, I, I'm pretty sure I can study now." And I'm like, "That's fantastic." The, the thing I talk about at the fly school all the time is that when people come unprepared
01:01
Bobby Doss
and maybe even a little bit unmotivated, but they wanna fly, all they're doing is wasting money and buying my wife a pair of shoes that she doesn't need. It is A common theme around there, I joke about it all the time. My wife, I used to say black shoes, she got mad, so now she said, "Just say white tennis shoes," 'cause she's retired and she's got a white tennis shoes fetish instead of a black shoes fetish. But end of the day You've seen it, Wally. I've seen it thousands of times, that when someone comes unprepared, the
01:32
Bobby Doss
plane is the most expensive classroom in the world. If you don't understand the words that your instructor is gonna use, you're gonna just waste that whole lesson. And yes, you might log one point seven, one point nine, doesn't matter. Those hours count, but they're not valuable. How can we- Eliminate the hidden costs by rushing flight training. That's what this episode's all about, and I wanna kick it off by saying, accelerated is not always accelerated. To me, accelerated is
02:03
Bobby Doss
marketing. It is not the true test of how you get done. you-- I do think there's good schools out there that are, quote unquote, accelerated, but for the large majority of students, Wally, you've met many people What do you think about accelerated flight training and where it works and maybe where it doesn't work?
02:34
Wally Mulhearn
Where, where I think it works, and, and I hope I don't offend people by saying this, but I, where I think it works is if the student, okay? And, and we're all students. I'm, I'm a about a thirty thousand hour pilot, and I consider self, myself a student of aviation. I learn every day. but so-
03:05
Wally Mulhearn
But you are, you are like a helicopter student pilot right now, aren't you? Well, yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay, I am. A-and I, I'm a, I'm a taildragger student pilot too. I scare myself when I get out in that. But anyway, so where, where I think the accelerated type places work well
03:36
Wally Mulhearn
is when the student- Is mature, okay? a-and I'll give you an example. I, I had a, a friend that, that I, I met years ago. He was an, in athletic administration at my university And he, he left there and he took a job at a, another university as, as an athletic director. He was actually a VP of the university, VP
04:06
Wally Mulhearn
of athletics for, for a university in Texas. And, I got a call from him one day, and he said, "Hey Wally, I, I wanna talk to you about a career option." And he basically said, "I wanna quit being an athletic director and, and become a professional pilot." so here's a guy who is, you know, in his, his late forties. He's been around the block. He's got life experience. you know, he's, he's
04:37
Wally Mulhearn
managed, you know, million dollar budgets. he's hired and fired coaches. he's, he's got some tread on the tire. I told him, I said, "I, I think one of these type places would work well for you." And, and he did go to one. He didn't go to a-- He went to a, a lesser known one. and, and he's, he's out flying right now. He's a, he's a professional pilot right now. So, that's where I think it works. I,
05:07
Wally Mulhearn
I, I venture to say for the 19-year-old who has just graduated high school I'm not sure it works as well, just because there's, oh man, a-g-again, I, I hate to say this, but there, there isn't a maturity level. Yep.
05:38
Bobby Doss
I, I would add to that to say it's Their program may not fit with your lifestyle, whatever that is. Like, Absolutely. Absolutely. Seven months isn't seven
06:09
Bobby Doss
months for all of us. It, it, it varies greatly, right? And so I think that's marketing, and then you have to go still involve yourself with that location, with that school, learn how they do it. I, I use this example quite a bit. W-If, if they, if their accelerated program is Friday, Saturday, Sunday, but you're, you only work Thursday, Friday, Saturday, Sunday, well, I'm- Obviously that's not gonna work, right? And yes, maybe you could find another school that does Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, but who can go seven days
06:40
Bobby Doss
straight work and accelerated training and, and keep the wheels on, right? I think it's a myth. I do believe it's a myth in the large percentile, eighty-five percent plus percentile, that it's gonna work the way it's advertised for most of us. Doesn't mean it doesn't work. I, I think multi programs are probably a good example of where an accelerated program program works, but they've, they've refined and refined and refined to make that work the way it works for most people. I also think
07:10
Bobby Doss
that accelerated just doesn't-- well, in most cases, just costs more money. And it's not about the dollar per hour, it is about that most people don't come prepared, so they're repeating things multiple times. and so we'll take the, the, the- Corporate conglomerate out of the story and just say, "If you train five days a week but only have two days to study, there's no way you're gonna be able to, to, to be prepared for those lessons, and
07:43
Bobby Doss
you're going to miss things, and that school, whoever that school is, is probably gonna have a schedule that you have to follow, and you're not gonna be successful simply because you don't have the time to prepare yourself." we all need about two hundred and fifty hours to be commercial pilots, but not all of us Do it the same pace, the same way, and it, it's just gonna take a lot more time to repeat those things. And then we talk about it all the time, Wally, but what about check rides? Y- you administered thousands of
08:13
Bobby Doss
check rides at this point. How many of 'em that you get a call from a fly school, I'm sure I've made the same phone call, and say, "Wally, I've got this young man that's gonna go to college. They're leaving next Friday. He's gonna get signed off today. Any chance you could squeeze him in graciously say yes. early next week becomes whether you graciously flip things around to get this kid done. How good does a checkride go when there's that much external pressure because of a, a deadline? I,
08:44
Wally Mulhearn
you know, I don't, I don't have hard numbers, but I, I guarantee the pass rate on that checkride On those type check rides is lower than the normal pass rate. I'm just making up, I'm not even gonna use numbers. Let's say the, the normal pass rate is X percent, I would say for this check ride, it's X minus twenty percent. There you go. And so what
09:14
Wally Mulhearn
do we do about that? Well, work with your fly school, work with your flight instructor, try to have a better plan, try to make that external pressure not be what's-- the external pressure of accelerating it not be what's, driving the decision or the timeline. and then, in the case that it does, make sure you're ready. one thing we've talked a lot about on air and off air is the consistency of training prior to a check ride. So in that event, if- If that person said get
09:45
Wally Mulhearn
signed off on, let's call it Wednesday of last week, and can't fly until Thursday of next week, that's eight days. What does an eight-day gap in flight training mean to you for a student pilot who's going to try and pass a private pilot checkride? It's huge, and, and I, I can tell. I mean, there, there have been so many times on, on check rides where, in there with the applicant, and it may be the initial check ride or
10:15
Wally Mulhearn
it may be a continuance, maybe we discontinued for, for whatever, but y-you can tell, you know, especially, you know, a, a, a student pilot going for their private, you know, they, they don't have a ton of time. and it's, it's things like struggling to find the tower frequency. We're out there, we're number one for takeoff, and, and they, they don't, they don't know what the tower frequency is. I, and I, I just, I
10:46
Wally Mulhearn
think that it's I think you oughta have that memorized. I just think you do at, at your home airport, you oughta know the frequencies. Heck, my, my home airport, Monroe, Louisiana, I was flying there in nineteen eighty-one. Ground one twenty-one nine, tower one eighteen-nine, departure one twenty-six-nine, ADIS one twenty-five o five. I still know it. but I'm, I'm a numbers guy, so, but, a-and, and, you know, that kinda is a
11:17
Wally Mulhearn
red flag for me. When, when I see that. The other thing that I see and, and I just had this happen the other day, young man, we, we scheduled a check ride, for Saturday morning, and, On about Thursday, I get a, a text from his CFI that says, "Hey, the airplane, i-is gonna be in maintenance, we're gonna have to change airplanes." And it was changing types. It was going from
11:47
Wally Mulhearn
a a Cherokee to a Cessna, I believe, and, and it was an instrument rating. so I said, "Well, okay, alright, I'll go in and change it on my end." And, we got there, and then we hop in the airplane, and, the airplane had an engine analyzer, and, and the young man didn't-- He didn't know how to work it. And, and I said, "How about that light that's flashing?" And
12:18
Wally Mulhearn
it says remaining fuel zero. I said, "W-we just gonna ignore that?" And, you know, he didn't know how to answer 'cause he did not know how to work this JPI. He did not how to tell-- know how to tell it that we actually had fuel in the airplane. And, so, you know, that was a flag. He ended up, he ended up electing to discontinue and saying, "Hey, I'm not, I'm not familiar with this airplane." And there were, there
12:48
Bobby Doss
were other things, it wasn't just that, but there were other things in the airplane that he, he really didn't know how to work. Yeah, and that's both acceleration and external pressures where they've got you on the hook, you, you, you've given them a date, they don't want to go through the deep e déluge of waiting again, and they just, they try to accelerate it themselves, but it's not the right decision. And while this is all really hard I think it's just grounding yourself in not trying
13:18
Bobby Doss
to accelerate things that should be accelerated. So part one, there was the urge to rush when accelerate isn't accelerated. Part two is the myth of saving money, rushing often costs more. Would, would you agree with that statement, Wally? I wrote this show, but would you agree with that, that the myth of saving money, rushing normally does cost more?
13:49
Wally Mulhearn
I, I w- I would think so. I, I definitely would think so. You know, sometimes you're just forcing things. Some people, it, it just takes them
14:20
Wally Mulhearn
longer, you know? I, I look at my, my, my musical career coming up as a drummer. Man, I was I was horrible for the first couple years, and then all of a sudden, the light bulb went off, and all of a sudden, I realized how to read music. And I just remember going back to school after, after seventh grade, and, and people saying, "Wow, what happened?" And
15:21
Wally Mulhearn
much opportunity to learn more, and the knowledge exam is gonna take you about sixty minutes at some point in the future. There's no reason to rush the knowledge exam, and the fact that it says on the internet in a lot of places that it'll save you money makes no sense to me either. It's the exact same price, right? It, it's gonna take you a lot longer during the check ride 'cause you're not gonna score as well, and you're gonna have to talk to Wally about everything that you missed. And There's just no logic to it saving you
15:51
Bobby Doss
money. There's none. You're not gonna get out of it. Well, the CFI is gonna still have to talk to you. Exactly. And, and, and where I, where I see it is, I see it in the ground portion, the applicants can answer, they can answer questions. I will say, "Tell me what are cloud separation requirements in Class D airspace? "Thousand above, five hundred below, two thousand horizontal. Great. All right, let's go fly. can we,
16:22
Bobby Doss
can we at least do pattern work? Oh yeah, it's, it's, it's fourteen hundred overcast. Okay. W- traffic pattern's a thousand feet. Yeah, we're below the clouds. I just go, wait a minute, you- but an hour ago, you just told me we gotta be five hundred feet below the clouds. And there's a light bulb moment, I go, oh! Why did I think about, and it's like, well, where have we been? What have we been thinking about? So, so you, you know something, but
16:53
Bobby Doss
you, you, you can't take that knowledge and put it in real world situation. It, it's just like, you know, learning, learning math skills. Okay, I can tell you that eight percent of a hundred is, is eight dollars. But now I'm in a store and what I want has a price tag Of a hundred dollars and it's eight percent tax, but I can't tell you how much it is. Well, it's the same thing. It's, we're, we're just correlating. No question.
17:24
Bobby Doss
And, so, so we do, s- I do see that, you know, people, they, they, they know these book answers. you know, tell me, what's density altitude? Is pressure altitude corrected for non-standard temperature? Okay. What does that mean? The deer in the headlights look. It just happened today, just happened today. Yeah. Well, I also think that the rushing Where it costs more money is, again, lack of preparation. So
17:55
Bobby Doss
we come in and, and go over a topic with our flight instructor, we go fly that topic, we didn't read the maneuvers guide, we're not ready, we're not set up, we don't even know how to set up for the maneuver, and we don't know why we didn't get all eight maneuvers done that, that day because we spent all of our time working through just the setup process. When at home, we could have chair flown for free. Practice, practice, practice, practice, practice, and then came really ready for that. But to have that much time to chair fly, we would need three days
18:25
Bobby Doss
between lessons. And it, it's, it's a mind-blowing math number, and we talk a lot about math on here. But I ask everybody at our school that comes in, we host these orientations to kinda give people a background of what they can expect from flight training. And I always say What timeline from today do you think you could be applying for a job to be a flight instructor at this school? And I hear everything from one year to five years. And normally when
18:56
Bobby Doss
I go back to that person, but it says one year, I say, "How many times a week do you have to fly?" And they say, "Oh, at least five." I'm like, "Okay, let's do the math." So if, if you have to get two hundred and fifty hours to be a, a commercial pilot, and the way we train, we kinda overlap the CFI training towards the end of that to help you get done more economically. If that's the case, two hundred and fifty hours, we'll say we average two hours of flight, so
19:27
Bobby Doss
we need a hundred and twenty-five lessons. You know that math works, Wally, so we'll just hope the listeners know it works too. If we split that up into two chunks, and we say the first half is gonna be sixty-two hours, or sorry, sixty-two lessons, and the second half is gonna be sixty-three lessons, and I start my flight training training two times a week, that means to finish the first sixty-two lessons, I'm gonna need thirty-one weeks to finish those. Seems reasonable, okay. In the
19:57
Bobby Doss
second half, I train three times a week. That's sixty-three divided by three, that's twenty-one lessons. Thirty-one plus twenty-one is, Wally? Fifty-two. And how many weeks are in a year? Fifty-two. So in one year, if I just trained two or three times a week, I could be a professional pilot. Now, it's not gonna be at the airlines, but I would probably have enough time to, to be really close to my flight instructor certificate and apply
20:27
Bobby Doss
for a job, I could do a few banner toes or other things like that, make money flying, but most people don't realize that to get done in a year, I only gotta fly two or three times a week. and it's a, it's a, it's a, it's a simple thing that says, "Take a deep breath, slow down." How much more prepared could you come? If you only flew twice a week, if you gave yourself three days to, to study for one lesson and two days to study for the other lesson, it
20:58
Bobby Doss
would be impactful. The other thing that I think a lot of people do to rush is their, their availability makes them condense their training in their mind, right? So I have a full time job, I've got, I can only train on Saturday and Sunday. So what do I do? I train every Saturday and Sunday. Well I have no time to study for the Sunday lesson, ever. I don't know if I finished the Saturday lesson before Sunday, and so you're in this quandary of almost not being prepared for one lesson a week. That's gonna
21:29
Bobby Doss
really set you back. You're gonna repeat that lesson multiple times. Whereas if you could work with the school or work with a CFI and say, "Is there any way we could train late on Wednesdays and once on the weekend?" Now you've got time to study. I don't think new flight students know that, and they just do what-- Excuse me, they just do what they're told. Hey, let's just train Saturday and Sunday. And they don't even know how hard that's going to be to do and how many repeat sessions that's gonna take. This young man
21:59
Bobby Doss
that I talked to today, I asked him what I asked a lot of people, "Do you think if the Blue Angels chair fly, you should chair fly?" And he says, "Yeah." And that documentary's worth anyone watching, I say it Three times a day. They debrief their set three times a day. How many times do you think they chairfly their set as a group? Three times a day. So by the end of the season, seven months later, two hundred, two hundred and ten days later, they have chair flown
22:29
Bobby Doss
that probably five hundred times. They have no question of what they're gonna do at the six, six minute and thirty-two second mark of their flight. It's just so rhythmic. Right. So rhythmatic. How good would a checkride go if someone had done a chair flying exercise to set up for slow flight six hundred times before they did a slow flight? Yeah. Yeah. It would miss absolutely, absolutely. So, chair flying's the big one. If you don't have a maneuvers guide, you can
22:59
Bobby Doss
have mine, maneuversguide.com. It's what United Flight Systems uses. we, we iterate that thing, we've, we've made it the best we can make it. it's free out there. Go grab it if you don't have one. Sit in front of a cockpit poster, sit in front of a screen with a cockpit on it, chair fly that thing to death. That is free. No money. If you wanna save money in flight training, do that. Alright, let Patients wanting the certificate too soon. Who do you see
23:30
Bobby Doss
that wants the certificate too soon, Wally? well, I'm gonna say a lot of times it's parents. Parents. And they also-- I'm a parent, you're a parent, we know our kids' strengths and weaknesses normally, before they even go to kindergarten. I think it's parents of kids who think this is gonna be the solution 'cause they're not gonna do good in college, that's probably not gonna work. I also think it is the parent
24:01
Bobby Doss
who wants to be a pilot, the, the wealthy businessman who works twelve hours a day, has more money than they do free time, and they're like, "I wanna buy a plane so I don't have to fly commercial. Can I get my private pilot certificate in thirty days?" Yeah. Maybe, but not you. you work twelve hours a day, seven days a week. When are you gonna squeeze this in? the math on how much time it takes is
24:32
Bobby Doss
a real number as well. And- To me, that real number is, okay, if you fly a two and a half hour flight lesson, it takes you forty five minutes to get to the fly school, it's gonna take you forty five minutes to get home, that, that already has become a four hour event. Then I think you should spend at least the flight time, the, the booking time at home preparing, so that's two and a half hours. So every lesson became, just became six and a half hours. How many of those can a businessman do in a week that works twelve hour days? Not
25:02
Bobby Doss
many. Right. That, that creates one, a lot of pressure, but two, just a almost immediate attempt for failure. And I'm not saying you can't do it, I'm just saying you have to sacrifice something else. You have to work less a few days a week, you have to take a couple days off if you want this to work and be successful. I think you can train twice a week, obviously, but, you have to, you have to really dedicate that time. The young pilots I
25:32
Bobby Doss
think they just think it's about the flying, so they wanna rush. I, I have people call me all the time in May. My son's about to graduate, and he's gonna go to LSU. We'd like to get his private pilot certificate before he leaves for college. When's he leaving for college? August. When in August? August 1st. So we got 60 days. 60 days to do it, okay? is he-- Are y'all taking any vacations? Yeah, we're going two weeks to Hawaii, and then we're taking a two week cruise in the Mediterranean. So
26:04
Bobby Doss
now we got four weeks and two, two week gaps. I would suggest that you don't try to take this on. And people are shocked every time I say that, but what do you think the chances of success is there, Wally? probably about one point six percent. Yeah. And that kid has to be on his A game. Or her a game, because it's just way, way, way too much. The other piece is burnout. When, when people want it too soon, the worst thing that I see happening to students
26:35
Bobby Doss
is when they start hating flying. It, it breaks my heart, because we probably all got here with some passion and love for aviation, whatever it was. It was the discovery flight, it was looking up and seeing planes, and then you make it so rushed, so condensed. I actually dread going to the airport. You actually don't feel good driving to the airport. How many days do you not feel good driving to the airport, Wally? Never. Exactly. And so when we turn flying
27:06
Bobby Doss
or the act of learning how to fly into something that we start to resent or hate, it's not gonna be any fun, and we're gonna, we're gonna have a lot of setbacks, which takes that desire to get done too soon, and it's gonna lengthen it, it's gonna make it what it is. You're not gonna, you're not gonna be able to get away from it. So That impatience is one of those things that I see in a lot of people that I, I don't know how to shake it out of 'em, I wish I could shake it out of 'em, but you can't go
27:37
Bobby Doss
faster than you can go. And so you gotta take your work life, your availability, your financial situation, your ability to study, your ability to retain what you study, tie all that together, and if you don't have a good home, a good flight school, a good CFI It's, you're gonna, you're gonna repeat stuff and spend a lot more money. That's where the hidden costs of flight training by doing it fast come from. What do you think?
28:08
Wally Mulhearn
Well, I, I spent, before I became an examiner, I actually taught at a local high school in, in Houston. I taught, I taught music, I taught the percussion section, I taught the drum line, and I, I did it for about six years. And, you know, everybody likes to wear the little silicone wristbands, so I had silicone wristbands made up with, with the name of our drum line. And on the inside of it, w- I had three words imprinted,
28:40
Wally Mulhearn
and, they were "attitude." Preparation and effort, A P E. And I, I used to tell, tell my drummers, I said, "Just, we wanna be apes, A P E. Attitude, preparation, effort." And those three words, I says, "If you come in here, you give me a good attitude, you come prepared, and you give me effort when you're here, we're gonna be successful." And, and I took a lot of pride in, in really building a, a, a
29:10
Wally Mulhearn
really nice program. you know, by the time I left after about six years, it was just on autopilot. I, I didn't even need to do anything. The, the kids, they policed themselves. It, it was really a beautiful thing. But notice, nowhere in there is the word talent. Nowhere in there did I say give me talent, because we can't control that. What do attitude, preparation, and effort have to do with each other? They're all things that you have major influence over. I don't say control, 'cause sometimes,
29:42
Wally Mulhearn
sometimes things are a little bit out of control, but you have major influence. You can control your attitude. You-- obviously, you can control your preparation, and when you get to the school, you can control your effort. And, you know, that's the, the, the preparation. We, we ke- we keep coming back to the preparation. You, you used the word study. Study sounds horrible to me. I, I don't study. It's like, oh, god, I kinda go into, you
30:12
Wally Mulhearn
know, it's been a long time since I've been in college, but I've, I have gotten a couple of type ratings and I've had to study, and, it kinda scares me. But it study prepar- and preparing, same thing, right? But I, I, I, I've, I've, at least with aviation, I've been very blessed that studying doesn't feel like studying. I, I'm such an airplane geek that I like it, so it, it's not hard for me. You gotta, you gotta find your groove and you gotta find
30:43
Wally Mulhearn
your niche, and, You know, hopefully, hopefully people, you know, I, I say to a lot of people who, on my check rides, I'll listen to them talk and they'll tell me what their plan is, "Well, they're gonna do this and then they're gonna do this and then they're gonna do this," and nowhere in there do they mention a passion for airplanes. And, and I'll, a lot of times I'll stop them and I'll say, "Uh, do you like airplanes?" And I go, oh, oh yeah, yeah. I said, "Well, you haven't mentioned
31:14
Wally Mulhearn
that. You, you've talked about wanting to do all these things that have to do with flying, but nowhere in there did you say, 'I love airplanes.'" And I, I think that's what we gotta look at. First of all, I mean, do you like airplanes? I, I joke with people, you know, I, in fact, I said it to an applicant today. I said, "Do you like the smell of avgas?" And he goes, "Oh, yeah, That's a good thing for sure. Yeah, and
31:44
Bobby Doss
I, I don't-- everybody' life situation's a little bit different, but there's nothing that says you have to get done faster. I can't think of one scenario that would really make me say, "Yes, you have to do something accelerated," or "Yes, you have to do this in ninety days." I think it's, it's propaganda on the internet, if nothing else. I don't think accelerated is always the best path for everyone. I think it's something that you have to be thoughtful about, especially if you wanna save money. If you wanna waste a bunch of money, try to go as fast as
32:14
Bobby Doss
you can, but I don't think that that's what anybody wants to do. I normally ask the question, "Does anybody wanna spend extra money during flight training?" I've never seen a hand go up. Pace yourself, learn deeply. Come prepared if you don't like the word study, do it the best way you can to save time and money economically. And, time to me is worth a lot, so I don't wanna waste any of that either. I wanna go at the right pace for me, and that's different for everyone that's listening to this podcast all over the world. Find
32:45
Bobby Doss
a school that'll help you do it at your own pace, and as always, Stay s- stay behind the prop and fly safely.
32:53
Behind the Prop Outro
[Outro music and announcer]