Bobby Doss and Wally Mulhearn tackle the critical question of whether pilots are truly ready for an emergency tonight, emphasizing that you fall to the level of your training rather than rising to the occasion. They break down memory items, scenario-based drills, a real-world gear-up landing case study, and night-specific risk reduction strategies like flying higher and following freeways. Listeners walk away with practical ways to build reflexive habits and stay prepared for the unexpected.
Bobby and Wally kick off this episode by posing a tough question to all pilots: could you handle an emergency tonight? They stress that you don't rise to the occasion but fall to the level of your training, sharing examples of how complacency creeps in during checkrides and real flights. The hosts dive into memory items every pilot should know cold, like engine fire during start procedures, glide speeds, and oil pressure emergencies, while advocating for scenario-based training and chair flying to build reflexive habits.
They explore real-world case studies, including a pilot in Australia who executed a calm gear-up landing after hours of troubleshooting and fuel burn-off. Wally recounts a medical emergency on a 737 where staying calm and breathing first made all the difference. The conversation turns to proactive strategies for night flying, such as following freeways, flying higher for more options, and using tools like ForeFlight's emergency glide mode to improve odds during engine failures or electrical issues.
In the lightning round, they challenge listeners with scenarios like engine roughness at night over a city, comms failure into Class C airspace, and night VFR with lowering ceilings. The takeaway is clear: build habits through deliberate practice with instructors or solo, know your airplane's POH inside out, and prepare your brain for the day you hope never comes so you can fly safely and confidently anytime.
00:00
Behind the Prop Intro
[Intro music and announcer]
00:27
Bobby Doss
What's up, Wally?
00:27
Wally Mulhearn
Hey, Bobby, how are you?
00:27
Bobby Doss
I am fantastic as always. We've had a number of really good shows recently, and I'm really excited about this one. It's been something that, I've been thinking about, you've been thinking about, and, it's something that I think all of our students at United Flight Systems should be thinking about.
00:45
Bobby Doss
And the question is, the title of the show today, could you handle an emergency tonight? We've done a couple shows on emergencies way back in the early days of Behind the Prop, but this is one that, that really- It resonates with me.
00:59
Bobby Doss
It's not about can you handle an emergency, or it's not about nighttime, it's about the pressure or the thought process of, are you ready for an emergency tonight? I've said this a lot in my past, the fly school, I'm sure I've said on the show, but you don't rise to the occasion, you fall to the level of your training.
01:16
Wally Mulhearn
It's so true. Like If, if you, if you, we talk about instruments a lot, if you haven't flown instruments in nine months and you shoot an approach to minimums, it's going to be really, really sloppy.
01:29
Bobby Doss
Even if you do good, it's probably gonna be sloppy. What are your thoughts on pilots, the people that you maybe examined recently, how ready are they for an emergency tonight?
01:44
Wally Mulhearn
Yeah, I would say in general, not very. I, I, I think the, the name of the, the, the show, the title, that tonight is, is kinda hits home 'cause, you know, it doesn't say, "Can you handle an emergency at night?" It says, "Can you handle an emergency tonight?" I, you know, when I was young and dumb, not that I'm old and smart, but, but probably there was a period of time in my life Where I believed that I performed better under pressure.
02:20
Wally Mulhearn
And, call it cocky, call it arrogant, I don't, I don't care what you wanna call it, but there, there was a time where I really felt that. I've just watched enough, I've read enough data, I've read, you know, seen enough YouTube videos, and I've, I've- Made a 180 degree turn on that.
02:44
Wally Mulhearn
I don't think, I, I-- Well, I know, I know you don't perform better. One thing I hear on check rides a lot from an applicant, "Well, I've never done that before." And, I, I say, "Well, you did it three times on this one." And, you know, it might be, I don't know, Maybe not using the landing checklist.
03:11
Wally Mulhearn
That, that's kind of something that, that really gets under my skin, and granted, in a Cessna one seventy-two, especially a, a fuel-injected one, there's not a whole lot on the landing checklist of, of that, airplane.
03:27
Wally Mulhearn
But it's a mindset of performing the checklist. I've, I've flown a lot of different Boeing airplanes, and there's three, basically three things on our landing checklist: speed, brake, gear, and flaps.
03:38
Wally Mulhearn
Apps, three things, I have it memorized, but we still use the checklist, we still use the checklist because it's just a mindset, it's a mentality. And people tell me all the time, "Well, I have never landed the airplane without using a checklist, but they did it on all four, five of the landings that we did on the checkride." So, you know, I kinda wanna raise the- The, well, I shouldn't say the BS line, but the BS meter, it's
04:08
Bobby Doss
Okay. Yeah, yeah, I'm, I'm kinda going, I don't believe you. I don't think that's an accurate statement. I was gonna call it the DPE effect, like, surely that's just because you were in the airplane with him.
04:20
Wally Mulhearn
Well, they, well, they say that, that, you know, and, and I, I hear that a lot. And so from that standpoint, and this is kinda going, off, off on a tangent a little bit, but in-- as instructors, we gotta figure out a better way to stress our students.
04:36
Wally Mulhearn
We gotta put them under stress. And, and, you know, if, if you're at a flight school that has multiple instructors doing stage checks or having them fly with someone else, that's, you know, that's a little-- that helps a little bit.
04:50
Wally Mulhearn
You know, you're jumping in an airplane with someone you really don't know, so, you know, that, that's gonna add some stress to it. But, I, you know, the, the, the original question, I, I don't think they do better.
05:05
Wally Mulhearn
You know, one, couple scenarios I give are, a, divert. Well, we, you know, for a private commercial, we're, we're, we're required to do that.
05:16
Wally Mulhearn
So I will give them a reason to divert, and I'm not gonna go into, I'm not gonna give away all my tricks, but I will say this, the reason to divert is time critical.
05:30
Wally Mulhearn
Okay. So we may, be flying away from an airport, and we have a reason to divert, and we just keep flying away from the airport, and away from the airport, and away from the airport, and, we're running checklists going away from a potential landing spot.
05:49
Wally Mulhearn
So, you know, I think that's kind of a basic premise. We, we, you know, when I was flying the triple seven, we had a- A training scenario where we took off from Hawaii going back to the mainland, and again, this is training, it was actually, actually checking, and prior to our point of no return, we, we call that our critical point, prior to our critical point,
06:20
Wally Mulhearn
We had a, a fairly significant emergency. You know, w-when, when I flew this scenario, I knew I was going back to the islands.
06:33
Wally Mulhearn
I didn't know where I was going back to. I didn't know if I was gonna go to Honolulu, I didn't know if I was going to Kona, I didn't know if I was going to Maui. I think we had taken off from Maui. I didn't know where I was going to, but I know-- I knew I was turning around.
06:44
Wally Mulhearn
I wasn't gonna continue towards Southern California. So, you know, in this scenario, I, I, you know, I Back towards the islands.
06:58
Wally Mulhearn
That's where we're going. Then we'll get weather, we'll check notams, we'll talk to dispatch, and we'll pick the airport we're going to, but let's at least get the airplane headed in the right direction. And that practice prepares you, and we're gonna get into a whole lot of content tonight, but the reality is, is emergencies, we talked about at night, but this is about tonight.
07:18
Bobby Doss
If you fly and you're proficient and you're good, I think the big question is, how proficient and how good are you at handling a slew of emergencies that may happen? We don't get to pick when they happen.
07:28
Bobby Doss
They don't happen in perfect weather, they don't happen during the daytime, they don't happen when our iPad's fully charged. We have to have all this stuff ready to go, and if You fall back to that level of your training.
07:42
Bobby Doss
So you gotta find a way to train yourself, you gotta find a way to prepare yourself, because it can happen over bad terrain, it can happen in good weather, it can happen in bad weather. You gotta take that on to effect.
07:53
Bobby Doss
So we, we've got a show that's got three parts today, like we always do, and we're gonna break this down and help you be better pilots and better prepared for when the emergency happens so that you can gain some confidence that you will be able to handle an emergency tonight.
08:08
Bobby Doss
So part one is training for the day you hope never comes, while I just gave you a great scenario of how they do it in the simulator, at his air-airline, to practice, practice, practice because that one muscle memory of turning that airplane Back might be the thing that saves a whole bunch of lives.
08:25
Bobby Doss
So how do you do this with your instructor, by yourself, with, with others, safety pilots, et cetera? I think it's about building the habits, until they become reflective, reflexive.
08:40
Bobby Doss
And I had a, somebody told me recently, and maybe he's listening to the show, he goes, "I'm telling my son to learn his private pilot material as if he knows his name." And I'm gonna use this for the rest of my life, because if someone asks you, Wally, what's your name, you know the answer, and you don't have to like, dig deep and go into a, a, a Rolodex in your mind and think, is it Walter?
09:02
Bobby Doss
Is it Wally? Is it Mr. Mulhern? If someone says, "What's your name?", it's a, it's a one-word answer. Yeah. And if you knew the material, which none of us know the, the whole pi-private pilot book like this, but I thought Because many people don't know stuff like that.
09:22
Bobby Doss
So I think this is where, if you are that reflexive on it and you know it like you know your name, you're gonna do really, really good. And so that might be the utopia that we all shoot for.
09:33
Bobby Doss
How do we get to that point? What are some things that you think private pilot applicants that just graduated or just got their private pilot certificate, what do you think are some of those things related to emergencies that they should know like they know their name?
09:49
Wally Mulhearn
About the airplane or about those procedures? Yeah, I mean, one thing I ask, and, and I'm, I'm just gonna throw this out there because if everybody out there knows this, and I'm not talking about just preparing for one of my check rides, I, I think, I think if we know this, we're all better off.
10:08
Wally Mulhearn
I ask everybody, "Uh, we're starting the engine, we're going out, and we're starting the engine, and while starting the engine, we see flames coming out from underneath the cowling.
10:23
Wally Mulhearn
What are we gonna do?" I would venture to say that every airplane has an engine fire during start checklist. And they dig around for it, and, they'll find it, and they'll, they'll read it to me, and I'll say, "Okay, that..." And, and when they put their head down, they start looking for that checklist, I start the timer, and I'll say, "Okay, that took you thirty-one seconds to find that checklist and pull it out," and that's actually pretty quick.
10:51
Wally Mulhearn
And, and I say, "Isn't it... Don't we think that this might be something that you just need to memorize?" And Pretty much all reciprocating engine airplanes have the same procedure.
11:09
Wally Mulhearn
It is, for this, it's shut the fuel off via the mixture and continue to crank and try to get, get the flames out.
11:19
Wally Mulhearn
I mean, we're, we're eliminating fuel, which is one of the three things we need for a fire, okay? But so many people will tell me, you know, they'll say I'm gonna just get out of the airplane and run.
11:35
Wally Mulhearn
I said, okay, well, now, now, and, and maybe that's not a bad thing to do, but I'll say, well, now the airplane's blown up, and, now, now the one next door to it is on fire, now the one next to that is on fire, you know, you could cause a big problem.
11:55
Wally Mulhearn
So, a, it doesn't follow the procedure. And, you know, you could do more damage. So are there things that instructors can do, obviously beating that into applicants' brains or students' brains and saying, "Hey, here's five things that you should memorize and know," memory item type items.
12:17
Bobby Doss
But do you think, do you think a pilot should know the glide speed for their airplane?
12:28
Wally Mulhearn
Absolutely. Absolutely. The glide ratio. I mean, that's pretty important, yeah. So I think, I think there's a, a handful of things that we should all kinda be able to say from memory that will make us safe.
12:43
Wally Mulhearn
And if you upgrade, then you, meaning go from a one seventy-two to one eighty-two, then you need to understand that aircraft's stuff. I think a lot of people don't think of these things when they get the opportunity to go fly a new airplane for the first time.
12:58
Bobby Doss
Like, let's say I get to go fly an SR-22 and I've never flown one, and the guy or girl that I'm flying with is first in that plane. I think there's, I see way too much casualness of that happening, where I'll go jump in a plane and fly with someone, and I, I just don't think kids or maybe even some young adults think about it, but that person could have a heart attack.
13:21
Wally Mulhearn
Yeah. Can I land from the right seat? Can-- Do I know the glide speed of that airplane? Do I know how the flaps work? Can I do a no-flap-- Can you do a no-flap landing in a Cirrus?
13:32
Wally Mulhearn
Of course you can do one because it's just, it says in an emergency you can do anything, but it's not approved under normal operations. Like, there's all kinds of stuff that we would just never know if we don't try to be prepared for those sorts of things.
13:47
Bobby Doss
So know your stuff, I can't stress chair flying enough. Knowing your maneuvers guide and being able to work through those emergencies, we could talk for days about that.
13:57
Bobby Doss
The, the other one that I stress on iron instructors is really scenario-based decision-making. You talked about it, like, "Why are we flying away from the airport? Don't let that happen, turn back, be reactive to that, know that like you know your name." If, if you have an emergency and the airport's two miles behind you and the next one's ten miles in front of you, it's kind of obvious where you should go, but if you don't turn back, Are there things that you do in your training or when you're instructing, or you, you tell instructors, is
14:27
Bobby Doss
Are there scenarios that you share with them that they could do to make pilots better for that emergency tonight?
14:27
Wally Mulhearn
Well, y-you know, another one that I give is I say, okay, here's the scenario, we have low oil, low oil pressure, we have high oil temperature, and there appears to be oil all over the cowling.
14:46
Wally Mulhearn
And, you know, so most airplanes will have a low oil pressure checklist which tells you to bring the power back to idle. Well, I mean, what are we gonna do?
14:59
Wally Mulhearn
Are we gonna land in a field, or are we gonna try to make it to that airport five miles away? Now, I can't say landing in a field is the wrong choice. Because if you pick a good field and, and land and live, that's probably better than trying to make it five miles to that airport and crashing in a neighborhood.
15:19
Wally Mulhearn
But it's, it's something just to think about, you know? I, I know what I'm gonna do. I'm probably gonna go for that airport as long as that engine is running.
15:31
Wally Mulhearn
But, you know, I'm gonna have something very close to my hip pocket, to, to land that airplane somewhere other than, than, that airport.
15:44
Wally Mulhearn
You know, there, there, there's just so many different scenarios, you know, y-y- and I, I'll, I'll say to people in a debrief, you know, one, one scenario I'll give is I'm having a medical emergency.
15:57
Wally Mulhearn
You know, if you're out driving, between two towns, you're in the middle of nowhere, and, and the passenger in your car says, "I think I'm having a heart attack," I think as the driver, you're gonna think to yourself, "Hey, the town behind us is closer.
16:16
Wally Mulhearn
I'm just gonna turn this air-- this car around and aim toward that town." At least if I'm that person having that heart attack, I'd hope that's what you would do. Or You know, if, if the town in front of you is, is closer, you're gonna go for that one, and I hope you'd put the pedal to the metal.
16:34
Bobby Doss
No doubt. Are there ways to practice this when you're alone? I have a few that I'll share, but what are your thoughts about practicing this when you're alone?
16:47
Bobby Doss
And I'll say this to my solo students out there, you're still a student, don't do this when you're alone as a solo student. But let's say I have my rating, what are some things that I can do to practice some of these emergencies by myself to keep my skills up?
17:00
Bobby Doss
If I, if I'm working on my instrument rating, yeah, I'm doing some training with an instructor and we're going through the books and training, but I'm probably doing some other flying, How do I keep my skills rich by myself?
17:14
Wally Mulhearn
Yeah, well, well, you, you gotta try things, you know? You know, one of the maneuvers that we, we are required to test on a commercial is a power-off one eighty.
17:25
Wally Mulhearn
And basically, on downwind, we, we pull the power and we're, we need to land the airplane on, on a spot. And I, you know, to the, the instructors out there, I think that's a great maneuver, i-if, if the situation is right, to do with your, your, your student pilots.
17:47
Wally Mulhearn
When I say student pilots, I, I mean true student, you, you got a student pilot certificate. You know, I, I was always taught, I mean, and this came from my father a long time ago, never be so far out in the traffic pattern that you can't make it to the airport if you lose an engine.
18:05
Wally Mulhearn
So when I, when I fly the traffic pattern, my patterns are tight. And, you know, if, if you're a, a controlled airport, sometimes you can't do that, they're gonna have you extend, they're gonna have you widen out, or, or whatever.
18:20
Wally Mulhearn
But, you know, by default, my patterns are really tight. I'm, I'm staying within glide range to the airport. Another thing I see is we're, we're coming back to the airport after being out and doing some maneuvers, and I'll, I'll typically tell the applicant, "Okay, we are lost." Take me back to XYZ Airport.
18:43
Wally Mulhearn
Altitude is your discretion, everything is available to you. And, let's say we're 18 miles out, 20 miles out.
18:55
Wally Mulhearn
You know, the, the applicant who usually climb up to-- or depending on where we are altitude-wise, will climb up to a couple thousand feet, but we descend way, way far out there. And I just, I wanna, I wanna stay at two thousand feet till, if I can, until I'm about a six-mile final.
19:13
Wally Mulhearn
Or six miles from the airport. Now a lot of times, we have one airport right now that, that ATC will ask you to enter the delta at traffic pattern altitude, so, you know, that, that kind of puts, some limits on that.
19:29
Bobby Doss
When you talked about power off 180s, you know, I don't, just so everyone's clear, we're not saying teach the commercial maneuver to the student pilot.
19:39
Bobby Doss
We're saying pull the power in the downwind so they can actually get to the ground, because all the other examples are above a field and we're probably going around at 500, 600, 700 feet AGL, right?
19:51
Bobby Doss
This is a, let's see if they can really make it all the way down, and they don't have to land on the same hundred-foot spot that This is just, can we get to the runway, right?
20:02
Bobby Doss
I do that at night time. I think when I do, do night currency, I try to do, I try to do my three laps, two of those I'm trying to do power off one eightsies. Again, I'm not trying to land on the exact same hundred feet, I'm trying to make sure I make the spot, the runway, the place I'm trying to get to.
20:17
Bobby Doss
Coming up short, and when I do come up short, I have power, so I get to go, I get to go around So I love to do that at night.
20:31
Bobby Doss
The other thing I do at night is ask the tower to show me the light gun. Luckily our airport has, a tower and they're probably, it's probably a little slow, so they probably, they're interested in doing something, and I ask them to show me the light gun signals and they-- I ask them to go through different ones just so I can see all of them, and I'm kind of reworking that memory in my brain about what is that, what is steady green, what does green flashing mean again?
20:56
Bobby Doss
We can all lie and say we have 'em all memorized, but we probably don't have 'em memorized like we need. But man, when my cell phone's dead and my radios are out, I'd like to know what they're telling me to do.
21:07
Bobby Doss
So it's best to practice that over and over and over again. We can probably default that green is good, red is bad, but come on, we, we need to know. There's only six or seven of 'em total, so we should know those for sure.
21:19
Wally Mulhearn
What do, what do two reds and a Okay. It means that the Coke machine in the tower is out of Coke and Dr. Pepper and uses exact change only.
21:31
Bobby Doss
Oh, I get it. Now, now those, the young people don't understand what "use exact change only" means. I get it. Yeah, they're just, they're just tapping their phone on the Coke machine.
21:41
Bobby Doss
Why would you ever- Why would you ever exact change? Venmo always has exact change, Wally. Yeah, exactly, exactly. So practice those things. I think it's really important that you find ways to keep your skills up.
21:52
Bobby Doss
Obviously, instruction from two guys on a podcast, but if you want to those, have those habits be as good as they can be, training for the day you hope never comes is the best thing you can do.
22:06
Bobby Doss
Part two of the show really is about how you can be your best and learn from other people. So we have a case study, out of Australia A guy named Peter Schultz, recently landed, with his gear up, and it wasn't just like a gear up landing.
22:24
Bobby Doss
He had to do a lot of right things. He, he had a malfunction shortly after takeoff and did a lot of things that I'm sure he prepared for. The weather wasn't perfect, there were low ceilings, he flew for almost four hours, Wally, to burn off all the fuel in his airplane, which would have to be pretty stressful when you know, probably doing a lot of troubleshooting, probably trying to do Hand cranking all by yourself in an airplane for four hours, knowing that it's not getting any better and that you're about to tear
22:55
Bobby Doss
Up what I presume is his airplane, that's gotta be pretty nerve-wracking. Recognizing the problem early is key, but also, I read the story, it talked about bird, birds in the area, bad low ceilings, fifteen hundred feet ceilings, and you're sitting there flying Probably thousand feet AGL in a plane that you, you know is damaged with hundreds of gallons of avgas, it's got to be very, very stressful.
23:23
Wally Mulhearn
Yeah, absolutely. So What, what did this guy do, right? I think it was the, the story was that I read, I don't know him, but he kept his calm.
23:34
Wally Mulhearn
Another story that you shared with me recently was the solo student that was going berserk in the plane, right? Don't know that that helped her in any way, but for Peter, staying calm, following the checklist, trying everything, knowing that as important as gas is to us.
23:53
Wally Mulhearn
You don't want it if you're gonna land on the belly of an airplane, so you wanna burn as much of that off as you can. It, it, again, it's, you gotta do the right things, and you gotta know your, you gotta know your airplane, you gotta know your POH, you gotta know what to do and how to do it.
24:09
Bobby Doss
What can we all learn from somebody who walks away from an outcome like that, Wally, that, did the right things?
24:22
Wally Mulhearn
I, I think keeping your calm is, is number one.
24:22
Wally Mulhearn
So I, I will say to a lot of people, "What's the first thing you should do in an emergency situation?" And the answer is, "Breathe." I, I was-- I had an emergency situation, about five or six years ago, we're going into Los Angeles, I was in the right seat of a seven thirty-seven, I was doing, giving OE to a, a new captain in the left seat.
24:47
Wally Mulhearn
And we, I, I don't know, we're maybe on a ten-mile final, and, we got a call from the back, which, tells me that there's something bad going on back there, 'cause normally they wouldn't call us on sterile cockpit.
25:03
Wally Mulhearn
But I picked up the handset, and they said, "We've got a guy who is..." On the floor in the aft galley, he's not breathing, no pulse, any, nothing.
25:16
Wally Mulhearn
They said we've got two doctors who are back here working on him. We're on a ten-mile final, that's, you know, that's about four mile, four minutes out.
25:28
Wally Mulhearn
Not really time to do anything. And, and I said, okay, I said just, we will declare an emergency. I don't know if they'll have time to get emergency equipment for us. And so I, I put the handset down, I was about to key the mic and, call ATC, and, and this may seem kinda ridiculous, but before I said anything, I stopped, I took a deep breath, and I said to myself, "Cool pilot voice," and
26:00
Wally Mulhearn
I, I hit the button, the-- and I said, "Uh, LATAR, United, so-and-so." We've got, you know, a passenger not breathing.
26:11
Wally Mulhearn
We have medical people working on him, we're declaring an emergency. And, ATC was, man, they were good. We were landing on an outboard runway, they immediately cleared us over to the inboard runway.
26:25
Wally Mulhearn
They basically shut traffic down in the airport. We got to the gate and, When he left on a gurney, there was a, a doctor, doing CPR on him.
26:36
Wally Mulhearn
And I don't know what the eventual outcome was, but, yeah, you gotta, you gotta remain calm. Yeah, I think the, the lesson that I learned from reading the article and learning more about this situation was that His brain had been there before.
26:56
Bobby Doss
It wasn't the first time he'd experienced it, it might be the first time he physically experienced it. It's probably the first time he ever did a belly-up landing, but his brain had practiced it.
27:07
Bobby Doss
He had been there before many, many times. He knew what he would do if it happened when he took off. He knew that he was gonna fly around for three or four hours. He knew what to do, and his brain had been there before.
27:18
Bobby Doss
And that, that's the best advice that I can think to give anybody is- Yeah. Your brain has to be there at least once, 'cause if it's never been there, you're not gonna know what to do. I, I remember when I first started flying charter a long, long time ago, d-doing some training and talking about things, and the dust-- the, the discussion came up Of how are you gonna handle a partial gear up landing?
27:46
Wally Mulhearn
Are you gonna land with two gear down and one, one up, or are you gonna try to get 'em all up and do a belly landing? What are you gonna do? And so I, I made the commitment, this was, forty Forty years ago, that I'm gonna take whatever I can get.
28:04
Wally Mulhearn
I'll take one gear down, two gear down, hopefully all three, but so in my mind, I've already made that decision. That's how I'm gonna handle it. And you may choose to do a gear up, belly landing, with, you know, if you can get the, whatever's down, if you can get 'em back up.
28:22
Wally Mulhearn
And I'm not saying that's wrong, but I'm, I'm just saying I have already made the decision of how I'm gonna handle it. I probably would've said gear up landing before you said that, but now that I think about it, you know, I could get the plane and a lot of energy bled off with one, one left main gear down, just kind of fighting it up for a minute, probably less impactful.
28:45
Bobby Doss
So you probably just changed my mind and now I have that decision made for me if I'm ever in a plane with one, one or two down. I think I'll make the same decision moving forward. Alright.
28:56
Bobby Doss
Jumping into part three, nighttime emergencies and, and proactive risk reduction. You know, we talked about this being tonight, not, just about night, but night brings a whole slew of other problems.
29:09
Bobby Doss
And I have, golly, for a five hundred hour pilot, I've got probably a hundred and twenty-five hours of nighttime, probably a hundred of it, Solo with no other pilot, or solo or with me being the sole pilot in the plane, meaning my family was with me.
29:27
Bobby Doss
Lots of trips back and forth from Houston to Dallas and Austin, in a 182 and I have a strategy that's called "Follow the Freeways." Like, I'm just going to be close to a freeway.
29:41
Bobby Doss
I look at freeways as, as a hundred and fifty-mile runway as far as I can go, and it's not always convenient, it's probably not always the most fuel-efficient route, it's probably not always the most economical route, but man, I would hate to be over some dark Terrain in Houston, slash, Dallas, slash, Austin, farmhouses, cows, any of that's gonna, power lines, power poles, rivers, creeks, none of that's gonna be fun with one, two or three gear down.
30:10
Bobby Doss
So I've, I've just kinda always cheated towards a freeway and known where the closest airport is, but Night brings a whole other slew of problems that we're probably gonna have to be prepared for.
30:23
Bobby Doss
That's my own personal system, Wally. Do you have a personal system that you lean on for nighttime flying if you're going cross country?
30:35
Wally Mulhearn
Yeah, go higher. Higher's great.
30:35
Wally Mulhearn
I think to an extent, posters and t-shirts everywhere. You need three things, altitude, airspeed, and money to be a pilot. Yeah. Altitude is your friend, no question.
30:46
Wally Mulhearn
And, and a lot of my applicants on, on their check rides will tell me, you know, they'll, we're heading out on a cross-country and maybe it's a two hundred mile cross-country and wind isn't an issue and maybe we're going eastbound, I'll say, "Okay, what altitude are we going at?" And they'll say, "Three thousand five hundred." And I'll say, "Why, why not, why not hire?" And the, the answer I get a lot-- a, again, there's nothing wrong with three thousand five
31:17
Wally Mulhearn
Hundred, but the answer I get a lot of times is, "Well, I've never been higher than that." So to use CFIs, I mean, i-if you can get a student up to seventy-five hundred feet, eighty-five hundred feet, man, go for it.
31:33
Wally Mulhearn
I think it's, just not too long ago, I, I had a checkride on-- I don't remember if it was a twin-engine airplane or not, but, we had a broken or, probably a broken layer, and we were able to navigate, you know?
31:49
Wally Mulhearn
Climb above the clouds, but to get proper cloud clearance, we're up at about eight thousand five hundred feet. And, and, the young man said to me, "Wow, this is the highest I've ever been." He said, "It, it really feels different up here." You know, and it does.
32:06
Wally Mulhearn
I mean, the airplane's gonna take, you know, more power. We're gonna lose power as we get up there. It's just different. So, you know, to the CFIs, I, I would encourage you to get your students But if I've got altitude, let's say an airplane, it comes down and let's just make the math nice and easy, let's say it's five hundred feet a minute, if I'm at eight thousand five hundred feet above the ground, I've got seventeen minutes before I'm gonna impact the ground at five hundred feet a minute.
32:35
Wally Mulhearn
And it's probably a little bit higher than that, but just to make the math nice, so seventeen minutes, I've got, a-and that, that glide ring, you know, most of us are using Foreflight, we have a glide ring, they have a new feature in there that, that helps us with, with figuring these things out, but I've got a lot more options at a higher altitude.
32:57
Bobby Doss
You know, that new feature, we talked about it before we got started, it's called emergency glide mode, and it's automatically active on your preflight if, if you have it, I think it's automatic no matter what, but it puts airport circles airports, shows you flat land, day or night, it gives you a little bit more help than what you probably think you have with just the glide, the glide ring by itself.
33:21
Wally Mulhearn
Very, very useful piece of technology built into that. Yeah, I mean, it, it just, it just improves the odds, you know? You gotta, and it might not be perfect, but I'd rather have it than nothing.
33:34
Wally Mulhearn
An abacus versus four flight with emergency glide mode, I'm gonna take a, a emergency glide mode over an abacus. Absolutely, absolutely. So we have a few lightning round thoughts, and we, we, we won't go into each one of these, but I wanna ask these, I think Wally is rhetorical questions to everyone listening, no matter where you're at in your pilot career, think about these things and think about how you really, really, really would react or what would you really do in these scenarios, and tell yourself This
34:04
Bobby Doss
Doesn't have to be something we're gonna shame anybody on. I'm shameful about one of 'em that I would have a lot of hard time with, and I won't even tell you which one it is. But, if you think about this, if you had engine roughness at night over a city, what would you do?
34:18
Wally Mulhearn
I mean, I'm gonna, I'm gonna aim for the airport and go land. There you go. If you had an electrical failure twenty miles from your destination at night, what are you gonna do?
34:28
Bobby Doss
You know, well, there's a lot of, lots of, you know, we could tell you what we would do, but there's lots of scenarios where that might not work for you, but, there's probably not a wrong answer, but you gotta have an answer for that.
34:42
Bobby Doss
You gotta know what you would do tonight. Right. You can't not have a plan. Night VFR with lowering ceilings and you're not instrument rated. God, that's, that one's scary to me, especially if it's pitch black, man.
34:56
Bobby Doss
I've flown a lot of night IFR, and, I've flown some night IFR really bumpy with my wife, I don't think she'll ever go with me ever again, but, you have to know what you're gonna do if you're not rated and you can't get through that cloud layer.
35:12
Bobby Doss
Finally, if you had complete comms failure approaching a Class C airspace And you feel like you need to land, how are you gonna do that? What are you gonna do? Everybody can say, "I'm, I'm in an emergency, I can get away with it." I get you can get away with it, but you don't wanna run into someone else, you don't wanna run into something.
35:30
Bobby Doss
Like, what are you going to do? What is your strategy? What is your approach? If you don't have one, think through and get one. There's a million more of those that we could throw out there, but those are four scenarios that we wanted to If you're not ready for all four of those tonight, get with an instructor, do some more building of time, build some muscle.
35:55
Bobby Doss
You're only gonna be as good as you were on what you trained for. Wally says it all the time, if you never shot an approach with just your iPad, you surely don't wanna do it for the first time when it's really happening.
36:06
Wally Mulhearn
Yeah, and, and I will say this, we have a very, very, very powerful, tool at our disposal, and that's squawking seventy-seven hundred.
36:18
Wally Mulhearn
You know, I'm looking at these, the complete com failure approaching Class C. Well, if it's an electrical failure, you won't have a transponder, but that's the first thing I'm doing, complete com failure, I'm gonna go to, you know, the, lost com procedures.
36:35
Wally Mulhearn
I'm probably gonna start, you know- On the emergency code to kind of really let 'em know that we got something going on. And just for those of you flying jerricans out there, I'm gonna give you just a little, little nugget that may help you with something.
36:49
Wally Mulhearn
Most of the warriors and archers, have a glide speed of about seventy-eight knots. What's the emergency transponder code?
37:01
Bobby Doss
Seventy-seven hundred. Seventy-seven? Seventy-seven. I could live with you saying it's 77 knots. Anyway, just, just, just maybe an easier way to remember that.
37:13
Bobby Doss
I love it. So as we wrap up, be prepared Do some repetition, have a mindset that you're ready to, to tackle these emergencies when they happen, happen, build habits, you, you, if you don't build the habits, you're not gonna be ready for it.
37:31
Bobby Doss
The safest pilots aren't fearless, I might actually say, the most unsafe pilots pretend to be fearless, but practice, be your best, work with instructors, get the help that you need to be prepared for your worst day, and as always, fly safely and stay behind the prop.
38:14
Behind the Prop Outro
[Outro music and announcer]