In this episode of Behind the Prop, hosts Bobby Doss and Wally Mulhearn dive into the Dirty Dozen, a set of twelve human factor traps that can affect pilots and mechanics alike. Originally released by the FAA around 2011 or 2012 as a poster for mechanics, these traps apply equally to pilots and can lead to serious situations if not recognized. The discussion covers everyday traps like complacency and distraction that bite on routine flights, as well as decision-making and awareness issues. Bobby and Wally share personal anecdotes, including stories about fuel checks during checkrides, the dangers of expectation bias, and real-world incidents like the Eastern Airlines Flight 401 crash caused by a distraction over a light bulb. They emphasize how these factors, including fatigue, pressure, lack of communication, and normalization of deviation, can cascade into problems for even experienced aviators. To combat these traps, the hosts offer practical defenses such as setting personal minimums, chair flying, using checklists effectively, and maintaining situational awareness. They stress the importance of being prepared, honest with oneself, and continuously learning to avoid the Swiss cheese model of accidents. Listeners are encouraged to review the Dirty Dozen poster linked in the show notes.
0:00:00.00
Behind the Prop Intro
[Intro music and announcer]
0:00:03.14
Bobby Doss
What's up Wally? Hey Bobby, how are you? I am fantastic as always. Imagine this, you're in the cockpit, everything feels normal, and then one small decision cascades into a serious situation. It happens to good pilots every year, not because they lack skill, but because they fell into one of those same twelve and twelve human factor traps that can affect us all. Today's show is going to be called The Dirty Dozen for Pilots, and this isn't new. This is a document that goes back to like two thousand eleven or two thousand twelve that the FAA released, and the document, and the poster that they made was really for mechanics, but it is the exact same thing for us pilots.
0:00:44.61
Bobby Doss
I wouldn't say that any of these only apply to mechanics, but they also apply to pilots. So we're gonna break down the Dirty Dozen. You've probably heard all these things before, but it's not gonna hurt for every one of us to fly planes, work around planes, see people working on planes, talk through these things one more time so that we can avoid the Dirty Dozen. We're gonna post the link to the Dirty Dozen in the show notes. it's a poster, or you'll see it on social media as well.
0:01:14.93
Bobby Doss
But We're gonna break this down into everyday traps that bite us on routine flights. We're gonna do some, the decisions and awareness traps that bite us and maybe catch us on some of our trips. And then Wally and I, hopefully, plan to give you some real defenses, systems maybe that might protect you if you fall into one of these traps on one of your upcoming flights. Wally, we, we spend a lot of time preparing for these shows and doing research and thinking through things. wh-what's your, what's your perspective?
0:01:45.25
Wally Mulhearn
This week on the Dirty Dozen. Well, you know, when, when you, as I'm looking at this thing, the, the everyday traps that bite us on routine flights, the first- The first word that I see here is complacency, and, this comes up on, I, I haven't actually- Taken a formal poll, but I'm gonna say 80% of my check rides.
0:02:18.33
Wally Mulhearn
So here's, here's how things go. So we, we, we start the ground. And usually, for a private or commercial instrument, the, the ground is, you know, in-including the, all the paperwork and everything, it's somewhere around two hours, hour forty-five or something like that. So we will typically take a break, about halfway into that, or maybe, maybe an hour into it, we've got, you know, another thirty or forty-five minutes to go, we'll take a break. Before we take that break I will say to the applicant, "Um, is the airplane here?" And they'll say, "Yes, it is." And I will say Do we have fuel?
0:03:02.98
Wally Mulhearn
And almost probably eighty percent of them will say, "We should." And I look at them, I say, "We should?" I said, "Are, are we gonna go with that? Are we gonna take off based on we should have fuel?" And they look at me and, and, and they will kinda snicker and they'll say. I'll go check right now, and I'll go, I say, "Very good.
0:03:36.49
Wally Mulhearn
I, I appreciate that." And I, I joke, I joke with people that, I'm gonna be laying on my deathbed, and I'm gonna wish I had all the minutes back of my life that I spent standing at airplanes waiting for fuel trucks. So, you know, the, my point is, let's get fuel now because we're not gonna be ready to fly in an hour. So if we need fuel, let's call that fuel truck. Truck and get fuel now. but until they kind of read my body language, most of the applicants are perfectly fine with, "We should." And I, I, I, in, in flying, in life, we oughta-- we, we should change, we should, to what we do.
0:04:24.67
Bobby Doss
And, so that's, that's my little, my little plug on the complacency, aspect of all of this. Yeah, there's, oh my gosh, I have more stories than any of y'all wanna listen to about complacency. but there are so many things that happen around the flight school that- Embody this word, right? and it, it is, I, I, I always contribute to, that in a car, Wally, we can pull over.
0:04:57.12
Bobby Doss
I think it was from my younger days as a pilot when I would say, "Well, I'm just gonna pause, I'm just gonna pull over, I'm gonna stop at this gas station and get my thoughts together." You can't do that. I, I, I pass dozens of gas stations, o-on the way to and from places, so I can always add fuel. I'm not too- Critically worried about fuel like I am in the airplane, I just think that complacency's something that we can't let happen, and too often we have.
0:05:28.48
Bobby Doss
I've told stories about weather, I've told stories about all kinds of things on this show, but- Complacency is something that happens to all of us. We'll talk about many others, but one of the things too that I think creeps in with complacency is a little bit of expectation bias. How many times have you been in a plane at Hooke's Airport and you heard, "Taxi to the Delta ramp via Juliet Echo Papa." Well, if that were to change, I think a large majority of the pilots at Hooke's Airport would still go Juliet Echo Papa, just out of expectation bias.
0:06:03.16
Wally Mulhearn
I don't even write it down if they said something else, but, it's that, it's that little bit of complacency that starts that Swiss cheese model that unfortunately can get people really hurt. Well, going back to your, your fuel, story that you're talking about, even in a car, even now, a-and I can honestly say I've never run out of gas in a car in my life. Ditto, ditto, I've never done that. Yeah, I never have, but even if you did It's gonna be a major, probably a major inconvenience, but it's not gonna be death.
0:06:38.76
Bobby Doss
And maybe in an airplane, at best, it's gonna be a major inconvenience, you know, but it, it could result in something worse than a major inconvenience. So, yeah. So, so funny story you can relate to this, but a instructor recently said Because I'm pathic about fuel, I'm pathic about teaching new students how to get fuel, and it is probably something that's not in the syllabus, but, and it drives our instructors probably insane.
0:07:09.45
Bobby Doss
But part of what we make them do is teach students to go get fuel somewhere, whether they just go to the self-serve pumps at Hooks or demonstrate it on one cross-country at some point in their training. And we enforce that the student should get fuel on those cross country flights. I mean, it goes back to what if we left the cap off? Who knows? And, and instructor, I won't say bowed up to me, but like, he's like, "Are you sure you want a student to get fuel? What if they blow up?" I'm like, I have a feeling more student pilots have ran out of gas than they've, than they've caught on fire at the fuel pumps.
0:07:45.96
Wally Mulhearn
Like, that, that just doesn't even quantify to me that those two examples make sense to one another. So, yeah, we're gonna get fuel, we're gonna teach 'em how to get fuel. It, it was a silly remark, I think, but I, I gotta believe more pilots have ran out of fuel than more pilot-- than the pilots that have caught on fire at the fuel pumps. What do you think, Wally? Oh, absolutely. I mean, that's like saying, "What, what if the guy at Taco Bell puts cyanide in my taco?" One in a bazillion, yeah. Yeah, it, it, it could happen.
0:08:16.93
Wally Mulhearn
But, yeah. You know, I, I, speaking of fuel, and, you know, I, I noticed trends. And I, I've been an examiner now for about twelve years. And, here's what, here's what I'm seeing. I'm seeing that the pilots today Their personal fuel minimums are a lot lower than they were twelve years ago. And when I ask somebody What, whether let's say it's a private or a commercial, and, it's a daytime VFR flight, I'll say, "What is your personal minimums?
0:08:57.41
Wally Mulhearn
Fuel minimums?" And I'll say Oh, thirty minutes. And, and I, I cringe, and, and I, I, I will say, "Okay, well, if that's your personal minimums, that is, that is FAA minimums. I, I can't argue with it." But I look at 'em and I say I wish it were higher. No doubt. I wish it were higher. Because we're all human too, and to the word complacency, when does thirty become twenty-nine? Just twenty-nine become twenty-eight.
0:09:28.27
Bobby Doss
I mean, you can't live in that world. Like, I, I fl- I've flown professionally, and if you broke the company rule on fuel, you weren't gonna fly ever again. Like, there's no gray. And so that- Yeah. Then you add, you add another buffer, and you add another buffer, you go the other direction, be safe. The next thirty dozen Word is distraction. And these aren't all self-created, these are accidents, meaning what happens when you depend on your iPad and you have an Apple Pencil and you drop the Apple Pencil?
0:10:02.70
Bobby Doss
You want the apple pencil? You, you reach for the apple pencil. I would bet as an examiner, you could drop your pen and ask someone to pick it up, and they would fail a check ride. I mean, a distraction as simple as a pen can be very, very dangerous. Well, I, I see checklists, I see applicants dropping checklists all the time, and then they're, you know, they're digging around for it. Well, I would bet the distraction factor has caused many, many, many summaries on NTSB reports, from family, from passengers, from just weather, distractions can be a myriad of different things.
0:10:48.07
Wally Mulhearn
What, what do you think some of the distractions are? Distractions are that get people confused, disoriented, or in a bad spot on a flight. Well, y-you know, there, there's, there's, there's the instantaneous distractions, like you said, dropping your apple pencil or something, boom, you know, five seconds ago it wasn't a distraction, now it is a distraction. But I think there's also the, the ongoing distraction, you know, it's maybe a, a, two, like, are, are, you know, Take a three-hour cross-country flight and, you know, now you're, you're thinking about, a sick loved one or something, you know, and, and you, you know, a-and you gotta, you gotta keep your head in the game.
0:11:35.39
Wally Mulhearn
I mean, it's A long flight, it's just like a long drive, you're gonna, you're gonna think about other things, but, you know, I, I would say, getting hyper-focused on a perceived mechanical issue with the airplane, you know, hey, the, I, I haven't asked this in a long time, but I, I really oughta, I oughta bring this back in. I, I would ask people, okay, you're, you're, you're on a two-hour cross-country flight, and you are one hour into the flight, so you're exactly at the halfway point.
0:12:16.27
Wally Mulhearn
You've got a viable airport right below you, and you have your-- and, and there's not a cloud in the sky, beautiful weather, and all of a sudden you realize that your number two com radio Is not working anymore. What are you gonna do? And I'm, I'm amazed at-- a-and there's no wrong answer. There, let me, let me say this. If you wanna divert over that, okay, that's, that's okay.
0:12:47.25
Wally Mulhearn
If you wanna continue, that's okay. If you wanna turn around and go back, that's okay. So there is no wrong answer here. I, I'm amazed at how many people divert it though. They would divert over that. And And there is an aspect of that where you might say, "Well, maybe I don't know why this radio failed. Do I have an electrical system problem?" And, and that's a valid point, it is. But, You know, probably not what I would do.
0:13:19.97
Wally Mulhearn
so, what I-what I'm trying to say is, I mean, there, there, there, the Eastern Airlines flight four zero one back in the seventies, I believe, was a Lockheed L ten eleven. And they crashed in the Everglades and killed a lot of people over a burned out light bulb in a, in a gear indicator. They put the gear down and they didn't have three green. And they-- three pilots, three professional pilots, got distracted over that and the autopilot kicked off and they flew the airplane into the Everglades.
0:13:54.93
Bobby Doss
So a distraction over a thirty-seven cent light bulb. That's crazy. Unfortunately, all of these can get all of us or any of us at any time. Third and fourth word combined here, fatigue and pressure, part of the dirty dozen. We've probably all flown when we were a little tired, and I can say it as unhappy as I am about it, I've flown under pressure, right? The, the pressure to take a friend to Galveston, probably shouldn't have ever flown that flight.
0:14:26.21
Bobby Doss
Luckily, nothing happened. and I've also felt pressure and said no, and nothing happened then either. and I can tell you the better part of the second one was there was zero risk that something was gonna happen. The worst thing that was gonna happen is I wasn't gonna see my wife that night or I wasn't gonna That night, but I still had a hotel room, perfectly safe, no danger. what are your thoughts on fatigue and pressure? I'm sure your company has rules about it, but what's your guidance to your daughters, your guidance to, say, to pilots that are new at this?
0:15:00.06
Wally Mulhearn
What do you tell people about fatigue and pressure, Wally? You know, I, I, I fly a lot of backside of the clock stuff, where we fly all night, most of my flights, Or in-- well, and now all my flights are international, but I fly Denver to Rome a lot, and we leave about, 6 PM, Denver time, and, so we're landing in Rome when your body thinks it's about five in the morning. I also fly to, Tokyo and, same kind of stuff.
0:15:36.10
Wally Mulhearn
I have realized over the years that sleep is more pressure, or is more precious than food. Okay? and that's me. I, I can, I can operate hungry a lot better than I can operate tired. So the, the first thing is try to mitigate the fatigue, you know? If, if you got a big flight, man, get, get some sleep, you know? Or, or try to.
0:16:06.83
Wally Mulhearn
And, and, you know, the, the thing that comes up for me is check rides all the time. I mean, and, and a lot of times my applicant will tell me, "Well, but I just didn't sleep very well last night." And, well, you I, I get the, the, the anxiety, the-- I won't say excitement, but the anxiety of a check ride, I get that. I'd like to think it were excitement. But, yeah, fatigue, we, we, we, we get stupid, you know?
0:16:37.55
Wally Mulhearn
And it doesn't take much for me to get stupid. I'm, I'm right on the edge even when I'm, I'm doing really well. So, you start throwing fatigue in there, and, it's, it could be, a bad thing. I mean, at, at, at, at my, at United Airlines, be- I don't know if it's this way with every airline or what, but we have to actually, Via our, our iPad, we have to declare that we are fit for duty, you know, I think it's starting about six hours before the flight, we-- before we can get to our paperwork, we have to go in here and say, "Yep, I am fit for duty." And, before we can depart, we, we have to do that.
0:17:21.02
Wally Mulhearn
So, it's basically saying, "Yeah, I'm, I'm healthy, I'm, I'm rested, and all that kind of stuff." Now, nothing says that, yeah, we've all, we Tired, I mean, I, I can remember coming home from work one day and, I was, I was going up a highway, up Highway 59, and I realized I, I was four exits past where I- I was supposed to turn it off, and I wasn't sure how I got there. That's kinda scary. Yeah, it is.
0:17:52.01
Bobby Doss
And I was in a car. That didn't drive itself. for sure. Yeah, exactly, exactly. Okay, so that's part one. Those are kind of those things that we, we talk about that are traps that could bite any of us on routine flights. There's some decision-making and awareness traps that I think Kind of are more prevalent than we talk a lot more about in general at training, but lack of communications, between each other, between a crew, between you and ATC, just assuming that we all know what we're doing, maybe a little bit, Or miscommunication, right?
0:18:35.09
Bobby Doss
The lack of understanding. Surely you've seen a lot more of this than me, but how many bad radio calls do you hear? How many mis- Missed calls, not missed, like I've missed the call, but how many responses do you hear that are just wrong, where maybe it's expectation bias, maybe it's something else, but you've got to have Hundreds of examples where pilots don't say the right thing back or say the wrong thing when they're coming in, there's gotta be dozens of those, and that, that creates a spiraling effect of, of mess, the, the spaghetti mess that we're talking about.
0:19:08.12
Wally Mulhearn
Oh, there's, there's more than dozens. There's, there's hundreds of those, you know? and some controllers, you know, one airport I fly out of a lot has, has, In fact, one, one controller who's actually kind of TikTok famous up in Conroe, Texas, and, he He, he holds the pilots accountable. you know, if he says, "Cessna 1 2 3 alpha bravo, clear the runway 1 4, clear to land." Yeah, one two three alpha bravo says, "one two three alpha bravo, clear to land." He's gonna say, "Okay, I need you to read back the runway number in that landing clearance." And, you know, I know when I hear that, well, I mean, I, I, I try-- Well, he said it to me!
0:20:03.53
Wally Mulhearn
I mean, I've, I've messed up, and he's held me accountable. And, you know, your initial reaction is to get a little mad at him, but then you sit there and you go, "Wait a He's right, he's absolutely right. We all should be accountable, you know, and, and you just hear a lot of, pilots using "Roger" as affirmative, you know, or, you know, maybe just, just wrong phraseology. one, one phrase that I hear all the time at non-towered airports is, "Tustin one two three alpha bravo is taking runway one eight." And I, I'll tell my appli-- well, if, if I'll tell my applicant, I'll say, "I really don't know what that means.
0:20:52.00
Wally Mulhearn
I don't know if that means that you're just lining up and waiting, or if it means you're taking off." 'cause it's, it's not in the pilot controller glossary, and some people will say I'm being really nitpicky, but why not just say what you're doing? "Cessna one two three alpha bravo is departing runway one eight. Okay, there's, there's no question there. So it could be the lack of communication that's also just as dangerous as anything else. let's move on to lack of awareness. There's one thing that scares me more than anything with student pilots, solo students, all these things, is do they have the big picture in mind?
0:21:29.44
Bobby Doss
If you're, if you're new to the show, go back and listen to episode four of My Near Miss, It was the worst day of my life. I think I should have died that day. I can literally thank my lucky stars every day that I get up and, am above ground because I didn't die that day. But I didn't, as a hundred and fifteen hour pilot, I didn't have the awareness that I should have had. And I, I don't blame myself for this, because I don't think it was my fault. I think it was ATC's fault in this instance.
0:22:01.10
Bobby Doss
But the helicopter was cleared to land, I was cleared to take off on the same runway, the helicopter was doing, engine out landings. If you're familiar with Hook's Airport, it happens all day where you're cleared number one, you're cleared number two, you're cleared number three, you're cleared to take off, one leaving before you depart or one leaving before you arrive, and it's, it's, it's a lot of noise, and at 115 hours, I had no idea that the hel-- the helicopter had been cleared to land. And I was supposed to be aware of that somehow. I was aware of final was clear, I was aware that the, the runway was clear, and it just, it just wasn't in my awareness that they had cleared that helicopter to land.
0:22:41.56
Bobby Doss
I've listened to that tape dozens and dozens of times, but even just the awareness on the taxi diagram now for me is easy. I've, I've got a lot more experience. I know when traffic's coming back to, to United Fly Systems. I know when they clear somebody to go from Mike To echo, I know that if I'm going from Yankee to Mike, they're gonna, we're, they're, we're gonna have some contention, not just in the air, and that's called experience, right? What does someone who has thirty hours have in their awareness bucket?
0:23:12.68
Wally Mulhearn
It's gotta be a lot less. And then when you're distracted, you talked, and you're thinking about that sick loved one, awareness is, is a, is a thing that can get away from you really, really quick, Wally. Yeah, yeah. situational awareness is something, you know, one thing my wife always says is, is read the room. You know, you, you walk into a room and you kind of read the mood of it. you know, you walk into a doctor's waiting room and everything's quiet, well, you're probably gonna be quiet.
0:23:45.61
Wally Mulhearn
You walk into an NFL stadium and everybody's yelling "Go team, go," you're probably gonna be loud. And, you can say that to an extent with, ATC. You know, other times you tune in a particular approach controller tower and you can read, read the controller's voice, oh, and this, this guy is stressed today. Okay, so is it gonna-- you know, am I gonna be Try to be on my A-game.
0:24:18.44
Wally Mulhearn
I mean, I try to be on my A-game anytime. you know, you know, I'm, I'm flying a cross-country flight in, in my Saratoga tomorrow, and it, it'll be IFR, we'll, we'll file IFR, and before I even call for the clearance, I'm gonna have written down on a piece of paper or maybe on the scratch pad on my iPad, I'm gonna have R H, which stands for runway heading, because they might give me runway heading.
0:24:50.24
Wally Mulhearn
I'm gonna have two thousand, I'm gonna have three thousand, and I'm gonna have my filed altitude off to the right. So if they-- 'cause I know where I'm taking off from, they're gonna initially clear me to two thousand, maybe three thousand, and so I just circle the one that I'm going to. I know what my, frequency, my departure frequency is gonna be. Basically, the only piece Of information that I'm not totally aware of is the squawk. So, you know, before I even call up, I've already have this stuff written down, so it makes the readback really easy.
0:25:28.72
Wally Mulhearn
And, you know, ju-just for instance, you know, when you're, when you're gonna taxi somewhere and, and you've been there a lot, you expect alpha bravo charlie to runway three six. You know, a-and I'm not, expectation bias is a bad thing, but if that's usually what you got, maybe write down A B C three six, knowing that you may get something different, but if you get what you normally have, it's already, already there written down.
0:26:02.12
Bobby Doss
Down for you. It just makes reading things back so much easier. It's a skill that takes time. I don't even know if it's a skill or experience. It's gotta be some combination of both. But somehow, some way, you gotta have a much bigger picture, and that picture just needs to grow a little bit, and a little bit, and a little bit, and a little bit, and it'll, it'll take some of the lack of an awareness away from your skill set. Or out of your, out of your, not skill set. Next, we got norms and lack of assertiveness. This is a common thing that I think happens with young pilots or pilots who don't have that experience as well.
0:26:40.51
Bobby Doss
Wally, you've probably taxied down Yankee thousands of more times than I have at our local airport. How many people get close to Mike and deviate to the right off centerline because of the cars parked on the left side of Yankee? Oh, ninety-six point seven percent of the time. Yeah. How, how, how close is the wing to the vehicles? How, how close is the wingtip to the vehicles? Oh, a long ways.
0:27:12.12
Wally Mulhearn
We got a long ways. Yeah. There's no way. And, the, the, the irony is, the irony is, so imagine this, you're going down a taxiway and you see some Something to your left that you think is a threat, that, that's what we've got here. there, there are cars parked over there. So what, what the tendency is to do is to drift right. But th-this is really where the irony of this just doesn't make sense to me. The eyes are to the left and we're drifting right.
0:27:45.79
Bobby Doss
And, and I, I think, well, if anything, you're going to the right, well, look over there. 'Cause there's stuff over there, too. I think we did a whole show on normalization of deviation, which is what that is, right? It's, it's a weird spot at Hooke's Airport where I think everyone has naturally just agreed there's nothing sitting over here, although there is a fence, a hangar, a lot of really big jet engines, stacked up on that side that could really tear up a plane and tear up a day, but we've normalized the deviation of centerline in that respect just because there's cars on the left-hand side.
0:28:21.56
Bobby Doss
And I, I've tried to beat it out of my team and on safety meetings and other things, it is just something that's still there. I think they deviate less than they may be used to, that's the one thing I'll say, but there's also things that we do on a regular basis in the air that are just kind of the norms. You know, I'll, I'll talk to a student pilot that'll tell me something, and he'll say, "Well, that's just the way we do it." Wally, have you ever heard, "That's just the way we do it, that's just the number we use." You ever heard any of that on a checkride, Wally?
0:28:52.56
Wally Mulhearn
All the time, all the time. And, and, and-- What about true airspeed, Wally? What's the true airspeed in this airplane? Word is out, word is out, because, I haven't had that answer in a long time, you know? And I say, "How'd you come up with one hundred and eleven knots?" "I got it from the POH." Students do a really good job. They'll say, "Well, I came up with here, and because we don't have wheel pants, we subtract three knots, so we go from point fourteen to one eleven, and here we are." And they'll show it to me, and I'll say, "Okay, very good, excellent." But for a long time, you know, the, the, the answer was, "Well, that, you know, how'd you come up with one hundred and ten knots?
0:29:37.78
Bobby Doss
Well, that's just what we use." Okay. Alright, well, alright, how'd you get... Somebody got that number, how'd you get it? So- Yeah, we gotta, we gotta do better than that. We can't just do the norms, and we can't just have the lack of assertiveness to figure out that number. Part three of this episode, let's help these people, Wally, let's help ourselves, let's build some real defenses. What are some systems that can protect us? For me, the one that I found early on in my career that, that has always been in my quiver per se is I have a, I have a set number for a lot of things, and those that I don't have a set number for, I just won't go.
0:30:15.98
Bobby Doss
But, I jokingly say my icing level is twelve thousand feet. if I get within twelve thousand feet of ice, I'm not going, which pretty much means I'm not gonna go fly anytime there's any risk with ice. crosswind, I have my personal minimums on crosswind. It does change quite frequently. I haven't been flying much the last ninety days. I am current, I'm instrument current. In the thousand overcast, that's for sure, but I wouldn't be afraid to fly in three thousand foot broken. And the same time, I think if there was a twelve knot crosswind today, I wouldn't go.
0:30:51.69
Bobby Doss
Have I ever done it? Sure. But my skills aren't there. These are perishable skills, and I think a personal minimum checklist. And maybe there's someone listening going, "Guy who flies, flies jets has personal minimums. I don't need personal minimums." Yes, you do. You need to be thinking about this all the time. This is the one- One thing that'll bite you, going in whatever you think, on a crystal clear day, twelve knots of crosswind's gonna get you if you haven't been flying in crosswinds. So keep, keep a list, keep that in your mind, keep it on paper, remind yourself, and don't take chances.
0:31:25.59
Wally Mulhearn
What other defenses do you think you can give someone, Wally, to help them combat the dirty dozen? Well, just to go back to the, the personal minimums thing, you, you know, you talk about a crosswind, you know, I'd, I would fly all day on a 172 with a 12-knot crosswind, but I've, I own an airplane that's a tail dragger. I wouldn't think of flying that tail dragger in a 12-knot crosswind just 'cause my, you know, it's my comfort level. So, you know, so it may differ depending on the airplane.
0:32:00.43
Bobby Doss
And great point, great point. There's an example of that. 'Cause the VisionJet's not very good in crosswinds. I might not fly it in eight knots of crosswind, in some cases, too, right? Yeah, yeah. you asked a question. What was your question? What would you give to the listeners as other defenses that might help them in the cockpit, or in the, in, in flight that might help them not be susceptible to the dirty dozen? Well, you know, I, I would say, you know, one thing I'm a big thing on is chair flying and, just kind of, you know Mentally go through what you're gonna do, you know?
0:32:42.74
Wally Mulhearn
I haven't-- Well, I, I, I guess it's been about three weeks since I've flown, My Saratoga, and we're gonna fly it tomorrow on a, a long cross country. but, you know, I, I'm already thinking, okay, what, what runway are, are probably gonna take off tomorrow? Is it gonna be three four or one six? you know, I, I'm, I'm going through my run-up, you know, two thousand RPM, cycle the props three times.
0:33:15.23
Wally Mulhearn
Of course, I'm gonna use a checklist, but I'm, I'm gonna use a checklist to back it up. you know, I'm already, I'm already thinking through this stuff, and, you know, we're, we're sixteen hours away from, from going to fly. So, am I sitting at a chair, doing all this? No, I'm not, but mentally I am going through my- Yeah, and there's all kinds of other things, just like your briefings and your flows, which is also part of chair flying, you can sit in front of a cockpit poster, do a lot of things I'm assuming your Saratoga cockpit is very different than your taildragger, and you gotta put the gear up in one of 'em and not the other one.
0:33:56.62
Bobby Doss
So these things, while checklists are there to help, and, and you should use them, you, you can practice over and over and over again with the checklist while you're just sitting in your chair flying. None of us, none of us are immune from the dirty dozen. If we think we are, we're probably a very risky pilot in some levels. So please, please, please take heed to these thirty dozen. we're not saying that you have to be perfect, but it's about being prepared and honest with yourself. The best pilots aren't the ones who never face these traps.
0:34:29.69
Bobby Doss
We're going to experience these things, they're gonna get us. It's at what level they get us. I tell new flight instructors all the time, you are going to get really cocky, and you're gonna have short time misjudgments. Don't let me know it and fake it, hide it from me. Same thing with these. When they, when they start to creep in, do the defense mechanisms that will prevent them from taking you down that Swiss cheese rat hole that might get you hurt. Fly thoughtful, fly defensive, and keep learning. If you had a good time at Oshkosh last week, let us know.
0:35:02.52
Bobby Doss
We'd like to hear more about your adventures and air venture. As always, fly safely and stay behind the prop.
0:35:10.00
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