In Episode 200 titled 'The Flight Before the Flight,' hosts Bobby Doss and Wally Mulhearn explore thorough pre-flight preparation beyond traditional navigation planning. They break down the night-before sequence including weather outlook briefings, aircraft documentation and qualifications, fuel planning, and personal fitness assessments, followed by morning-of checks using current conditions and personal minimums. The discussion emphasizes building habits with tools like the PAVE checklist to support better go/no-go decisions and safer real-world flying.
Bobby and Wally open the episode reflecting on recent experiences at Oshkosh, including social media feedback and a memorable interaction with a young aviation enthusiast whose parents are pilots. They then dive into the main topic of Episode 200, The Flight Before the Flight, stressing that most poor decisions occur during pre-flight preparation rather than in the air. The night-before sequence covers weather outlook briefings using multiple apps and 1-800-WX-BRIEF for human insight, verification of aircraft records especially for older experimental planes with modern avionics like G5 systems, fuel planning with extra margins beyond legal minimums, and self-assessment of fitness including illness or medication effects. On the morning of the flight they recommend re-evaluating forecasts against actual conditions observed outside and applying personal minimums that may differ by aircraft type such as the Saratoga versus a tailwheel. The hosts stress making these steps habitual through a simple card system and the PAVE checklist while inviting listener confessions about past decisions, shared personal minimums, and feedback on what they always check the night before. Wally adds insights from international flying on the importance of sleep management. They close by recommending the AOPA VFR personal minimums sheet and an ALPA Air Safety Institute case study called Fair Weather Flyer.
00:00
Behind the Prop Intro
Welcome to Behind the Prop, the podcast for pilots, by pilots. Here are your hosts, Bobby Doss and Wally Mulhearn.
00:24
Bobby Doss
What's up, Wally?
00:24
Wally Mulhearn
Hey, Bobby, how are you?
00:24
Bobby Doss
I am fantastic as always. It has been, probably eight to ten days since you were in Oshkosh, and- My daughter was at Oshkosh, and everybody had a lot of fun at Oshkosh. I love feedback, I got a lot of feedback on my posts, from Facebook and X and all the social channels. Their one minute videos seem to be a big hit, but if you didn't see those, go check out our social channels. If you did see those and you have feedback for us, let me know. I can't stress that I think people think this is easy, but that's hard work. I would actually say that a thirty minute podcast is less work than a one minute video. I probably have more of a radio face than I do a movie face, so to get that set up, to get it right, to post-produce it, to get captions was a ton of work, but I think those were five amazing tips for Oshkosh Week, and, I'll start planning ahead this time. I had that idea about twenty-six hours before Monday, and just put a bit extra, extra work on my plate, but,
00:44
Wally Mulhearn
We had a lot of cool stuff. You met a young fan and I think- I think that was a very well liked social post. Hopefully she was excited about it, and got to hear her voice. She named the five most important things about aviation, and I thought it was the cutest, social post we've had in a long time.
01:05
Bobby Doss
Yeah, and, both her parents are pilots, and, she sits-- they said that they drive down the road listening to the podcast, and she's in the back seat, and they, they told me they said, "We had no idea she was even listening." but, but now they, as I, I, I wanna say the father is, is a private pilot, and the mother is real close or something like that, and, they said that They'll, they'll be talking about things and the little girl will chime in and say, "No, that's not right. It's one time, one point three times, VSO or, or whatever, whatever." But they said, "Very good." She's like, "No, eleven? Was she eleven?" ten or eleven, yeah, yeah, she's very young, very young. So that was-
01:44
Wally Mulhearn
Well, we welcome all listeners. The, the- I got a few pictures from Oshkosh. The one that I got was the, the ego booster, was the house that I stayed in last year. The, the young man. He was very disappointed that a famous person didn't stay in his house this year, just four flight people stayed in his house this year, so the four flight team sent me a picture that he was so sad that the host of the Behind the Prop podcast wasn't there this year, and so I'm, I'm sending him a, a simple gift this week, he'll, he'll get that in the mail soon.
02:24
Bobby Doss
That's funny. I, I think what's interesting about Oshkosh is if I ever forget when Oshkosh was, all I've gotta do is go My health app or, or whatever measures my steps and look for the day that I had the most steps in the last year, and it's gonna be like a twenty thousand step day, and it's, it's the days at Oshkosh, 'cause I think we had this discussion last year, every-- everything at Oshkosh is a half mile away, no matter where you are, it's, it's a half mile that way, and, okay, alright, let's, let's walk. And the, the The heat, was it bad this year? Last year was hot.
03:04
Wally Mulhearn
No, it wasn't as bad. It wasn't, it certainly wasn't as bad.
03:24
Bobby Doss
Yeah. Alright, so we digressed talking about Oshkosh, it's what pilots do. This week, the title of show is "The Flight Before the Flight." And we've done some similar shows, but this one's gonna be a little bit different. We're gonna talk and teach some this week, and we want to really help you think through What I would consider flight planning, but it's not the typical flight planning that we learn at a flight school through traditional, building navigational points and things like that. Some of it's part of that, but it is how do we get ready to go fly, and then how do we continue to hold ourselves accountable to our personal minimums and all those things? most accidents, most bad things don't happen by making a bad decision at three thousand feet. I think where I've made my bad decisions, and I've made a few, were the day before the lead up to a pressure from an external factor, and we're gonna try and enable you to have some tools and things today that will get you ready the day before, get you ready the morning of, hopefully help you make the best go/no-go decision at that time, and then build some serious rigor, what I call- is more about making it a habit to really do this every flight in the real world. Too often where I'm at, right? We're in flight training and the instructor's making the decision, or it's simulated, it's not real. While you are in a similar world, I think, as a DPE, but when you have three hundred and seventy passengers behind you going on an inter-- a long, long flight all the way around the world You, you gotta be carrying some decision criteria in your brain that's different than mine.
05:45
Wally Mulhearn
Yeah, well, not really. You know, I, I, a lot of people will say to me, "Um, oh, this must be a stressful job." And I say, "You know, it, it, I, I guess there are some stresses to it, but..." As far as being a pilot, all-- and this, this gonna sound selfish, okay? All I gotta do is take care of myself, and everybody else is gonna follow along with me. you know, so I know that if I mess up I'm gonna hurt me and I'm gonna hurt my passengers. You know, a doctor, if a doctor messes up, he doesn't hurt himself, but he hurts his, his, his patient. So, you know, as I'm flying along and I'm, I'm, I'm thinking about those people in the back, yeah, yeah, I guess maybe I am, but man, all I gotta worry about is, is, is saving me and, and everybody else comes along with me. I, I hope that doesn't sound selfish, but But, you know, I don't, I don't add the weight of those, you know, those three hundred and seventy people back there, but I mean, they are back there, they certainly are. And as you're listening to the show today, wherever you're at, on a train, a plane, an automobile, be thinking about maybe some of the things that you- Would confess, and we're gonna ask you at the end of the show today to send us some of those confessions on maybe some things that you did that you shouldn't have done. Part one, we're gonna call it the night before sequence, what actually matters, right? When, when I go fly now, normally it's not just a, a lap in the pattern or I don't just get night current or anything, I'm going somewhere. I think this is real world flying. A lot of the students and the people that are training to be professional pilots, they probably can't afford to go do the hundred dollar hamburger, and those are, those are, those are real flights and big deals. But normally if I'm gonna go fly now, I'm going with my wife somewhere big, and I am taking zero chance. We talked to Brandon Cooks a couple months back, and he said, I think his phraseology was, "If there's any risk, we're not flying." And you, as a professional pilot, don't have that option, but me and my wife, we can drive everywhere instead of flying if there's any risk. And so this night before type effort is what I think helps me make the best decisions for my flying, and I'm not at that last minute trying to make the decision, "Am I gonna go fly or not?" I've probably- Cancelled or decided not to go more the night before in the last couple of years than I do in the morning because I've got all the information. The, the stuff that's out there is really, really good. So what do I do? What is the, what matters the most and how do I do it? Weather outlook briefings are important to me. we, we have so much information, there's so many trend pieces of data out there now. We have a lot of great tools. There's I used to always think the one thing I knew was coming would be a hurricane, but now that I'm so good with weather, 'cause the hurricane's so far away and it's moving pretty slow, they don't always predict it hitting the right spot, but you know it's coming, it's not gonna be a surprise. There's really not much weather that's a surprise nowadays. You might not know when the afternoon thunderstorm's gonna happen in Houston, Texas in a hot summer day, but you, you know it's gonna happen, and you know it's not gonna last all day, So there's so many tools, and we're gonna put a lot of things in the show notes this week to help you, but the timing of fronts and thunderstorms shouldn't be a surprise to any pilot. In today's world, we got so many tools. Well, how many weather apps do you have on your iPad?
09:44
Bobby Doss
No, I haven't counted, but I, I'm guessing probably five.
09:44
Wally Mulhearn
Yeah. And they're probably all getting the same data, and they probably painted a little different, but you know that, clear skies are good and red and yellow and orange are bad.
10:04
Bobby Doss
right. And you can almost put it all into motion. We've talked a lot about it, there's other shows about it, so we're not gonna spend a whole bunch of time on it, but one eight hundred WXbrief dot com is a great place to go, and if you actually call that phone number, those people are just chomping at the bit to talk to pilots nowadays.
10:24
Wally Mulhearn
Absolutely. And I get, maybe it's the, the group, the age, the society that we live in, most people would rather go to a website than make a phone call nowadays. But those people wanna talk to us so bad, and they, they're going to help, they're going to provide you a wealth of information, and you should use the phone number and you should use the website to help you make those weather decisions. I, I gotta think checking an app isn't good enough anymore, although we have five or six apps on our iPads and phones. I would much rather talk to a human being that knows more about it, is seeing and reading all the notums and helping me make a decision. So my weather outlook briefing is probably the most important thing, and sometimes it's clear, so I don't have to spend a whole lot of time on it. But then I'm an owner of a fly school, and I keep track of all my records for all my planes. You are an owner of a couple of aircraft, and you keep track of all your records and planes. I would assume the majority of people listening don't own their aircraft and don't keep the records of those aircraft. How important to you, Wally, is the qualification process for that aircraft during a checkride? If you're at a, if you're at, at a individual, if you come to my school, I know you don't even think about it, we're, we're really, really good, haha. But if you meet someone who has their own aircraft and it's a, I'll go on a limb and say an experimental aircraft, how much more focused are you maybe in the looking at the qualifications of that aircraft and the records?
12:04
Wally Mulhearn
Oh, yeah, much more. And, and, h-here's what we're running into now. The most of the, most of the people that I give check rides to, the individuals, not, not the flight schools, are in older airplanes. Okay? They're in 1980 model airplanes. I mean, a forty-six year old airplane. Okay. When that airplane came out of the factory, it had a vacuum system, it had a six-pack. Today, it probably doesn't have a vacuum system anymore. It probably has, some sort of a, G5 configuration with two G5s. That's probably the most common that I see. And it, it comes up all the time that I, I talk to someone about a total electrical failure, a total electrical system failure, and I say, "Okay, what?" Is gonna, what are we gonna have for attitude, airspeed, and altitude? And, and more times than not, the applicant will say, "Well, we're not gonna have anything because those are electric." And I say, "Well, does that just make a lot of sense that we've gone backwards in safety? We had a backup vacuum system where we had those instruments, and now we don't have those systems in electrical failure. We're just gonna have all that-- imagine a moonless night, VMC, not a cloud in the sky, with no moon, and you're gonna have that happen to you, and, you've got nothing." And I'll say, "Does it make sense?" And they, well, no, it doesn't make sense. And, and I'll say, "Well, do you have the documentation for that G5? Do you have the supplement to the flight manual? You know, you, you should have some, some paperwork." And, I just had one a couple days ago, and, and they didn't have it. I said, "Well, then is this airplane legal to fly?" "No, it wasn't legal to fly." So we didn't end up doing it, we, we, the, the airplane didn't qualify. And the, and the young man didn't know that a G5 has an internal battery and you, you're supposed to get four hours out of it. Electrical system failure, the thing's supposed to run for four hours. you need to know that kind of stuff. And you would suspect that that plane probably can't fly for four hours on the remaining fuel in that, in that configuration.
14:25
Bobby Doss
Yeah. More often than not.
14:25
Wally Mulhearn
Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. Yeah. I, I doubt they're gonna send us backwards. And Again, I think it's this mindset that we assume it's gonna work, it's, it's gonna, it's, it's safe. I always, I like to throw the few things I do know out there and say, "Well, are you a student pilot?" "I said, "I'm, I know how to do the maintenance records," and I said, "Okay, just describe to me what a three thirty-seven is," and they'll be like, "Three thirty-seven? I've never heard of three thirty-seven." I'm like, "Well, that's a major alteration. Have a completely different panel than it does today, and be able to show the documentation. Well, no, probably not. And I'm like, well, I don't know that you should be flying that plane by yourself and working it, and if you don't understand any of it, it's not gonna fly itself necessarily. So, yeah, it, it came from the factory with a hundred and fifty horsepower engine, now it's got a one eighty, you know? There's probably some paperwork on that somewhere.
15:44
Bobby Doss
Right. Right. so you go through that documentation, you really understand it, and I don't know, have you ever been involved in a checkride that skipped an annual for some crazy reason or didn't skip an annual but might not have had it documented correctly? That's gotta be happening.
16:04
Wally Mulhearn
I, I, I don't recall ever an annual now, but what I will say is I, that's one thing I will always ask for, I'll say, "Let's see the latest annual on the airplane," and it's not unusual for the applicant to show me a three-year-old annual. And I'll say, "Okay, this was, July of twenty twenty-three. Here it is, August of twenty twenty-six. I go, "That's, that's the latest annual," and they'll say, "Yeah, yeah." I'll go, "Well, okay. that's the one we put a posted note on yesterday, huh?" "Right. How long's an annual good for?" let me know, let, let, let me look it up. I go, well, the, the word annual, what does annual mean? So, and I, I can't ever remember a situation where the airplane was out of annual. Now I've seen airplanes that have been out of static check, I've never, I don't recall ever seeing one that's been out of annual. So, again, I think when the planes are managed by other people, it's easy to assume all that stuff's done. But if I'm gonna take a trip, even at my own fly school with the planes I own, and I have a lot of employees that do a lot of hard work to make sure that's all up to date, I'm going to go check the systems and make sure that I'm not gonna get myself in trouble. yes, I can rent a plane above and beyond the hundred hour if, if it's just me and my wife, but I wanna make sure the work When I'm on the trip, and hopefully my team's checking that with me. But then there's other things like, how many people are going? Have I done the right amount of fuel planning? Do I know where my fuel stops are gonna be? it's not about just keeping the legal minimums in there. I did that video, last week or so on,
17:46
Bobby Doss
plus thirty, right? Let's, let's always have thirty extra minutes. I'd much rather land and get fuel, i-in a personal situation with just me and my wife going somewhere and making- Sure, I had, I had an hour of fuel in a VFR condition than just that thirty minutes. You never know what's gonna happen. I've gone to a lot of
18:04
Bobby Doss
airports that were closed for emergency reasons. And- Yeah. That's, that's a bummer when you get there and you listen to the ad and it says, "Oh, sorry, we're closed right now." You probably didn't get that in a note 'em before you left the day before or planning purposes, right? Yeah. And then I do think it's the, the, the planning of what
18:24
Bobby Doss
am I feeling good about, what am I, am I qualified? And I think that varies. I got a little bit of something going on, I told you before the show, like something's-- I've got this summer cold that's kinda kicking my butt right now, and I don't think it would be smart for me to jump in a plane with my wife and just take off. I don't
18:44
Bobby Doss
know what's in my sinus cavity right now. I've taken more Mucinex today than a human being probably should have taken, but- I gotta break this stuff up, and I surely wouldn't want to climb to eight thousand feet and then descend from eight thousand feet and my sinus cavity feel like I'm getting a nail through my eyeball and my
19:04
Bobby Doss
wife in the plane with me, 'cause that's gonna be a bad situation. so am I safe? Have I taken medication? Am I fit for flight? I think we just take that for granted sometimes when we show up to fly schools or show up to do our, a, a time building flight with our buddies, 'cause there's so many things
19:24
Bobby Doss
we've thought of and caught in the past, but this is the real world for me. I saw a squad come in yesterday that, pilot and a student felt the feelings of hypoxia and opened the window. That's a real deal. Who's ready for that, right? Who's ready for that? yeah. It's,
19:44
Wally Mulhearn
it's okay to cancel. I, I, we're recording this, on a Wednesday. I canceled an afternoon check ride two days ago. I, I've gotten back into doing a lot more cycling and, Try to ride about a hundred miles a week, and, so I've, I've
20:04
Wally Mulhearn
been reading about all this fitness stuff, and, I, I decided I needed to start taking creatine, and, so I, this article I read says, "Well, when you initially start taking it, you need to load up, and you need to take, need to take five grams a day." So I did it,
20:24
Wally Mulhearn
and, I started it, and, my gosh! Monday afternoon, I realized I was taking way too much creatine, and I, well, I was sick. I was sick. I had to tell my applicant, I said, "Man, I am sorry. I just, I just can't do this today." And, you know, he's understood. I got him, you know, he's coming back
20:44
Wally Mulhearn
next week, so it's all good. But it's, it's okay, it's okay to say I'm sick. So if we do all the good stuff the night before and we make the go/no-go decision based on the information that we have, and we're gonna proceed to tomorrow morning, I think part two of this is really the current
21:04
Bobby Doss
weather brief briefing. We've joked about this a bunch, forecasts are forecasts, and you, while the data's really strong today. It, it probably, if it said it was gonna thunderstorm, it's still probably worth going outside and looking up at the, at the clouds, and then re-uh, really re-evaluating your personal minims.
21:24
Bobby Doss
Whenever I started getting this cold of whatever I've got going on, the night before I didn't feel bad, I can assure you, I felt it when I woke up the next day, and I probably coughed for the first time in the nighttime. It seems to always happen that way. But now's the time to go deeper. So part two is all about going deeper and really
21:44
Bobby Doss
kind of taking that fine-tooth comb to your plan, what you're expecting, and is it all mapping to what you did yesterday? And we're going from standard weather briefings, I think, and abbreviated weather briefings to really the day of and figuring out exactly what we're gonna do. We joke about it, Wally, if you, if you went
22:04
Bobby Doss
outside tomorrow morning for a check ride And it wasn't a hundred degrees outside, what runway do you think you'd be taking off on at Hook's Airport? I'm thinking three five, three five left. A cooler norther wind, right? Humidity's fifty percent, you, you know you're taking off on three five.
22:24
Bobby Doss
you know performance is gonna be better. And we can all learn these tips and tricks, but if it, the forecast was not for that to happen, something changed, the winds changed directions, a low front beat a high front or a high front beat a low front, you need to know those things and dive deeper. And then this is where I think personal minimums
22:44
Bobby Doss
for me come in the most, right? Okay If the ceiling was six thousand feet, the forecast was six thousand feet, and I planned to, to fly at five thousand five hundred feet in VFR conditions, and it's now three thousand feet, and I'm not instrument current or I'm not instrument proficient, my decision should change.
23:04
Bobby Doss
yeah. 'Cause if it went from six to three, it could easily go from three to one. I'm between houses and life is good for Bobby Doss and I can't complain, but I, I'm living about an hour from the flight school temporarily. And the visibility today where I'm at, unforecasted, was
23:24
Bobby Doss
like two miles visibility and the ceilings was like fifty feet this morning when I was coming in, right? Wow. very odd for the middle of the summer. Lots of moisture in the air. I think my decision to go fly today out of College Station would have been an absolute zero, nothing burger. There's no way I would
23:44
Bobby Doss
have taken off in a single engine piston airplane, at three hundred foot ceilings, right? So you gotta, you gotta dive deeper, you gotta go further, and, and it probably helps more to look outside because I really think my phone said it was VFR, and so there was a delay or there was an automated weather system that wasn't seeing what I was seeing,
24:04
Bobby Doss
and it wouldn't have been safe for me to take off. Wally, your personal minims are gonna be different than mine, but what do you think about when you and your wife are gonna go launch your Saratoga versus maybe your Tailwheel? What, what, what, what is your debate there? You do the same thing, same flight no matter what?
24:25
Wally Mulhearn
No, I mean, the, the Saratoga is our, our cruiser and our, the, the 120, well, it's, it's been in the shop getting a major avionics upgrade for a long time, and you know how that goes. I, I've seen trends, I have seen trends, you know, I've
24:44
Wally Mulhearn
been doing check rides, I think about twelve years now. and what I think is very, very interesting is, I, I was gonna-- I'll, I'll say ten years ago, twelve years ago, I would ask applicants what their personal minimum amount of fuel
25:04
Wally Mulhearn
to land with. And I would say the general rule of thumb was nobody was ever less than sixty minutes, it was usually sixty to ninety minutes worth of fuel that I wanna land with. Now it is very common for my applicants to say thirty minutes, and,
25:25
Wally Mulhearn
I, I, I, I can't argue with it. I, I tell 'em I think-- Well, I just say I think it's stupid. there's not much time in thirty minutes. That's just- Yeah. When you're having a bad day, thirty minutes will go by in a blink of an eye. Yeah, I, I can't
25:44
Bobby Doss
fault them for that. I, I, you know, it's, it's not wrong, it's, as long as it's during the day and it's VFR. but to, you know, at, in a, one seventy-two N that's burning seven, call it eight gallons an hour, two gallons per tank, man, that's
26:04
Bobby Doss
Not much fuel at all. you know, my, I'm, I'm not-- ninety minutes is probably my personal minimum to land with. Yeah, I, I definitely believe in the plus thirty. I'm not gonna go anywhere with less than an hour, and I know that I'm gonna make a stop if it's just the, if it's right at an hour.
26:24
Bobby Doss
and I think I've told this before, but the Vision Jet that I flew- That they had a strict, strict rule, and if you landed with one minute less than that rule, you were gonna get a conversation. And the first conversation would probably be unpleasant, the second conversation's probably you're never flying it again, right? And if your personal minimums aren't
26:44
Bobby Doss
that hard of a deck, then they're not really personal minimums, and that's just the reality. Exactly. Exactly. I, I had a young man, I, I, the, the cross country that I give in this scenario pretty much warrants a fuel stop, a fuel stop. Now, there, there might be wind
27:04
Bobby Doss
situations where you could really stretch it. and, we were going from the Houston area to Atlanta for this particular cross country, and I said, "Are we making a fuel stop?" He said, "No." And I said, "Oh, okay." I said, "How long is it gonna take us?" And it was like I want to say,
27:25
Bobby Doss
you know, four hours and fifty-one minutes. I go, "Wow, okay." I said, "How much, how much fuel are we gonna land with?" And it was thirty-two minutes. He was gonna land with thirty-two minutes worth of fuel. And I said, "Okay, well, what happens if we get
27:44
Bobby Doss
to checkpoint number one and we're two minutes behind?" And then we get to checkpoint number two, and we're another minute behind. And he says, "Well, I'm, I'm fine, we're still landing with twenty-nine minutes." And I'm like, "Oh boy, well, what's your personal minimum?" He told me his personal minima were forty-five minutes.
28:05
Bobby Doss
And I said, "Well, wait a minute, so you're, you're taking off below your personal minima?" He says, "Well, I, I thought you wanted me to plan the flight." And, and I, I was just, there was this disconnect, and I said, "Well, if you read the, the letter, you know, I talk about going to a fuel stop."
28:25
Wally Mulhearn
Yeah. So, you know, and then of course he kind of backtracked and said, "Well, I'd never really do this." I said, "Well, we're, we're trying to simulate realness. We're trying to do what we would really do." So, you know, again, I, I would hope he wouldn't ever do that, Did take off
28:44
Wally Mulhearn
with that little fuel. If, if he started getting behind, I hope he would come up with a, with a plan B. Well, the ALPA Air Safety Institute has a lot of great videos. They're Heartbreaking to listen and watch most of them. I think I've watched and listened to most of them, and
29:04
Wally Mulhearn
there's one that's out there, we'll put in the show notes, it's an accident case study called Fair Weather Flyer, and it's someone who didn't take, take advantage of these ideas and thoughts, and non-instrument pilot who flew into some really bad weather, and it didn't turn out to be a really good day. we'll encourage you guys and girls out there to, to take a, take a watch
29:24
Wally Mulhearn
of this one, and again, they're very heartbreaking if it makes one person a little bit safer, it's worth, it's worth the effort that they put into it and for us to bring it up. Part three will go quick here. I think it's about making this effort a habit. And how we would like to try and interact with all you listeners
29:44
Bobby Doss
and maybe get some feedback from y'all and get some information from all the pilots that are out there. I've, we've talked to people all over the world, Oshkosh was a good way to connect with people. I've had people ask me for the maneuvers guide link and some other things recently, Wally. I think, I think it, it, I think this can be simple if
30:04
Bobby Doss
you make it a habit, right? And so come up with your flight before the flight plan, make a simple Card out of it, do this work the night before, and on the backside of it, kinda have a morning checklist. the sequence of changes are gonna be real, and then qualify yourself the day of, the I'm safe
30:24
Bobby Doss
checklist, pave is the pilot, the airplane, the environment, and the external factors. Look, if my wife was twisting my arm to get to Dallas tomorrow I would feel pressure to make her happy. We're, we're all human. but if it was three hundred overcast, I would
30:44
Bobby Doss
tell her we're gonna get to Dallas, we're just gonna get there a couple hours after we would in a Cessna, 'cause we're gonna be taking a vehicle. yeah. I don't think she's gonna win that battle, I don't think she's gonna twist my arm, because I want us all to get to the next day. And so the, the, the three things that I'm gonna ask everybody That's listening to
31:04
Bobby Doss
interact with us on, send 'em to bobby at behindtheprop dot com and, or put 'em out on social media and let us know how we're doing. But if you have a confession, send me that confession, I would love to correlate some of those confessions. we talked about it a long time ago with the, group from Best Tug that they were thinking about maybe
31:24
Bobby Doss
starting a show one day called Confessions, like it was really church confessions, so that you wouldn't get in trouble, but What, what are your confessions? I won't share 'em, I won't give your name, but what, what's the, what's the thing you did that you look back on and think, "Oh, that was stupid." I'd like some of those. And then, personal minimums.
31:44
Bobby Doss
This is a challenge. Go find the AOPA VFR personal minimums sheet. It's a one pager. I'll put the link in the show notes as well. But Fill yours out, post it on the internet, post it on social media, tag us in it, send it to me, ask me what I think. If your crosswinds are twenty-six knots,
32:04
Bobby Doss
I'll-- and then you're in a Warrior, I'm gonna tell you you're crazy. but what are your personal minimums? Share those with us, in your each aircraft that you fly. I'd love to see those. And then the question or poll for the week is, what's one thing you always check the night before, and what's one thing you probably most often
32:24
Bobby Doss
Shouldn't skip. send us that feedback, put the, put it on our posts on social media, let us know, interact with us. We'd love to hear from you, and we'll put some stuff together that you guys and girls can use to be better pilots. Wally, as we wrap up, anything to close with? Yeah, I, I just wanna talk about the, the night
32:44
Wally Mulhearn
before a little bit. You know, I do a lot of, international flying across time zones, across, date lines. Heck, I, I'm, I'm calling home and talking about tomorrow, but where I am, it's Friday, but where my wife is, it's, it's Thursday, and she thinks I'm talking about Friday, I'm talking about Saturday
33:04
Wally Mulhearn
'cause we're, you know, on different, we're on different days. But, one thing I've learned by- Doing this kind of flying is, is to me, and this is my, my body, this is, I, I know sleep is more precious than food. I, I,
33:24
Wally Mulhearn
it, it seems like I can always get food. On the airplane, there's always something to eat. So I know if, if I'm on a trip and, and I'm gone for forty-eight hours, I look at it this way, okay, out of that forty-eight hours, I need to try to get about sixteen hours of sleep, 'cause my, my body works best on Eight hours. I know you,
33:44
Wally Mulhearn
a lot of people work with less amount of sleep, but I, I kinda need eight hours. And so I, I try to meter it on these trips. I, forty-eight, you know, I'm gone for forty-eight hours, and I'm keeping track, okay, I got two hours here, I got five hours here, I'm still needing nine hours, you know, and I, and I wanna get in the ballpark.
34:04
Wally Mulhearn
So for me, the, the, the rest thing is, is a huge thing. You know, I know, At a, a flight, there are times where, we might start a, a, a check ride at six AM in the morning because of, you know, we're trying to get just the flight in before I start my
34:24
Wally Mulhearn
eight o'clock check ride, you know, we just gotta do some landings, so I'll tell the applicant, "Okay, I can meet you there at six o'clock." Well, right off the bat, I, you know, I'm, I'm looking at the night before and I'm saying, "Okay, this going to bed at ten Adjust the night before, so
34:44
Wally Mulhearn
just, just factor that in. Yeah, the flight, in my opinion, is largely decided the night before. Do the work that we've shared with you when you're calm, write your personal minimums down, and get a real brief. That makes the morning become really, really simple.
35:01
Wally Mulhearn
I'd like to challenge everybody to, to pick one flight that you do and do this sequence and let us know how it goes, tell us how you felt. As always, fly safely and stay behind the prop.