In this episode of United Flight Systems, Bobby Doss continues his conversation with DPE Wally Mulhearn in part two of Ask the DPE. They dive deep into what makes an examiner nervous during checkrides, particularly during simulated engine failures and low altitude go-arounds. Wally explains the importance of proper go-around procedures versus touch-and-goes and why examiners avoid the latter on checkrides. The discussion covers the fine line between an ugly maneuver and an unsafe pilot, emphasizing crew resource management and speaking up early. Applicants learn about checklist discipline as a critical factor, the value of accurate but not overly precise calculations like density altitude, and how decision-making skills are tested from the start. Wally shares insights on common failures, pet peeves with scheduling, and best recoveries after mistakes. The episode wraps with lightning round questions and advice for applicants the night before their checkride. Tune in for invaluable tips to succeed on your next checkride.
00:00
Bobby Doss
What's up, Wally?
00:02
Wally Mulhearn
Hey Bobby, how are you? I am fantastic as always. Last week we went a little bit long, which was kind of cool because we love to talk about aviation stuff, but we really kind of talked about everything applicants want to know about you. Today, I'm going to flip the table a little bit
00:19
Bobby Doss
and I want to know what Wally's seeing, what makes a DP relax, what makes you nervous,
00:25
Bobby Doss
and then I'm going to put you in a few spots in some real checkride scenarios and ask you the simple question, would you bust me in these scenarios? So we're going to pick up, we did part one and part two two weeks ago.
00:38
Bobby Doss
We're going to pick up on part three. We added a part four and then we're going to do a lighting round and then wrap up part two of Ask the DPE. And if you're a long time listener of the show, you know we've done a lot of checkride stuff, but we never got this intimate with the Q&A questions on a checkride. And I'm kind of excited that we're going to get to
00:57
Bobby Doss
dive deep into Wally's head. I've been his friend for Seven years, six years now, and I know a lot of it, but we haven't really exposed some of this, so we're gonna jump right in. Wally, what actually scares you when you're sitting in the right seat on a checkride?
01:17
Wally Mulhearn
you know, that's, that's a, oh man,
01:23
Wally Mulhearn
really not much. I, I would say
01:28
Wally Mulhearn
the, the times on a checkride where maybe some words came out of my mouth that were probably words that I shouldn't say on a checkride were, when we're doing our simulated engine failure,
01:47
Wally Mulhearn
and we get down low,
01:49
Wally Mulhearn
and I say, okay, let's go, go around.
01:54
Wally Mulhearn
And the applicant, rather than pushing the power forward, adding full power, the applicant reaches down and retracts flaps. Wow. So here we are, you know, we're maybe,
02:08
Wally Mulhearn
you know, 500 feet or, or lower. And, and, and by the way, we can get below 500 feet. The regulation is very clear. It says in sparsely populated areas, it's 500 feet from an object. So
02:25
Wally Mulhearn
By the regulation, you can get down to one foot above the ground as long as you're 500 feet from Fido's doghouse or whatever, whatever, a, a, a water well or, or a house or whatever. So anyway, so a lot of applicants kind of freak out when we get down that low. And, and usually in the debrief, we'll talk about it and they, they come out and they say, well, we can't go
02:47
Wally Mulhearn
below 500 feet. I said, well, no, that's not really the case. But anyway, getting back, I digress, getting back to the original question, there have been cases where we,
02:59
Wally Mulhearn
you know, we're down pretty low and we're usually slow, you know, in the, again, we're talking 172 warrior type airplanes. So we're in the, the 65, 70 knot range because we're, we're simulating a landing, right? And, so rather than adding full power, we do flaps and that airplane just begins to mush. And, so that, that,
03:26
Wally Mulhearn
that's probably gotten my pulse up a little bit higher. Now, and so while we're here, let me, let me use this as a little teaching, part. As examiners, we are not supposed to do touch-and-go's on check rides, okay? And I'm just going to leave it there. We are not supposed to do touch-and-go's on check rides.
03:50
Wally Mulhearn
and this just came out a couple years ago.
03:53
Wally Mulhearn
I don't do touch-and-go's on check rides. I know most of the, the, the examiners that I'm close with do not do touch-and-go's on check rides. Why is that? Well, first of all, there is no maneuver in the airplane flying handbook called a touch-and-go. You won't see it, okay? The other thing is, think about a touch-and-go. What do we do on a touch-and-go? We touch down,
04:19
Wally Mulhearn
we land, We typically get the flaps, and then we add the power, okay? So it's, now what do we do on a go-around? We add the power, and then we get the flaps. So it's out of sequence, okay? So that might be part of the reason why these applicants are doing that, is we're down low. I say, let's go around. They're getting the flaps, and they're getting, then they're getting the power.
04:46
Wally Mulhearn
Well, they've probably done 100 touch-and-goes. They've probably done,
04:52
Wally Mulhearn
I don't know, eight, ten go-arounds, maybe. So,
04:57
Wally Mulhearn
and it's different. On a touch-and-go, you're going to get flaps, and then power. On a go-around, you're going to do power and flaps. So for that reason, we just don't do touch-and-goes on checkrides. so anyway, that's. Makes sense. Makes sense. Yeah. And, and, and again, the, the other thing is. The FAA wants us to finish one maneuver before starting another maneuver. So how does a landing end? Landing ends when we, you
05:29
Wally Mulhearn
know, we come to a stop or clear the runway. It doesn't have to, doesn't have to be a full stop, but clearing the runway is when that maneuver ends.
05:39
Bobby Doss
So what's the difference between an ugly maneuver and an unsafe pilot?
05:45
Wally Mulhearn
That's, that's a really good question, and it, it,
05:51
Wally Mulhearn
not much. And what I, what we hear a lot in, in the airline is, you know, we, we talk about CRM, crew resource management. And, you know, 40 years ago when I started at the airline, we, we called it charm school.
06:10
Wally Mulhearn
and it was basically how you tell the other pilot that he or she is messing up without, without making them mad. You know, it was kind of, kind of the joke. We've evolved so much over the years in, in, you know, talking about,
06:28
Wally Mulhearn
other pilots. And we've recently had a, an accident down in Miami with a 767, which resulted in, you know, just tragically resulted in some dead people, where one of the pilots was may, you know, maybe trying to tell another pilot that they weren't in a good position and, you know, bad things happened. So,
06:56
Wally Mulhearn
what we hear at the airlines a lot is we'll say, okay, when are you going to speak up? And the, the, the common answer that we would usually get is, well, I'm gonna, I'm not really, probably not gonna say much until it becomes unsafe. And the problem is,
07:17
Wally Mulhearn
you don't know when it's gonna become unsafe. So,
07:23
Wally Mulhearn
you probably need to speak up before then.
07:26
Wally Mulhearn
you know, when, when they're not adhering to
07:31
Wally Mulhearn
the standard operating procedure, SOP as we call it, of your airline, you know, at, at United Airlines, it's, it's very well defined. If we're not
07:42
Wally Mulhearn
Within this envelope, configuration-wise, airspeed-wise, altitude-wise, vertical speed-wise, at given altitudes, we go around. We go around. Any, anybody in the flight deck is allowed to call a go around. And you ask questions later. You don't, you know, boom, you go around and then you say, what happened? And somebody may say, well, I saw this. Oh, jeez, I didn't see that. Thank you. So go arounds are free. We say that. Go arounds
08:15
Wally Mulhearn
are free.
08:18
Wally Mulhearn
so, you know,
08:22
Wally Mulhearn
I, I don't know if that really answers the question, an ugly maneuver.
08:27
Wally Mulhearn
And it, maybe, you know, an unsafe, I mean, I think the, the question was an unsafe pilot, but it, I, I'll say an unsafe maneuver.
08:41
Bobby Doss
I think you answered it. I think you said not much. That's, that's pretty clear.
08:45
Wally Mulhearn
no, I think we think of single engine pilots, you know, flying around, doing things, and, and what we see in the ACS, you know, maybe not a perfect set of steep turns,
08:58
Wally Mulhearn
might not make an unsafe pilot, but it probably creates characteristics that build an unsafe pilot, not, in, not being able to hold altitude, not being able to look outside the airplane, all the things we talk about. but I like the not much difference. That's good.
09:13
Bobby Doss
What's something applicants think is a huge deal that you really don't care much about?
09:20
Wally Mulhearn
well, the, the, the ex, the exactness of, of some of their calculations.
09:29
Wally Mulhearn
I,
09:31
Wally Mulhearn
I, you know, I've gotten on this kick about density altitude, and we, we did, I think we did a little Thing a couple weeks ago where we talked about the poor man's way or the quick and easy way of calculating density altitude. And I'll, I will say to the applicant, okay, what's our density altitude today? And usually I get one of two things, either they just go to ForeFlight and they look
09:57
Wally Mulhearn
it up and they say it's 1857 and I'm, I'm fine with that. But, but the other side of it is they pull out a calculator and they start doing the amplitude of the moon divided by the square root of the date of your mother's birthday, you know, divided by pi times the, the, the, the, whatever. They're just these complicated formulas and I, I just go, wow, wow. You know, another thing I'll,
10:28
Wally Mulhearn
I will ask, I'll say, well, you know, what is
10:33
Wally Mulhearn
the freezing level?
10:35
Wally Mulhearn
freezing level and, and, you know,
10:40
Wally Mulhearn
they'll,
10:42
Wally Mulhearn
they'll, again, they go into this in-depth formula and it's, it's half the temperature. It's half the temperature in Celsius. If it's 28 degrees, the freezing level is 14 hundred, 14,000 feet above the ground, not 1,400, 14,000 feet above the ground. And that's a standard day. That, that's just a, a, a wag, a pretty good estimate. But where I see people just freaking out is when it's an odd number. It's 29 degrees
11:10
Wally Mulhearn
and they have trouble figuring that that would be 14,500. And I say, look, just, just make the odd number even. Call it 30, call it 28, I don't care. You know, just get me in the ballpark of the freezing level is somewhere of around 14,000 or 15,000 feet above the ground. So,
11:30
Wally Mulhearn
you know, you,
11:32
Wally Mulhearn
you do,
11:36
Wally Mulhearn
You know, a lot,
11:37
Wally Mulhearn
these calculations, they're, they're really good estimates. I mean, if we come up and we say our takeoff distance is 957 feet,
11:51
Wally Mulhearn
you know, if, if we take off in 958 feet, I'm, I'm pretty happy.
11:58
Wally Mulhearn
Yeah, that's, less than 1%. I think, I think that's pretty close, close enough.
12:04
Bobby Doss
That's good to know. What, what's something applicants don't think matters that absolutely does matter?
12:12
Wally Mulhearn
this is probably the easiest question you've asked me so far, and I'm gonna say checklist discipline.
12:21
Wally Mulhearn
I get it. You're in a 172S model. There's not a whole lot to the landing checklist. There's no carburetor heat to worry about. We might already be in the traffic pattern. Your lights are probably already on.
12:37
Wally Mulhearn
You know, we can land at flaps up, we can land at full flaps, we can land at flaps somewhere in the middle. So there's probably not a whole lot to that landing checklist. But fast forward to two years when you're flying now a Beechcraft Bonanza. That has wheels that go up and down. It has a prop that moves around. It has calf laps. It has a yacht amper. It has, an air
13:04
Wally Mulhearn
conditioner that needs to be off. so it's, it's checklist discipline. you know, I've, I've flown every non-four-engine Boeing transport airplane. I've flown the 727, 37, 57, 67, triple seven, and now the 787. The landing checklist on all, all those airplanes has three, three things. Speed brake, gear, laps. It's, it's memorized, okay? It is memorized in 40 years of, of flying the airplanes, I have that checklist memorized. I still pull out the
13:38
Wally Mulhearn
card if I'm in an airplane that has the card, and, if it's a airplane like the triple or the seven eight has electronic checklist, we still pull up the checklist on the electronic display and, and, and go through the, the checklist as appropriate. It, it's a discipline, it's a mindset, it's a way of doing things. There used to be an oatmeal commercial back in the eighties and nineties, and there was an
14:04
Wally Mulhearn
old guy named Wilford Brimley,
14:07
Wally Mulhearn
an actor, and, and he used to say,
14:11
Wally Mulhearn
eat Quaker oats, it's the right thing to do. And that's, that's, I think of Wilford Brimley when I think of the checklist. It's, it's the right thing to do. What I, what I, which is a head-scratcher to me is a lot of applicants, and they're, they, they're usually don't, the, the checkride usually does not end favorably for them.
14:35
Wally Mulhearn
They'll, they'll skip check, their landing checklist, but when we get back to the flight school and they're gonna shut down the airplane, by golly, they're gonna use that checklist to shut down the airplane. And, and I, I talk to them, I say, okay, what, what maneuver do you think is kind of more important, landing the airplane or shutting down the engine? You know, really, shutting down the engine, if you pull the
15:05
Wally Mulhearn
mixture and get the, the master switch off and get the mags off and leave everything else on,
15:12
Wally Mulhearn
yeah, the, the next person's gonna maybe be a little upset with you, but
15:19
Wally Mulhearn
you're, you're probably okay.
15:22
Wally Mulhearn
But by golly, we, we don't shut the airplane down without using the checklist, and, and you shouldn't. Like, use it, or, or, or at least do a flow and back it up with a checklist.
15:33
Bobby Doss
Yeah, that's, my flow's slim on that one, and it's a good one, in my opinion. It's in our maneuvers guide. You can go to maneuversguide.com and download it if you want it, but, slim is a good, good flow for that one, and then back it up with the checklist. Next question. At what moment do you think this person is a pilot?
15:53
Wally Mulhearn
I, I'm gonna say the moment I meet them, because, I, I, I,
16:00
Wally Mulhearn
I try to give my applicants that respect right off the bat. You're a pilot until you prove to me that you're not.
16:12
Wally Mulhearn
you know, I'm gonna see a snapshot of you. I'm gonna see you for four hours of your life. I, I, I, I do trust the process. I trust the flight instructors. I trust the flight schools. So, you know, I, I, I expect my applicants to do, to do well. So,
16:34
Wally Mulhearn
you know, I,
16:36
Wally Mulhearn
I'm gonna say,
16:38
Wally Mulhearn
yeah, at the, the, the, the time I walk in, until you prove me otherwise. That's good to know. I mean, everybody's got the right benefit of the doubt right from the beginning. And,
16:50
Bobby Doss
I'm, I'm sure a mistake in a calculation or close to or whatever is not gonna make you think they're not a pilot.
16:58
Bobby Doss
it's not perfection that you're looking for. I think that's what I've been speaking to a lot lately around the flight schools. Perfection is not the standard. And if we could get away from believing that, I think we would get down the road a lot faster or down the runway a lot faster for sure. Yeah, yeah. Next question, what's the best recovery you've seen after an applicant made a mistake?
17:21
Wally Mulhearn
Oh,
17:28
Wally Mulhearn
you know, in, in the ground portion,
17:32
Wally Mulhearn
there have been, there have been times where an applicant will answer a question that is totally wrong,
17:41
Wally Mulhearn
and then you, you keep, you move on to something else, and, a lot of times I'll look over there and I can see the wheels in their head are turning. I, I know they're not focused on what I'm talking about. They know
17:55
Wally Mulhearn
what they said before wasn't right, and,
18:01
Wally Mulhearn
it, it typically happens after a break. I'll say, okay, let's, let's go take a break, and I'll go,
18:06
Wally Mulhearn
you know, use the restroom, and depending on what flight school I'm at, grab a cup of coffee, cause some are better than others. But anyway,
18:16
Wally Mulhearn
and then I'll come back and, and the, a lot of times the applicant will say, hey, can I, can we go back to what you, what you were talking about earlier? Now, I'm not sure what happened. I don't know if it was phone a friend, if it was Google, if it was just, recalling something. I mean, I, I, I was in college a long time ago, and I remember walking away from,
18:37
Wally Mulhearn
chemistry and thinking, oh my gosh, no, it was, it was that, and I put down this. So, you know, I know it comes back. So, so, and, and I, yeah, you, you're, you're allowed to change your answer. You want to go back and say that it's, you know, the, the, whatever. I, I, I can't think of a, an exact example, but, that's, that's not, that's not too uncommon to happen.
19:07
Wally Mulhearn
you know, and, and you, you see it in the airplane,
19:13
Wally Mulhearn
We might,
19:16
Wally Mulhearn
miss, a, a, a checkpoint,
19:23
Wally Mulhearn
you know, the first checkpoint, but then they, they realize, hey, we got more of a wind out of the north, I need to compensate for this, let me, let me turn this way. Okay, here's, here's the second checkpoint. Okay, here's the third one. And, and that's fine.
19:39
Wally Mulhearn
The
19:41
Bobby Doss
last time we talked about pet peeves, and before we started recording, you said we might want to revisit pet peeves a little bit. What pet peeves did you miss a couple weeks ago that you feel obligated to share with the listeners this week?
19:55
Wally Mulhearn
Well, I, I, I'm gonna say in, in,
20:00
Wally Mulhearn
I get a lot of, I'll get a phone call from somebody, and they'll say,
20:08
Wally Mulhearn
Hey, Wally, this is, this is Joe Smith.
20:13
Wally Mulhearn
give me a call back
20:15
Wally Mulhearn
about a check ride.
20:18
Wally Mulhearn
And,
20:19
Wally Mulhearn
you know, a, a lot of times I, I'll get these messages and, and, you know, I'll be in the air and, and the, the, it, it transcribes to, to me via text. And I'll, I'll be on my way to Japan and I'm in the bunk on my break and I, I get Wi-Fi and I'll, I'll see this and I can't call you from there, the, the Wi-Fi isn't that good.
20:45
Wally Mulhearn
but I would say if you would, man, if you, first of all, probably the, the, the most efficient way of communicating with me is text or email. But if you, if you want to leave me a voice message, tell me what, what the situation is. Because a lot of times it's something that I might need to research. And, you know, if you could Email me or text me or, or even leave
21:09
Wally Mulhearn
a voicemail and say, hey, I've got a question. I've got a student who's got a,
21:16
Wally Mulhearn
private rotor wing, and he wants to get his fixed wing, and we're not sure about the cross-country time. he's got XYZ and, you know, so, so let me know what the question wa- is, rather than just say, call me back.
21:35
Wally Mulhearn
cause, cause I don't, you know, again, I may, I may need to dig in and, and research it. Second thing would be,
21:43
Wally Mulhearn
when, when you,
21:45
Wally Mulhearn
when you
21:47
Wally Mulhearn
communicate with me, no matter what way it is,
21:52
Wally Mulhearn
tell me who you are.
21:54
Wally Mulhearn
a lot of times I just, I get these texts from numbers and,
22:01
Wally Mulhearn
it'll say, I'd like to schedule a checkride. And, and that's it. That's it. It's like, I don't, I don't know who you are or where you are.
22:10
Wally Mulhearn
I don't know what kind of checkride. I don't know anything about your applicant. So, so help me out with that, cause sometimes it, you know, depending on what kind of checkride it is, I know if, if I have two multi-engine rides in a day,
22:28
Wally Mulhearn
I can probably fit a third multi-engine ride if that's all I'm doing. if I've got two privates in a day, I'm not gonna be able to fit something else in there.
22:39
Wally Mulhearn
So, it, it does make a difference. So, if, if you would tell me that, and, and just know, I don't, I don't really keep everybody's phone number in my You know, I don't have your contact information probably. so if you just say, hey, this is Bob Smith, I'm up at this airport, at this flight school, it would really help me out. I just look back at my calendar for the month of
23:03
Wally Mulhearn
August,
23:05
Wally Mulhearn
and I have in my calendar everything, it's kind of color-coded, and I just went in and counted check rides. I had 26 for the month of August. Now,
23:18
Wally Mulhearn
that, that doesn't mean 26 check rides happen, but I had 20, you know, between, there may have been a day where I had two and, and we got weathered out. So those two got moved to next week. So,
23:32
Wally Mulhearn
on my calendar, it shows up as four green dots, right? And it was really only two check rides. But August was 26, and I'm a little bit ashamed to say this, but I actually took three days off in August. Like I, I went away somewhere for three days and didn't do check ride stuff. and looking at my September schedule, here it is, whatever, it's today, September 14th that we're recording this. I've
23:57
Wally Mulhearn
got, as of right now, I've got 26 scheduled for August as well, I mean for September as well. So, there's a lot going on. There is really a lot going on. So,
24:09
Wally Mulhearn
you know, if you, if you text me, just Give me a little more. Say, hey, this, tell me your name and what, what you need.
24:18
Bobby Doss
Take that advice, everyone. Take that advice I hear from every DP. Next question. What's the most common reason basically good applicants fail?
24:31
Wally Mulhearn
I'm going to go back to that,
24:34
Wally Mulhearn
checklist discipline.
24:36
Wally Mulhearn
we,
24:38
Wally Mulhearn
we don't, I don't think we do a, a, a really good job with the checklist. I, I think,
24:49
Wally Mulhearn
we are not as good as we used to be at being able to look things up, and I think that's because of Google and AI and all that kind of stuff, and, I, I use it too, so we're, we're all guilty of it. I think I said this a few weeks ago. There's been a number of people recently tell me they don't even know what an index is. And that is clearly
25:14
Wally Mulhearn
a societal thing. Like, you and I probably did book reports from the encyclopedia, which we only could find it if we knew how to use an index. You weren't going to find Benjamin Franklin by looking through 40 books.
25:28
Wally Mulhearn
so I think if you're listening, I think we said this a few weeks ago again, learn how to use an index, because the far aim is amazing if you know how to use an index. You can dang near find anything. Learn how to use a POH, too. I will ask so many questions. I will say, all right, here's a scenario. You're up at altitude. And, or, or, oh, here's one I ask
25:51
Wally Mulhearn
on multi-engine rides. I will,
25:54
Wally Mulhearn
if you ever listen to this podcast, you know I'm passionate about electrical system failures. And so I will say to my applicant, okay, we are in our
26:06
Wally Mulhearn
our Seminole, our Travelair, our Baron, our Duchess, whatever multi-engine trainer we have,
26:14
Wally Mulhearn
we're in on an airplane and we have a total electrical system failure. How are you gonna get the gear down? And the, all I'm asking for is, I'm gonna refer to the checklist. Bingo. You just hit the jackpot. And I'll say, okay, let's pull out the checklist and let's talk about it. Because there are things on that checklist like,
26:38
Wally Mulhearn
you know, checking the gear lights. Well, are the gear lights gonna work? No. They're on the, on the pipers, there's something about turning the nav lights off because of the bright dim switch. Well, is that gonna make a difference in an electrical system failure? I'm not saying don't do it, I would still do it, but it's, it's not gonna make a difference. The nav lights aren't gonna be working anyway. So,
27:01
Wally Mulhearn
what I'm, what I'm trying to get at is, is Use the checklist, I will then,
27:09
Wally Mulhearn
dovetail into the flaps. Okay, are we gonna have flaps in our airplane in an electrical system failure? If you're in a Piper Seminole, you are, because they're just manual flaps, just like in a Cherokee. But in the other airplanes, they're usually electric, so we're not gonna have flaps. Okay, well, are we gonna need more runway now? What's, what's your comfort level? Let's, let's look up the book, in the book to see
27:34
Wally Mulhearn
if we have data for a no-flap landing.
27:38
Wally Mulhearn
And it's just, it's just getting, getting intimate with, with the, the POH.
27:46
Wally Mulhearn
I, I can honestly say I have never taken a check ride in an airplane where I did not have personal access or own a copy of the POH. Now, I know POHs are expensive. If you, if you get the real ones.
28:07
Wally Mulhearn
but, you know, so many people, they, they don't even have them downloaded on their devices, and you could probably just Google it and say, I need a PUH for a Cessna 172N model. I'll, I'll, I'll bet on your,
28:21
Wally Mulhearn
unitedflightsystems.com, or I'll, I'll, I'll bet, I'll bet that the PUHs are available.
28:30
Wally Mulhearn
they're there. So, you, you ought to have it, and, and you should be able to kind of have an idea of what's in there. The PUH is like your toolbox. I mean, a mechanic knows what's in his toolbox. He knows if he has a metric socket set, okay, or he's, you know, he's got a hammer. You, you, you know what's in the toolbox.
28:53
Bobby Doss
Really good question, in my opinion. What do CFIs consistently fail to prepare applicants for? Decision making.
29:02
Wally Mulhearn
That was quickest. Yeah, the decision making.
29:06
Wally Mulhearn
you know, this is,
29:10
Wally Mulhearn
this, this is, this, this could've gone with, with pet peeves. This, this, here's a typical morning for me. Okay. let's see, I have a,
29:21
Wally Mulhearn
8 AM checkride. my alarm goes off at 6.
29:26
Wally Mulhearn
I, I roll over, I, I grab my phone, I look at the weather.
29:33
Wally Mulhearn
And, it's, the weather is, we're gonna say marginal.
29:38
Wally Mulhearn
And I look at,
29:41
Wally Mulhearn
you know, I, of course, I look at the forecast for 8 AM checkride. I, I tell the applicant to plan on flying at, at 10.
29:51
Wally Mulhearn
And look at the forecast for 10 o'clock, I look at around the area, other airports, because we have weird weather a little bit in Houston. We'll have one airport that'll say it's 200 and overcast, and
30:04
Wally Mulhearn
the other seven airports in the area are, you know, 25,000 broken.
30:10
Wally Mulhearn
but,
30:13
Wally Mulhearn
I will, then at that time, I'll, I'll text the applicant, and I'll say,
30:20
Wally Mulhearn
hey, what do you think about the weather?
30:22
Wally Mulhearn
I'll set my alarm for 6:15, and I'll go back to bed. I'll go back to sleep.
30:30
Wally Mulhearn
Alarm goes off at 6:15, no response. Okay, I'll set it for 6:30, and I go back to sleep. 6:30 comes along, still no response. At this point, what I'll, I'll text the applicant is, hey, I haven't heard from you, I'm not gonna leave home until I hear from you. And boom, they, they get back to me in a hurry.
30:52
Wally Mulhearn
but a lot of times the response I'll get from the applicant is they just read me the weather.
30:59
Wally Mulhearn
And I say, well, right now it's this. And they go, yeah, I, I, I can read the weather, but what, which, what are you thinking?
31:06
Wally Mulhearn
And really what I'm getting at is if, if I, if they use, you know, if they kind of say to me,
31:14
Wally Mulhearn
I think we'll be able to fly, I think we should be able to fly at 10 o'clock. Okay, I'm in the shower, I'll see you at 8 o'clock.
31:22
Wally Mulhearn
and, you know, that's,
31:25
Wally Mulhearn
we, we haven't started a checkride yet, but we are, we are starting the process, you know,
31:33
Wally Mulhearn
preparation for it. The, the, you know, there's a, there's an old football saying that says, you know, a lot of locker rooms will say something like,
31:44
Wally Mulhearn
for a college team, it'll say, we win Monday through Friday, we prove it on Saturdays. So, you know, the, the winning starts before the checkride, if you will.
31:57
Wally Mulhearn
Yes, it does. And so a lot of times they're just, they're, they're, they're, they're, they're just not used to making the decisions. So, see if I, if, if you could let your students make decisions.
32:12
Wally Mulhearn
and sometimes that decision may be contrary to what you think you ought to do. Now, this is where it gets tricky. You've got to say, well, okay, is this compromising safety? Is it,
32:26
Wally Mulhearn
just the fact that we're going to the airport and getting in an airplane, we're accepting a risk, okay? Just the fact that we drive to the airport, we're accepting a risk. So,
32:40
Wally Mulhearn
You know, we, we've already accepted some level of risk. but sure, we, we don't want that, we, we want that risk level as, as low as we can. But, you know, there, there's an old joke that, I've heard some DPs say, well, we probably won't fly today. There's forecast to be a cloud over Dallas, you know? And,
33:06
Wally Mulhearn
I, I, I, I just, you know, I would like to see, and, and it's, it's the decision of the applicant, you know, it's, it's my, it's not my decision. And if you need to consult with somebody, you want to call your CFI, yeah, man, go for it. That, that's using your resources. I, I don't, I don't really have a problem with that. I would just like to think the real world that
33:26
Wally Mulhearn
you would consult with somebody as well, and hopefully that somebody would be a weather briefer.
33:32
Bobby Doss
Yes, that would be nice. Alright, getting long again, let's jump into part four, cause we got part four and part five. We'll make these kind of short and sweet as well, but would you bust me?
33:43
Bobby Doss
enough about the theory, let's just do a few scenarios. I'm the applicant, and I catch the mistake.
33:50
Wally Mulhearn
is it automatically a bust just because I went below 100 feet on steep turns? No, absolutely not, and it's defined very well in the, the ACS. I think it says, I think the wording is momentary exceedances are acceptable if they're corrected in a timely manner.
34:10
Bobby Doss
What's the difference between, between correcting the mistake and trying to hide it, in your opinion?
34:19
Wally Mulhearn
I, most, most students aren't very good at hiding things. They, most of them will tell me, I mean, I may be looking the other way for traffic or, or whatever, and, and I'll hear them go, "Oh man, I got low." And I look over and it's like, "Oh gee, I didn't, they didn't see that, but I see it now." So,
34:41
Wally Mulhearn
I, I, you know, the, the one thing that,
34:44
Wally Mulhearn
you know, I, applicants don't really seem to try to hide things. I, they, they cheat a lot on instant approaches. I mean, they're just picking their head up and looking out the window, and it's like, man, you, you, you need to learn to cheat a little bit better than that, cause it's pretty obvious to me that, you know, I'll tell them and I'll say, quit, quit, quit cheating. Well, I'm not cheating.
35:07
Wally Mulhearn
Well, yes, you are. It's pretty obvious, but anyway, so,
35:12
Wally Mulhearn
I, I've
35:14
Wally Mulhearn
I, I, I'm sure people have hidden things from me, and I'm sure some have gotten away with it. but,
35:22
Wally Mulhearn
by and large, I, I think they're, it, they're, they, it, their emotions come out, and, and they, they usually give it up. Number two, I don't know, but I know where to find it.
35:36
Wally Mulhearn
how do you feel about that? I don't know this one from memory. I'm gonna go look it up.
35:41
Wally Mulhearn
I'm,
35:45
Wally Mulhearn
that's a tough one. I mean, I, I do tell everybody that check rides are open book, and they are. And I, I don't, I really don't have a problem with it, but at, at some point there are certain things that we have to know. For instance, cloud separation requirements, you know, if, if you're, if you're struggling, gee, Class D airspace, it's a thousand feet horizontal and two thousand feet above and five
36:13
Wally Mulhearn
hundred, is, you know, if, if you're doing that, because as you're flying along in an airplane, call it a, again, a 172 or Warrior, let's say you're doing 120 knots, we'll make the math nice and easy, you're doing two miles a minute,
36:28
Wally Mulhearn
you probably don't have time to just say, hey, let me look this up. So there are, there are certain things that you just really need to know.
36:38
Wally Mulhearn
I, I don't, you know,
36:43
Wally Mulhearn
But if you do look things up, sometimes you're, you're telling me more because it's, you're telling me that you can get the information because I am finding that
36:56
Wally Mulhearn
in general, people struggle with that. People struggle with that skill of looking things up.
37:03
Wally Mulhearn
you know, I'll, I'll ask something obscure. Okay, tell me our landing distance in our airplane with no flaps.
37:11
Wally Mulhearn
And 10 minutes later, they're still thumbing through the, the POH looking for it. And I would like to think that they could go to the landing distance chart and try to see if there are any notes or anything in there that, that say, yeah, add X percent for a no flap landing.
37:29
Wally Mulhearn
so,
37:32
Wally Mulhearn
anyway. I guess my follow-up question to this one would be, would you rather hear a confident wrong answer or an honest I don't know?
37:44
Wally Mulhearn
Yeah, I don't, I don't, I don't know. I, I, what's, what's funny, I, I had a, a, I did a couple of check rides today, and I had a young man who gave me a very unconfident right answer. And, and I, at, at the end, I was teaching him a little bit, little gamesmanship, and, and I, I, I said, man, I said, I know that you were kind of guessing on that.
38:12
Wally Mulhearn
He goes, how did you know? I said, well, your, your volume level went from I mean, you, you, you got much softer and you started talking like this. And I said, that, that told me that you weren't really sure. You know, I, I, I come from a musical background and we used to always say loud and proud, man, if you make a mistake, it's going to be loud. so, you know, say
38:39
Wally Mulhearn
it with confidence. and, and when you preface everything with,
38:45
Wally Mulhearn
you know, that, that's kind of another,
38:49
Wally Mulhearn
kind of giveaway that you're not a hundred percent sure. And, and you may get it, you may get the answer, and that's okay. I mean, that's, that's what we're looking for is to get the answer. So,
39:01
Wally Mulhearn
yeah, I don't, I don't have a problem with someone saying,
39:07
Wally Mulhearn
You know, like, like one thing, you know, with, with private pilots, we'll, we'll get into the oxygen requirements, and I'll give them the scenario of, okay, we, we're going westbound, and we find that if we can get up to 12,500 feet, we can get some extremely favorable tailwinds, and we can make it home nonstop with plenty of fuel. Can we fly at 12,500 feet? And,
39:36
Wally Mulhearn
you know, they're like,
39:38
Wally Mulhearn
and, you know, I'm not gonna say look it up, but just, just pull it out and say, oh, jeez, the regulation says oxygen is required above 12,500 feet, so by the letter of the law, can we fly at 12,500 feet without oxygen? Yes, we can. So.
40:00
Bobby Doss
There you go. Scenario three, the weather's legal, but you, Wally Mulhern, don't like it, but the applicant decides to go. Are they gonna get in trouble?
40:12
Wally Mulhearn
no, if, if they can make it work,
40:17
Wally Mulhearn
no, it, it's their call, you know, and I'm, I'm confident in my ability. I mean, if I'm getting in the airplane, I, I feel good about the airplane, and,
40:29
Wally Mulhearn
you know, have there been times where,
40:33
Wally Mulhearn
I, I, I can think of a couple of check rides where out of Hooks Airport, where some thunderstorms moved in, and we were just zigzagging north of the airport for about an hour, and they moved out, and, and we came in. Now, I mean, that was a case of, wow. That, that caught us both off guard, you know, wasn't, wasn't forecast to be like that. But,
40:59
Wally Mulhearn
it, it's the applicant's, applicant's call. Now,
41:05
Wally Mulhearn
might I give some body language that I don't think it's a very good call? I, I can think of a, a, a checkride many years ago. I was, I was a fairly new GPE, and I was out flying a checkride in the morning, and boy, we were getting beat up. I mean, it was, it was extremely turbulent and windy up at altitude, and up about 3,000 feet, the winds were about 55
41:34
Wally Mulhearn
knots.
41:36
Wally Mulhearn
And,
41:39
Wally Mulhearn
When I landed, I, I, I texted the next, the, I, I guess I didn't have the applicant's number, but I texted the CFI. I said, that does he really want to fly in this? And he said, yeah, he says he's ready to go. And I said, okay, I, I just landed. It is really rough out there. It's really rough. And he said, he, he says he's, he's good to go. And I
42:05
Wally Mulhearn
says, okay, tell him to really check his, his, the wind, because it's not only rough, but it is really windy. Up at, up at 3,000 feet, we, the winds were out of the south at 55 knots. You know, and, and I, I think if you could say the, the old phrase of read the room, I, I, I think I was trying to say I don't think this is a good idea. And,
42:30
Wally Mulhearn
it, it, it ended up not being a successful day for, for the applicant,
42:38
Wally Mulhearn
and, and all that, the wind and the turbulence played a lot into it, and I, I kinda was trying to say, this is not a good idea, but it was his call.
42:50
Bobby Doss
All right, we're gonna jump to the lightning round. This is part five of our two-part series. two or thir, two or three word answers only, Wally.
43:00
Bobby Doss
no DP explanations, no lawyer answers, just a couple of words. Most overrated checkride fear?
43:08
Wally Mulhearn
DP's out to get me.
43:10
Bobby Doss
The biggest applicant confidence killer?
43:17
Wally Mulhearn
probably,
43:21
Wally Mulhearn
messed up paperwork or
43:26
Wally Mulhearn
Bad logbook entries. Okay. Number three, best thing to do after a mistake. Own it.
43:35
Bobby Doss
One habit that screams prepared pilot.
43:46
Wally Mulhearn
having their ducks in a row, their paperwork ready to go,
43:51
Wally Mulhearn
their, their logbook pages, well, that's more than three. That's all right. I was going to say with the logbook, since that was the other one up above, logbook's a good one. night before the checkride, study or sleep? Sleep. Sleep. No one believes that. Why does no one believe that? Why does no one believe that? You gotta try. I mean,
44:13
Wally Mulhearn
I, I just did a, a,
44:15
Wally Mulhearn
a bike race on Saturday. I know it wasn't a super long, it was a 30 mile race.
44:22
Wally Mulhearn
But, you know, my, my plan was to be in, I had to be up at four in the morning to get down to South Houston, and, my plan was to be in bed at nine o'clock, and, I,
44:35
Wally Mulhearn
eleven o'clock I'm looking at the clock and trying to jump in bed. So,
44:40
Wally Mulhearn
you know, it's, it's, it's nice to plan for it. Sometimes it doesn't work out that way, but I would, I would say sleep. you know, and, not, not to sound negative, but if you don't know it at this point, I'm not sure how much
44:57
Bobby Doss
you're gonna, you're gonna learn. Amen to that. Well, we're thinking about making this kind of a regular show, maybe do one of these every other month or something. If you like it, let us know. a final question as we wrap up, you know, the, the whole checkride DP thought process and what's in your head, Wally. If you could literally sit down, which would be impossible, but if you could sit down with
45:17
Bobby Doss
every applicant the night before the checkride and just give them one piece of advice, what would you tell every applicant the night before their checkride?
45:27
Wally Mulhearn
try to have, just, just try to relax. Try to, try to, try to embrace it.
45:36
Wally Mulhearn
you know, it's, it's probably something you're going to remember for a long time.
45:42
Wally Mulhearn
it's a big day for you, and, and I, I, I get that it's a big day for you, and I'm actually honored that I get to be a part of your big day. it's, it's a really cool thing. I mean, it, it's, I guess it'd like be being a minister to, you know, getting to marry people or, or, or, you know,
46:02
Wally Mulhearn
whatever you call the doctor that delivers babies, you know, to, to be there for the birth of people's babies.
46:11
Wally Mulhearn
you know, that's, that's kinda what I get to do. Unfortunately, sometimes, you know, it, it doesn't go great, but most of the time it, it does go pretty well.
46:25
Bobby Doss
Well, that is exciting. It's a life-changing event for all of us pilots at some point or another, and we love doing these shows. Hopefully, you love listening to these shows. As always, fly safely and stay behind the prop.