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A Good Pilot Is Always Learning
Rank #1: Defense Mechanisms.
What are defense mechanisms and what do we do once we recognize a defense mechanism in one of our students?
Rank #2: The Greatest Teaching Method.
In this episode Jason shares with you a few tips that you won’t learn from your FOI (Fundamentals of Instruction) written test.
A Good Pilot Is Always Learning
Rank #1: E6 Will Miller – Finding a New CFI, Crosswind Landings, Talking to ATC, Steep Turns.
Will Miller describes the challenges in his flight training and how worked through them! Need help finding the right CFI? Get a copy of our Private Pilot Blueprint: https://ud165.infusionsoft.com/app/storeFront/showProductDetail?productId=58 Email your story and questions: Scott@MzeroA.com
Rank #2: IA E15 Matt Krysiak Tells Us How He Made Major Life Changes To Pursue His Dreams.
scott@MzeroA.com matt@MzeroA.com Paragon Flight School Fort Meyers FL: http://paragonflight.com/ See AOPA’s Video On Why Paragon Is The Best Place To Fly. Click On The Video Under “Best Flight School” http://flighttraining.aopa.org/awards.html MzeroA’s Private Pilot Blueprint: http://bit.ly/1OFrF0H
Rank #1: Common Carriage, Private Carriage and Holding Out.
In this podcast Jason answers your questions regarding the differences between Common and Private Carriage. And, what is “Holding Out?”
Rank #2: The Hardest Part of your Commercial Pilot Certificate.
In this episode, Jason talks about what he believes is the most difficult aspect of becoming a certificated Commercial Pilot.
A Good Pilot Is Always Learning
Rank #1: Mock Checkride.
Listen in as Jason administers a mock check ride as Matt prepares for his Instrument Pilot check ride.
Rank #2: IFR Acronyms.
MDA, MEA, MSA. There are so many altitude acronyms in IFR flying. In this episode, Jason helps you cut through the clutter and identify IFR altitude acronyms.
A Good Pilot Is Always Learning
Rank #1: 3 Ways to Improve Radio Communications.
Learning proper ATC radio communications early on is crucial for success as a Private Pilot.
Rank #2: The Private Pilot Checkride.
Jason and the MzeroA.com team have built an entire business around helping students pass their checkrides. Hear his best tips for preparing for your Private Pilot check ride.
4 (Student) Pilots hangar flying about their experiences with flight training and enjoying all things aviation.
Rank #1: Episode 72: Trouble with iPads.
We are back! Chris flies to Catalina, Brad cancels some flights, and John still wishes he could fly. Links Flying Wing Black Widow Seneca Windshield Heating Element Aviation News Talk Podcast Episode about CO Poising Crash
Rank #2: Episode 61: There was no screaming.
In this much delayed (but still excellent episode!) Brad goes mountain flying and John went to Sun n Fun and is about to have a baby. Links Mountain blocking airport on base The lone tree in Nebraska
Your go-to source for IFR communication procedures and techniques
Rank #1: Enroute ATC: Traffic and Radar Handoffs.
If your IFR training was like mine, you spent a lot of time taking radar vectors to instrument approaches using approach control service. Less time was spent working with enroute center controllers. Communicating with an enroute controller at an air route traffic control center (ARTCC) is its own special skill. In today’s show, we’ll look at ARTCC communication during traffic avoidance vectors and during radar handoffs. Show Notes and Resources: AIM 5−3−1. ARTCC Communications 2. An ARTCC is divided into sectors. Each sector is handled by one or a team of controllers and has its own sector discrete frequency. As a flight progresses from one sector to another, the pilot is requested to change to the appropriate sector discrete frequency. Notice how the following statement in the AIM has no requirement to repeat the numbers of an assigned radio frequency. AIM 4−2−3. Contact Procedures d. Acknowledgement of Frequency Changes. 1. When advised by ATC to change frequencies, acknowledge the instruction. If you select the new frequency without an acknowledgement, the controller’s workload is increased because there is no way of knowing whether you received the instruction or have had radio communications failure. More info about: Radio Mastery for IFR Pilots Everything you need to know to talk to Air Traffic Control while flying IFR Trying to decide which radio headset to buy? Check out my Headset Buyer’s Guide at ATCcommunication.com.
Rank #2: Flying an Approach Into an Uncontrolled Pattern.
You are flying an ILS approach into an uncontrolled pattern. The weather in the pattern permits VFR. There are other pilots buzzing around the airport. As you change from ATC’s frequency to the airport’s common traffic advisory frequency, what are you thinking about? Completing that ILS? Sure. If you are like me, you are thinking about whether another plane established in the pattern is going conflict with you as you arrive on short approach. Here’s what you can do to avoid turning your single-wing airplane into a biplane at the point where your ILS straight-in crosses paths with VFR aircraft on base-to-final. Show Notes: Aeronautical Information Manual 4-1-9 4−1−9. Traffic Advisory Practices at Airports Without Operating Control Towers TBL 4−1−1 Summary of Recommended Communication Procedures Under “Practice Instrument Approaches”, “No Tower, FSS, UNICOM”–Make a position report: “Departing final approach fix (name) or final approach segment inbound.” Coincident with VFR procedures, inbound to the airport: “Report 10 miles out. Report leaving the runway.” My Techniques 15 miles or more out, with time, workload, and radio traffic permitting, either request off frequency with ATC or quickly switch to UNICOM on Radio 2 and announce: Example– “Fenway Traffic, Skyhawk 9130 Delta, 15 miles northwest, inbound ILS Runway 15, full stop, Fenway.” After ATC says, “Radar service terminated. Frequency change approved,” make another position report, time and workload permitting: Example– “Fenway Traffic, Skyhawk 9130 Delta, 10 miles northwest, 5,500, ILS Runway 15 inbound, full stop, Fenway.” At 2 to 3 miles from landing, make a last chance report: Example– “Fenway Traffic, Skyhawk 9130 Delta 2-mile final, Runway 15, full stop, Fenway.” Report leaving the runway: Example– “Fenway Traffic, Skyhawk 9130 Delta, exiting Runway 15, Fenway.”
What does it take to master flying and become an airline pilot? Join me on my journey from private pilot to commercial airline pilot through the wonders of an accelerated flight school.
Rank #1: AFSP 002 – Aeronautical University, Flying Club, FBO, or Accelerated Flight School?.
Before you begin flight training, you need to know what your training options are. Should you attend an Aeronautical University, join a local Flying club, hire a CFI from an FBO, or attend an Accelerated Flight School? There are many differences between these options and I cover them here.Aviation Careers Podcast: http://www.aviationcareerspodcast.com/AOPA Flying Club Finder: https://www.aopa.org/CAPComm/flyingclubs/flyingclubfinder/GI Bill Flight Training Information: http://benefits.va.gov/gibill/flight_training.asp
Rank #2: AFSP 003 – Week 1: Steep Turns, Stalls, and Pattern Work.
The fun has begun!!! Yes! I have finally started my flight training! The first week of training has been amazing. It feels so good to be back behind the controls.Let's get right into things. We dove into some steep turns (and I sucked!), did some power on and power off stalls, and spend two entire days on pattern work. Boy did I need that pattern work! Hop on in, folks, and enjoy episode 3!SHOW NOTES:Live ATC: www.liveatc.net / m.liveatc.net
How to communicate effectively and confidently with air traffic control. For pilots of all experiences levels, flying VFR or IFR.
Rank #1: How to Switch from Approach to Tower Control.
“Chestnut 372 Victor Charlie, you’re six miles north of the airport. Contact Propinquity Tower on 119.6.” That is how the switch from Approach Control to Tower Control should sound. Does it always happen that way? We’ll rip it apart in this week’s show and see what the pieces tell us.Last time in our story, I asked you some important questions about how you would use the Aircraft Radio Simulator. Yeah, I’m talking about the software I’ve had in development since the Late Pleistocene Epoch. I’ve got your answers from the survey on this subject. The results are going to surprise you.Got a good question for you about how the ILS hold short line affects pilots flying VFR. That’s right, sometimes IFR approaches affect VFR.All that, plus listener emails and that twice-a-month brain cramp, Your Question of the Week. I’d tell you more but time is a-wasting and we’ve got a huge show to navigate. Roll the mp3 player!Show Notes: A listener writes: “I am 10 miles out [from the airport], usually where I am making my call to Tower to notify them that I am inbound for landing, but I am still stuck on ATC [approach control] for flight following. . . Had I not terminated Flight Following, would Longview Approach have sequenced me in, and had me contact the Tower, say 5 or so miles out?” Approach Control or ARTCC will always switch you to tower control before you enter Tower’s airspace. This applies whether you are flying VFR or IFR. You normally maintain your discrete transponder code when switching from Approach to Tower because most towers have their own radar display in the tower cab. Your discrete transponder code allows the tower control to view vital information about your aircraft on the tower’s radar display. If you ever find yourself in a situation where you believe the controller has forgotten or overlooked your flight, do speak up. You and the controller are both working for a safe flight. Help each other out. The results of a survey regarding the Aircraft Radio Simulator are in, and no, I cannot offer the final version of the simulator for free. I explain why in this segment of the show. You only need to hold short of the ILS hold short line when tower tells you to do so. There are very specific criteria Tower uses to activate the ILS hold short line. If Tower does not tell you to hold short of it, taxi like it isn’t there. The question about the ILS hold short line comes from my Twitter feed. You may follow me at twitter.com/jeff_atc for more tips and techniques when talking with ATC. Use the Twitter icon in the upper right corner of this website or use this link. Do you have experience with any of the following flight schools: ATP, Aerosim, Wayman, Dean, ADF? If so, get in touch with me at jeff@atccommunication.com. There is a listener in Venezuela who is interested in attending one of these schools and he needs more information. Your Question of the Week:You are departing VFR from a Class Charlie airport. Before you taxied out to the active runway, the clearance delivery controller in the airport tower gave you a discrete transponder code to squawk and a frequency to contact departure control. You have lifted off of the runway and you are climbing away from the airport. The last thing the tower controller said to you was: “Cleared for takeoff.” You are now 7 miles from the airport, well beyond the boundary of the tower’s airspace, and you have not heard anything further from the tower controller. What, if anything, should you say on the radio?When you think you know the answer to that question, go to the link atccommunication.com/answers. There you will find a complete answer along with a full explanation of how that answer was derived.
Rank #2: Radar Contact: Airport Traffic Pattern Position Reports.
This photo has nothing to do with this article. A photo of an A-10 just increases the overall quality of the website.You are approaching an uncontrolled airport traffic pattern and you need to know where other pilots are in the traffic pattern. How do you get that information? Two ways. You call on the radio for an airport traffic advisory. You also listen to the flow of position reports from other pilots established in the airport pattern. What you do not do is say, “Traffic in the area, please advise.” I’ll explain why in this week’s show.Flight levels are those altitudes at or above 18,000 feet MSL, right? In the United States, yes. Everywhere else? Not necessarily. In this week’s show we’ll talk about flight levels because if you fly outside of the United States, you don’t have to be in a jet to reach a flight level. You may enter the flight level regime as low as 4,000 feet in some places.Wanna be a test pilot? Here’s your chance. I’m running a test of the most important component of the Aircraft Radio Simulator today. You get to take it on a test run. I’ll explain how in this week’s show. Show Notes: The Aeronautical Information Manual (AIM) says, “Traffic in the area, please advise” is not a recognized Self−Announce Position and/or Intention phrase and should not be used under any condition.” (Chapter 4, Paragraph g. 1.) “Traffic in the area, please advise” is not necessary anyways. Just listen to Unicom at an uncontrolled airport and you’ll get all of the information you need from other pilots’ position reports. If the radio is silent for a long period of time, that is a traffic advisory in itself–there’s likely no aircraft in the airport pattern. Position reports and traffic advisories are no substitute for disciplined and continuous clearing for traffic while in an airport pattern. There may be pilots in the airport pattern operating without a radio or pilots in the pattern operating without a brain. In the U.S. flight levels begin at 18,000 feet MSL unless the local altimeter is extremely low. Outside of the U.S. flight levels may begin at other altitudes, depending on the country in which you are flying. In Europe, ATC says flight levels with double zeros differently than in the U.S. U.S. ATC: “Climb and maintain flight level two zero zero.” European ATC equivalent: “Climb and maintain flight level two hundred.” (20,000 feet with the altimeter set to 29.92 inches or 1013 Hectopascals.) I talked about all this recently at my Twitter feed: http://twitter.com/atc_jeff. My Twitter feed is all about radio procedures, tips, and techniques with some miscellaneous info about flying. If you follow me on Twitter, I won’t waste your time with off-topic tweets. A test of the Aircraft Radio Simulator’s speech recognition module is now online and available to try out. Read all of the instructions at the test page before trying the test. Following the directions will produce accurate test data. Please tell me about your results by using the 3-question survey at the end of the test. If the pop-up is suppressed by your computer’s pop-up blocker, click the link near the top of the test page to produce the survey. Update for 27 November 2013: The reference to the speech recognition test module mentioned in this show is no longer applicable. I have taken the test module offline. If you had a chance to try the test module, thank you for your help. I’ll have more announcements about development of the Aircraft Radio Simulator in future Radar Contact Shows. Your Question of the WeekYou have just completed your engine run-up near the runway at an uncontrolled airport. You are holding short of the only runway for Hometown Airport. This airport has a published left traffic pattern for Runway Two and you are facing the left downwind as you prepare to enter the runway. Just as you are about to advance the throttle of your aircraft to take the runway you hear someone key their microphone and say on Unicom, “Hometown traffic, Aerostar 304 Uniform Mike, base leg, Runway Two, Hometown.” You scan the base leg and see nothing. You check the final approach path and see nothing. You check the downwind leg and see nothing. Here’s your question. Remembering there is only one runway at this airport, what would you do at this point?When you think you know the answer to the question go to ATCcommunication.com/answers. There you will find the full answer along with a complete explanation of how that answer was derived.As always, if you have questions of your own, you may always reach me at jeff@ATCcommunication.com.
Fly Smart. Fly Safe.
Rank #1: SMAC078 Obtaining Your Instrument Rating.
Pre-Flight Checklist Everyone is here tonight except for Sean, starting the discussion with airplane shaped foods. Cruise Flight Victoria kicks us off with a discussion of getting her Instrument Flight Rating and keeping your rating. This leads into a discussion of best practices for training, and how to handle communicating with the tower and keeping […] The post SMAC078 Obtaining Your Instrument Rating appeared first on Stuck Mic AvCast - An Aviation Podcast About Learning to Fly, Living to Fly, & Loving to Fly.
Rank #2: SMAC105 Preparing for a Real In-Flight Emergency.
Pre-Flight Checklist Carl, Rick, Larry, Eric, and Sean are here, as well as a special guest Tom Frick. Carl realized recently that he is an “AV Geek,” or Aviation Geek. Announcements Eric had a big signing ceremony today with ExpressJet, as Polk State’s Aerospace program entered into Expressjet’s Airline Pilot Pathway Program, which gives their […] The post SMAC105 Preparing for a Real In-Flight Emergency appeared first on Stuck Mic AvCast - An Aviation Podcast About Learning to Fly, Living to Fly, & Loving to Fly.
Welcome to the SimpleFlight Radio show! We are here to help you define your personal aviation lifestyle. We've got the tips, pilot hacks and introductions to the people who give their aviation secrets.
Rank #1: VMC into IMC January 26th, 2014.
When tonight's scheduled guest had an unexpected and unavoidable issue come up preventing her from being on the show, Al and Marc had to pick up their scan and focus on aviating the show for the full two hour schedule. No problem for these two #avgeeks, who always have something to say about general aviation.Listen in as the show kicks off with a great debate about a pass or fail check ride scenario brought to light by the guys at BoldMethod (www.boldmethod.com). Would you pass the applicant?The rest of the show was a random stream of consciousness covering everything from the impossible turn, when to pull the chute, flight sims, aviation maintenance scholarships, and whether a stick shaker played a role in the Aspen Challenger crash.Wishing all of you, strong tailwinds and blue skies!
Rank #2: DIAMOND GIRL; YOU SURE DO SHINE August 17th, 2014.
Online Ground School & Flight Training
Rank #1: AviatorCast Episode 88: Rod Machado: Flight Instructor | Becomeapilot.com | Speaker | Edutainment.
Today’s Flight Plan At some point along the way, several education departments in the aviation industry decided that learning to fly had to be scary, sad and boring. Well, that’s just not how flying really is. Flying is a joy. So why not have training that matches that joy? Today we’re honored to have Rod Machado on the program. Rod is long time flight instructor, speaker, and entertainer. He believes in ‘edutainment’, a mix between education and entertainment. This is something we believe in big time here at Angle of Attack, and on AviatorCast. Join us as we talk to Rod about his insight into flying. What can pilots do to get better stick and rudder skills? Why is flying still the coolest thing around? How can a pilot keep and maintain a lifelong commitment to learning? All these questions and more in this great episode. Useful Links Becomeapilot.com Don’t forget the Coupon Code ALASKA. Use at checkout to get 20% off storewide until May 27th, 2016. Credits Rod Machado Huge thanks to Rod of joining us! A very enlightening and inspiring conversation. I always find myself learning something from this guy. Crew Major thanks to the amazing Angle of Attack Crew for all their hard work over the years. Our team works incredibly hard, and they’re very passionate about what they do. Now What? iTunes Subscribe Want to get regular updates through iTunes? This is the easiest way to automatically download your podcast, and take it on the go. Make sure to SUBSCRIBE HERE. Email Signup Want us to let you know via email when episodes of AviatorCast are released? We can do that, too. SIGNUP ABOVE. Get Started Today! Want to get started with some of our video training? Go to our main page and signup for Aviator90 (our basic and free course) or other pay products we have. Transcript [transcript] This is AviatorCast episode 88! Sticking the rudder smooth as butter! Calling all aviators, pilots, flight sim enthusiasts and aviation lovers, you’ve landed at AviatorCast! Join us weekly in our efforts to become better masters of the air through interviews, refreshers, lessons, training topics, simulator set-up, hangar talk, news and more! Buckle up and prepare yourself for this week’s episode of AviatorCast! Preflight complete, fuel on board and flight plan filed. Let’s kick the tires and light the fires! Here’s your humble host, Chris Palmer! Chris: Welcome, welcome, welcome aviators, you’ve landed at AviatorCast. My name is Chris Palmer, regardless of where my skill level is at as a pilot, I’m always looking for ways to improve and progress. Where am I lacking? What haven’t I tried before? What can I do better? One of the biggest joys of aviation is how much there is to learn. The limits of learning go far beyond the sky and personally, I’m dedicated to a life of learning in aviation. Welcome to this, the 88th episode of AviatorCast, it is my pleasure to welcome you here. This podcast is brought to you by Angle of Attack, a Flight Training Media Production Studio. If you haven’t been to AviatorCast before let me tell you what it’s all about. AvaiatorCast is obviously a place where we bring a lot of aviation passion and get pretty excited about flying things. First and foremost, that’s all were about is passion and really we’re about a passion for learning continued learning. You heard that in some of my opening statements. We bring on inspiring aviators and interviewed them and find out about their story or asked them about their knowledge and things that they have to teach us. Again, growing our knowledge, we get inside into the industry and track what the industry is doing, how that affects new pilots, current pilots, and pilots that maybe want to get back into flying so we talked about that too, getting back into flying, reigniting that flame or maybe you’re starting for the first time. We’ll talk about the getting the courage to do that, the steps it takes, all those sort of things to demystify flying because really at the end of the day if you put your work into it and you’re passionate about it, I believe that everyone can become a pilot so long as you’re financially and medically able. Even those things, you don’t really have many excuses because they’re still is a way. Alright so we have a fantastic episode lined up for you today. I lined up Rod Machado on the podcast today. He is a fantastic speaker and educator in the flight training industry a long time instructor. I just really like his style and he’s a funny cool guy and very intelligent about aviation so I’m happy to have him on the show to ask him some questions for your benefit, for your learning, and for my learning too. Before we get to that, I always read a review on the podcast from either iTunes or Stitcher or some of the other podcasts avenues out there where you can get this podcast and feel free to subscribe by the way. That’s a great way to make sure that you don’t miss anything so this review comes to us today from Scott Heizer and it comes on Stitcher and I actually know Scott. I met him in Oshkosh. He hadn’t heard about my podcast before, but his friend had loved the podcast. His friend got a Fly or Die t-shirt himself. He actually got number one. He got the Fly or Die t-shirt and Scott is just now reviewing the show so I’m going to sending him a t-shirt so here’s Heizer’s review. He says, “For pilots, dreamers, and even simulators. I had the pleasure meeting Chris from AviatorCast through my buddy Glen last year at Oshkosh.” I kind of already mentioned that. “I’ve been listening to this show since. One of the things about Aviation is Aviators usually say, ‘Immerse yourself in aviation.’ And this podcast certainly helps do that. I was literally just working on my experimental RV7 aircraft, which I’m just getting started on. I wasn’t feeling very motivated so I cued up AviatorCast and next thing I know, I’m knocking out portions of my project and an hour went by. I was right there with experience the Stohl competition in Valdez, Alaska, completely forgetting that only an hour earlier, I was lacking motivation to do much of anything. If you’re reading this review, I can certainly attest that AviatorCast covers a wide range of aviation topics. Come on in and be welcomed to the community-like family.” Summed it up perfectly man. I really appreciate you sending in that review. Totally awesome, I’m going to send you an AviatorCast, a Fly or Die t-shirt it is, something you’d be proud of wearing it doesn’t have AviatorCast all over it. Just a cool flying shirt that you can wear and Scott, I’m going to send that to you before Oshkosh even so maybe you can wear it at Oshkosh one of those days and I’ll see you there. Really appreciate that, if you guys want a Fly or Die t-shirt as well, feel free to leave a review on iTunes, Stitcher or some other location. If you do leave a review, just write me right away and tell me that you’ve done it, me@AviatorCast.com so I can be aware of who you are. If I ever read your review on the podcast then I’ll make sure to get a shirt sent out to you, really appreciate that. Alright so I’m excited to get into this interview with Rod. He is an awesome guy. I just love the humor that he weaves into his teaching moments, very cool guy so let’s get right into it. Here is Hanger Talk with Rod Machado. Now a special Hangar Talk Segment. Alright everyone, we’re honored to have a very special guest with us today. We have Rob Machado with us. How are you doing Rod? Rod: I’m doing very well, Chris. Very well, thank you. Chris: It’s an honor to have you on the program. Last year, I was helping my wife with her job down in the harbor here in Alaska. I was helping her clean boats and I was listening to your wonderful books on flying and just having a great time with all the knowledge that you had so if you can for just a moment, please tell the audience what it is you do and what you’re known for if they haven’t heard your name before. Rod: Chris, pretty much what I do is I’ve been a flight instructor since 1973 and I teach people how to fly and right now, I’m doing a lot more proficiency flights and general familiarization flights and I’ve been writing books for the past 30 years and I’ve written and illustrated personally, I do all of my own writing and all of my own illustrations, but written and illustrated seven aviation books. Six of which are textbooks and textbooks, how to fly books, and useful books that every pilot can find benefit from and audio books and videotapes. I’m currently involved in creating quite a few eLearning type courses, integrated electronic eLearning courses that you know, nowadays people like to be more engaged on their computer. It’s wonderful way to learn so that’s what I’m doing right now and I have about of these interactive courses on my website at RodMachado.com or BecomeAPilot.com. They both go to the same place. Chris: Perfect, so if you can, tell people as little about what sets your training material apart from other people’s training material because what I really like about what you do is you inject a lot of humor in it, but at the same time there’s this deep knowledge involved in the process so share a little bit about maybe the unique things that you do that other people don’t. Rod: Sure and I’m sorry for coughing there. Chris: No worries. Rod: I should take up smoking. I already have the cough. No, I don’t want to do that because the surgeon general once said that smoking was four times worse than they originally thought and they originally thought it would kill you so I mean, that’s bad. I have to stay away from that. Chris what I do in terms of how I teach is I use a process called Edutainment and it’s a way of—it’s a philosophy, it’s nothing new to me of course, but it’s something that I do. Philosophy of teaching people using humor as essentially behavior modification tool, I learned a long time ago and I went to school and studied psychology for many years. You can learn this just as a practical matter. When teaching round school, especially the accelerated type of ground school, you can—you need to get people’s attention and you can get their attention in one or two ways. You can either make them cry or you can make them laugh and it’s a lot better to make them laugh because they like you more for it versus making them cry with let’s say with drama and tear jerking stories and so on so I guess use humor as a way of reinforcing points, keeping people’s attention and of course the ultimate benefit for me is I just—it’s just a lot of fun. It’s a lot of fun teaching people, engaging them, and getting them to pay attention to you, but humor is the ultimate behavior reinforcement tool. I just want to make sure people understand humor is not necessarily telling you jokes and I spent ten years in comedy clubs, not doing standup, but studying the comedians. That’s what I do. I study people and learn the skills that they have and then try to replicate them, to acquire them, and turn them into something useful I can use and that’s one way, telling jokes is one way of getting people’s attention. Being playful with people is another and I’m always very playful on the cockpit when I’m training people. Playful to the, with the intent of helping them acquire behaviors and in a much more fluent and accelerated and that’s an extremely effective thing to do. You know, when I say playful too, you know I’m—as somebody does something, they put us into a spin, you know, I may say something like an understatement like, “Well that’s not exactly the type of entry I was looking for and decide we’ve got to do something about the Earth spinning underneath us right now so I think I’ll take the controls.” You have to be light of tongue so to speak, but being playful is something that every single person can do because we all have that playful instinct within us, and it’s every—the thing I think a flight instructor’s capable of doing if they just get into that mindset, but remember you never want us to mistake kindness for weakness so playful and yet having standards is extremely important in the flight instructor position. Chris: I remember you talking about that when I saw you speak and I think it was at that moment when I realized I had to have you on the podcast, not only the way you that you teach and your philosophy on this edutainment if you will, but also the fact that you have those standards and you set those standards so why don’t you talk about those standards a little bit and what you mean by that. Rod: Sure, I learned to fly, I’m so proud of this. I never really thought about it, but it taunted me about six months ago. I learned to fly in a War Bird. Yes, I learned to fly in a War Bird, a Taylorcraft L-2 and so that’s my one claim to fame at the moment, but I learned to fly in a school and I know you read aviation and the instructors there were all the prime of the—if not, the direct applicators of stick and rudder flying or a World War II stick and rudder flying skills. I learned some fairly good, basic flying skills, and I realized that in World War II of course, if you didn’t have good stick and rudder skills, you simply were unable to survive. Chris: Right. Rod: It was impossible. You had to know to how to fly your machine. That’s why an instructor or a pilot in World War II can jump from a P38 to a D51 or a vice a versa by simply reading the manual and we you know we’d probably have a hard time doing that today, but again, they knew how to fly and apply those principles from one airplane to the next and that’s what I did. When I started flight training in 1973, when I began teaching people to fly starting in 1970, but I began teaching people to fly in 1973, that was something that I thought was extremely important and so I made it a point to understand that students understood the concept of altitude instrument. I’m sorry, altitude VFR flying. You know, altitude plus power equals performance and the concept of flying the wing, which is extremely important and that allowed me to train students in such a way that they were masters of their machine. Today, I’m not so sure that that philosophy of stick and rudder flying is as important to many instructors as it was when I was learning to fly and by that I mean that today, we’re not as much—oh let’s say, stick and rudder oriented as we are interface oriented and by that, I mean that we are in a sense today more interfaced pilots than we are stick and rudder pilots, interfacing meaning that work with the equipment in the airplane to fly the airplane versus the flying the airplane directly. Now not all the time, but just as general statement. Chris: That’s one of the points I wanted to get to actually pretty quickly was where was the stick and rudder skills maybe when you started as an instructor and where it is now so I really like that idea of the interface pilots. That’s actually the perfect example and I know exactly what you mean when you say that because we’re in the world of glass cockpits now and iPads and things of that nature, which are kind of keeping us heads down and maybe not active with our limbs so what’s the answer to that? How can we get back to those stick and rudder skills as pilots and maybe if you could answer a little bit how can the education community, flight instructors out there help out with that as well? Rod: Well, number one, I think that to understand stick and rudder flying, you have to go back to the very basics of flight and as I mentioned, that would be altitude plus power equals performance, flying the wing, being able to look at the wing and many flight situations determine the angle of the tap, being able to fly by the seat of your pants. Assuming you wear pants when you fly, I recommend it especially on your check ride. That confidence of feeling the airplane and think ahead of the airplane and that’s something that comes with basic training and it’s something that should be taught of course, in the formative hours of flying. Certainly, if you fly a Tail Dragger, one tends to be a little bit more adept at using his rudder or her rudder as an example and many of the airplanes we have today have a rudder or Aileron coordinations springs or cables, which makes the, well the need for rudder, not quite as great as it once was and other airplanes, but of course in strong cross winds and in conditions where you’re doing some extreme maneuvering, irrespective of the rudder or Aileron interconnections still needing to know how to use Aileron and rudder together in coordination appropriately as well as fly altitude. The answer to your question, how do you get back to that? I’ll give you an example of one having a good stick and rudder syllabus for your students and if anybody goes to my website, RobMachado.com or BecomeAPilot.com I have a private pilot syllabus that’s—you can download for free as well as a ground school syllabus for any students that wants to have a map for going through ground school on his or her own or for instructors to teach ground school. You can download those for free and I recommend you do that and the stick and rudder syllabus is something that I use to train my private students and any instructor might consider using to train their private students. Chris: Perfect, yes, I’m actually looking on your website right now at these—at your training syllabus and the ground school syllabus so that’s a really great resource. We’ll make sure to get those so I was actually listening to your book. It was How to Fly an Airplane and you know I have about 700 hours. I don’t have a great amount of hours, but I kind of thought that I knew a little bit about flying an airplane, but when listening to your book, I found all these little intricate details about the controls and things that I could be doing different and how I could be thinking ahead of the airplane more. Give us some idea—some general exercises or some general ways that interface pilot can go back to the beginning and maybe exercises that you would put them through to get them those stick and rudder skills that maybe they didn’t get in the beginning of their training. Rod: Great question, Chris. Here’s what I would do first if—I would find an instructor who has a philosophy of stick and rudder altitude baseline and take some training with this individual and there are instructors out there that of course understand these principles. I meet quite a few instructors that understand those principles and emphasize with their students, good stick and rudder flying skills. That would be the first thing. The second thing is and here’s a shameless plug from my book, but my How to Fly an Airplane handbook talks about for example of the many things it talks about in terms of this philosophy. Making a turning airplane—when you make a turn in an airplane, the questions is how much rudder do you use, entering the turn and once established in the turn. Let’s say—let’s talk about just entering the turn and when you turn to the right or you turn to the left, the Aileron is rolled into the turn by using Aileron of course and the adverse yaw caused by the Aileron that goes down is in instances what yaws the airplane to the outside of the turn. The problem with that is that if you look at the ball, let’s say the ball and the inclinometer, the same ball that—well if I—when I was a student, if they had put cold Vaseline in that inclinometer too—I would have gotten that ball to bang against the side of the case, one side or the other. That’s one way of developing a sense of how to coordinate the controls, but there’s a far better way that should be taught from the very beginning. When you roll into the turn, you use enough rudder to make sure the airplane knows points in the direction you’re turning and that means as you roll into the turn, you apply enough rudder to compensate for the adverse yaw and that means just rolling in the very short period of time that that takes to roll in and establish the bank, a fraction of second. The nose actually doesn’t move. The airplane just rotates around the longitudinal axis. Now once the turn is established, then you can back off on that rudder, but the roll in is what you’re looking at to apply rudder to make sure the nose at least doesn’t yaw outside direction turn so that’s how much rudder you know how to use. Then once established in the turn, you apply enough rudder to keep the nose pointing along the arc of turn and then you compensate and add the other sense of feel on your posterior, whether you are adding too much rudder or not enough rudder and that’s how you develop that stick and rudder sense of rudder Aileron coordination for a rolling into a turn and the same thing with rolling out of a turn. When you begin to roll out of a turn, you apply Aileron to level the wings and at that particular point as you’re rolling out, the nose actually pivots around some spot straight ahead of the airplane and what the nose shouldn’t do is yaw due to adverse yaw so consequently as you roll out of a turn, you apply enough rudder to keep the nose actually straight as the airplane rolls out. That’s the basic quality I think that a pilot should have. Those qualities, if they’ve mastered stick and rudder skills. Chris: I think that’s a really good example of what is in your How to Fly an Airplane book because I remember that specific example talking about adverse yaw and using your rudder when you’re initiating a turn and coming out of a turn and I had actually never heard that before and it ended up moving right into my practice. You know, I started to practice that a little bit. Rod: It’s one way to again that every person can improve their stick and rudder skills. I’ll give you another example, Chris. Chris: Go ahead. Rod: You got me so excited talking about this. One of the things I watch for when I’m giving you, buying a part review is if a person understand the concept of minimum effort, maximum performance and by that, I mean in the traffic pattern, flying the airplane generally anywhere, but in the traffic because that tends to be that—let’s say the crucible where one’s stick and—well where one’s—let’s say improper piloting techniques are seen in full display and we’re good stick and rudder skills are quite evident. I watched a pilot—if they’re flying in the traffic pattern, I watch them very carefully and I see how much work they’re doing because if they’re working too hard what that means is, in other words, too hard to fly the airplane. They’re not thinking about where that airplane is going. They’re not able to plot planning scheme to put the airplane exactly where they want on the runway if they even put it on the runway, the one they were aiming at so and the point there is, I’ll give you an example, turning from downwind to base. Turning from downwind to base, assuming that you own the traffic pattern in this case and there are no other airplanes in the pattern, you turn from downwind to base and let’s say you’re close enough, you pull the power back and when people pull the power back, generally what they’ll do is they’ll kind of establish an altitude, the carburetor heat of course if appropriate. They’ll establish an altitude and then they’ll give it a little bit of trim and they’ll reestablish the altitude for the proper air speed, give it some more trim. A person is a good stick and rudder pilot, doesn’t want to work that hard. That pilot will turn the airplane and once established on base, pitch the airplane for the altitude he or she knows is going to give the airspeed they want or somewhere in the proximate altitude given the air speed they want. Then hit that trim and trim that airplane very quick to keep that airplane right at that altitude. It only takes two or three good twists of the trim to keep the airplane right there and now it’s a done deal. Then if they have to adjust the altitude a little bit, they can do that, but this doesn’t take a long time, it’s something that happens quickly. It’s that concept of altitude plus power equals performance and that allows then once they do that, turning base, turning final, turning from crosswind to downwind, what have you to put the airplane where they want with a minimum effort and therefore, now they’re able to look outside, they’re able to look at the run way and then do what pilots do best and that is think. Think about how they’re going to fly their airplane safely. Chris: That’s a really good example and it makes me wonder what it would be like to have you in the right seat watching me do that and what I would do and so it almost makes me want to be really honest with myself about what I’m actually doing. I guess kind of as a self-evaluation exercise if someone didn’t have Rob Machado on the right seat, they could even self evaluate with maybe a Go Pro. Film what you’re actually doing and the traffic pattern. Don’t look at the scenery out front the airplane, film what you’re hands are doing and how you’re handling things and that’ll give you an idea of I guess how busy you are. How busy you’re keeping yourself? Rod: I think that’s actually a great idea because it is hard to self evaluate, mainly because it’s you know, it’s hard to be self reflective when you’re flying an airplane and moving several thousand pounds of sheet metal or plastic through the air and your job is to put it on a runway. You can’t be thinking, what am I doing now or maybe I should be doing this? Well you can be thinking that, but you can’t do it enough to perhaps offer yourself a honest critique or a thorough critique of your behavior. I really like that idea. That’s a good one. Chris: Do you have any other common problems and solutions that you see that pilots have today, especially these interface pilots that you’re mentioning? Rod: You bet. I used to call them panel pilots because the pilots, well when they give biennial flight review, what I’ll typically do is bet the person if I haven’t flown this person this before, I’ll be them that they’re not going to look outside enough and that they will get close to traffic and keep in mind, I’m in Southern California and there are a lot of airplanes here. Chris: Yes, yes. Rod: Of course, they’ll hey you’re on and I’ll bet them a coke or a soda pop and so what I’ll do is we’ll take off and of course people with movie map displays are typically looking at the movie map display more often than they are looking at the lets say five to seven actual gigantic moving map displays they have in the airplane, which are called windows. I’ll just wait until an airplane is off in the distance and I’ll say, let’s turn right headed 35 zero degrees, they’ll turn. They won’t look and say, “Clear right, clear left” or whichever we return. They’ll turn and then I’ll say, “Ha, looks like I get a coke this afternoon” because we’re pointed right toward another airplane and this happens. I bet it happens eight out of ten times on air you know assuming that the airplane’s nearby. People won’t look. Looking for traffic, I’ve almost come to the point Chris where I’m wondering whether it’s actually possible now to teach people to look out for traffic given all the goodies in an airplane so it’s a real challenge. That’s one of the things and that’s why called them panel pilots and now with interface pilots, which I think is a more appropriate term people are spending a great deal of time controlling the automation in the airplane and the only saving grace there is something called his TAS and ADSB where you actually do have some traffic monitoring that is providing them with some degree of heads up information regarding traffic, but you know, nothing beats a good old pair of eyeballs quite frankly and I know it works because I spent now 43 years flying in the LA Basin so I have a very good idea to eyeballs do work when it comes to warding traffic. You have to use them. Chris: What’s your favorite scanning technique that you use. Is it by the book or do you have your own type of technique that you use? Rod: Yes, it’s calling looking outside. That’s my favorite scanning technique. Actually, I used to know a military technique. Military had the best technique for VFR flying and that is on a 17 second cycle. You spend three seconds inside looking at your panel, looking at whatever you want to look at maybe looking at the Hobbs Meter and making sure it’s not running too fast and the ultimate fear to any pilot is a one way Hobbs Meter as you well know. Out of that 17 seconds cycle then 14 seconds are spent looking outside so three seconds inside, 14 seconds outside and what you’re doing is divvying up the time in that proportion while looking outside and taking chunks of airspace, maybe 20 degrees in scope as you take that chunk, you look at that through that 20 degree span. Then you look off in the distance, focus, then look at another 20 degree chunk off in the distance and focus and try to do that systematically. I spent a lot of time looking behind me when I’m in an environment that has faster, you know, let’s say I’m training in a Cessna 150, which means you are defacto. The slowest airplane a loft at any one time. Chris: Yes. Rod: Of course I’m just kidding, but maybe not and therefore you know, you’re more likely to have somebody over take you and when you look at AOPA’s accident database, you’ll find that 82% of all mid airs that occur typically occur with one airplane overtaking another, a faster one overtaking a smaller one. That’s pretty scary when we think about it so we need to look behind us. How do we do that? Well, if you can’t bend your head to the side and look which I used to be able to do when I was in my early 30s, a little harder to do now so what I do is I just make a turn and look behind me, assuming I don’t have windows back where to look through. I just make a turn and see what’s behind me and that’s a very effective way to do this. Same way military pilots used to do when they checked their six so to speak to see if they were—they an enemy target behind them or enemy pursuer. Chris: Perfect so as a pilot gets a little more experienced and a little more self confident in their skills what would your recipe be for some humble pie to make sure that that person stay’s in a good mindset to continue to be safe. Rod: If you’re asking what maneuver I would have them practice if that’s what you’re talking about. Let me give you two things. I’ll give you the psychological aspect and the physical aspect. Chris: Perfect, yes. Rod: I can tell how well a pilot flies an airplane by having them do one maneuver and this has never failed me. It works so well. We’ll be in the practice area and then I’ll ask him to give me some slow fly to minimum control blow air speed and that’ll be with a stall warning horn or right audible or visible. You can feel this of course in the airplane’s—the buffeting as the boundary layer begins to separate depending on the airplane of course that you’re flying. In that condition and then I’ll have the make right turns, left turns, climbs and descends and slow fly and if they can do that and keep the airplane coordinated, they are definitely masters of their machine. I would suggest and I say this as a general caution. Have them practice that in a long time go up to art least 3,000 feet and practice it because I’ve seen people take the airplane in slow fly, make a left turn or a right turn and put the airplane right into a spin. That is not uncommon, depending on the airplane of course. Hard to do when it’s air humid and 40, much simpler to do on a Cessna 150 because the different airplane types. Chris: Right. Rod: It’s very very very important to you know, we might even take a flight instructor up with you, but those are the maneuvers that I use as an evaluation tool and that works out really well. As far evaluating somebody psychologically, you get a flight instructor—well something somebody can do psychologically that would enhance their confidence let’s say. One of the best things a person can do is take his or her airplane and go on a cross country flight to some place you—that they have not been. Cross country flying is a tremendously helpful tool for developing what general confidence all over. It’s one of the reason’s why the—let’s say the founding fathers of general aviation that and you know those maybe Orville and Wilbur Wright of course and then all the folks who came after them, all the Jimmy Doolittle and so on. These folks, you know, were all very smart in their collective wisdom, which I can be seen in the federal aviation regulations and it used to be that we required more solo cross country time for the private pilots certificate that we do now and that was an important thing to do because it built confidence. We don’t require as much now so consequently, a private pilot or any new pilot, even an experienced pilot, if they haven’t been on many cross country flights, it’s just tremendously helpful in terms of giving them confidence to be able to put their airplane at a different airport of their choosing. You know, several hundred miles away and to return to their home base airport and then to solve all of the decisions and make all of the decisions and solve all of their problems that one has to solve on route. Chris: I totally agree with that and I think that flying gives us this great opportunity to experience something different, but I believe that doing a cross country flight gives us a purpose to fly, a mission, and I’ve always found that in my time as a pilot, I you know, I really, probably have spent more time doing cross country flights on average than I have doing the pattern work like most pilots at my hour range. The experiences and even the things you see I think just give you a lot of purpose to what you’re doing and the adventure of it and I think down to the core of it. That’s why aviation was created in the first place to get somewhere, to go somewhere, to experience something new and to explore the world, I think that’s the heart of what it is so. Rod: Oh I agree I absolutely agree. Cross country flying in a sense shows you at your best and shows you at your worst and by that I mean when it comes to making decisions if you really haven’t had practice making decisions about oh should I deviate here. Do I have enough fuel to get there and what have you? That is what cross country flying does for you. It gives you a chance to make those decisions. It puts the idea of how you can make those decisions in perspective and keeps them in your mental real house and it also shows you at your best because the moment you land in an airport 200 miles away, you get out and of course you do what I tell my students to do. Get out and claim this land for Spain and if you can stick a big flag in the ground everybody would treat you like royalty when you landed. Okay, maybe not, but the point is that it’s always so you’re just so always fun to do. I don’t know how many airports around here my students now have claimed for Spain, but I think it’s quite a few. Chris: The you know, there’s a special experience too looking in your log book over time. You know, I just transition my log book from the paper form, putting it into a digital form and the memories that I had on so many of those flights, especially the flights where I was in new territory exploring if you will just—it’s irreplaceable and I can’t imagine having spent that time just in the pattern around my home so. Rod: Oh that’s. Chris: I really like that idea. Rod: That’s very true. It’s interesting. I have yet to you know, I have like what eight or nine log books somewhere around here and I have not done—in fact, I just don’t log my time like I used to anymore. Chris: Right, yes. Rod: Except for currency as you’re required to, but the thing with digital log book, I’ve never become a big fan of those and I know my students want digital log books so I say, “Okay, fine.” I tell them to also keep a paper log book. There’s something about going to a paper log book and opening it up and flicking through it, which is typically more difficult to do digitally, but looking, seeing something in your handwriting. Let’s say after your first solo cross country flight and you look at your handwriting and it looks like it’s handwriting within EKG type script added to it because it’s jumping all over the place. Mainly because you’re knees are still knocking against each other and you know, there are subtleties that you can’t get from digital, but you know, I’m old fashioned in that way so call me old fashioned. Chris: Yes and I think there’s wisdom in keeping both even though you know keeping things in the cloud is technically safe. I don’t really trust that and plus I like having my log book here on display and it you know kind of in that same vain that you mentioned. In the front of my log book, I have a statement and I actually learned this statement from the wonderful movie One Six Wright because the guy talks about this in that movie and it says, “This is a love story, please, please, please return to this address. This person, if you find it.” Rod: Yes. Chris: That’s what it’s all about so. Rod: I think so and you said, “Keeping your log book in the closet” which is great, don’t even need an instrument ready to do that so. Chris: Yes. Rod: Sorry, I couldn’t resist. You see that’s the kind of stuff I look for. As soon as you say it, I have to say something back. Chris: Yes. Rod: It’s just the instructor I am. Chris: Yes, good, good so let’s—I want to ask a question for the younger generation if you can answer this one for me. Last night, actually, I had the boy scouts over to my house and we had a big video game party right. These young kids, they have all these options out there, all these entertainment options, can you tell us why aviation is so the coolest thing out there for these kids to do? Why if you’re thinking about getting into aviation, it’s going to be way better than any video game you could ever play or any of those things out there that may be taking their attention away. Rod: Sure, aviation has consequence. When you fly an airplane, when you’re motoring around and several hundred thousand—two or three thousand pounds of sheet metal within a motor, an engine attached to it. You have to do things right. Now don’t get me wrong. Aviation can be very safe, if I didn’t think that that were the case, I would never get in an airplane again. That’s a fact. I do believe we have control over our destiny and no, I don’t believe fate is the hunter. Nice book title, but in practice we can’t operate that way. Chris: Yes. Rod: Aviation is safe, but when a young person gets in an airplane and actually flies an airplane versus flying a video game, what happens is that young person learns something new. Yes, maybe you can learn something flying a video game or playing a video game and shoot down Klingons in and out from their home world, but realistically in an airplane, what you do has consequence and in the back of your mind you know, oh my gosh, “I’m actually flying this large piece of machine around. I’m doing what people do that was unthinkable a 100 years ago—120 years ago and now I’m doing it.” The most important thing is when you learn something new you become something new and that’s what happens. You become something new, something as a result of your having developed confidence, your having applied your skill, seen the result of that skill and there are many other attribute and derivative attributes that occur from flying an airplane and that is powerful, powerful stuff for a young person. I know that for a fact. I’ve seen the changes that it makes in young people and I can assure you with 100% certainly that the changes this flying an actual airplane makes versus flying let’s say a flight simulator. You never really getting out of your easy chair or your bathrobe, there is no comparison. It breeds a whole new type of personality again when you learn something new, you become something new. Chris: Those that do decide to get into flying and they are going to be jumping into it, what can expect and what are maybe the three top things they should be looking for. Let me just mention one I want to hear about from you, finding a good instructor, maybe wrapping into that, a good school and how do they apply themselves. I know that you probably will answer that one really well so how did they apply themselves to making sure that they become a fantastic student, not only for a license, but a student for life in aviation. Rod: Well and if I haven’t said this, you’re asking some great question by the way so. Chris: Appreciate it. Rod: Great questions, one of the most important things that anybody can do in learning to fly is to find a good instructor. Without any doubt whatsoever, it is the single most important thing for a person to do. In fact, there’s an old Chinese saying, would you like to hear it regarding instructors? Chris: Absolutely. Rod: Okay, now do you want to hear it in Mandarin or English? Okay, English it is so it’s so much more elegant in Mandarin, but it goes like this, “It is better to look for an instructor for three years than to spend even three minutes with a bad one.” That’s extremely important. How do you find a good instructor? Here’s how you do it. Go to my blog piece at RodMachado.com or BecomeAPilot.com, same site, go to the blog area and look at the article on how to find a good instructor and I list something like around 12 points in there that tell you how to go about doing that. Requires a little Gumshoe work. You have to check out the person’s reputation, there are certain questions you want to ask absolutely do not want to spend time with a bad instructor and unfortunately, like in many professions, not everyone who has a flight instructor certificate is a good instructor and perhaps, to be fair, maybe not everyone is appropriate and maybe a good instructor—maybe they’re not appropriate for you. That’s what I would recommend and if you find somebody that knows something about stick and rudder flying then that is a absolute must. You want to, you want to try to look for somebody like that. The other things that one can do and that one should do is consider having some good books to study and of course, another shameless plug I happen to have the perfect book, Private Pilot Handbook, which covers all the basics in aviation for the general knowledge and then How to Fly Handbook available in physical form as well as in digital form or audiobook form too. Again, I write these all myself. I do all of the illustrations. I do everything myself. The only thing I don’t do is print it because I can’t fit a Heidelberg Press in my garage and have room for my car so that’s the other thing and also to be fair, there are many good courses that you can take, courses that are written test prep courses that are offered by the John and Martha King ASA Sporty’s, these are all fun courses. You find something that best fits your personality and pursue that means of study. The other too Chris, if you couldn’t—if a student could attend a live ground school where you have an experienced instructor talking to you over let’s see, a nine week period, two nights a week something like that, a live ground school local to your airport then that is an absolute must if you can get in that ground school. Chris: Perfect. I’m actually looking at these blog articles that you mentioned here. You mentioned something that I want to ask of you and that is training for the certificate or training for confidence or proficiency and this is something I always wonder of really experienced instructors out there, how they answer this problem because obviously, it gets a little complex with the time that it takes to get a license and obviously, people are very eager to get their license and be able to take up their family. Obviously, money is a motivator, but can you speak to that a little bit. The difference between passing a written or passing a check ride and actually being able to perform those skills and what that takes, do you know what I’m asking there? Rod: I understand completely what you’re asking. Chris: Perfect. Rod: Again it’s a very good question. It’s a very insightful question and my response is this, first of all, private pilot certificate and this is important to remember, private pilot certificate is a license to learn. It is not a license that says you learned everything. A private pilot certificate accomplishes one goal and that is to allow you to go out by yourself and carry passengers and be safe enough to acquire additional experience. No, private pilot certificate does not say that you are qualified to fly every airplane and to fly every place in the United States under any type of VMC conditions. It doesn’t state that at all. That was never what it was intended. It is philosophically impossible to accomplish that let’s say that level of performance after you’ve spent 40 hours or so learning the skills necessary to pass a private pilot practical exam. This is something people forget about so and it’s extremely important so as a private pilot, you’re thinking, okay, I’ve got my private license, this is what I can do. I can go out and learn how to develop skills beyond what I have now. How you do that is this, you take your airplane and you go on a cross country flight. You fly a different airplane. You develop—in other words, you go out and you fly a different airplane. You get checked out in another airplane. You go to the local aerobatics school and you take aerobatic training and you develop yours and then maybe you go out with an instructor and then you perform or develop some other type of skill such as let’s say emergency landing skills. Yes, you have emergency landing skills already, but what about emergency landing skills such as engine failure on take off. Such as being directly over an airport, having the power fail and spiraling down to that airport and being able to land on that runway, which you could do at certain airports that are not too busy, which means pretty much no airport in southern California, but I’m talking about somewhere out where you don’t have that much traffic. You can do those kind of things. You can always find a way to improve your skill so, but unfortunately Chris and this is a slightly different aspect of that, today there’s a very large movement in the aviation community that wants to essentially raise the let’s—the level of thinking sophistication of the private pilot to the extent that the intent is to train a private pilot to think with—for a lack of a better phrase airline transport pilot skills, skills in terms of decision making risk assessment situation where I sit and what have you. You know what? You can do that, you can do that if you’re willing to sacrifice obtaining a private license in 40 hours. You can give a private pilot airline transport like thinking skills if you want to spend 1,500 hours with that private pilot in dual and solo flight training. It’s just not realistic to do that. My whole thing with learning, teaching people is one thing. My philosophy and my guiding statement is, “I want the average person to be able to acquire a private pilot certificate at a reasonable cost without having to jump through too many government hoops.” That is extremely important because again, we can over regulate private pilot flight training to fulfill the ideological desires of some people in aviation because they want aviation to be so safe. Yes, I want aviation to be so safe too, but there are ways to make it safe without having and to increase a pilot safety and inspiring them to be safer without having to mandate that they spend more time and more money in private pilot development and training, which eventually means, ultimately means that your average person is going to look at the curriculum for private pilot training, look at the amount of money spent and say, “Ah, there’s no way I can do this.” Go home and fly flights simulator and that’s it. Chris: I suppose that’s a crux in my question is we—I feel like we have a pretty good system right now where regardless of the school, you go to, meaning if it’s a Rating Mill or if it’s a 141 School, you’re going to get a license at a pretty reasonable hour and from there, it’s a license to learn. Just like you said and I found that in my experience, you know, once I hit private pilot. I started doing a lot of cross country and at that time, I started flying with more experienced instructors, was very blessed to be able to do that and it completely changed my perspective, you know. Rod: That’s very wise by the way because you ferreted out more experienced instructors after you acquired a private pilot certificate and what you did was you went to this is the best analog for that, you went to graduate school for private pilot training because you found a different instructor and sort of like you became a Rhodes Scholar and apprenticed yourself to this one individual and that’s Rhodes Scholar, not Road Scholar, R-O-A-D. I want to make sure you got that or rodent scholar, I did not say that. You raised your level of awareness that way and that was—that’s brilliant on your part, but again, what we do in aviation is we want to get the private pilot qualified. To think with the highest order thinking skills all up front, which is physically impossible to do without having to have that person spend more time and more money and in essence drive them out of aviation. At least, that’s what I worry about so inspiring private pilots, people who are newly readied to then go on and develop these thinking skills that’s what I like to do. It’s what I do and I like to think I might be effective at that with some of the things I write and my lectures and things like that, but that’s my ambition. Chris: I certainly think you are so one last question I have for you before we part ways here and that is how does a pilot, any pilot at any level, whether you’re a brand new student pilot or you’re a 10,000 hour pilot. How do we collectively and individually commit ourselves to life long learning, continually learning? What are the steps or even maybe it’s just a psychological mindset that you can tell us about that commits to that for long term. Sure there are only two ways to get smart. At least only two ways that I know of, you have to read a lot of books and ask a lot of questions. I don’t know of any way that works better than that so reading a lot of books means that you find the aviation book that has the answers to your questions. There are a lot of great aviation books out there. You know, I look back at some of the books I read when I was working—just became a flight instructor, Robert Bucks—Bob Bucks’ book, Weather Flying as an example. Richard Collins had many wonderful books and he shared a lot of insight and wisdom. Wolfgang Langewiesche had Stick and Rudder, which became a classic. Then Richard Bach’s, A Gift of Wings. It has in it probably one of the best articles I’ve ever read on the—on anxiety in flying and it’s called Loops, Voices, and the Fear of Death and it was an amazing book. Then Antoine Saint-Exupery book, Wind, Sand, and Stars is probably one of the most beautifully written books I have ever read and there’s actually a great deal of wisdom in that sort of autobiographical tone of his and it was just so well done and but there are—those are the books I’m talking and there are many many books like that. Another shameless plug if you don’t mind. Chris: Yes. Rod: My book Plane Talk, which is one of my—actually, one of my most favorite books and it’s a book that has 100 chapters in it with articles that range from how to think critically, how to learn more efficiently those things are extremely important. That method of learning is extremely important. Read a lot of books, ask a lot of questions and I think the ambition is this. Nobody wants to fly an airplane and worry about hurting themselves or their passengers. You want to fly an airplane knowing that you have the training that allows you to handle the most common things that could happen to you as a pilot. In all the seminars I’ve taught on handling in flight emergency just as an example, I have yet to have somebody give me an emergency that doesn’t have a solution, that is not what we would call classically an act of god. In other words, getting hit by a meteorite on the downwind leg, nothing I can do for that. Chris: Yes. Rod: That’ll teach you to hold a heading and that’ll teach you not to have the airplane degaussed so the fact is that there is an answer for everything and that answer is what we call—there’s a reason why get trained. Getting you know example—door pops open in flight. There’s a way to handle that. A gear doesn’t come down, there’s a way to handle that runaway constant speed propeller, there’s a way to handle that. There’s a way—in flight fire, electrically based fire, control malfunction. First of all, these things are all extremely rare, but they sit resonant in the pilots mind sometime and he or she wonders, “Gee, I don’t know what I’d do if that happened.” Therefore, they feel anxious when they fly. You should never feel anxious when you fly because you should have an answer for the most common problems, but one should fly in a heightened state of awareness, always ready to handle anything that could happen. Sort of like a trained martial artist when he operates or she operates in an environment where she’s not familiar with, you know, a little heightened state of awareness, not uncomfortable, just always prepared like the boy scout motto that you of the boy scouts you had over at your place. By the way, I always have boy scouts over when I need to start a fire. They are great at starting barbecues. Yes, it’s pretty good. Of course, I’d normally end up with that on the barbecue, 5% meat, 95% barbecue fluid so lighter fluid. They’re great at starting fires. Chris: I’m not sure they’d appreciate that down there, the starting to the smog. Rod: Definitely not. That’s true, Los Angeles is a great place to be if you’re a muffler. Chris: Perfect, well I really appreciate you spending time with us today. I’ve always appreciated your wisdom whenever I’ve been able to see you speak and personally I’ve enjoyed your training material too. I knew that my audience would enjoy listening to you and if they hadn’t heard from you before, getting introduced to you so I really appreciate it. I really appreciate your time, Rod. Rod: Chris, thank you so much and I appreciate what you do too. You do ask very thoughtful good questions. I’ve been on several of yours before and your questions were very well thought out so thank you so much for asking great questions and you do great work too with you radio program, your podcast so I want to wish you continued success with that. Chris: I appreciate that and we’ll catch up soon, maybe at Oshkosh, we’ll run across each other. Rod: I look forward to it. Chris: Right, thanks Rod, take care. Rod: Thank you. Join us next week for another exciting topic or interview with a great guest. Spread the AviatorCast message. Please review AviatorCast on iTunes or submit an audio question for the show at AviatorCast.com. All iTunes reviews and audio questions that are aired on the show will get an official AviatorCast t-shirt. You can write AviatorCast directly on AviatorCast.com where you can interact with the AviatorCast community or write AviatorCast at me@aviatorcast.com. We’d love to hear from you. For more information on Angle of Attack simulation training videos for FSX, X-Plane and more, go to www.flyaoamedia.com. If you are looking for a professional aviation training video services and other media, inquire at www.angleofattackpro.com. Now, for the final release clearance, back to Chris Palmer. Chris: Alright so a huge thanks goes out to Rod for joining us on this episode of AviatorCast. I was talking to Rod after the show and he was nice enough to actually give you guys a coupon to get onto his store and order some of his books. Now, Rod and I didn’t arrange this ahead of time at all. I didn’t bring him on the show so he could promote himself or anything like that. He’s a great guy. He’s part of the community, really wants to see the community move forward and be safer and I love his stuff. That’s why I brought him on the show. Now since you guys are listeners, of the podcast. I know that you like listening to material so what I found actually is that I actually don’t sit down and read as much as I should right now, but I found that I could really absorb some good material with some of the other busy work I was doing by just listening to stuff. It’s cool that Rod has his audiobooks with most of his books and I think that’s a really useful tool if you guys are open to that. Otherwise, if you are a book kind of person, obviously, great stuff too and with the audio, you’re missing the great illustrations and things that Rod does so you would certainly get more with the actual book. I think he does a fantastic job. I definitely recommend his material. If you go on his store, it’s going to be for the next week. This will expire the 27th of May you will type in the code Alaska so that’s where I’m from. That’s where the podcast is recorded from here on C plane court in Homer, Alaska. He is doing that coupon code Alaska, 20% off on all orders. It’s good for one week, expires the 27th of May. Great material, I think you guys will really enjoy it so if you are looking for something, I think that’s a pretty dang good deal and honestly, I’m going to go take advantage of it myself. I do have the How to Fly and Airplane book and really enjoy it, but I think I would enjoy some of the other stuff as well. Make sure you check out his website, BecomeAPilot.com. Again, huge thanks to Rod. It was a pleasure to have him on the show. I wish we could talk to him for hours. Maybe we’ll have him again some time in the future, but always love talking to an experience educator in the community. Really, really, appreciate it. Also, big thanks goes out to the Angle of Attack crew for all that they do outside of this podcast to help the company move forward so that you and I can spend time doing things like this often. I’m glad we’re doing the podcast often. It’s a lot of fun for me and thank you the listeners for all you do to make this podcast possible. You know, I know that we have this—a bit of an exchange going here with, “Hey review this show and I’ll send you a t-shirt” but really you know, I really appreciate getting that feedback and knowing that this show is doing something for people. If you guys ever have any ideas, any guests you want to see on the show, send them to me, me@aviatorcast.com. Let me know what is troubling you. What’s in your way, what kind of blocks you’re maybe having to getting into flying or keeping flying, whatever it is let’s talk about it. Let’s get someone on the show or I’ll address the topic myself and we’ll make sure that we answer some of these things that pertinent to you guys right now, some of these challenges. You know, I just went through a process myself in renting local 172, getting insured, getting checked out, all of those things and I can tell you, it does take a lot of work. It takes a lot of work to call people you don’t know and show up and do these things, these steps that allow you to fly. I can tell you, it’s totally worth it. You know, this aviation is one of those things where people will help you, but you have to help yourself as well and you have to take those steps. I would love to help you guys out. I’d love to give you some knowledge, some assistance in getting where you need to go, but I really want to see you taking those steps. If there’s anything I can ever do, let me know. Again, me@aviatorcast.com or you can write me on any of the social networks that we’re on and I’d always love to talk to you guys. Again, really appreciate it. Keep up the good work. Keep pushing forward. Keep reaching for your dreams and try to stay in the air as much as you possibly can so long as you have fuel, okay. Alright so that’s it for this episode of AviatorCast. Until next time, throttle on. [/transcript] The post AviatorCast Episode 88: Rod Machado: Flight Instructor | Becomeapilot.com | Speaker | Edutainment appeared first on Angle of Attack.
Rank #2: AviatorCast Episode 48: Rob Burgon- Fighter Pilot | F-22 Raptor | U.S. Air Force.
Today’s Flight Plan Today we are joined by Rob Burgon, an F-22 Raptor pilot in the United States Air Force. Rob didn’t start out like many fighter pilots do. He found out later on in life that he really wanted to do this aviation thing, and serve his country while doing it. This decision process started on his first business trip for an investment firm. The date was 9-11-2001. Sitting in an airport after having been forced to land, he felt the need to do something for his country. Eventually Rob would qualify for Flight School, and eventually be flying the F-22 Raptor. Today he is active duty on the East Coast of the US. He has a young family, a love for his country, and a passion for aviation. Useful Links TallyOne Blog TallyOne Store (Awesome Shirts!) Slipstream Radio Podcast Credits Rob Burgon Huge thanks to Rob for joining us on this show. Thanks so much for serving our country. In addition, thank you for inspiring us all with your aviation story. Godspeed! Music Big thanks to Atrasolis for providing the great music for our podcast. Please check them out on their Facebook Page or SoundCloud and get the music you’ve heard for free. Crew Major thanks to the amazing Angle of Attack Crew for all their hard work over the years. Our team works incredibly hard, and they’re very passionate about what they do. Now What? iTunes Subscribe Want to get regular updates through iTunes? This is the easiest way to automatically download your podcast, and take it on the go. Make sure to SUBSCRIBE HERE. Email Signup Want us to let you know via email when episodes of AviatorCast are released? We can do that, too. SIGNUP ABOVE. Get Started Today! Want to get started with some of our video training? Go to our main page and signup for Aviator90 (our basic and free course) or other pay products we have. Transcript [transcript] This is Aviator Cast episode 48. Bandit locked, FOX-3! Calling all aviators, pilots and aviation lovers, welcome to AviatorCast, where we close the gap between real aviation and flight simulation. Climb aboard, buckle up and prepare for takeoff. Here’s your host, Chris Palmer. Chris: Welcome, welcome, welcome aviators, you’ve landed at AviatorCast.My name is Chris Palmer. High, low, fast or slow, big, small, jet or prop, what’s not to love about airplanes? Like you, I happen to be crazy about aviation. I’m the founder and owner of Angle of Attack, a flight training company which is bringing you this podcast today. AviatorCast is a weekly podcast where we talk about the spirit of the aviator. We believe flying is an art form, one that have to continually practice and master. This mastery is gained through a focus on continual learning, human factors, humility and a commitment to excellence. Show notes, transcript, community discussion and links for this episode can be found by simply going to AviatorCast.com. So welcome to this, the 48th episode. I am absolutely excited for this episode. It’s a great. It is fantastic to have you here. So thank you for showing up every week for this podcast. I hope to continue to bring you great and interesting guests and topics and I have a very good one for you guys today so hang tight there. First off, we always start with a review. This review comes from iTunes. It comes from Mike20SM. He says “A quality podcast for aviation enthusiasts of all types. Five stars.” He says “I’m so glad I stumbled upon this podcast recently. I finally become of the mindset that I’m going to get my pilot’s license no matter what and this podcast is highly informative as well as being motivational too. Keep up the good work Chris and company.” Thanks Mike, much appreciated. Good luck with your pilot’s license. I encourage you to continue to go toward that direction. It is one of those things in life that I don’t think many people regret. You will achieve so much in your private pilot license or anything that you do. So first and foremost, you’re going to just be a more confident guy and if nothing else, you have this thing in your back pocket, this thing called the pilot’s license that lets you go experience life and this world in a completely different way, suspended above the earth. I love being a pilot and I encourage many people, even you Mike to be a pilot and become a pilot. Speaking of that, we have a very interesting guess today, an awesome story from Rob Burgon. Rob Burgon is a fighter pilot for the United States Air Force, and he joins us today to talk about his journey to the cockpit of a very high-powered and very technologically advanced fighter jet that all of you will recognize the name of, I’m not going to give away the name quite yet, but this is an exciting interview with Rob. Rob is a top notch guy and you can just tell that he absolutely loves aviation. And his story is a bit unique as well. He’s not the type that just always knew that he was going to become a pilot, he decided later on in life that he was going to become a pilot and decided to go the military route and the little nugget that I will give to you and have already given to you is that he ends up becoming a fighter pilot for the United States Air Force. So we have a very interesting discussion with Rob. I know that on this podcast we don’t really talk about military aviation too much but I just found this to be a fantastic interview. So let’s not delay any further, let’s get right into it with Rob Burgon. Now, a special hangar talk segment… Chris: Alright everybody, we are honored to have a very special guest with us today, Rob Burgon. How are you doing Rob? Rob: Yeah, I’m doing pretty good Chris. Great to be on the show. Chris: Yeah, it’s great to have you. Now, you have a podcast called Slipstream Radio in which you and Brent Owens talk about some different topics, aviation topics, really great podcast. Tell us a little bit about yourself as far as your aviation career quickly so we can just get an idea of where you’ve been. Rob: Maybe I’ll work backwards here. So right now, I’m flying the F-20 Raptor. I have been doing that for several years now. Prior to that, I was a T-38 instructor, UPT, so undergraduate pilot training for the air force. And then before that, I actually was a civilian working a finance job. So it’s kind of been the long way around getting to where I am and flying professionally but that’s it in a nutshell. Chris: So and you I were talking before the show. I am in Utah right now visiting family, this is where I grew up, and you mentioned right before the show that you have family here too. It just so happens that I did my flight training at the college you went to so that’s pretty interesting. Rob: Yeah, small world. I did not expect that. That was cool to make that connection. Chris: Now, tell the audience what you told me about your degree and 9/11 and kind of how this all played into this aviation thing. Rob: You bet. So I got my degree in finance and I had these delusions of grandeur if you will about going back east, becoming a big investment banker and making my millions out there and so I started down that course. I got a job with a venture capital type company out in Boston. And the job required a lot of travel and I remembered my very first business trip was actually on 9/11 and I actually didn’t fly out of the Boston Logan Airport that morning, I flew out of Providence Road Island. I was airborne and I remember because I had flown several times before on commercial aircraft and I remember we descended after we’d been airborne for only a short amount of time and we were low for quite a while which I thought was kind of weird. I thought maybe we had some kind of malfunction or something. Then we eventually landed at our destination and there was like absolutely no movement on the ground and it was really just weird, and getting into the terminal, all the people huddled around TV screens and I’m asking just some bystanders what had happened and they told me. It kind of was that surreal moment that was just very difficult for our country as a whole and it was just really a weird feeling that day. But something else that day, I really felt that surge of patriotism and I wanted to do something to serve my country and to be a part of the fight. Over the next couple of years as I worked this finance job and I was sitting behind the desk I just felt like I couldn’t sit behind the desk anymore, I had to get out and go do something. My whole life I’d wanted to fly right up until just after high school when I thought making money was probably more important but I tell you what, it was pretty easy to make a decision to switch over to aviation and especially at that time in our country’s history, it just seem like the right thing to do. Chris: Was there any sort of a-ha moment that you had where you knew it was time? Rob: You know, there was. I had been kind of doing some research on the internet and I had found a blog. It was kind of a student journal from an air force pilot training student and his name was Jason Barton. He is an amazing person. Unfortunately he is not with us anymore. But he actually had a lot to do with me kind of accepting the risk of leaving this good-paying job and going into the air force not knowing if I was actually going to get those wings because once you join up with the air force, there is no certainty whatsoever. These are the air force. He did a lot to kind of help me have that a-ha moment that “Hey yeah, I can do this and I’m going to go for it.” I really do credit him with a lot of going through that initial gate. Chris: Great. Cool. I don’t know. The way you explained it before the show is you said you went from being basically a spreadsheet guy to an F-22 pilot so I guess we’re going to be talking about that gap today but that’s really cool. I mean, thank you so much for serving our country and that call to action is really amazing to see. It kind of reminds of the greatest generation of World War II where people answered the call to action for this country and went and fought the great war there, so thank you for your service. I really appreciate that. Rob: Well thanks. That’s always nice to hear. I agree with you wholeheartedly, like the greatest generation. I feel like there was a different type of patriotism in their generation. We certainly have patriotism in ours, don’t get me wrong. We are I think a very strong country but there’s truly something magical about that era. Chris: Right. I mean, back then, if guys didn’t qualify to actually join the army, they would kill themselves. That’s how connected they were. I remember actually my grandfather. He didn’t serve in the war or anything, they actually wouldn’t let him, but he was just so depressed that they wouldn’t let them go to war but they needed him back home to basically be a farmer. That was kind of his job which was interesting but anyway. So let’s rewind a little bit. How did you fall in love with aviation? So obviously this started pretty early because even after high school or during high school, you kind of knew you had this aviation thing. It was kind of in your back pocket when you realized you want to serve your country, so how did you fall in love with aviation in the first place?` Rob: Well actually, that kind of goes back to the greatest generation. Not that I was there but my grandpa was a B-25 pilot towards the end of World War II. So as I grew up, I had a lot of aviation influence from him. My other grandfather had done some work for the airlines and has a private pilot license. So he also helped contribute to this love of aviation that was growing within me as a child. I’d be going to air shows and watching movies and reading books and they just kind of fed the beast if you will. Just over time, just kind of grew and grew. I can’t really explain why I didn’t pursue a career in professional aviation right out of high school or through college. Honestly I have no explanation for that. Maybe it was the money thing. Somehow I just lost track of it. But it never went away. As I’m sitting out there in Boston behind that desk, and don’t get me wrong, the company I worked for was awesome and it was a great job and I really enjoyed it but there’s just kind of that missing piece. Once I did make that decision, I had that moment that we talked about earlier that it seemed to fill that void and I just never really look back. Chris: Definitely. That’s awesome. So that was kind of my next job actually, is who were your aviation mentors and I’m sure that your grandfathers were and also the guy that had the blog. Is there anyone else that comes to mind or do you want to expound on them at all? Rob: Yeah, absolutely. My grandfathers, both of them have been very supportive. As I was growing up they were present in my life and they definitely had a lot to do with kind of fueling the fire there for aviation. And Jason, it’s been a while since I’ve been able to talk to him but he was a very good influence. Like I said, I contacted him through his blog and he actually gave me his phone number. I was like “Hey man, give me a call sometime and I can kind of talk you through the process of application and stuff and so we talked several times and he really helped me get through the bureaucracy and the paperwork of getting into the air force. And then kind of during my year of pilot training, we just kind of lost contact. We’re both very busy. He was active duty flying and I was going through pilot training which is in and of itself a pretty big undertaking. Eventually we reconnected and I found out that he was actually somehow had picked up a job with a reserve unit and was actually make a switch over from active duty to the reserves. On the side, he was a Pilatus PC-12 instructor. So he was out actually one day with a student doing emergency patterns, landings and unfortunately something went wrong and they ended up crashing just short of the runway. Actually, neither of them made it out of the crash. So pretty sad day. But looking back to everything that Jason contributed to not just helping me but helping a lot of other guys via his blog get into the air force and make their love of aviation their profession. That to me a huge contribution and definitely a legacy that he leaves behind. Chris: And I think that’s torch that all of us take that it’s up to us to pass on that passion to other people. I definitely think you’re doing that through your blog and your podcast and so that honors his name. I can’t imagine what it’s like to lose a friend in aviation. I haven’t had that happen yet. Hope it doesn’t happen it seems like it’s something that pretty much happens to every pilot eventually. Rob: Yeah, yeah. Unfortunately it is kind of a part of life as a pilot. There are definitely risks that we take every time we go fly and really all we can do is try to mitigate them to the maximal extent possible and kind of go from there. Chris: Great. So let’s shift gears a little bit. Let’s talk about the different types of airplanes you’ve flown. Your hangar-full of airplanes if you will. It’s going to be a lot different from a civilian guy so it’d be pretty interesting to see what you’ve flown. Rob: Yeah. Surprisingly, it’s probably not as full as some of the civilian guys. Back when I was going through pilot training right before I started, the air force basically put me through private pilot’s program. Up that point, I already had about 40 hours that I had been working on towards my PPL mostly in Cherokee Warrior but the little flight school that they sent me to to finish up just had like Cessna-172s. So I finished up in that. I’ve flown just kind of the little single props, Piper Archer, a Diamond Katana. I think that’s about it on the civilian side. And then once I got into the air force doing the air force flying, I started out flying the T-37, if you’ve ever heard of the Tweet. It’s a little twin engine jet. It’s actually built by Cessna back in the 1950s. That thing was awesome. It was like extremely loud and very high pitched. It’s everything you’d expect a jet that was built in 1950 to be. Chris: Kind of the man’s jet probably. Rob: Yeah. The instructor sat like right next to you. You still wore like the helmet oxygen mask and the parachute but you didn’t like a G-suit. And the thing that sucked about that jet was that the instructor, like if you had like an salty old crusty guy that was your instructor, he’d reach over and like grab your oxygen mask and like pinch it so you couldn’t breathe, kind of give you a shake there if you were messing something up. Chris: Funny. Rob: Yeah. It was pretty interesting. And then we moved on from that to the T-38 which also a pretty old jet. Most of those were built in the 60s. If you’ve ever seen the Chase aircraft or the shuttle, those white T-38s that NASA flies, that’s the same thing. But what they’ve done is they’ve given it a glass cockpit and given it some engine upgrades to kind of bring it a little bit more into the present technology of flying. But still the jet is amazing. It takes a beating and just keeps going. Chris: Well it ought to be good if it stayed around that long. Rob: Oh yeah. And it’s not going away in the foreseeable future. In fact, we use T-38s right now as Red Air, as a training platform for the fighters and it actually can put up a pretty good fight believe it or not so it’s a good little jet to have around. I flew that one for quite a while. I got my wings in that jet and then actually my first assignment was to go through pilot instructor training and then go back to the schoolhouse as an instructor. I did that for about three years and then towards the end of that assignment, I got my assignment to come fly the Raptor. But the unique thing about the Raptor, there’s no two-seat models so up to this point, I’d never been to a tanker and done air refueling. I’ve never flown with MPGs. You don’t do any of that stuff in pilot training. And so you don’t want to be doing that for your first time by yourself. So what they did is they sent me in with some of the other guys who were first time going straight from T-38s to the Raptor. They sent us out to Luke Air Force Base where we got to essentially fly a transition course in the F-16. I got like 12 Reds in the front seat. That jet was actually pretty fun to fly. It’s just a little sports car and it’s got amazing visibility from the cockpit. Chris: I bet. That wraparound view. Rob: Oh yeah. It’s great. The cockpit is so small. It’s just like putting on a glove. The Raptor feels like a spacious office building compared to this tight little cockpit. So that was a lot of fun. And then after that, obviously the next step was a Raptor. Chris: Great. Man, what a leap. Pretty wild. Tell us about the first time you soloed a jet. What was that like? Rob: Yeah. So that was the Tweet. That was the mighty T-37. I’ll tell you what, I did not sleep at all the night before. Because you don’t go very many rides before you solo that day. I think if I remember right, it was only like 7 or 8 flights that I had with an instructor before taking the Tweet solo. The pilot training air space for somebody who’s never flown IFRs, has never flown a depature or anything, when you get to pilot training, it seems very complex. So here you are, you’ve done seven flights, a few simulators, and here you are flying an instrument departure, you’re going out to this controlled air space and checking out in with the airspace control, doing your thing and trying to stand in your little piece of the sky because it’s all sectioned off. There’s a whole bunch of other aircraft out there, and then finding your back to the field and getting into a pattern that’s just saturated with other students so nobody really knows what they’re doing and it’s just this chaos. So it was a lot of fun that I remember. The T-37 actually at that time had the quickest G onset rate of any aircraft in the inventory, at least that was what all the instructors told us. It’s true. You’d pull back on a stick and you were just instantly under G. Not very many. It’d only pull like 4 Gs or something before you’d over G it but it’s enough that if you weren’t ready for it, you actually could like G-lock yourself, black yourself out. I remember just doing a split S and essentially just honking on the stick there and not really prepping my body that much and I just remembered getting a little bit of gray, a little tunnel vision and thinking like “Holy crap. I’m all by myself in this jet. This stuff is real. I could G-lock myself and by a smoking hole in the ground.” So that was kind of a wakeup call for me. Chris: Yeah, no kidding. What safety mechanisms are there for that or is it mostly just your own physical preparation to make sure you don’t over-G and black out? Rob: Yeah. So in the T-37, there’s nothing. It’s all up to you. It’s really not difficult with only 4 Gs. That’s not bad. You just need to get used to it. You need to watch your diet, watch your exercise and make sure that you’re tensing up your leg muscles to keep the blood from pulling in your feet. Like the Raptor, I mean the Raptor is a G monster, like no kidding, you can sustain 9 Gs. You can accelerate while your pulling 9 Gs which is something that other aircraft really can’t do. We have a pretty good G-suit. It’s basically just a set of pants if you think of it like that that you put on that’s got air bladders that are located on and around your arteries that as you put G on the jet, it will automatically inflate and constrict the blood flow in your legs and lower abdomen. That helps a lot but really the best thing that you can do, the absolute best thing you can do regardless of whether or not you have that help is just tensing up the muscles in your lower body and using a breathing technique they teach you. Chris: Right. You always see the videos on YouTube where guys are taking rides in the Thunderbirds or the Blue Angels and they’re just passing out like all the time. I mean sorry if I’m ignorant there. I just don’t know like the systems that kind of help you out with that but I would imagine that the best system is just to remain healthy and yeah, know the breathing techniques and things like that. Rob: Yeah absolutely. And everybody is different too. Some guys have a very high resting G tolerance where they don’t even really have to strain and other guys like start having to strain right at four Gs or something. Everybody is a little bit different. There’s a lot of physiology that goes into it, science. Chris: Right, yeah, science. It’s all science. That’s the motto of the show. So out of all those airplanes, what’s your favorite one to fly? Rob: Well, I’ve got the say the Raptor. It’s just such an amazing jet. There’s really no other aircraft in the world like it. That thing was built to be just a beast. It’s actually a very easy jet to fly. The difficulty really comes in processing all the information that it gives you and employing it tactically. Chris: Yeah. That makes sense. Seeing those at air shows and what they’re capable of doing, it just blows my mind. It doesn’t even seem possible for an airplane to do that kind of stuff. Rob: Yeah. I mean you throw how overpowered this thing is, you throw that into the mix with the fact that it’s got thrust vectoring and so now you’ve got like essentially an extra flight control that most other aircraft don’t have. There are a couple of jets out there that have thrust factoring. I can fly, we call it post stall so the wing will be fully stalled out but you will be still pointing your nose up and you could actually still be maintaining altitude so yeah it’s pretty amazing. Chris: Yeah it’s wild. I just never see anything like it. Alright so shifting gears a little bit and you don’t have to answer this question if you don’t want to but what is or what was your scariest moment as a pilot? Rob: We’ve been talking a lot about pulling Gs and actually my scariest moment is I actually did come very close to blacking out once. And it was in the Raptor. It was a four-ship offensive counter air escort mission and as we go out to the air space, we all test our Gs. At that time, I think I was just like an element lead so I was number three in the formation. We test our G-suits by doing an exercise, a couple exercise where you do like a four to five G-turn and 180-degree turn that you followed up by a 67 G 180-degree turn just to make sure that your body is feeling good, that your systems are working. And during that turn, I noticed that my G-suit wasn’t inflating. We got done with the exercise and I was like, I told the flight lead, I was like “Hey, my G-suit’s not working.” Usually the default game plan there is like “Okay, G-suit doesn’t work. Don’t pull more than 5 Gs.” “Got it.” Well, you can’t really tell a fighter pilot like “Dude, go and do this giant flight and don’t more pull more than 5 Gs.” Chris: Exactly. Because it’s all instinct right? Once you get in the fighter or whatever. Rob: Oh yeah. The adrenaline kind of kicks in and things start going and things start getting busy and you’re thinking about employing, you’re thinking about running your tactics and next thing I knew, I’m doing a strength conversion on one of the bandits and I’m pulling like 8-1/2 Gs in the strength conversion and I’m like “Man, this hurts a lot worse than it normally does.” I’m like really having to strain just to stay awake and as I’m doing that, I’m noticing like I’m getting that tunnel vision, kind of like I got that day that I told you my first solo in the Tweet just when I really quickly pull the Gs. But this was, it was like really closed in. I was having a lot of we call it light loss, you actually lose your color vision while you’re doing that. I recognized that and immediately I pulled the throttles back and unload the jet to get to unload the G and just kind of roll towards. At this point, I’d lost almost all vision at this point and I just remember the horizon thing and just kind of keeping some back sick pressure to get the nose up and when my vision came back, I was like about 20 degrees nose high and there was a moment in time there where I just felt a little confused and I was like “Man, I’m sure I experienced some low level of loss of consciousness.” It was scary. My heart was going. At that point, I’d lose track of the bandit that I was running my intercept on and I ended up having to call knock it off and basically just knocking off the fight. Once somebody calls knock it off, everybody gets in these little sanctuary altitudes and everybody starts worrying about deconfliction so I knew at that point, as long as I was in my little sanctuary altitude, I should be okay and ended up just going straight back to the field and landed. But it really shook me up and it was good lesson that like hey, if you have a system malfunction which I did, you’ve got to honor that. You can’t just pay it lip service. We have training rules. We have procedures for a reason. And it’s not that I was going against any procedures at that time but it was more that I think I just made a less than conservative decision that could have had really dramatic consequences. I’m just happy that I stayed awake with absolutely no support from my anti-G system under 8-1/2 Gs. I’ve actually felt kind of awesome after that a little bit but at the same time kind of scared. Chris: Yeah. I can’t imagine that. So if I understand right, like you pulled behind the bogey and you were doing your Gs there and that’s kind of when it all happened when you’re right on his tail? Do I understand it right? Rob: Yeah. Usually like on an intercept like on a strength conversion. In this particular intercept, it was a high aspect so we were kind of nose to nose. I was about 10,000 feet or so above him. When you use the term bogey, that implies like a lack of ID. I know that Top Gun movie, everyone talks bogey, but bogey is this you don’t know the allegiance. You don’t know if it’s a friend. You don’t know if it’s a foe, neutral. So for a guy that’s been a bandit, he’s been identified as “Alright, this is a foe. If he’s just a bandit, maybe I can shoot him, maybe I can’t.” It all depends on the rules on engagement. It’s what you can do with a bandit versus a bogey. Chris: Great lesson. I like that. Rob: But yeah. Executing this intercept from 10,000 feet above the guy. He had no idea was there. In fact, throughout the entire intercept he never saw me. He had no clue that I was doing the intercept and my whole goal was to arrive at a point behind him where I could shoot it. Just to get where I needed to be required about that 8-1/2 G pool in order not to overshoot his altitude in a vertical. Chris: Crazy. I keep forgetting, I don’t know why but I keep forgetting that the F-22 is stealth right? So they’re not going to see you on radar or anything. It’s wild. Rob: Yeah, which is awesome for us but it also makes for some interesting training scenarios because a lot of time even though you’re fighting against a training platform, you’re all working together to make sure that the flight is safely executed. So if they have say awareness on you, then they can deconflict and they can make sure that they’re not going to run their aircraft into you but if they have no idea where you are, then the it’s completely on you as a Raptor pilot in order to maintain that deconfliction. Chris: Yeah. I’m sure the systems and everything of the Raptor are top secret but if I could learn about that, it would just be fascinating because I’m sure there’s so much technology in that thing that just helps with scenarios like that. Rob: Oh yeah. It’s wild. I mean, these guys, these engineers that come up with this stuff, my hat goes off for them. They are some pretty smart individuals. Chris: Alright, so switching gears here. Have you ever been deployed overseas? Rob: I have. Chris: Okay, tell us about that. Rob: So I can’t really talk a whole lot about deployments but what I can tell you is the air force, our air force is the greatest expeditionary air force in the world and what that means when we say expeditionary is that you can pick up a unit, pick up a squadron and take them anywhere in the world in a relatively short amount of time and as soon as you get on the ground, you are ready to go to war. It is amazing and the fact that our air force has that capability to just pick up and move, I mean it’s a very large operation when you think about it. Even if you’re only to take like a couple of fighters and you’re going to go take them somewhere, anywhere in the world, you’re going to have to take a cat of hundreds. You’ve got your maintainers obviously and within the maintenance section, you need to make sure you got the jet engine mechanics. You need to make sure you got the structures guys, the metals guys, the crew chiefs and all those guys who are going to require supervision. So you got all those guys. In addition to that, you have all the life support folks that do the air crew flight equipment like the G-suit, the parachute, harness, the helmets. It is a huge undertaking to take a group that large and with that much equipment and just park them somewhere around the world. The fact that we’ve got this down almost to a science is really very impressive and pretty amazing when you think about it. Chris: Yea. The military is a very organized that if there’s anything you can say about them, it’s that. Cool. I know you can’t talk about the specifics or sometimes even the wares but that was interesting. Rob: Yeah. I tell you what. I sure wish I could. Chris: Someday, you can tell your grandchildren or something like that. Rob: Yeah, there you go. Chris: Alright, so I want to get into military training a little bit and kind of pick your brain on what it was like and also for those who are younger or deciding to go into flying and they have kind of this decision point what direction they should go and some considerations to take into account in making that decision. So we talk a lot about civilian training on this show. We really haven’t talked a lot about military training just because we haven’t had anyone on this show that is of your caliber, a fighter pilot. So I’d like to get into that a little bit. Now, we got into your backstory. So you kind of decided that you were just going to go into the military and it kind of made sense with the background with your grandfathers and stuff like that and kind of your connection to patriotism. For others, how do you compare between the civilian and the military side? What would you say the decision process is there for someone that’s looking to get into, rather comparing the two and deciding which one they want to get into? Chris: Well, I think it’s all lifestyle. Because you think about really what’s important to you. Is it important that you’re home every night or are you the kind of person that likes to travel, go around the world? The military actually has both options available to you. If you like to travel and spend time on the road, you could be a tanker pilot, a transport pilot. I mean those guys are gone all the time. But as a fighter guy, you’re pretty much flying around the flagpole. You go out to the airspace, you do your flight and you come home. You’re not logging as many hours as the tanker transport guys but that 1.1 or 1.2 that you’re logging a few times a week is extremely action-packed and it is a very busy time. In addition to flying, it’s different because they are such short flights and they are very intense. It requires a very, very significant amount of preparation. A lot of the tanker transport guys, they’ll show up and they’ll be handed “Hey, here’s the flight plan that’s been done.” They need to have it that way because they can’t spend hours in the day prior planning for their mission. They’ve got to just be able to show up, take their mission materials and go whereas we’ll spend like an entire day, 12 hours or more planning up a mission. And so you really got to decide if you’re thinking civilian and military, like “What do I want lifestyle-wise” and being the military, it’s not just flying. If you’re a delta pilot or you’re flying for the airlines or flying professionally in the civilian side. At least, most of my friends that do that that fly for the airlines tell me “That is your job. Your job is to fly and that is awesome.” In the air force, you are an officer first. Yes, your job title is pilot but there is so much other stuff that needs to be done. We each have additional ground duties. You take those ground duties and kind of add them to your flying duties and it makes for a very busy life. And then you’ll sprinkle in some deployments, sprinkle in TDYs or temporary duty or you’re on the road for like an exercise or something like a red flag for example. The days really add up that you’re away from home and not just being gone separated by distance but just separated by time. Several times, I’ll leave for work early, like well before the family wakes up and I’ll get home after the kids are down. Chris: Yeah. Long days. Rob: Yeah, but at the same time very fulfilling. So that’s kind of the tradeoff that you need to weigh as you’re trying to decide whether or not you want to go the civilian route or the military route, is what kind of fulfillment do I want for my flying or what is fulfillment for me as a pilot. Because being an airline pilot can be extremely fulfilling for some people and for other people, they have to fly fighters. So you just got to figure it out. Chris: Yeah. I think you get that kind of expect in both civilian and military. So obviously in the military like your example, you could choose to do transport or fighters or whatever, you kind of choose what works better for you. And in civil aviation it’s much the same where you can choose to be a flight instructor or you can choose to be an airline pilot or a corporate pilot or any myriad of other jobs that are out there and really what it boils down to at the end of the day is lifestyle. When I first fell in love with aviation, I wanted to be an airline pilot. That’s what I worked for, that was my goal. And then I realized “You know what? I’m kind of a family-first type of guy and so that’s not really going to work super well for me.” So I kind of took things a different direction. So yeah, a really good advice there that you need to think about what your lifestyle is like. Rob: Yeah. You got to love what you do. That was the thing for me when I was working that finance job, is I liked it a lot but I can tell that it wasn’t really my love. It wasn’t what I really wanted to do in life. It made a big difference just in my day to day happiness once I decided to make the switch. You just got to figure out what makes you happy and just go after it. Chris: Great. Love that. So tell us a little bit about preparation. Now, for someone that is looking to go straight into the military right out of high school or something like that, it’s going to be a little bit different than your path but the paths are similar in the level of quality person I guess or quality character you need to have. Tell us a little bit about who you need to be to qualify to be a fighter pilot or even someone in the military. Rob: Yeah. So it definitely is going to depend on which route you take to get into the air force. Right now, there’s kind of three ways to get in. So the first way and it’s probably the recommended route is to go through the air force academy. The air force academy is a great opportunity for folks to get a very deep, a very profound indoctrination and to learn a lot about the air force from a young age and kind of come up in a way if that makes sense. You don’t really have to make a transition where you get to the point that you are going to commission and go to pilot training. Chris: Right. Rob: The second way is ROTC. It’s not quite as structured as life at the air force academy but still you’re getting a very good solid foundation and very pointed direction with your studies. So that’s a good route. You get your college paid for as well if you’re on this ROTC scholarship. Both are very good options. Or you can go to the route that I went which is through officer training school. The nice thing about going through officer training school is I knew before I had to sign on the line that I was going to go to pilot training. I got picked up specifically for a pilot slot. If you got to the academy or you go to ROTC, that’s all up in the air. That doesn’t get decided until you get close to graduation. It was nice to know that if I didn’t get picked up for pilot, if I got picked up for something else because you have to apply for like a primary, like a backup or two career field, it was nice to know that if I didn’t get what I wanted then I wouldn’t have to leave my job. Chris: Yeah, that’s really nice to have that backup plan. Rob: Yeah. To be honest with you, all three ways, like you need to have good grades, you need to study hard. There was a time there especially for OTS, that they were really only accepting for pilot spots people that had engineering degrees. It’s a very short time where they came up with that but I think they’ve since gone back away from that. An engineering degree definitely helps. But I would say yeah, just grades, staying in shape physically is huge. You got to be able to pass the air force PT test. Not only that. If you want to fly fighters, you have to pass what they call the fighter air crew test and it’s more of a strength-focused test where you’re doing all the classic lifts, you’re doing bench press, you’re doing squat, curls. There’s a couple of other exercises in there, and you had to do a certain amount of weight and a certain number of repetitions and that’s just to determine if you’re physically capable of withstanding the G-forces. So there’s that. That’s probably really the best advice I could give, is if that is your goal, then map your route out, figure out air force academy, ROTC or OTS and then find out everything you can about that particular route and do your very best that you can in order to gain entrance to that route and then to stay there. Because the air force is not scared to kick people out. If you’re not making the cut then they’ll tell you to go find something else to do. Chris: I’d imagine especially for a fighter pilot position which obviously every pilot wants to do, it’s very competitive to get in there and so yeah, it’s got to be pretty cut throat as far as the options they have. They have the best of the best that are in physical shape. To hear that they would require an engineering degree is amazing but at the same time it’s not surprising just because that’s the level of competition you’re at. Rob: Yeah, and the bros in the fire squadron will probably kill me to hear me say this but to be honest with you, not all the best pilots want to go the fighter route. There a couple of really sharp dudes that I went through pilot training with. They just didn’t want the lifestyle. The heavy lifestyle really appealed to them so they want that route. Yes, you’re absolutely right. There’s a ton of competition for the fighters. It’s ridiculous. It’s very stressful going through pilot training wondering “Hey, am I going to be on that list? Am I going to be in that shortlist?” For my class, I’d say about 20% of us got to go to the fighter bomber track and then of that, I think we had, I can’t remember how many people we had in my class but we ended up with it’s like five guys if I remember right that went the fighter bomber track and of those guys, three of us went fighters. Chris: So they had their choice basically of the two and they chose transport basically or cargo or whatever rather than the fighter route. Is that right? Rob: Yeah. So when you got through pilot training, there’s kind of different layers of cuts. The first cut comes about halfway through pilot training but it’s fighter route or transport. And then if you’re the fighter, it’s actually the fighter bomber track. From there, at the end, when you get to your assignment night, you could actually go to a bomber. It wasn’t an option for me just because this was like before UAVs were around but you could go to fly like a predator. There are students by the time I got done being an instructor, students were getting assigned to Mk1s and Mk9s. I’m not sure exactly how it is right now but I know over the last couple of years, they have been taking guys from the fighter bomber track and sending them to like C-17s or KC-135s. These jets that were historically allocated to the heavy track. There’s no sure bet in the air force is really what it boils down to. As long as you’re doing the very best that you can and you have a good attitude. I’d say that it is huge, having a good attitude. I’ve seen a lot of sharp guys that have bad attitudes get the cut. Chris: And what would you find a good attitude? Rob: Somebody who’s open to instruction is really a big one. If you’re not open and willing, if you scoff at the instruction and think that “Alright. Copy. I got it, you’re telling me what I’m doing wrong but I think what I’m doing wrong is actually right.” As an instructor, I’ve seen that attitude before. Some people are just not teachable because they’re just too prideful. Chris: Which is very dangerous in aviation. Rob: Oh absolutely. Absolutely. And that’s why that attitude is rooted out very quickly because we just can’t have that. So yeah, somebody who’s willing learn, who’s willing to listen and somebody who’s willing to embrace the traditions. Chris: Interesting. What do you mean by that? Rob: You know, fighter pilot world has a lot of traditions. Going back to when guys first started flying one of the tradition is roll calls. Way back in the day when they first started using aircraft in combat, at the end of the day, because they didn’t have the radios that we have today or they didn’t have the capability to take accountability while airborne. They would set up a time and they’d say “Hey, we’re going to have roll call at 6 p.m.” And so at 6 p.m., everybody that have survived the day would get together to take roll and find out who is missing. That’s kind of how they kept their accountability. And that tradition is carried on through the day even though we have the accountability real time, but we still get together and at roll call we’ll tell stories and just kind of foster the brotherhood that a fighting unit really needs to have. Chris: Great. That’s cool. So on the flipside of that, you’re saying that if someone was resistant to those sort of traditions, they wouldn’t show up to the roll call sort of thing, they’d just be off doing their own thing. Rob: Yeah, exactly. Exactly. Chris: Cool. That’s really interesting actually that that little piece of history has remained and actually really cool. I mean, how neat is that that this tradition from the beginning years of aviation warfare has remained. Probably things that your grandfathers actually did too. In a real sense, in their day, they would have to do it in a real sense. Rob: Yeah, for sure. There’s just a lot of little traditions and stuff. Those are the things that kind of add variety and flavor to this lifestyle. Especially today, we’re doing more with less budget cuts, and these guys are just burning the candle at both ends, just working really hard. It’s nice to have these like little traditions that you can feel kind of set you apart from some of the other career fields. Chris: Yeah definitely. Great. Here’s another question for you. How has simulation play a role in your training? I don’t know what kind of simulators they have their. Do they have any F-22 simulators? Rob: Yeah. Absolutely. It’s been interesting. Since I very first got in, simulators have been a huge part of my flying. Everything that you could possibly think of that has to do with flying, flying instruments, flying executing tactics, just basic aircraft handling, all that stuff is practiced at some point in the simulator. It’s actually even now like I mentioned the budget cuts before. It’s becoming more of a cost effective way to train and so now we’re actually doing these large force exercises in the simulator where you’re linking up guys and simulators around the world, literally around the world and doing these exercises we call them virtual flags. And yeah, it’s pretty amazing what we can as a technology. It’s a great experience for guys, especially young guys who aren’t able to see these giants exercises. It’s good for them to see them in a non-threatening, like non-life threatening environment if that makes sense. Chris: Yeah. Definitely. Tell us about, you mentioned flag. I know this is getting away from the simulation question but tell us about red flag a little bit and what that is. Rob: Yeah, so Red Flag was, I can’t remember the exact year it was started but the whole crux of Red Flag was to prepare the brand new wingmen for combat. To really understand what that means, you got to understand that especially back in the day when air combat was happening frequently and there were dogfights and air to air engagements were a regular part of war, there’s a lot of fog and friction associated with that. It gets very confusing especially when you’re trying to like identify somebody to shoot and you’re running your rules of engagement. There’s a lot of radio comm that goes on because you have to have coordination and you can’t all be on separate frequencies and so now you have like your Red Flag hundreds of aircraft that are on the same frequency and everybody’s talking and everybody has something important to say and that can be very confusing to a new guy. And so Red Flag is an opportunity. It’s almost like stress inoculation when you think about that. That was the whole crux of that particular exercise, was just to expose these young guys to that so that when they get to combat, it’s not their first time seeing it and they don’t have the jitters from that first employment. It’s since kind of evolved into something even bigger. Now, it’s an exercise on command and control as well as the air to air combat and the air to ground combat pieces. It’s much bigger than fighter pilots. It’s bigger than bomber pilots, bigger than C2 command and control. It really is almost like an entire force exercise. Chris: And you guys go out to Vegas to do that or where do you do it? Rob: Yep. They got one in Vegas. That’s the one that they did, the Fighter Pilot IMAX movie. I don’t know if you ever saw that. Chris: I did yeah but it seemed not too authentic. It wasn’t as authentic as I wanted it to be. Rob: Yeah, there was definitely some stuff that was staged. The funny stuff I actually know one of the guys that was in that movie. One of the guys that was in that movie flying the F-16 was one of my instructors going through the F-22B course. It was pretty funny to see him. It was like “Hey man, you’re the guy in the movie.” I’m sure they gave him a part and I was like “Hey man, can you do this when you’re airborne?” I’m sure it was like not easy for him to do because it’s kind of cheesy but yeah, some of the air footage definitely not really authentic. However I think they did a pretty good job of kind of just showing the whole process with the big mass brief in the beginning, that big room that big auditorium, and just showing just the sheer numbers of aircraft and pilots involved. They did okay. I can’t scoff them entirely. Chris: It was cool in IMAX too. I think I saw it in IMAX. Rob: Yeah, for sure. Chris: Did you, I know this is a separate branch but did you see Speed and Angels, that movie? Rob: No. Chris: Man. I might have to send you a copy of that show. It’s really, really great. It’s about the final, and just for our listeners too, it’s about the final or some of the last pilots to go through training for the F-14. It just kind of shows their experience and there’s one male and one female pilot that go through that. And they have vastly different experiences. One of them ends up getting deployed and gets in command. They must have declassified some of the information because he is actually able to talk about all that. And then she struggles quite a bit with landing on a carrier at night. It’s just really interesting, really well done. It’s on Blu-Ray. Really nicely done. Rob: Yeah. I definitely have to check that out. Chris: Alright. Let’s kind of wrap up here because we’re getting to our time. I could go on and on, maybe we’ll have to have you on this show again some other time. Rob: Yeah, absolutely. Chris: But I’d like to get your final inspirational words for those that are out there that have captured the aviation bug. Maybe they’re trying to get into military, maybe they aren’t, but you’re the perfect example of this story because you have this bug and it kind of showed up a little later in life than a lot of people start to pursue aviation, so what would your final words of advice or inspirational words be for someone in that position? Rob: You know, I would say that probably the biggest thing that keeps people from following their aviation dream is fear like “Am I going to be able to do it? Am I going to be able to succeed? If I fail then what do I have to fall back on to?” There’s kind of a barrier there. And so what I would say is if you really love aviation and you want to make it a career, just go for it. As simple as that is, I think there’s actually a lot of consequences behind that and you got to weight those and decide “Alright, is it really worth it? Do I love it enough to face the consequences if for some reason it doesn’t work out?” Once you make that decision and you take the leap, just give it all you’ve got. Just give it everything you have. Don’t stop working until you get what you want and it’s definitely possible. But I definitely understand that there’s a lot of stuff that’s based on timing and a little bit of luck but it’s amazing what you can overcome and compensate for if you have the right attitude and the right determination to just sit down and power through the difficult parts. Chris: Maybe you can attest to this too but I feel like if you follow your heart and you know this is a passion of yours, you know it’s something you’ve always wanted to do and you go for it, there is this time as a pilot. It kind of happens at different stages for everybody but there’s this time and pilot training where at some point, you really know that you are where you’re supposed to be. I think that happens for everyone. Did that happen for you? Rob: Yeah. You know, it’s funny because I kind of felt that. Like really from day one when I showed up at pilot training, I’m wearing the flight suite, I’m sitting in a class all day just talking about flying and I’m like “Yeah, this is what I should’ve been doing this whole time.” It almost sounds like Napoleon Dynamite when he’s like “Just follow your heart, that’s what I always do.” It’s totally true. If you know you love something and it is interesting to you and you go out and do it, then yeah, I think it will just be confirmation when as you’re doing it you’re like “Alright, this is awesome. Time is flying and I can’t believe I’m getting paid to do this.” Chris: Right, exactly. And maybe that advice goes outside aviation. Maybe someone listening to this, they’re kind of dabbling in aviation sort of thing but maybe their passion is really over elsewhere. So really, I think that goes to anything. We spend so much of our lives working, we may as well enjoy it. Rob: Oh for sure. Chris: Well I really appreciate you being on the show. Really cool to hear your perspective and to hear your story. Again, thank you for your service and we’ll keep up with you so thanks for joining us Rob. Rob: Awesome Chris. Yeah, thanks for having me man. It’s been a lot of fun. Chris: No problem. We’ll catch up soon. Rob: Alright. Chris: Alright, so I’ve always had this utmost respect for what is called the greatest generation, and the greatest generation is that of those during World War II that were of the age to go to war to fight for the good side if you will, the force or whatever. Obviously, that’s the Allied Forces I’m talking about. But these are people that answered a call to action. In this interview with Rob, I think that’s the biggest thing that touched me, was that Rob answered that call to action in our modern day. He was, obviously got his degree in finance, went to Boston, had a job there at an investment firm, enjoyed his job but then this thing called 9/11 happened and it sparked this journey that he’s been on and he hasn’t looked back since. And now, he is fighting in the military or he’s in the military and has the ability to fight if needs be for our country and has because he has been deployed. I just think that’s so awesome that Rob answered that call to action and went out and kind of followed the road that his grandfathers had been on in being pilots in World War II. So I thought that was so interesting and just so amazing. And not only that, you can tell that Rob is just a top notch guy. He absolutely loves his job. He loves aviation, loves his family and it was absolutely fantastic to have him on the show, so Rob, thank you for coming on the show. It was a great pleasure and I know that for all of us, you inspired us to see this passion for aviation, kind of a different light from the military side and it just goes to show that no matter what part of aviation you are in, you have a piece in the pie or a piece in this industry and you have something to share. It was really great to have Rob on the show and I hope you guys enjoyed it too. Make sure to go on the AviatorCast website and see some of the links and things I’ve put on there. Rob has a great website called tallyone.com in which he writes on and he has some other source material there too. He actually has some really nice t-shirts and I plan on getting one of these t-shirts. He has cool stuff on there. I’m also going to post some pictures on the post on the website and a video that he told me about that they made in pilot training. Kind of a Napoleon Dynamite spoof if that gets you excited. Anyway, so again, Rob thanks for joining us on this show, and for you listeners, go to AviatorCast.com and find the episode there and the information there and check out some other stuff that Rob has going. They have a lot of great stuff. Not only tallyone.com but they also have this Slipstream radio podcast that is pretty great as well. Alright, so that’s it for the show. We are going to wrap up here with our aftershow AviatorCast actions. You can take a quick two-minute survey at survey.aviatorcast.com. Here you can give us ideas for upcoming shows. Second, you can continue the conversation by joining us on this episode on AviatorCast.com. You can comment there or you can write me directly at me@aviatorcast.com. I’d love to hear from you in either location. I do get emails and I do answer every single one of them and I make an effort to answer everyI’d love to hear from you in either location. I do get emails and I do answer every single one of them and I make an effort to answer every single comment as well. You can also subscribe. Don’t miss another AviatorCast episode. You can subscribe through iTunes, Stitcher, YouTube, SoundCloud and more. Really simple there and that means you won’t miss another episode. Fourth, we’d love to get an honest review from you on iTunes. This helps others learn about AviatorCast so that they can enjoy it as well. That review from Mike20SM at the beginning of the show came from iTunes. We really love to hear from a lot of you in different parts of the world and even here in the United States and Canada and kind of North America but we’d love to hear from you so if you do enjoy this podcast, please leave us an honest review on iTunes and we will read it on the show. If you’d like to check out any of our training products here at Angle of Attack, head to FlyAOAmedia.com. Start with the basics for free with Aviator90, learn instrument flying and more with AviatorPro, or even fly many of the world’s most popular jets virtually with our training products for the 737, 747, 777 and MD-11 again at FlyAOAmedia.com. Angle of Attack also offers professional video services and creative services at AngleofAttackPro.com. Just reach out to us there and we will talk about your project. Alright, so closing now, many thanks go out to the Angle of Attack crew for all of their hard work to make this episode possible and all they do outside AviatorCast. These guys are absolutely awesome, and they work their tail off when it’s time to really get after things and even when it’s not time to get after things, these guys are in the trenches doing great things for us. And last but certainly not least, thank you for joining us on this episode of AviatorCast. We are truly grateful to have you here, part of our community and so engaged in this wonderful passion for flying things. Until next time, throttle on! [/transcript] The post AviatorCast Episode 48: Rob Burgon- Fighter Pilot | F-22 Raptor | U.S. Air Force appeared first on Angle of Attack.
Learning to fly…in front of the world. A Podcast about flight training. Follow Bill as he progresses through his flight training. This is the audio only feed. The audio podcasts are NOT the same content as the video podcasts, so if you want all the content, please subscribe to both. The audio feed is more tied to the student experience, in cockpit training, with a few features and special events. The video feed includes in-cockpit video sometimes, but is more feature oriented and does not typically coincide as closely with the training.
Rank #1: SPC #034-Solo, Shorts, Softs, and FOD.
Hello again SPC listeners. Today’s episode takes us on a solo training flight on a very busy day to practice performance landings and takeoffs (shorts and softs). We have everything from FOD to go-arounds in this episode, so enjoy. I was nearing the end of stage III in my training, so I was almost in the home stretch. I also explain in this episode the cramming of flights I had to do over just a few days to finish stage III. This flight was the first of them. As mentioned, If you are thinking about learning to fly, check out Air Freddy’s Learning to Fly Guide, an e-book that will answer many of your questions beforehand, and do it in an entertaining way. Lastly, don’t forget to go check out the newly released (out of beta) myTransponder. This aviation oriented social networking site is great. To commemorate the recent full release and the fact that it is now open to anyone to join, I’ve created a group on myTransponder called, “Fans of the Student Pilot Cast.” Please head over to the site and sign up if you haven’t already, and by all means, join my new group! Thanks again for listening, and enjoy the episode. Then, get out and fly!
Rank #2: SPC #027-Out of the Nest, Part II.
This episode chronicles my return flight to Chandler from Tucson international, and is the second part of my first solo cross-country flight during my training. There’s some interesting things that happen, and another bonehead move on my part with the radio. Please enjoy this flight as I learn to fly in front of the world. The route home was only slightly different than when I went to Tucson. I needed to do a touch and go at Ryan Field down in Tucson, so that changed the route slightly. Here is the return. NavMonster, KTUS-KRYN-TOTEC-KCHD Remember, If you are thinking of learning to fly, find out everything you need to know to get started and what to expect during your training with Air Freddy’s Learning to Fly Guide. You help support this podcast by using my link here, so if you consider purchasing this e-book, please click above.
The Inspired Pilot Podcast is an audio podcast hosted by Marvyn Robinson. A weekly show interviewing pilots with inspiring journeys from all around the world. Each week we will highlight the life of our featured pilot, follow their aviation journey, experiences gained and lessons learned. Every episode will be packed with actionable advice and resources to INSPIRE seasoned pilots, low hour pilots, wannabe pilots and pilot enthusiasts alike. Wherever you are on your pilot journey, be prepared to be inspired!
Rank #1: 23: Colonel (ret) Richard Graham - Retired SR-71 Blackbird, USAF & Airline Pilot.
Join us as Richard Graham gives us insight into his inspiring pilot journey After his first solo flight in 1962, with his father as the instructor, Rich Graham was hooked on a flying career. After 25 years in the United States Air Force flying the T-37/T-33/T-38/F-4/SR-71/U-2/KC-135Q aircraft he retired in 1989. He flew at American Airlines for 13 years and was a Captain on the MD-80. With a total flying time of 14,437 hours, Rich is currently an instructor pilot at McKinney Airport in Texas, United States and is a member of the Dallas FAAST team. Listen to Richard's Interview Here: Episode 23: Richard Graham
Rank #2: 2: Chris Puddy - Flying Instructor & Ferry Pilot.
What does it take to become a pilot? Join us as Chris Puddy gives us insight into his inspiring pilot journey. After originally first going solo in Australia back in 1965, Chris finished his flying training back in England. Flying mainly Twin Otters and King Airs, Chris’ Professional Career has been extensive, flying for various companies working in the Far East, all over the UK and also in Africa. After a 12 year break he started Flying Instructing again in 2008. Today, student pilots continue to benefit from Chris’ vast experience and relaxed style of training.
The Pilot's Journey Podcast discusses aviation, proficiency and enjoying the journey.
Rank #1: Episode 4 - Project Volksplane with Martt Clupper.
This episode we talk with Martt Clupper, founder of AirPigz.com and his ambitious project to build and fly a Volksplane in less than 120 days.
Rank #2: PJP #008 - Flying Jobs and Flying for Fun.
This episode finds Stew and Stu discussing flying jobs, personal flights and future plans.
