Show Notes
The gag order is lifted. For ten months Ted answered "what have you been flying lately?" with a cheerful bunch of nothing, because he had quietly bet everything, sport pilot privileges included, on getting his FAA medical. If you apply and get denied, there is no crawling back to sport. He applied anyway. This week the curse-word-laden victory text went out: Ted has his medical, he is legal PIC again, and by his own math he'll have "probably 12 ratings in the next 60 days." Same week, same show: Ben formally accepted a charter job flying SIC in a Phenom 300. ("It didn't say Chrysler 300. It said Phenom, right?") He says he feels like the dog that's been chasing the school bus and finally caught it, and the chat has already decided his Piston Peasant shirt must be surrendered for a Turbine Tyrant model. Ted then opens the books on how the medical actually got won: five months of preparation before submitting anything, more records than his AME could upload (they faxed the rest), a cash MRI, a concierge neurologist one block off Rodeo Drive with an F1 replica car out front, a congressional inquiry, and a personally logged bill of $21,000. Disclaimer on disclaimer on disclaimer: that was Ted's very specific situation, not a recipe. Talk to AOPA Medical Services, Wingman Med, a HIMS AME, anybody but us. Also aboard: Mark, officially the fourth host ("the fifth wheel... it's really nice for redundancy"), is off to build airplanes in the Czech Republic, which Brian was reminded has not been called Czechoslovakia for quite some time. Brian pulled the power at 10,500 feet over a very hot Tennessee and glided Lucy all the way home ("the Icarus approach," per the chat). Plus a five-star review titled "New Era of Hangar Talk," sport pilot altitude rules straight from the 700-page MOSAIC reading (61.315: unchanged), and the non-event event on September 19 at McCollum Field (RYY). Tonight's wisdom, via Mike Alpha Golf: luck favors the prepared. Mentioned on the show: Chrysler 300: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chrysler_300 Phenom 300: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Embraer_Phenom_300 Raven Career Development: https://ravencareers.com/ Ted's video, "first flight after ten months grounded: my faa medical certification story": https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TCt_6pCuLgo Ison Law, The Pilot Lawyers: https://thepilotlawyer.com/ AOPA Medical Resources: https://www.aopa.org/go-fly/medical-resources AOPA MedXpress Simulator: https://wingmanmed.com/medxpress-simulator/ Wingman Med: https://wingmanmed.com/ Dissolution of Czechoslovakia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dissolution_of_Czechoslovakia
More from Midlife Pilot Podcast
Last week's emergency deserves a sequel about the thing you reach for in the later phases of one: the checklist. Enter returning special friend of the show Checkmate Barry, two years to the day (October 1st) from taking over CheckMate Aviation, the premier checklist company. His origin story is extremely midlife pilot: he redid his 182 panel, his trusty checklist no longer matched anything, so he designed his own, laminated it himself, watched it fall apart twice, and concluded "they make a better product than what I can do at home." He sent them the file. He now owns the company. Around the group: the Beast will be unleashed Wednesday (two and a half weeks in the avionics shop, plus one buffer day, "that's what you do"), Ben is inbound to Phenom indoc where a single-engine approach go-around is allegedly the single hardest thing you can do in that jet, and hold entries are being practiced the honest way, drawn in a notebook, no navigator, no pause button. Tonight's wisdom, from the old-school book: the aircraft may fly poorly, but it will always crash well. Mentioned on the show: Tape machine, merch, and everything else: https://www.midlifepilotpodcast.com Checkmate Barry's CheckMate Aviation: https://www.checkmateaviation.com/ QuarkXPress (Barry's design roots): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/QuarkXPress
Ryan and Jackie flew the beautiful RV-10 down for the EP200 hangar show. On the way home, the airplane had other plans: autopilot master fault, attitude indicator misbehaving in IMC, showing level while the airplane turned left, a wall of clouds ahead, and one analog instrument left in the panel: the compass. Ryan keyed up center and, per his own post-landing text, "declared mercy." So tonight is the rarest kind of debrief, one with the pilot in the room: round-robin questions, every decision second-guessed with love, and the sobering inventory afterward: "all the backup to the backup, that would not have worked." For the record, as established on air: Ted did not fly into a Bravo. Tonight's wisdom, pulled from the show's earliest days and never more fitting: remember, you fly an airplane with your head, not your hands and your feet. Mentioned on the show: Tape machine, merch, and everything else: https://www.midlifepilotpodcast.com Anderson, Indiana (KAID), home of unleaded fuel: https://www.airnav.com/airport/KAID Garmin Axis: https://www.garmin.com/en-US/aviation/axis/overview/ Picking up an IFR clearance on the ground: https://www.boldmethod.com/learn-to-fly/regulations/how-to-pick-up-an-ifr-clearance/ Rensselaer, Indiana (KRZL): https://www.airnav.com/airport/KRZL Purdue University Airport, Lafayette (KLAF): https://www.airnav.com/airport/KLAF Garmin GSU 25: https://www.garmin.com/en-US/p/532062/ East End Grill, Lafayette: https://www.eastendmain.com/
The Discord kept circling one subject, and it happens to be printed on our favorite t-shirt: I forget how to land (or have never learned in the first place). So this one's all landings: the plateau, the last five seconds, and the sight pictures we grade ourselves against "a little less forgiving than they need to be." Just don't ask the internet, where landing advice is "one of the most painful exposés in human behavior" and somebody always soloed in 0.6 hours and wants you to man up. Field reports: seven hours in and "squirrely around the pattern" (that's the hardest part and the most fun part, hang in there), a Cherokee pilot whose new ride lands "like I'm flying straight into the ground," and Hammack600's accidental greaser followed by the cardinal error: one more touch and go. Plopped it right in. Put the greaser in the bank, people. Then leave us a tape machine message at midlifepilotpodcast.com: under two minutes, the moment landing finally clicked for you. Tonight's wisdom: checklists are what smart pilots use when memory starts feeling confident. Mentioned on the show: Leave us a tape machine message (and everything else): https://www.midlifepilotpodcast.com The "I Forget How to Land" shirt and other merch: https://www.midlifepilotpodcast.com Van's RV-12 (Ted's squirrely trainer): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Van%27s_Aircraft_RV-12
Two hundred episodes, and this one comes with a studio audience: live from a hangar at McCollum Field, at a non-event event. "Come if you want, come as you are," and people came anyway, some from very long distances. Ben opened the show with engines running in the background and Lucy parked directly behind the crowd, and the staffing was deep: AJ, Lord Alpha Juliet of the Airline Pilot Guy show ("you shouldn't call him Substitute Mark"), Luke of Luke's Landings on production, and Evan, Brian's third-born, running the FBO shuttle. Brian's arrival got the full KRYY treatment. AJ knows "pretty much everybody in the tower," so the welcome came over the actual frequency, preserved by LiveATC and played on the show: "AJ called and told me to tell you it took you long enough." Then Brian turned his microphone around, unplanned, and pointed it at Dev Cannon of the Music City CAF: Navion owner, based at M54 in Lebanon, active in the Commemorative Air Force, and the volunteer on the ad hoc committee helping shape the coming Bachelorette Bravo. The job "pays exactly zero dollars," and Dev is the one synthesizing everyone's concerns within the FAA's framework. Happy 200! Mentioned on the show: Dev Cannon and the Music City CAF: https://www.cafmusiccity.org/ LiveATC.net: https://www.liveatc.net/ Airline Pilot Guy show: https://airlinepilotguy.com/ Luke's Landings on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@lukeslanding2230 Cobb County International Airport-McCollum Field (KRYY): https://www.airnav.com/airport/KRYY
Eleven minutes of "we're keeping it a mystery," and then out with it: our friend Timestamp Tedder went and passed his private pilot checkride. "No longer sport pilot extraordinaire." Theoretically he can still hold the title, he just kind of added some more. A hard-won medical, a pile of hours in the Egg, and now a private pilot certificate sitting on top of all of it. So tonight is the full checkride debrief, from a guy who did it the midlife way: over-prepared, slightly terrified, and delighted. The flight portion opened with a gift from the aviation gods: two lane faults on the Rotax during the run-up, in front of a DPE who is also an A&P. "Oh no, this is not a good sign." Flip the lanes, they reset, never came back, and if you also just said "lanes?", the 912iS explainer is linked below. Ted's adrenaline on boarding "just went nuts," at which point he discovered the top note on the DPE's own checklist: relax. "And he keeps pointing to it in the flight. It's like, wow sir, that's not helping." He did, however, collect planning points for knowing Redmond's Flight Following Lite: squawk 1237, tune the frequency, say nothing, and "they'll call you out if they need you to move." Around the patch, the wins keep coming. Gary in Colorado passed his private and asked the question of the week: is it normal to feel numb the day after? Gita's ruling: "totally normal to feel dumb or to feel numb the day after. Both sort of feel normal." Gita also shared a pattern with a police helicopter fresh off studying rotor wash, and received a comment from the helicopter pilot "best left unanswered." Ray B. in Australia passed his sport pilot nav ride, "but most importantly it was done in a Piston Peasant t-shirt." Skip L. passed his private after life got in the way for two and a half years, which is the most midlife pilot sentence there is. Sierra Squared logged 1.5 of floats, seven takeoffs and landings, and retired from float flying at "almost 700 bucks an hour." Tonight's wisdom: nothing improves your crosswind technique like an audience at the FBO. Mentioned on the show: Gita Brown and the Calm Cockpit Podcast: https://calmcockpit.com/ Description of the Rotax 912iS electrical system and lanes: https://www.rotax-owner.com/en/912is-technical-questions/11220-basic-description-of-generator-and-lane-system-operation "Flight Following Lite" in Redmond Oregon: https://notams.aim.faa.gov/lta/main/viewlta?lookupid=2667888510941271769