Technology
How You Can Save Money in Flight Training
In this episode of the Pilot-to-Pilot podcast, Jason Miller shares valuable insights on how to save money during flight training. He discusses strategies for both aspiring commercial pilots and those ...
How You Can Save Money in Flight Training
Technology •
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Interactive Transcript
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Episode 342 of the Pilot-to-Pilot podcast takes off now.
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plus traffic into your cockpit.
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My name is Jason Miller.
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I'm a career flight instructor.
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I've been teaching flying in California since 2002.
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I specialize in mountain training, technically advanced aircraft and instrument flying.
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And my philosophies for training have grown over the last couple decades and have been
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released in a series of YouTube videos and podcasts and ultimately culminated in our
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Ground School app, which is a proficiency in training app for pilots of all levels.
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Avination, what is going on and welcome back to the pilot-pilot podcast.
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My name is Justin Seams and I am your host.
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In today's episode we have Jason Miller on from Learn the Funner Points in the Ground
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School app.
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Now as you know, they're a sponsor of the episode.
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They're a sponsor of the podcast.
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I'm a big, big believer in Jason and his mission of what he's doing in aviation and teaching
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pilots.
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The first thing he says when he introduces himself is, I'm a career flight instructor and you
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feel that when you talk to him, you can tell that he loves it, that he has a passion for
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it, passion for teaching.
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And I highly recommend checking out the Ground School app.
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It is something that I wish I had when I was in my training and I think it is very, very
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valuable for you as well.
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So please check it out.
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It's just a wealth of information and so much knowledge in there.
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But in this episode directly, we are talking about how to save money.
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We talk about someone who is maybe a businessman and has a ton of money and how they can go
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about their training.
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And then we also pivot to your student pilot, money is tight.
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You won't hear private.
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We give you a couple tips on what you can do and how you can expect what your training
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is going to be like and how you can save money as well.
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Because as we know, it is very expensive.
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There's no ifs, ands or buts about it.
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Flying is going to be expensive.
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It's a major hurdle to getting an aviation is just to overall expense.
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But you can do it.
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Now that people have done it as well.
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So there are a couple tips for you in there as well.
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Aviation, I hope you enjoyed this episode.
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If you do, please leave us a review on Spotify.
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We just passed 1000 reviews, which is crazy.
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We're trying to get 1000 reviews on Apple Podcasts.
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So go there as well and leave a review.
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Last time I checked, I think we're at like 930.
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So we're close.
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We're very, very close.
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I appreciate you all listening.
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To that effect, we do have something coming out cool later this year.
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So if you sign up for the email list, every great.
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It's on the website, piothepyodageq.com.
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I'll make sure that it's there and I'll send it out either on Instagram
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or I'll just make it more available on the website.
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But something is coming that I think is going to be pretty cool.
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And we're putting a lot of work in, shout out to Nick, the video editor.
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Shout out to Nick.
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You're the man, putting him to work.
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But we're making something pretty cool.
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And I think it's going to be a lot of fun.
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So evenation, I hope you're having a great day.
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Without any further ado, here's Jason and how to save money in your flight training.
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Jason, what's up, dude?
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Welcome back to the podcast.
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Thanks, Justin.
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I'm happy to be here.
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Thanks for having me.
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I'm excited to have you here as well.
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I need to go back and start counting.
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But I'm pretty sure you are the most returning guest.
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You've probably been on here more than anyone else.
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So I don't know if that's a good thing or bad thing for you, but yeah.
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Well, that's a great honor.
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I think it's three or four times now.
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Yeah.
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Well, cool man.
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Well, today, we've had the series, which we actually haven't finished yet.
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I believe we stopped at commercials.
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We need to continue that series that we did.
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But this one is going to be more specific in how to save money in flying.
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I think it's a very, very hot topic, right?
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Like, I mean, you see people taking out tons of money for loans.
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You see some people in Instagram being like, hey, I only spent 20 grand in all my training.
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And this is how I did it, or I didn't have any loans.
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So there's really kind of like a huge spread of people on either side, either they spent
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a ton of money or didn't spend much money at all.
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I'm already able to pay it off.
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So I think it's a very hot topic, you know, how to save money because it is very expensive
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to become a pilot and pride with the number one reason why people don't do it because
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it's such a burden on people.
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And especially with what it looks like right now, where a lot of people aren't getting
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hired for regionals or aren't getting there's not as much movement as there was a couple
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of years ago.
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So I think it's a very good time to touch on this.
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So I don't know if it's going to be five tips, 10 tips, 100 tips or three, but we're
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going to have a little solid conversation on how you can save money while training.
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Yeah, yeah, that's great.
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That's great.
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You know, and I think straight away there's kind of like two different, I don't know, types
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of people or two people with sort of two different goals or agendas, right?
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Like there's the people that you mentioned that come into flight training with the idea
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that they need to get their certificates and ratings and then they want to get hired,
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right?
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So it's like how fast can I get all of that stuff done and start to earn money as a pilot?
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Maybe that's like one group of people.
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And then there's another group of people that are just successful in business or they've
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come to a time in their life where they want to become pilots and they maybe want to buy
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an aircraft and enjoy the world of aviation.
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And maybe that's a second group.
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And I think it's slightly different for each one, which is why I think we should probably
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make that distinction.
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Yeah, for sure.
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Because I mean, you do have the business man.
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It's like, hey, money's not really an issue.
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I want to be the best pilot.
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I can possibly be.
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Here's a bubbling check essentially.
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But I think focusing on this will probably focus on kind of like the younger student that
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really wants you to make this a career or just has a, doesn't have the opportunity to
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have the funds necessarily available and has to go into loans or has to go into cost saving
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and you know, they're eating beans every single night so they can afford one more hour
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of a 172 or 152 time.
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Yeah, yeah.
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And that's, and we can talk about strategies for that group people for sure.
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And there's some, there is a lot that they can do.
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But one thing I would say, let me just say this for the, for the, maybe the other group.
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And it's not so much that they can write a blank check.
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But it's, I think the main difference is in, in one group, you're at a certain point,
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you're going to turn around and flying will start paying you, right?
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And that's, so like eating beans and getting all your certificates and ratings and doing
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whatever you have to do to get that job, you know that there's this day where the flow
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is going to reverse.
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There will come a day where all of a sudden, all of this work and all this effort I put
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into flying, the career will start paying me.
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And that's maybe just different from like a pilot that's doing it on the side, whether
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they're super wealthy or not.
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That second group that's just doing it not as a career, but doing it because they love
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it should really think about it as a monthly expense, right?
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Like that, like flying is not something that you, you know, you learn to do and then
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you stop spending money on.
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Unless of course it's going to pay you, which we'll talk about in a moment.
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But if you're somebody that just is trying to get a pilot certificate because you want
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to enjoy this world of aviation, I really think you should disconnect yourself from the
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overall expense.
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All of us have to keep flying for instrument currency, for passenger currency, for just,
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you know, keeping our skills sharp.
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And that will never really end.
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So I think that for people that are going to not get paid, it's important that they
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just start thinking about it.
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And how much per month do I want to invest in flying?
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And what's a number that I can sustain sort of indefinitely?
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Yeah.
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One of my neighbors when I was growing up, he became a pilot.
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I don't know how much money they had, but they were able to afford lessons and start flying
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right on the same time I was doing my training.
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And I think for him, it was a monthly expense.
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And then eventually life gets busy.
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He goes back out to fly and scares myself in the plane.
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And it's like, all right, I'm done.
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So keeping up and thinking of it as monthly and making sure you are doing a couple hours
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every single month will help you maintain this as a full hobby for out your role.
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Long it way longer than taking a month or two off because there will come a time where
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you're not going to be as proficient.
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You're going to be like, oh, I'm a private pilot.
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I can go take this one 72.
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I've done it before.
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But three months later, you're like, oh crap, this feels weird.
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And you're behind the airplane.
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And you just scare yourself and you take the time off.
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So try not to do that.
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Yeah, 100%.
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I see that all the time.
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That's incredibly common.
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Yeah, because the thing that makes you anxious up there is when your skills start to decay.
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And unfortunately, like you said, you generally find that out on a flight where you're
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thinking to yourself, I'm not ready for this or I scare myself or whatever, you know,
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I don't feel prepared.
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So yeah, the antidote to that is consistent flying or even consistent training.
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But really, you know, like what they would, what you do in the professional world at the airlines
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are really at any professional job where you're going back every six months for recurrent training.
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Like there's a, there's a rhythm to it.
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And I think for it, that's good for anybody, whether you're a professional pilot or not,
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you should really think about it that way.
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So it's not like it's not like you achieve this goal and then all of a sudden the expenses are gone.
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Right. Exactly.
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Yeah.
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Exactly right.
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You may have recurrent six months, 12 months, spinning under flying 121 135.
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But yeah, it's always good to go back and do the training, you know, to get refreshers because
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you might be a little bit slower when you haven't done it in a year.
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And it's good to just have it on your mind and just a lot of things I like very current is
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they kind of tell you what's happening in the line.
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Like, hey, we've seen a lot of this.
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We've seen a lot of this and make sure you pay, this is a hot topic right now.
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So pay attention to that and it helps keep your brain fresh and just thinking about things
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because you know, it's pilots you think sometimes you fly and it's like, I've done this before.
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But every flight's different and it's really important to take every flight as their own
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and and make sure you're not just being complacent up there.
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Yeah, it's true.
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I mean, it's like having that community reflection is really where you can get into a little silo by yourself.
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You know, like in your own little world, if you don't have that feedback,
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even just, you know, I do this thing called office hours or every Friday, I just meet with a
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group of pilots. We have new people coming in all the time, but it's like a, it's turned into
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this group that just gets together every Friday and it's really great.
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You know, like just hearing what's happening for other people out there, problems people are
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dealing with, just that sort of community support and awareness of what other people are experiencing.
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That's awesome.
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So now kind of transitioning to what we're the second part of the group, right?
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So let's talk about like student pilots, private pilots, getting that private pilot license.
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I know when I was training, I think a private pilot license was anywhere from like $6000 to $8000.
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Do you know, is that pretty much what it is now or has it gone up with inflation?
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Is it pretty crazy?
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Man, that sounds really low for more I'm sitting.
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But let's just say it's a, I mean, I mean, and I don't, this number might sound shocking,
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then and keeping in mind I'm in the Bay Area in San Francisco and here in any part of California,
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the number would be skewed a little bit, but I'm seeing people spend more like 20 or 25,000.
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For the private pilot.
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Wow.
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Yes.
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Now, let's just say any, let's just call it a range, okay?
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Let's just say anywhere from, it's hard to get it with less than, for less than eight,
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but let's just say it's eight to 25,000.
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I think the main thing is the strategies that people can use and
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like it's there's two things that are really present on my mind and one of the things that I
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finished recently was a private pilot syllabus and it's, it's funny, the finer points hadn't generated
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a private pilot syllabus until about a year ago and it's contained now if you get our
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ground school app, you and anybody can just go to the resources tab and check out the syllabus.
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But there were two, well, there were some, let's say three things that I think are unique
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about our syllabus that I didn't see in other syllabi and maybe these are good,
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good points to talk about because I think they're directly related to saving money.
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And one thing is the concept of dry time and I know we talk about couch flying, we talk about
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dry time, we talk about this in kind of a vague way like your CFL tell you, oh, you know, you
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should, you should really do some couch flying before you go out.
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One of the things that we did in the syllabus and one of the things that really believe in as
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as a money saving practice is for every single lesson, there's like a dry time assignment,
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you know, so before you go to lesson two, you have to complete all of the assignments for lesson one
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and some of that is actually sitting down in a little procedural trainer where they're,
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well, you're not spending any money at all. There's no CFI, you're not paying a CFI hourly,
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you're not paying for the Hobbes time. But what you're doing is going through all those procedures
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and all of the things that will get you, you know, like in the run-up area, for example,
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like if you're in an airplane in the run-up area, you're paying your CFI, you're paying the Hobbes time.
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And if that's the first time that you've looked at the run-up checklist and tried to find all the
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switches and all the, you know, everything that you have to do in the run, that's the wrong time
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to be doing it. I mean, you're spending, you know, potentially three, four hundred dollars an hour
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sitting there trying to learn this stuff. So there's no reason you can't and students really should
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do that in a procedural trainer. If it's just a picture of the cockpit or even sitting in the
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aircraft without the engine running, but all that stuff should be like, you know, should really
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be well rehearsed, it should be comfortable and familiar before you ever go to the airplane.
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And you know, a lot of what I end up saying in the world about flying is really emulating
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what works for professionals. Because if we just, if we sort of back the camera off,
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the pros have been at this for a long time. The companies have survived many decades of
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accidents and transformations. So a lot of what professional pilots and professional pilot
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organizations do is really the right way to do it. And if the path, if the road is paved, like,
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let's just follow it, you know, let's not, if an amp broke, don't fix it. If it's working for them,
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it should work for us. So this is, as you know, this is how the airlines and the military and
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all of those higher level flying organizations deal with this. You go to a procedural trainer
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before you go to the sim and you go to a sim before you go to a plane. Yeah, because I want to save
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money, right? Yeah, exactly right. And that's my point, right? They've got it all dialed in. So
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we really just have to copy it. So yeah, so really it was like for every single lesson in our syllabus,
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there's a specific dry time assignment that has to be completed before the next lesson. And that's
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designed to just really save money. Yeah, just to trim off that slop, you know, that sitting in the
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run-up area, looking for a switch. You know, where's the, where's that switch again? Yeah, that's
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a lot of time. And adds up, right? Every point matter, every point one matters. Absolutely. 100%.
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And going back to dry time, I mean, even when I was doing my 120-wintering a couple years ago,
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before the initial checkride and in my initial, I was, you know, standing in my hotel room and I was
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like, all right, V1 cut and I'd like walk and then I turn left like, what do I call here? What I call
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400 feet? What do I call? What's my speeds in here? And I would do that. So then I felt comfortable
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enough in my first lesson. That I didn't waste anyone's time because when it comes to 120-wintering,
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you know, you're on such a time crunch. It's like you have to do this. You have to fit all this
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into this lesson. And if you don't, you start getting behind and it's really hard to catch up.
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And if you take that mentality into what you're talking about with student pilot or private pilot
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training or any kind of training, it's going to help you save money in the long run.
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Yeah, 100%. And exactly how you described it, right? That's what you do when you're training to
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be a professional pilot. I'm sure a lot of us have seen the blue angels on YouTube, you know,
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when they sit in the conference room and all of them with their eyes closed, rehearsing every
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little move and every little call out that they're going to hear on the radio. Like that's the
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highest level of precision. If they can't do it in a conference room, I'm pretty darn sure they
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can't do it in an F-16. And the same thing translates to any pilot training, right? If you can't,
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you know, like with engine failures, for example, right? We go through ABCD and E, right? Airspeed,
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best field check systems, declare the emergency. If you can't quickly tell me what systems you're
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going to check when we're sitting here at my desk, what makes you think you're going to be able to
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do that when we're gliding toward, you know, a field. Yeah. You know, and then there's terrain
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all around and there's wires and all these things you're thinking about. So, so I think that just,
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again, emulating the way it works for the highest achievers is what we should be trying to do.
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And I think it's going to feel weird at first, right? It's not going to feel natural sitting in a
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chair. We're like, all right, well, gumps, you know, you're just like, okay, cool, did it. But really,
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just like, honestly, just close your eyes like the blue angels and just imagine you're in the airplane
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and try to imagine the switches and the cool thing with technology, I'm sure there's going to come a
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time where you can put on a VR headset and you can put yourself in a 172, you know, put up flight
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simulator, hook it up to VR headset, look around and you're in the plane. Yeah. Yeah. We're kind of
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there. Yeah. If that's your cup of tea, you know, if that's the way you want to do it. And in my
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mind, it doesn't like that's an option in today's world. If you want to get, you know, fancy VR
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headset and put yourself in a virtual 172. If you want to go to your flight school and just ask to
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go sit in the airplane, right? There's no usually flight schools flying clubs. They don't mind.
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If the plane's not being used, just go sit in it. We all know. So a lot of times planes are maintenance
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and so you can sit in there while they're getting worked on. Or, you know, even just a picture of,
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you know, of the panel. But I think the main thing is this to really bring the attention to bear,
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like you said, and so you don't just sit there and be like, okay, gumps, I did it once, I know it,
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you know, it's, you know, go through all of the normal procedures and then go back through all the
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the emergency procedures. And this is where I found when we were writing the syllabus that
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there really are for every lesson, very specific things you can practice and you can build on it.
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It can become kind of accumulative. It's too much to do in one or two or three little sessions,
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you know, absolutely. What do you got next for for you said there's three steps kind of what's
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like yeah, or yeah, three or four different things that sort of popped to my mind. Another one
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is and this one's a little bit counterintuitive. I've got two kids and so over the last, you know,
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15 years I've been a father. We've been raising children and one of the things that
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has sort of presented itself in my life is this walldorf of education. Have you ever heard of it?
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It's it's like an alternative education concept that's pretty fascinating and there's a reason I
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want to tell you this because it relates to flight training. But traditional education is kind of a
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linear path, right? You go they basically say, you know, if you started zero and by 18 you have to
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graduate college, we're going to just break up every little thing you have to know into even parts
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and we're going to start teaching you, you know, kindergarten you learn this, first grade you learn
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that, second grade you learn this and it's just a little bit more every year until you get 18.
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In the walldorf education, it's a little different. It's a curved path. Okay. So they start out
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slower in the beginning. They don't, for example, introduce reading as early as a traditional
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education might. They invest in socialization skills or the ability of the child to concentrate
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or they kind of set the context for learning and their theory is that if you create a good
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context for learning, you create the appetite for learning, then everything accelerates and it's got
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kind of a hockey stick shape to it. And it's been proven quite effective like here in our local
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town, the walldorf school has the top eighth grade testing scores of any school in the
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districts, right? So the proofs in the pudding, right? Like they take them slow in the beginning,
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but those are the highest performing kids on tests here locally. Our syllabus when I was writing it
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is very similar. Like I really believe and I want people to hear this, if you invest in your early
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flying skills, if you take the time to really learn how to fly the plane in the first 25 hours,
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really understand where should I be looking? What does the rudder truly do? How does the rudder
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change as I add power? How does it change as I slow down? That stuff, if you invest in that very,
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very early on, will make everything downstream go faster and it will have that similar sort of hockey
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shape, hockey stick shape to the goal that the walldorf education has. And so you don't often
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find when you look at a syllabus, a flight training syllabus, you don't often find lessons,
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for example, where you might go out and just fly with your feet the whole lesson, and we're not
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going to touch the yoke, we're just going to fly with our feet or go out on a lesson with the
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flight instruments covered and you're just drawing on the window. And it's like, you know, mostly
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in flight training, we say things like, well, you have to know steep turns. So today we're just
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going to we're going to go work on steep turns. And I'm a believer that if you if you really slow
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the beginning down and invest in that foundation so that you know pilots can see the site picture
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in terms they know when the pitch is changing in terms they know when the bank is changing in terms.
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All of that investment early on will make everything super easy and super fast.
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You know, if you can do minimum controllable airspeed with your instruments covered, then your
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mover slow flight is a no brainer, you know, so I so two experiences with me with that I did most,
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I did my private out of high state, 141, you know, fast pace, we do this now, we do this now, we do
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that like it was just fast paced. And I thought I liked it at times. It's all I knew. But then I move
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back to Charlotte and I went to my local flight school and I flew with this really, I want to say
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really old, but he's an older Texas, you know, flight instructor and my goodness gracious. We got
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in the playing for the first time as I bought. He's like, son, don't touch the right. Don't touch
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the other ones. We're flying with our feet today. And I mean, I wish I had that in the beginning
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because it opened up my knowledge to just so much more about how and why and it really helped me
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feel the airplane, right? Like it helped me feel the controls anticipating and really understanding
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what it feels like. That would say like feel your butt when you're in a turn to make sure
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it coordinated, but they just tell you that they don't like show you or tell you how to feel it or
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what you're supposed to be feeling. And he really really kind of opened up my brain to kind of
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understanding why we're doing this and why we have to learn this, you know, rather than just be like,
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all right, this is on the check ride. Steve turns, all right, proficiency check, you know, now it
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helps you in the clouds, you know, helps you in everything. If you can really understand what's
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going to happen when you do what? Yeah, 100%. That is absolutely true. And it's just, it, you know,
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it might be hard to believe that if you're a, if you're a student coming in and you don't have a lot
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of money to spend, you know, and you're, and you're concerned about money. It's like, you know,
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you might be thinking to yourself, if this is a linear path, I can't take that long in the
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beginning to, to work on those basic skills. But what I'm telling you from decades in the right
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seat is that if you take the time to build those skills, the way you're talking about those,
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like lessons like you had with that guy in Texas, everything else is easy. Like that, you know,
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like that is what we're trying to accomplish. You can look at any one of the flight maneuvers
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on the private ACS. And we're essentially trying to test for a handful of things. You know, you know,
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are you aware of the, the rudder really? I mean, you can think of all the areas in the ACS.
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You look at the maneuvers you have to do slow flight. What are we looking for in slow flight?
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Pretty much to make sure that you can manage the left turning tendencies when we're at a slow speed.
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And that you can understand the pitch power relationship as you get to the slow end of the end.
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Yeah. In power off stall recoveries, when, you know, making sure that you manage the rudder
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when the power comes in, the go around, manage the rudder when the power comes in, you know,
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so it's really like a lot about the rudder and it's a lot about managing speed and angle of
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attack. You know, there's these basic concepts. And so if you don't really understand that stuff,
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you can learn maneuvers wrote, you know, for years without ever really getting to the bottom of
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why you're doing it or what skills are involved. Yeah. Absolutely. And what do you think the importance is
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of making sure your first instructor, instructor teaches you that because I mean, it is a law
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promisey, right? Like I can't even tell you how much I go back to my initial training and private.
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Now I had a ton of instructors because the 141 school that kind of just paired with an instructor
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every single quarter. But I really do my very first instructor who thankfully was a good instructor
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was the one that I kind of like lean back to now. And if I have an emergency, like, you know,
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I kind of, I go back to what I was first trained on and how to handle emergencies, which is just
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crazy to think about. Yeah, yeah, everybody does. I think it's, you know, this is a tough one to answer
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because I, I happen to be someone who I loved my first flight instructor, but she was young and
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inexperienced really cool person. I'm not knocking her at all. She did the best job she could.
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But she didn't know what she didn't know. And it wasn't until I met my instrument instructor who
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was an older guy from the Air Force or whatever that he really, he really changed the way I fly. So
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I think to answer your question, I think it's, it's, it's very important. However, not everybody has
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access to that. In fact, this is like, this is one of my life's missions really. I mean,
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this is why we give our app and our syllabus. It's all free for instructors. And the idea is that
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we want to try to make this education available to everybody. So if you go through our flight
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training, the flight training side of our app, for example, all of these exercises and lessons
spk_0
are there. They're part of our syllabus. And so I always say to people, if you're not sure, you know,
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if you, if you're like me, if you really like your flight instructor, but you are aware that this
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person's like 22 and just learned 12 months ago, you know, you know, then you should get our app
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and just follow along and make sure that your instructor has it also because your instructor would
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get it free and make sure that some of these lessons are being built in if possible. Because this is,
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you know, this is like, this is, there's a lot of meat on the bone here, so to speak. You know,
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I have right now two private students that I'm working with. And you know, I, I was flying with
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one of them the other day and I was having a heck of a time getting them to use his feet. You know,
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he's like, he's, you know, he's supposed solo. But it's like, how is this my student, right? I mean,
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you know me and I'm like, I'm doing all these things. How is it that my student isn't using the
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rudder the way that I want him to? And I realized, you know, and I realized we need to really go out
spk_0
and do a couple lessons more like what we're talking about. We're going to go fly with a dry erase
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marker, the instruments covered and we're not going to touch the yoke. You know, we're going to do
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falling leaf stall exercises and slow to minimum controllable airspeed and do all these things that
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are not on the ACS. But once all of this stuff comes together, that's when just all those goals that
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I was saying that we're looking for on, yes, what the examiner is trying to test does this person
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know the rudder does this person control the angle of attack in a way that is safe? All of that
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stuff will be there if we just invest in those initial basic. What's that really? Yeah, it's a,
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it's a hard thing to come by and it but it's really important and it's counterintuitive. It's a little bit
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like if anyone's a sailor another example you can think of is it's like tacking a sail, but you know,
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sometimes when you're sailing you go the wrong way
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because you're trying to get into a better spot so that you can go faster
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current. Absolutely. Yeah. That's what this is like. Yeah. And I think I think another one that's counterintuitive is
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making sure you are spending money and flying too because you need to stay current, right? The longer stretch
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that you have of taking time off is going to just make you repeat lessons and it's going to extend
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your training. So if you can find a way to make sure you're staying consistent and like I said,
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it might be more expensive but in the short term but it will save you money in the long term.
spk_0
Yeah. Yeah. And I think there's a lot of examples of how we can think about this. I mean,
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it's like I was just telling you when we got on that I was at the gym this morning and you're
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you know, you're an athlete. Well, there's a regimen, right? Like you might go to the gym one day
spk_0
and you're working on lower body, right? And then the next day you go and you're working on
spk_0
upper body and then you go do like a cardio day or whatever it is. And this is sort of where we
spk_0
started is if people start thinking about flight training as a monthly expense, you can design a
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program for yourself. Yeah. Like if you were somebody that just really money was tight, you might
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say, well, you know, one week of the month I'm doing just just dry time. That's like first week of
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the month I'm out there doing dry time and procedures. Second week of the month, I'm like reviewing
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accidents and listening to ATC, practicing radio communications, whatever it is. Third week,
spk_0
I'm going to go flying or you know, whatever the program is. Maybe I fly every week or twice a
spk_0
week or three times a week depending on how much money you have monthly. But you want to start to
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think of like a consistent rhythm like you're saying because if you have gaps, that's where you're
spk_0
going to end up spending way more in the long run. Let's take a break from today's podcast to
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here from our sponsor RAA. Hey, it's Justin. If you've been flying long enough to hit senior
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backslash pilot to pilot. And then what do you think is like a sweet spot of how much you
spk_0
should fly in a week? Like let's just say someone has unlimited money. Do you think it's healthy to
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fly five times a week, seven times a week, or what's kind of a sweet spot in training versus it?
spk_0
Kind of having fun and making sure you have a life outside of this. Well, if you want a life
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outside of it, I think twice a week is a sweet spot because you really have to understand that
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you're not being as efficient as you can be unless you're like putting three hours in for every
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hour you fly. So like all this dry time I'm talking about and the radio communications practice,
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maybe studying regulations, you know, for every flight you go on, you could walk away with a list
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of things that you could dive into the books and study. Something happened on that flight. Some guy
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entered the pattern in a certain way or some thing happened in the airplane that you're not
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sure about whatever, you know, you can go, you know, build your knowledge and study from the actual
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experience of your flight. If you're in training, there's stuff your instructor is going to tell you
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to go review or think about filming the flights is a really wise idea. Maybe not posting all of
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an Instagram or YouTube, but for your own consumption to make sure you're better pilot, right?
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Well, yeah, but I mean filming, yeah, and just, you know, like having a protocol, you finish the
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flight, you maybe you have now you've got to review the video, then there's going to be things that
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come up in the video that you want to study and research and then there's some procedural practice
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that comes out of it. So the problem with flying five days a week is there's just zero time to study
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and do all that prep work in between the lessons and then you're learning in the airplane. So it's not
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the most cost effective way to do it. I would say if you had no life, like you just were full time
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in flight training three days a week would be a sweet. Yeah, no, I think three, I think two to three is
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a great recommendation. That's what I try to do when I when I stepped away from football and I
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made it kind of like my full time job was flying part time of the Apple store too, but that was just
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whatever. But yeah, it was just two to three times a week and just try to enjoy it as much as you
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can. I think one thing to say about this as well is to understand that some days are going to be
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harder than others. There's going to be some days you get out of their plane. You're going to
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feel like you cannot do this and that this is not a career for you. And I just want you to know
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that I promise you you can do this and this is a career for you. I know a lot of people who I
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would probably be like, I probably don't want to fly with them, but they are airline pilots, right?
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Now they're all trained as some peas. They're all doing great, but it's like, you know, you just
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have this you saw what they did when they're in their private like, whoa, that's a little weird.
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But you can do this. Anyone can do this. I promise you, you can become a pilot and you can have a
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great career with their argument to be days and there's going to be needed days. We're
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instructors going to be really tough on you and be like, look, you're not where you need to be
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and you need to understand that criticism and take it as not necessarily as a tack on you,
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but just burn the fuel to help you burn the energy to make you want to do this even more and be
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the best pilot you can be. Yeah, for sure. In fact, there's a conversation that is so consistent
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for me that I expect it now on the instrument rating. There's always a point where I have to tell
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my students that they have to like basically try harder. Yeah. And and it's not just them. I mean,
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I had that experience. I remember I was when I was going for my instrument rating.
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I was keeping a journal and I remember there's this page like when I laugh at it where it's like,
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I had my annual goals, right? I can't remember what year this was. It was a long time ago, you know,
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maybe 99, 2000, a long time ago. And the goals were something like, I'm going to I'm going to travel
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to France this year. I'm going to do this. I'm going to, you know, fix my sailboat. I'm going to do
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all these things. I'm going to get my instrument rating. The year went by and none of the goals
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happened except the instrument rating. And even that I didn't finish in a year. It was like I just
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every day had to wake up and realize I have to put more into this like this is going to take more of
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my energy. This is going to take more of my time. And as I started teaching, I realized I have that
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conversation with almost all my instruments. There comes a time and instrument training about
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a third or a half way into it where I have to sit down and say, look, you're doing great,
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but I need more. Like I need more from you. You're going to have to try hard. And I think that's
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a healthy conversation to have and a needed conversation to have. And I think as the student,
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when you receive that, I know I said this before, but try not to view it as a personal attack.
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It's just what you need to do. It's like your expectations for passing this check ride. And even
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just being a good pilot on top of that being safe is that you just have to be better. And I think
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that everyone has to have that conversation at some point. Yeah. And it's not easy. And so like to
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your comment up front is that people will have those days where it feels like I can't do this. But
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you can push through those walls. And then in all the years that I've been teaching
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through our very, very, very few people, if anybody, one or two maybe in decades of teaching where I
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thought, okay, this is probably not for you. You should maybe think of a different career.
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Coding is my career. And to be honest, if it ever gets to that place, I'm the last person.
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It's usually the student trying to convince me that it's time for me to give up on them.
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You're like, no, no, no, promise you can do it. I promise. Do you have any other tips that you
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can think of right now? Yeah, what was the other one? The standardization, you know, is the other
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thing. And I think that standardizing your behavior in the airplane will make everything go faster
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and help you be more proficient at the end of the day. I'm trying to think of good examples.
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It's like a, it's like a freeing. It's mentally freeing. Now for anybody that doesn't,
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isn't familiar with the idea of standardization. This again is just a concept we borrow from,
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as you know, Justin very well, professional operations. When you go to the cockpit of your airliner,
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it doesn't really matter who the captain or the first officer is. Like, you don't have to necessarily
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know this person. You may have never met before. The two of you sit down and you start executing a
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ritual that you've both been trained to execute. That is the way to fly an airplane. That, I mean,
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we can talk for hours about that. Really, it's the cornerstone of safety. It's valuable in many,
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many ways. But one of the ways that it is valuable is it just allows you to hold less in your mind,
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really. Like, my like a fun example in GA is if you standardize after your pre-flight,
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you do a final walk around. If that's your standardized procedure. So I go, you know, say,
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I go to the aircraft, I do my pre-flight inspection. When the pre-flight inspection is done,
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the last thing I do is a final walk around. You don't necessarily have to remember all the things
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that could go wrong in a pre-flight. You don't necessarily have to remember that the pito tube cover
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needs to come off and that the control lock needs to be taken off the rudder and the tow bar
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of the nose wheel and the chains off and the fuel caps and all that sort of stuff. You don't have
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to remember it necessarily because in that final walk around, it's like a catch-all to make sure
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that you didn't miss any of those things. So as long as you're doing your checklist and you've
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got your final walk around, you're kind of guaranteed that you're not going to miss anything.
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Standardization in that way can simplify the process a little bit, turn it into a ritual in your
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mind and help you stay proficient. It can be, you know, there comes a point in my training program
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where I know that my students are ready to go when the standardized procedures become their
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safety blanket instead of a stressor. Like with instrument students, for example, I have a standard
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way that I want them to sort of talk about what we're doing, right? There's always a checklist for
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what's happening right now and then I want them to say, okay, when we get to the next point,
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here are the five things we're going to do and then we sort of deal with the after that effect.
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Now initially when I introduce that for them, it's stressful. They'll be flying along and they'll
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get real real quiet and I'll say, okay, I need you to talk ahead for the next event. They'll say, okay,
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you know, it's like kind of half coming out, okay, when I get to the waypoint, I'm going to turn,
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you know, and they it's kind of a stressful thing that I've added into their life. I know that
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they're there when later on in in training, I stress them out by saying, okay, now, you know, like,
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let's let's get an approach. Let's, you know, we've been holding here long enough. Let's get
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vectors to the approach and you can push them down the road, but you know, they're not quite ready.
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And when I see them react to that pressure by slowing the aircraft down and immediately going
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into talking the way I want them to talk when they use that as sort of like their safety blanket,
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like that's, it gives them confidence to be able to talk in front. That's when I know the things
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have switched. That's when I know that it's become deeply become a part of their foundations.
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Yeah, I mean, I just think about my training when I know I know in myself, whenever I was getting
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overwhelmed, you know, you get really quiet, right? You just kind of like freeze up a little bit
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because you're using all of your energy, just a focus on what you're doing. And you are just so
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laser focused on one thing in that if you if your instructor's like, hey, I need you to talk
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about this. And then you're just like, you're starting to get more flustered, but it's important
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to understand how to multitask and when you need to multitask and there obviously are times
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where you just need to focus in and talking is not the right thing. But it's a great exercise
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in getting yourself out of just being laser locked and focused on one thing because, you know,
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if you're just staring at your VSI or altitude, you might not be looking at your airspeed.
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You might not be if you're staring at the radios or your map, you might be looking to see
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you getting slower and uncorneated. You know, there's so many things that are happening and keeping
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your scan and standardize what you're talking about for airlines, right triggers and flows. And
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you mentioned it, I don't see 90% of the time. I mean, I'm relatively new to the company. I don't
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know who I'm five never met them before, but we sit down. It's like an act. It's like a show.
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Like we have triggers. We have flows. We know what's going to do. We do some pilot stuff in
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between there and then. But we know like at 18,000 feet, he's in a touchist button. He's in a
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call for this checklist here. It's just it's a show and it's playing. We all have lines. But yeah,
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I think it's very important to lock that in very early on in your training.
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Yeah, 100% and that is the way you should fly, whether you're flying in an airliner with a crew
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or whether you're flying single pilot. And if you really take a close look at single pilot
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professional operations, they do exactly the same thing. There there doesn't need to be two people
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there to have the show go on. So to speak like, you know, even in the single pilot world and there
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are many, many reasons why that's important. And I, you know, we said this earlier in the conversation,
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but we can just we don't even have to know why we can just take it from the pros that that's the
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way it works. And that's the way we should do it. And I guess my point on saving money is
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if you learn, if you ritualize your flying, you cut out a lot of, I guess what I would call slop.
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And you give yourself this very clear ritual that you have to remember that gives you confidence.
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And it gives you, it's like, um, yeah, I don't know exactly how to describe it. But it's like
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putting on your uniform, you know, like when I don't know, when you guys played football,
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I'm just I haven't asked this to an athlete. I've asked law enforcement officers, soldiers or whatever.
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But like, was it a different level of play, let's say, when you got in uniform,
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then if you all were just in sweatpants and t-shirts throwing balls around.
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Oh, yeah. I mean, like every Thursday, we had like a walk around, we'll just helm it on.
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And it's more fun, you know, you're just walking around. But when we start putting pads on or
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honestly, the very first time you put pads on and the very first time you do a live practice,
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that's when stuff gets starts getting really serious. That's when, you know,
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that some people can play really well without pads on. But as soon as you start hitting,
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as soon as it starts becoming very, very real, that's when the real kind of athletes and the best
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players show up. Yeah, exactly. And that's the way that's like your training. You touch back into it,
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I would imagine then, after that, if you do enough really hardcore training with those pads on,
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when it comes game time, like you put those pads on, you go through the ritual of putting on
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your jersey and like getting your stuff all suited up, you walk out there and now you're in top form.
spk_0
You haven't even done anything yet. You're just connecting back to all that training and the ritual
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of becoming that athlete, you know. And it's the same reason why soldiers were uniforms and
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officers were uniforms and there's a whole psychology to it. Absolutely. I know you got to go
spk_0
soon, but I got one more question for you. As a CFI, if you notice that your student money is very,
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very tight, what's something that you can do as a CFI to help them out? And I'm not talking about
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giving them money to go fly, but just like just something that a CFI can do to understand that
spk_0
their money is very precious, their time is very precious. What do you think they could do?
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I think that the CFIs can, if this, if I'm speaking to CFIs, you can really tee the ball up better
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for your students. So like one of the things that I'll do with my students, each one of my students,
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we have a Google sheet, like a Google spreadsheet. And I make sure that at the end of every lesson,
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they know exactly it's written into the spreadsheet. Here's what we did today. Here are the things
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that you did like wrong or that you could do better. And here's the things, here's the stuff I want
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you to do before we meet again. So giving your student a clear set of directions coming out of a
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lesson, saying before we meet again, I need you to go back and review the following things from
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today. But I also need you to look at these four or five things that we're going to do next time.
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And then when you meet next time on the front side of a lesson, same thing. The objective of today's
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lesson is to make sure that you have a full understanding of, you know, we will know you're there.
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We will both know when you can do the following things, right? So clear objective, clear completion
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standards. You go execute the lesson. If you're not there, if you fell short of the completion
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standards, then make sure that you had you give them direction for how to get back up to it and what
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you're going to do next time. And by the way, I may not have mentioned this, but we recently just
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put together what we're calling the pilot roadmap, which is like a free PDF document with all sorts
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of suggestions, tips and tricks, like all the things that I've seen as many pages. If anyone's
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interested in it, they can go to pilotroadmap.com. It is free for them to to grab. And it's like this
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kind of stuff, just how do you be more effective and more efficient in training? Love it. Yeah, we'll
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head to pilotroadmap.com. Sign up. I'll link it below as well. And I also have a link for 10% off
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of the ground squat as well for you as so go ahead and check that out. Awesome. Yeah, man. Well, Jason,
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I appreciate it. You're a busy man. Appreciate it. It's time across and looking forward to getting
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this out. Thanks, Justin. It's always great to be here. Thanks for having me. How are we going?
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That's our app on today's podcast. Thank you so much for listening to this episode. I really
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appreciate it. Like I said, sign up for the email list because we have something coming that you're
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not going to want to miss. And the only way you're going to find out is by being on the email list.
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It's the only way we're going to get it. It's the only way you're going to find out. So share it
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a couple more. Get to a thousand reviews. I think we can do it. Avionation, I appreciate you all
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so much. Thank you for listening. And as always, happy flying. Pilot Pilot L.O.C. is compensated and
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