Host

Episode 320 of the pilot the Pilot Podcast takes off now.

Host

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Host

Get advanced functions you'll use before, during and after every flight, including updating your aircraft's databases and logging engine data.

Host

Plan File Fly Log with Garmin Pilot the Pilot to Pilot podcast is brought to you by Learn the Finer Points.

Host

Use the link below to save 10% off their ground school app.

Host

All pilots like to have the big weather picture when they're flying, and that's why I use SiriusXM Aviation.

Host

I'm able to check things like fronts, air MITS segments, turbulence, P reps, and more while I'm pre flighting and while I'm in route.

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To learn more, visit sporties.com sxmoffer that's sporty.com sxmoffer.

Jason Miller

My name is Jason Miller.

Jason Miller

I'm a career flight instructor.

Jason Miller

I've been teaching flying since 2002.

Host

AV Nation what is going on?

Host

And welcome back to the Pilot the Pilot Podcast.

Host

My name is Justin Seams and I am your host.

Host

Today's episode is a part of the series I'm doing with Jason Miller from Learn the Finer Points.

Host

This series highlights how to Become a Pilot we start how to become a Student pilot.

Host

We did private pilot and now we are doing instrument rating Pilot ifr.

Host

If you haven't listened to the other episodes or you want to start at the beginning, by all means click on those two.

Host

First, if you're an IFR student, you are in IFR right now or about to start, then this is the one for you.

Host

So Jason and I, we just dive right in.

Host

As you're going to notice, we just start talking.

Host

We joke about how if there's ever a microphone around and Jason and I, we can record and have podcasts forever.

Host

It's just what we talk about and what you see is just our natural conversations.

Host

And some would call us nerds, but.

Guest

I guess we just love what we.

Host

Do and love to share this information, but I hope you enjoy this podcast.

Host

I think it's a beneficial one for becoming an IFR student.

Host

So check it out.

Host

Also check out the Ground School app.

Host

I'll put a code below that you can use to save some money off that app.

Host

So check out in the description that code.

Host

Or you can also head over to my website, Pilot the Pilot hq, scroll down to sponsors and partners and you can click on Jason's logo and it'll take you right to that webpage.

Host

So Avnation, I don't want to take your time much longer.

Host

So any further ado, here's how to become an IFR pilot with Jason Miller.

Guest

You never know when the emergency is going to come and there are stories of people on their solos losing engines or people on their first flight losing engines.

Guest

It's anytime you start that engine, engine, there's a chance that it could go out.

Guest

It's a lot of moving pieces in there, right?

Jason Miller

Yeah, a hundred percent.

Guest

Yeah.

Jason Miller

And it's like anytime I can identify what I call the ostrich approach to like, to risk management, where it's just like, people just don't think about it.

Jason Miller

Yeah, they just don't think about it.

Jason Miller

You know, like an example might be, you could tell a pilot, hey, would you go fly six miles offshore here at a thousand feet in a single engine airplane on a beautiful VFR day?

Jason Miller

And they'd be like, heck, no, I would never do that.

Jason Miller

That's crazy.

Jason Miller

If you lose your engine, you go in the water.

Jason Miller

Okay.

Jason Miller

Then two weeks later when the fog rolls in, they're flying the ILS into Monterey and they're five miles offshore at 1500ft.

Jason Miller

Just not thinking about it.

Jason Miller

It's just the ostrich approach.

Guest

You're just on the ils, See the water.

Jason Miller

Yeah.

Jason Miller

That risk no longer exists.

Guest

Yeah.

Guest

We were invisible.

Guest

I was doing aerial survey and this is one of the few planes that were IFR certified.

Guest

And we're down in Galveston and one of the we're landing.

Guest

I can't remember the Runway configuration, but we're landing either north, northeast, whatever it was where the ILS is over the water.

Guest

And that thought crossed my mind.

Guest

I was like, it was like marginal vfr.

Guest

It's like we could kind of get down, you know, it's like, how comfortable do I feel going that far out over the water?

Guest

And Houston Tech or Galveston, Texas, or just anywhere?

Guest

It's like, you gotta think about that sometimes.

Jason Miller

Yeah, you do.

Jason Miller

And to be fair, you know, my mentor Richard was the One who first sort of mentioned it to me.

Jason Miller

And I think that's all we're really trying to do is get to get pilots to get their heads out of the sand and just consider these risks.

Jason Miller

If you want to accept them, that's fine.

Jason Miller

But I remember starting instrument training with Richard.

Jason Miller

This is back in 1998, I think something like that.

Jason Miller

And don't date yourself.

Jason Miller

I said to him, yeah, sorry.

Jason Miller

And I said to him, hey, let's fly the ils, you know, whatever the Runway nine approach or whatever it was in the Monterey.

Jason Miller

And he said, I'm not doing that.

Jason Miller

And I was like.

Jason Miller

And I literally didn't know.

Jason Miller

I was like, why wouldn't you do that?

Jason Miller

He's like, do you see that?

Jason Miller

He's like, that's four and a half miles offshore and you're at 1300ft.

Jason Miller

He's like, would you do that VFR?

Jason Miller

You know, maybe if you're a Gulf Stream, fly that approach, but not for me and my 172, you know.

Jason Miller

So, I mean, we have to really consider, like, what risks we're taking on.

Jason Miller

And I think, like, to your point, it's a bit of a finer art in the beginning.

Jason Miller

You're just overwhelmed.

Guest

Yeah.

Jason Miller

And then as you get comfortable, I mean, here I am after two decades of experience, really starting to take some of the things that even we've been teaching more seriously.

Guest

Yeah.

Guest

And I was thinking about Monterey.

Guest

With my previous job, I went to Monterey quite a bit, and I don't think I've ever landed on nine in Monterey.

Guest

I think it's always been the other runways and there's been some.

Guest

The weather's beautiful there until it's not right, and then it's pretty bad.

Guest

And we've had some storms where we can't get in and go around, and the rain just sits there.

Guest

The clouds get low.

Guest

So Monterey, man, I love the area.

Guest

Having overnights in Monterey is amazing, but it's.

Jason Miller

Yeah, it's beautiful.

Jason Miller

But there's terrain there, too.

Jason Miller

They've had a number of accidents.

Jason Miller

People vectored into the mountain before.

Jason Miller

Radar was really good.

Guest

Yeah.

Guest

Thank goodness for radar.

Jason Miller

Yeah.

Jason Miller

Right.

Jason Miller

And terrain features on your eye.

Guest

Yeah.

Guest

But.

Guest

Yeah, I know.

Guest

Right?

Guest

And Garmin Pilot.

Guest

Thank goodness.

Guest

And Garmin Pilot.

Jason Miller

Right.

Guest

Amazing.

Guest

Yeah.

Guest

So we were.

Guest

We were previously talking about kind of our series that we're doing, and I figured we could just continue on.

Guest

We stopped Private Pilot.

Guest

I figured we just go straight into instrument pilot, and that kind of kicks into releases with your app as well.

Guest

So we'll plug that I'll pro.

Guest

I mean, I might just include everything we just talked about, because I feel like we just kind of hit the ground running and we'll just kind of segue into it.

Guest

Yeah.

Guest

I mean, always recording, man.

Guest

Always recording.

Guest

So, yeah, if you're listening now, this is technically the beginning of the podcast, but you got an extra eight minutes of just what normally happens when Jason and I talk.

Guest

It's just always that, like, it's just always a podcast.

Guest

We could always record it and it could be something useful, right?

Jason Miller

That's right.

Jason Miller

And we should.

Jason Miller

Maybe we don't always, but we always should.

Guest

24.

Guest

7 Streaming podcast with Jason and Jess.

Guest

Sounds like a terrible idea.

Guest

Yeah, right.

Guest

Truman Show.

Guest

Oh, that would not be ideal.

Guest

But anyways, let's do a quick intro about yourself and then we'll get started.

Jason Miller

Sure, sure.

Jason Miller

Yeah.

Jason Miller

My name is Jason Miller.

Jason Miller

I'm a career flight instructor.

Jason Miller

I've been teaching flying since 2002, primarily in the San Francisco Bay area.

Jason Miller

I focus on technically advanced aircraft and instrument flying, really.

Jason Miller

Although I teach a little bit of everything except multi and tail wheel.

Jason Miller

I built a company called the Finer points.

Jason Miller

So in 2005, I launched the very first flight training podcast, which grew into a YouTube channel.

Jason Miller

As early as 2007, you said, don't date myself, but there you go, you're doing it.

Jason Miller

It's okay.

Jason Miller

Yeah, the YouTube channel has gone great and it's actually grown into what is my baby is a product called the Ground School app.

Jason Miller

And the Ground School app is a repository for just about everything I know.

Jason Miller

It's got a private course, an instrument course, better takeoffs and landings course coming soon.

Jason Miller

Mastering IFR course coming soon.

Jason Miller

All of it for one price.

Jason Miller

The only catch is you need an Apple device.

Jason Miller

It's iOS only.

Jason Miller

But apart from that, you can access all of my knowledge through Ground School.

Guest

All.

Guest

You can access the brain.

Guest

You get the brain.

Jason Miller

I'm online@ learnthefinerpoints.com.

Guest

Sorry, I'm trying to think of the movie where they.

Guest

Where they uploaded, like, consciousness into AI and it's like what you're doing for your app, it's just Jason's consciousness right there.

Jason Miller

Yeah.

Jason Miller

It's funny, we've actually looked at that.

Jason Miller

We've been talking to some AI people.

Jason Miller

I don't want to derail this conversation, but it's hard to see exactly where that's going.

Jason Miller

Right.

Guest

Yeah.

Guest

I feel like every company is trying to implement AI in some way, so be interesting to see how it pans out in applications in aviation Whether we're talking about Garmin pilot or whatever you use, you know, there could be some help with AI with planning flights or doing other stuff, but legality of stuff, it's like, well, don't trust the computer.

Guest

All, you know, just there's a mess in there.

Guest

Right.

Guest

But AI is definitely going to come and be a bigger part of what we do.

Guest

So something just to keep an eye on.

Jason Miller

Yeah, yeah, for sure it will.

Jason Miller

And you know what's funny is though, like, I really find often what I end up saying to my team and I'm really blessed at this point to have a team of about 12 people helping build ground school.

Jason Miller

Um, but I always tell them that I think nobody's really done the basics well.

Jason Miller

So like it's like whenever there's a lot of fancy new things, at least in flight training, like if someone tells me, oh, they can create an AI flight instructor, they can build this tool that does this thing and shows you the data and you're 6.7cm off your center line on every 1.4g landing.

Jason Miller

And all this stuff is like, I think we can just go back to basics.

Jason Miller

I don't believe that for the last 120 years we've really done a great job of teaching the basics.

Jason Miller

And so a lot of the tools that we've built into the app are not really fancy per se, but they are just valuable in teaching the basics.

Jason Miller

You know, a quick example is we've built this tap target thing where we show video from the cockpit from the pilot's view and we ask people to touch the screen where they see things and when they see things and we can tell them where they should be looking.

Jason Miller

You know, these are very old.

Jason Miller

This is what Richard taught me.

Jason Miller

This is just old school stuff.

Jason Miller

It's not a fancy piece of data or anything.

Jason Miller

It's just a way to evaluate are we teaching you valuable things, are you learning them and can you apply them in the airplane?

Jason Miller

There's a lot of that in the app.

Guest

Yeah.

Guest

And that's something that it's hard to teach.

Guest

Right.

Guest

It's something that you gotta kind of pick up on your own.

Guest

And when someone's sitting next to you just saying, all right, look there.

Guest

And you're like, where, where's there?

Guest

But if you have like an actual guideline of like, all right, tap here, that's where you should look.

Guest

That's what the site picture should look like.

Jason Miller

Yeah, that.

Jason Miller

And when I teach, I of course always fly with a heads up display.

Guest

Yeah, the Expo marker.

Jason Miller

So My students all have a heads up display.

Jason Miller

We just write on the window where you're supposed to look.

Guest

Oh, that's cool.

Guest

Never.

Jason Miller

Yeah, with.

Jason Miller

Yeah, but with the technology in the app, you know, we can, then we can show them that and then ask them to prove it, you know.

Guest

So what else is going on with the app?

Guest

Recently I know you're, you're more focused.

Guest

You had private pilot.

Guest

Now you have instrument rating.

Guest

How's everything been going with that?

Jason Miller

It's been going great.

Jason Miller

I think maybe I'm not the world's best businessman.

Jason Miller

We're leaving money on the table.

Jason Miller

It's all one price.

Jason Miller

But there's a reason for that and I'm excited about where we're headed with it.

Jason Miller

So the exciting part for users now is they get everything in the app.

Jason Miller

The private course, the instrument course.

Jason Miller

And I think some of the challenges for us is to help experienced pilots understand that there's valuable content deep in there that they might not know about.

Jason Miller

And so we're building this, like I said, mastering IFR course and mastering landings course.

Jason Miller

And the nice thing about being one price is we can just add all this stuff to the app and it's just a more compelling reason why somebody should own it and engage with it.

Guest

And what's crazy about it.

Guest

I'm really, I'll keep going.

Jason Miller

Well, I was just gonna say I'm really fortunate, like I said a minute ago, to be surrounded by such incredible people.

Jason Miller

You know, we're all committed to making what we believe is the best flight training product ever.

Jason Miller

And that's like what we're focused on.

Jason Miller

And it's inspiring.

Jason Miller

You know, a lot of the guys are just brilliant.

Jason Miller

One of them is a UPS pilot, one's a prime pilot.

Jason Miller

They're all active flight instructors, former military guys.

Jason Miller

I just feel really lucky to be working with the guys I'm working with and girls and building what we're building.

Guest

I love it.

Guest

I really do.

Guest

And I'm getting ready to start renting a bonanza at a local flying club.

Guest

And I was just like some of the concepts of flying a small plane are so, so far removed from my brain.

Guest

With my training, with all my 121 AQP.

Guest

I mean obviously they're still there, right?

Guest

Once I get into it, it's going to take like an hour or two and everything should come back.

Guest

But I was just playing through the ground school app as well and just like clicking buttons like, all right, let me try to remember tomato fl.

Guest

Tomato flames or let me try to remember like this, like just the basic stuff, just so I can kind of have an idea.

Guest

Because it's a total different world.

Guest

You, you as an airline pilot can find yourself in a lot of trouble.

Guest

We're not necessarily flying just regulation wise because when you go to the airplane, you know, you look for the maintenance book, you look for, you sign stuff.

Guest

And there's a lot of people doing other jobs where when you're flying your small plane, it's pretty much you doing your job.

Guest

If you're running from a flying club, you got to make sure other people did their job too.

Guest

So a lot more to kind of take into consideration.

Jason Miller

Yeah, yeah.

Jason Miller

And that's, you know, that's a, that's a good example of the kind of thing I'm talking about because I really believe in ritualization, you know, of the flying.

Jason Miller

And I know in your professional life there's a lot of that.

Jason Miller

Yeah, right.

Jason Miller

Like when you get into the, to the, when you go up on the flight deck and you are flying with a captain you've never met at what, at the airlines, both of you are sort of involved in executing a ritual that you have both rehearsed independently, but now you're doing it together.

Jason Miller

If you knew your part in a play and the captain knew their part in the play, even though you guys have never performed it together, you could theoretically jump on stage and just start executing the play.

Jason Miller

That's how the pros work.

Jason Miller

And I'm a big believer in that at all levels, you know, even at the private level.

Jason Miller

So we teach it that way.

Jason Miller

I teach it that way in a normal living three dimensional students and we teach it that way in our app.

Jason Miller

But I also think that's a huge bit of like a, of gold.

Jason Miller

So when people say to me like, oh, I don't need your app.

Jason Miller

I already did my ground school, I already passed my written.

Jason Miller

I'm like, well, wait a minute, you know, check it out, there's a free trial.

Jason Miller

You can go into the flight side, look for these little gold nuggets that maybe you haven't, maybe your instructor didn't teach you that way.

Jason Miller

And to make it easier for people, that's the kind of stuff we're going to bring forward and just make like a mini course for anybody that has never seen a full set of single pilot SOPs, you know, and they're not, they're not mine.

Jason Miller

I mean, I took these SOPs from professional single pilot operators over the years.

Guest

Yeah, absolutely.

Jason Miller

They're mine as much as they're anybody's.

Guest

But it's one place for everyone to kind of find it out, which is really cool.

Guest

But we are here today to one, talk about the app, obviously, because it's great, fantastic.

Guest

And then like you said, it's your baby.

Guest

But number two, continue the series of no great.

Guest

I love learning more about it.

Guest

Continue the series of how to become a pilot.

Guest

We did student pilot, we did private pilot, instrument pilot, and who knows how long we'll go on for this.

Guest

Maybe we'll do space rocket pilot.

Guest

If we can get someone qualified to talk about that in your mind, I'll start it off with this.

Guest

What makes a good instrument student?

Guest

We talked about private students.

Guest

We talked about, before you become a private, all the work you need to do.

Guest

But when you get to instrument, it's a different language.

Guest

Everything you learned is going to be so different than what you're about to do and so foreign.

Guest

How much pre work should someone do?

Guest

Like should.

Guest

Should someone complete a full course before they even go for their instrument flying?

Guest

Um, learn on the fly.

Guest

Just kind of talk about what I should do before I even start flying instrument.

Jason Miller

Yeah.

Jason Miller

That's interesting.

Jason Miller

Well, I think because it's your second thing potentially, or at least you've done a certificate already, it makes more sense with the instruments to go through the written before you get started.

Jason Miller

You know, with the private.

Jason Miller

If it's.

Jason Miller

If you're brand new to flight training and you do it that way, it's.

Jason Miller

You're easily overwhelmed or you're going to read things that just don't make sense.

Jason Miller

Pappy.

Jason Miller

You read about Pappy three months ago, but then you're out there in the field and your instructor says, hey, there's a Pappy.

Jason Miller

You're like, what the heck was that thing I read about?

Jason Miller

You know, you don't remember.

Jason Miller

But now that you know what becoming a pilot is like, going into the instrument rating, you really should get a lot of that ground knowledge out of the way because you don't want to be worrying about things like chart symbology or what is an mea or what is a mocha or an a roca.

Jason Miller

You want all that knowledge in place because flying instruments is more advanced, it's more complex, and it's straight up harder.

Jason Miller

So that basic knowledge you just kind of need to have in place.

Jason Miller

And I always say to new instrument students, flying instruments is like doing something you've always done and that you know how to do well.

Jason Miller

Like riding a bike, for example.

Jason Miller

Only now you're blindfolded and you have a little elf on Your shoulder telling you what's happening.

Jason Miller

Here comes a turn.

Jason Miller

Here comes a turn.

Jason Miller

Here comes a turn.

Jason Miller

Okay, lean, lean, lean.

Jason Miller

Stop your turn.

Jason Miller

Stop your turn.

Jason Miller

You know, like.

Jason Miller

And every bit of information you're getting is by definition old.

Jason Miller

You know, it's just slightly old.

Jason Miller

Doesn't have to be that old.

Jason Miller

Here comes the turn.

Jason Miller

Turn.

Jason Miller

Now I turn.

Jason Miller

You know, it's like, that's how instrument flying works.

Jason Miller

So getting comfortable with that.

Jason Miller

And the.

Jason Miller

There's.

Jason Miller

There's an analogy in instrument flying, too.

Jason Miller

And I always put these pictures that I'm giving you here and the listeners.

Jason Miller

I always put these pictures in people's minds.

Jason Miller

The other one I do is like, imagine you have an office floor, like a whole office floor, where you've got different rooms.

Jason Miller

And I always imagine something circular, like a circular tower with a hallway that goes around the outside.

Jason Miller

And there's all these conference rooms, let's say six conference rooms.

Jason Miller

And you're the boss, and your job is to make sure that all six teams in those conference rooms finish at exactly the same time in 30 minutes.

Jason Miller

So you have to run into one room and say, how you guys doing?

Jason Miller

You're doing good.

Jason Miller

Okay, everything's fine.

Jason Miller

Okay, I'll be right back.

Jason Miller

You're into the next room.

Jason Miller

Like, how you guys doing?

Jason Miller

Okay, everything's good.

Jason Miller

I'll be right back.

Jason Miller

You run into the third room.

Jason Miller

They're like, sir, we got a problem.

Jason Miller

There's no way we can handle this.

Jason Miller

You're like, okay, good.

Jason Miller

Hold on a minute.

Jason Miller

I'll be right back.

Jason Miller

You know, and you, like, you figure out how you're going to work that problem.

Jason Miller

But you can't go into that problem and stay there till 6 without going into the other rooms.

Jason Miller

You can't just say, okay, you got a problem.

Jason Miller

Let's roll up our sleeves and let's spend the next 30 minutes finishing this.

Jason Miller

Because there's other rooms happening, right?

Jason Miller

So flying instruments is a little bit like that.

Jason Miller

There's flying the airplane.

Jason Miller

There's programming the radios.

Jason Miller

There's navigating, there's communicating with air traffic control.

Jason Miller

There's briefing, what you're going to do when you get there.

Jason Miller

There are a lot of different things that have to be done at once.

Jason Miller

But because nothing can be done at once, it's a lot of checking in with little things.

Jason Miller

And if you are.

Jason Miller

If you find yourself deep in a problem, it's a red flag.

Jason Miller

Like, lift your head up and figure out what are you missing.

Jason Miller

Like, you're stuck in a room right now, and maybe you do have a problem.

Jason Miller

But if you don't pick your head up and come out of that room, other problems are going to happen and the whole thing is going to go off the rails.

Jason Miller

Right.

Jason Miller

So that picture, I think is important also.

Jason Miller

And then the last one I'll give you for instrument flying is the juggler.

Jason Miller

You know that there is a physic, I call it a physiological reaction, but everybody has it, myself included, everybody.

Jason Miller

The saturation point where you can't think anymore and you can tell when a student's there because you could say like, what's your name?

Jason Miller

And they'll say standby.

Jason Miller

They literally can't even hear what's your name.

Jason Miller

They can't process the question.

Jason Miller

They can't answer Jason.

Jason Miller

So they say, stand by.

Jason Miller

That person is saturated.

Jason Miller

The good news is the saturation point is like a muscle.

Jason Miller

And the image that we paint for it is, you know, like a juggler.

Jason Miller

Juggling balls.

Jason Miller

Juggling one ball, you throw them another ball.

Jason Miller

Three balls or two balls, three balls, four balls, five balls, six balls are really good.

Jason Miller

Eventually there's going to come a ball where they can't catch it.

Jason Miller

And when they can't catch it, they don't just miss that one.

Jason Miller

The whole house of cards comes down.

Jason Miller

And that's what happens at the saturation point.

Jason Miller

And so as a cfi, if you're aware of that and you have to make your student aware of it, you know, like if you work with it is.

Jason Miller

What I'm saying is, like, you push your student to the saturation point.

Jason Miller

You push them right there and then you dial it back.

Jason Miller

Push them right there and dial it back.

Jason Miller

Autopilot is a great example.

Jason Miller

Let's say you're pushing a student and they're hand flying and they're this, that, or whatever.

Jason Miller

And you see that they're at the saturation point.

Jason Miller

Okay, take control of the airplane and engage the autopilot.

Jason Miller

Take.

Jason Miller

Dial it back one notch.

Jason Miller

Same situation.

Jason Miller

But you just took the room called flying the airplane and you put a manager in there.

Jason Miller

Yeah, you know, like that, that's, that's fixed now.

Jason Miller

But what instrument candidates or applicants or people working on their instrument rating will realize and what CFIs who don't already understand this will realize is that the saturation point is a muscle like it is.

Jason Miller

You'll notice that it's like maxing in weight.

Jason Miller

You can, you know, what saturated you 2 months ago is no longer saturating you, and you are now able to handle that much more and that much more and that much more.

Jason Miller

And, you know, it's not just flying.

Jason Miller

I'm sure this goes on in life.

Jason Miller

I mean, I've heard people say, like, can you imagine somebody?

Jason Miller

You know, just think of any billionaire person you could think of, like an Elon Musk or something.

Jason Miller

How much he has to do in a day versus how much I have to do in a day.

Jason Miller

And he wasn't born that way.

Jason Miller

That's like the saturation muscle that's just getting better and better and better and better and better until you're like, what Jeff Bezos has in 1.9 million employees or something, you know?

Jason Miller

Yeah.

Jason Miller

And so flying and flying on instruments is like, that.

Jason Miller

You can get really good.

Jason Miller

So.

Guest

Yeah, I totally agree.

Guest

I mean, I'm just thinking back when you were saying all the stuff I was thinking about to my experience with instrument flying, and there's definitely a moment, and you really have to count on your instructor to kind of.

Guest

I feel I think it's best for your instructor to ease you into it.

Guest

Right.

Guest

Not just throw you to the wolves, because then you're like, all right, screw that.

Guest

I'm not doing that.

Guest

But figuring out where your saturation point is and your breaking point of where you just shut down and, like you said, like, the house falls down and crumbles.

Guest

Like, you can't do simple math.

Guest

You can't turn.

Guest

You can't say luck.

Guest

You're just done.

Guest

Until we can figure out, all right, what do we need to do?

Guest

Just fly the airplane, and then we'll focus on that and then go from there.

Guest

Um, which, by the way, is the most important thing for you to ever do is just make sure you're always flying the airplane.

Guest

Uh, you can worry about headings out.

Guest

Just fly the airplane.

Jason Miller

Um, but it's the breathing part.

Guest

Yeah, I know, right?

Guest

Yeah.

Guest

Maybe breathe through that helps as well.

Guest

But there's definitely a break point for everyone.

Guest

And it happened just because, you know, you and your buddies start at the same time.

Guest

Just because they can do more than you at a certain point doesn't mean that you're a bad pilot.

Guest

Doesn't mean that you can't get it.

Guest

There's this point in instrument flying, which I can't really explain why, but it's essentially you're just hitting your head against the wall until you break through.

Guest

That's going to happen at someone for 20 hours of instrument flying.

Guest

It's going to happen for 40 hours for someone.

Guest

It's just however your brain can kind of conceptualize and put the big picture together.

Guest

It was all Steps.

Guest

For me, it was learning, like you said, like the verbiage, learning what everything meant on the charts, learning how to talk on the radio.

Guest

And then toward the end, it was learning how to put everything together and be like, all right, this is why I'm holding.

Guest

This is why I'm turning this one.

Guest

Listening to two planes ahead of you or the plane ahead of you.

Guest

Be like, all right, well, they're getting vectored on in the approach.

Guest

I can expect this vector as well.

Guest

Or they're holding, so I can expect this hold.

Guest

Kind of understanding the why behind instrument flying and the why the controllers are doing what they're doing.

Guest

Uh, so it's definitely.

Guest

It's definitely gonna take steps, it's definitely gonna take time, and eventually you're gonna break through.

Guest

Uh, it might take you a while.

Guest

That's fine.

Guest

There are plenty of people that I know that it probably took them a long time, and they're flying for the airlines.

Guest

So you're good, man.

Guest

You're good.

Guest

Or girl, whatever.

Jason Miller

Yeah, yeah, you will get there.

Jason Miller

Um, I like.

Jason Miller

You know, this is like, I have.

Jason Miller

I have.

Jason Miller

How do I say this?

Jason Miller

My instrument program is, I believe, radically different from all others.

Jason Miller

And I realized, like, the way you described it, by the way, and I think you're absolutely right, that as you go through, you get that the finer points, the kind of awareness of the.

Guest

Whys, context and all that.

Jason Miller

But the way you described the training is the way most people do it, right?

Jason Miller

Where you're like, okay, you learn to fly the plane, then you learn to work the radios, then you learn to fly the courses, then you learn to fly the ils.

Jason Miller

I don't do it that way, so we don't do it that way.

Jason Miller

And in the ground school app, if you go to the instrument course, you'll see the way we do it.

Jason Miller

And I think, for example, so what I do is I use what I call template flights.

Jason Miller

And so if you and I were working on your instrument rating, the first template flight might be San Carlos to Stockton, specifically along airways.

Jason Miller

So we will request the airways.

Jason Miller

So we'll go Santa, you know, San Carlos radar vectors, Oakland, Victor 6, Altam intersection, then direct, maybe.

Jason Miller

Who knows?

Jason Miller

I don't know if that's the exact right route, something like that.

Jason Miller

But we're going to repeat, we're going to fly that flight on your very first day when you come as your intro flight, we're going to fly it in the system with all equipment working, autopilot on.

Jason Miller

And just so you can see the context of Everything.

Jason Miller

Getting a clearance, waiting for release, taking off, seeing the whole thing point to point.

Jason Miller

That'd be the first time we fly the template flight.

Jason Miller

Then we might take two or three days to go out and build some skills.

Jason Miller

Okay.

Jason Miller

You're going to have to learn how to fly the plane.

Jason Miller

You're going to have to learn how to navigate the radios and all these things.

Jason Miller

But then before too many days, we go back to that very first flight.

Jason Miller

Only now you're flying it maybe, and I'm, you know, flying still autopilot, still everything.

Jason Miller

And we plug the skills back into that same flight and we'll keep revisiting that, just that one flight, until you can understand what it feels like in your body to be ahead of the airplane, to be thinking and talking ahead of the airplane.

Jason Miller

Right.

Jason Miller

And only then will we take what we've learned and move it to template flight two.

Jason Miller

Okay, now let's see what this looks like.

Jason Miller

If it ends at a non precision approach and, you know, or a non towered airport or something like that.

Jason Miller

And in the course of training, there'll be three, maybe four template flights until we start getting really advanced and then we're going, you know, all over.

Guest

You know, you're still, in a way, you're still easing them into it though, right?

Guest

Like you're showing them the big picture, but you are.

Guest

Maybe not.

Guest

Maybe you'll do the radios or maybe they'll fly, but each time you're kind of adding another scale in there, which essentially is, yeah, is still easing them in.

Guest

And I think that's like we both talked about is you can't just really, you can, you can throw them to the fire and that Some people might figure it out, but it's definitely a good way to ease them in like that and take some of the burden off of their, their hands so they can just focus on the flying or the learning.

Guest

Um, so you're still doing that in a way for that.

Guest

Which I really like.

Guest

If I was a cfi, that idea sounds great to me.

Guest

Cause it is funny how if you just ch as simple as changing the flight plan or as simple as changing an ILS to an RNAV or a VOR approach, like just that one change can mess you up for the whole flight, right?

Guest

Like you could take off, everything go fine.

Guest

You're like, all right, well, we're going to do the approach you've never done before and probably haven't looked at in a while other than I told you to look at all the approaches last night.

Guest

But you're not going to do the vor.

Guest

I'm going to be like, what?

Guest

And you're just going to think about the vor.

Guest

You're going to miss calls.

Guest

You're going to do just sloppiness.

Guest

Right.

Guest

So I think that's, that's definitely the way to do it.

Jason Miller

Yeah, a hundred percent.

Jason Miller

And that's, and it's maybe a subtle distinction.

Jason Miller

Cause like you said, you're still easing them in.

Jason Miller

But what we're doing is putting the primary instructional focus on the ability to think and talk in front of the airplane.

Jason Miller

For example, what I want more than the student understanding the differences between an ILS and a vor.

Jason Miller

That's less important to me than the student realizing they're getting a little stressed.

Jason Miller

They need to slow the airplane down and they're able to say, okay, when I get to Altam intersection, it's going to be a right turn to a heading of 040.

Jason Miller

I'm going to switch my GPS to the navigational signal.

Jason Miller

I want.

Jason Miller

I verified that.

Jason Miller

I identified it.

Jason Miller

My flow checks and checklists are done for right now.

Jason Miller

I have no time to start and I'll report reaching.

Jason Miller

Okay.

Jason Miller

When I get there, I will.

Jason Miller

So their ability to recognize the big picture, create the time they need to push their mind out in front of the airplane and verbalize it is way more important to me as a fundamental skill.

Jason Miller

Like I always say to students, I'm not worried that you're going to be able to hold altitude, hold needles, hold headings, fly approaches.

Jason Miller

Zero concern.

Jason Miller

I have zero, zero concern that by the end of this instrument rating, you'll be able to do that.

Jason Miller

What I'm more concerned about is that you're going to be the kind of pilot who understands the big picture and can think and talk in front of the airplane.

Jason Miller

And that has a ritualized procedure based on decades of professional experience that you're going to use to fly this like you're the chief pilot of your own flight op.

Jason Miller

You know, like you would hire yourself to fly your kids, you know, to be like a real, like 1 percenter in it.

Jason Miller

And so it's subtle.

Jason Miller

It's like all the things you said, you are easing them in, but you're orienting it around these scenarios to how does it feel?

Jason Miller

Were you able to talk in front of the plane?

Jason Miller

Were you able to do all your checklists?

Jason Miller

Were you able to.

Jason Miller

All those things.

Jason Miller

And there's an.

Jason Miller

Like you to your point, there's enough variables in the same flight over and over again for people mostly not to get bored.

Jason Miller

You know, ATC will try to vector you or they'll have to give you delay things or maybe a hold or like, things will come up.

Jason Miller

But it's not like, like, like what you said.

Jason Miller

If you switch the approach, which is this is when I noticed that when I was going through instrument rating or instrument training, was that like, for me, it was more like my instructor would say, okay, last week we went to Napa.

Jason Miller

We did the localizer.

Jason Miller

This week, let's go over here to NAS and I'm going to show you an LNAV approach and then next time.

Jason Miller

Okay, well, we did those two already.

Jason Miller

So let's go to Santa Rosa.

Jason Miller

I want you to see an ils, right?

Jason Miller

There was a lot of that.

Jason Miller

And it's like if you do that, like you said, there's so many changes going from ILS to VR that this 100% of the students learning energy and all of it will be put into the details.

Jason Miller

What's different about this?

Jason Miller

Okay, this has this approach or what does this mean?

Jason Miller

The timing thing has absolutely nothing to do with those core fundamental skills of staying in front of the airplane that I was talking about and having like a ritualized procedure for checklists and all the things that at the end of the day, I believe are going to keep you safe.

Jason Miller

Yeah, you know, we can argue about the, I mean, not argue, but we could not.

Jason Miller

You and I, I mean, the student and I, we could talk about the differences between different approaches, like, you know, till we're blue in the face.

Jason Miller

That's why I always say to the students, it's like, I'm not worried about that stuff.

Jason Miller

Like, at the end of the day, we're going to run through so many different approaches.

Jason Miller

We're going to have so many little mini oral sessions and phase checks.

Jason Miller

Like, there's no way you're going to get through this without being able to hold altitude and fly approaches.

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Guest

How so in the airline world and you know, bigger jet world, what's very important in any approach and what's being taught.

Guest

What has been taught is being stabilized, having criteria where you're stabilized at a certain spot, whether it's 500ft, a thousand feet, you need to be in certain parameters.

Guest

Now smaller airplanes, you don't have someone to tell on you.

Guest

You don't have a chief pilot looking over you.

Guest

So it's a lot of the honor system.

Guest

When you're flying 172s and you're flying smaller banana or bonanzas or whatever it is you're flying, how important do you or how much emphasis do you put on stabilize approaches in instrument?

Guest

Um, cause like you said, there's a lot going on right now.

Guest

You might be getting all these kind of, you may be getting all these instructions and all of a sudden you're, you find yourself at the final approach fix and maybe you haven't put your gear down or you're not configured or you're going 15 knots fast.

Guest

Um, how like is, is that something you're constantly thinking about in this world?

Guest

I know smaller airplanes have the assumption that they can be more forgiving, which I mean obviously you're not going to stop in 6,000ft or to 3,000ft like these bigger jets.

Guest

But there is danger, especially when you get into Moonies that just don't want to stop flying that you over on runways that you have incursions and when you, when something bad happens, you want everything going in your favor.

Guest

So stabilization is amazing and is huge.

Guest

But I kind of long worded that question, but how important is stabilization for you when you're teaching ifr?

Jason Miller

It's.

Jason Miller

Well, it's certainly not as important as it is in flying heavy jets, you know, and I, and I always want to use a little bit of caution when we like I think for example, how checklists are used as an example of how we've really misunderstood two crew versus single pilot environments.

Jason Miller

Right.

Jason Miller

We don't use in.

Jason Miller

I mean I do, but in general in ga pilots are teaching checklist usage as though there are two pilots there.

Jason Miller

Whereas if you go get hired by Pac Valley or Ameriflight or I don't know if Ameriflight does single pilot anymore, but you get hired by somebody that does single pilot.

Jason Miller

It's all about flow checks and acronyms and then pick up the checklist because there's no other pilot, there's no pilot monitoring.

Jason Miller

Right.

Jason Miller

So we have to be careful when we take crew or heavy transport category procedures and bring them down into ga.

Jason Miller

A lot of times it's fantastic, but we do have to use caution.

Jason Miller

So with stabilization, for example, being stabilized is a just more critical for an aircraft with a lower thrust to weight ratio.

Jason Miller

I can arrest a thousand foot per minute descent in about 3 seconds in assess time.

Jason Miller

That's just a reality.

Jason Miller

That's just a truth.

Jason Miller

But if you're coming down in a big heavy jet at 1,000ft per minute, you're not going to stop that in three seconds.

Jason Miller

It's going to be six or seven seconds before power even hits the engines.

Jason Miller

So you're just in a situation where stabilization in the ways you're talking about it matters more.

Jason Miller

For example, this comes up a lot of times when people ask me, hey, do you put flaps down outside the final approach fix?

Jason Miller

And it's kind of a trick question.

Jason Miller

In most light airplanes, I do not.

Jason Miller

And my logic is, how often are you out there flying 5 mile finals with 10 degrees of flaps?

Jason Miller

Like that's a very unusual situation.

Jason Miller

Why would you put yourself in an unusual situation when you can't see out the window?

Jason Miller

Like, why would you not fly the plane?

Jason Miller

In a way you always fly the plane.

Jason Miller

And a lot of the things you're talking about with the Mooney, this is another buffer that we have that you guys do not have at all.

Jason Miller

Like in a heavy jet, when you're coming in at 130, 40 knots or whatever, you guys approach at 120 maybe sometimes.

Jason Miller

Or what do you approach at 130?

Guest

The 737 is fast.

Guest

So the 737, it's like 149 to 150 something.

Guest

The latitude was like 100 to 110, right?

Jason Miller

Your whole world is more critical.

Jason Miller

So not only are you not able to arrest descents if they're not stabilized as rapidly and just have to be that much further in front of the airplane.

Jason Miller

If you don't hit the touchdown zone of the Runway, you got a problem.

Jason Miller

And you've got a short window of time to figure out that that's true.

Jason Miller

In a light airplane, even a Mooney, some of that is like we have consider that we have a huge buffer.

Jason Miller

For example, if the weather is low enough to require us actually flying down to say 200ft above the ground, then it's an ILS and we have 5,000ft of Runway in front of us.

Jason Miller

You have to be pretty off on your speed to blow 5,000ft or more of Runway.

Jason Miller

And Even in a Mooney.

Jason Miller

But you'd have to be 20 knots fast or.

Jason Miller

I mean, I don't even know.

Jason Miller

I do remember one time flying into McCarran in a DA20 where I had 737s behind me.

Jason Miller

So I flew the approach at 120, I think, or 130, and then just pulled power to idle over the threshold.

Jason Miller

And it took me the full length of the Runway, which was like 8, 000ft, to actually slow down and land.

Jason Miller

I don't know if I saved anybody time.

Jason Miller

But my point is there's a huge buffer.

Jason Miller

Those are two completely different worlds just before we even really start talking about it, right?

Jason Miller

Two different worlds.

Jason Miller

So when it comes to flaps outside the final approach fix, like I said, if I'm in a 172, I do not do that.

Jason Miller

I fly in at 90 knots in a clean configuration because that's the most familiar and comfortable and normal configuration.

Jason Miller

And there's no world in which I'm not going to see that Runway, be able to go power idle, add my flaps and land if I need the flaps.

Jason Miller

That's how I've always done it.

Jason Miller

That's how I do it.

Jason Miller

The alternative to that, the quote stabilized version, would be to set the 10 degrees of flaps at the final approach fix, figure out some power settings.

Jason Miller

So now you're in this somewhat unique configuration that you only use when flying final approach fix inbound, you know, on an instrument approach, and then you'll be able to come down.

Jason Miller

Now you're still probably going to add more flaps if you see the Runway.

Jason Miller

I mean, I don't know if the assumption is you land with 10, you don't ever change flaps after that.

Jason Miller

But there are people that are trying to take the heavy transport world and the, the things that you're saying are really, really important there and bring them down into ga.

Jason Miller

And my point is just we have to use caution.

Jason Miller

Like sometimes it's not necessary.

Jason Miller

Now if it's a high performance plane, a Bonanza, a Mooney, a Cirrus, something like that, I do add flaps outside the final approach fix, just the first notch.

Jason Miller

So there you go.

Jason Miller

I flew may not have rhyme or reason and I think the only value I could add there is just to have people use caution.

Guest

Yeah.

Jason Miller

The other one really quickly is the thousand foot per minute descent which I feel is completely stabilized in a, in a light aircraft.

Jason Miller

So my students all can fly 90 knots and 500ft per minute or a separate non precision approach descent of 90 knots and a thousand feet per minute.

Jason Miller

But again, in assassin, you can arrest a thousand foot per minute descent just by power into the green, and it's.

Jason Miller

It's over.

Guest

Yeah.

Guest

Uh, this is a comment about putting flaps in.

Guest

Well, before the final approach fix, I was fine with Josh from Aviation 101.

Guest

We flew to Garmin headquarters from Dallas.

Guest

Uh, hopefully the video's out by the time this comes out.

Guest

But I.

Guest

In my mind, I was, like, thinking, how do I fly this when I fly jet?

Guest

It's like, all right, well, we're putting flaps out, like, on downwind, on base, or put another notch.

Guest

We're fully configured gear flaps full.

Guest

And it's.

Guest

And I was like, I forgot how long things take in a 1 72, if that makes sense.

Guest

Like, yeah, initial approach adds another 20, 25 minutes to a flight, which is just what was kind of baffling to me.

Guest

And I was like, all right, we're still on downwind.

Guest

We haven't even turned base yet.

Guest

It's been eight minutes.

Jason Miller

Welcome to my world.

Guest

Yeah.

Guest

It's like, wow, this takes forever.

Guest

It's like I wasted.

Guest

Wasted a ton of money on my instrument training by just shooting approaches all the time.

Jason Miller

Right.

Jason Miller

But anyways, this is a great dovetail.

Jason Miller

What you just said is reminded me, because that's how pilots in Europe are taught, and it drives me crazy.

Jason Miller

So I'll have these guys come over from Switzerland or France or Germany, and they want to fly with me to improve their VFR skills.

Guest

Right.

Jason Miller

They think I'm a cowboy because they're all taught to fly 172s.

Jason Miller

Like you just said, it'll be like.

Jason Miller

And they say it like airline pilots.

Jason Miller

They'll be like, at the abeam position, they'll be a flaps one, you know, and then.

Jason Miller

Then we go out, you know, four miles out, and we turn, and it's flaps two, and everything's set.

Jason Miller

And Richard would have pulled my power to idle and said, you just lost your engine over East Oakland.

Jason Miller

Where are you going?

Jason Miller

You know what I mean?

Jason Miller

So back to that ostrich approach.

Jason Miller

The real issue in a Cessna is, do I have enough altitude to glide to the Runway?

Jason Miller

Which is a totally different issue than you have when you're out there flying in your 737.

Jason Miller

You're not worried about where you're going to go if your engine fails.

Jason Miller

So you're flying these, you know, you're putting flaps in on the downwind or whatever.

Jason Miller

But it drives me bananas when I fly with, like, instrument European pilots that fly small airplanes that way.

Guest

Yeah.

Jason Miller

I'm saying where are you going to go if your engine fails?

Jason Miller

Like Oakland is back there.

Jason Miller

Yeah, like four miles now back there you could have gone power to idle and glided around in a short approach, you know.

Jason Miller

So that's an example of where a big transport category procedure would be the wrong thing to do in a light airplane.

Guest

Yeah, for sure.

Guest

And I think more Europeans are taught to fly every plane like an airliner because I think obviously their, their kind of mold is, you know, at 250 hours you can go through a cadet program and be flying right seat in a 737.

Guest

So they're just teaching you to fly an airliner.

Guest

But just the concepts.

Guest

You start in a 7,172.

Guest

Moving on a little bit from that.

Guest

What do you see are big kind of threats or are big stumping grounds for instrument students?

Jason Miller

Well, I think there's a lot of instrument students that never actually learn how to fly instruments, unfortunately.

Jason Miller

I think there's a lot of people that get instrument rated that don't feel comfortable flying in the clouds, that don't ever fly in the clouds.

Jason Miller

I hear stories of double eyes instrument instructors that say they don't feel comfortable flying in clouds.

Jason Miller

So there's that.

Jason Miller

You know, I think there's a lot of people that figure I'm going to get my instrument rating, I'm going to get my commercial, I'm going to get my CFI and get hired and I'll fly in the cloud soon enough, but I'm going to do it in an airliner with a captain next to me.

Jason Miller

And that's like where they get their first imc, you know, or in their first job.

Jason Miller

Yeah, so that's a real hazard, you know, because I mean, it's not a hazard, I guess, if you're never going to fly instruments in a light airplane.

Jason Miller

But it would be a hazard if you're a person who wants to fly instruments in a light airplane and you meet that flight instructor and that's like, you know, and you don't know it.

Jason Miller

So.

Guest

Yeah, a hundred percent.

Jason Miller

And then I.

Jason Miller

Sorry, go ahead.

Guest

I was a hundred percent agree.

Guest

I mean, going straight into flying single pilot IFR is much different than doing simulated instrument and simulated approaches with the foggles.

Guest

You still have some sort of idea of where you are.

Guest

Like your body can tell a little bit if you're straight and level.

Guest

If you're turning, you know, you can still see the ground.

Guest

Right.

Guest

You can still see out of the small corner of your eye, but IFR and then you start adding thunderstorms.

Guest

You start adding icing and your brain, you're constantly moving and your equilibrium's getting all off.

Guest

It's like having the actual versus simulated instrument flying is huge.

Guest

Especially if you want to be an airline pilot and especially if you ever think you'd be flying an approach.

Guest

You know, it's like you don't want to have your first time flying actual instruments when you actually need it.

Guest

If that makes sense.

Jason Miller

Right?

Jason Miller

Yeah.

Jason Miller

No, 100%.

Jason Miller

And I think, you know, like, if people wanted to see, just check out what we put in the flight side of our instrument course.

Jason Miller

I think really what we want to emulate is like we said earlier, single pilot, professional operators.

Jason Miller

That's who.

Jason Miller

If we in ga, if we want to aspire to be anybody, it's those amazing short haul cargo pilots where they've got one pilot in the plane.

Jason Miller

You don't ever hear about them because they never get in accidents.

Jason Miller

They're up four in the morning.

Jason Miller

Right.

Jason Miller

And they're out, you know.

Jason Miller

Right.

Jason Miller

Like the procedures that they use.

Jason Miller

If I had to give something to the instrument folks that are going through it right now, I think take that template idea is really the most valuable, valuable thing I can add.

Jason Miller

Get, get your instructor to stop forcing you to shoot pool while the balls are still moving.

Jason Miller

You know, like settle it all down by repeating the same flight, going out and like you said, Justin, you know, slowly walking into the skills, but then go back to the same thing you've seen so that you can actually measure.

Jason Miller

Did the work you did on the skills, did it, did it really do anything?

Jason Miller

I think that's a big thing.

Jason Miller

And then seeking out imc, like even vacations.

Jason Miller

I, I've always thought about doing, you know, how we run those airplane camp trips.

Jason Miller

That's where we started the call.

Jason Miller

I always thought a great one would be like living the life of a freight dog for a weekend.

Jason Miller

You know, come to California in August and we'll get up at 4 in the morning and we'll just be IMC all day on the coast.

Jason Miller

You know, we'll go from Lake Santa Barbara to Eureka and just fly approach after approach.

Guest

Don't invite me to that aviation camp.

Guest

I don't want to come to that one.

Jason Miller

You don't?

Guest

I've already done that.

Guest

I don't need to do that again.

Guest

I want the one where Catalina.

Guest

I want the one where we're going to Napa, you know, we're stopping at Wineries, you know, I want the fun part, which fun might not be the right term because you would think that was fun because you haven't done that before.

Guest

But I have done that enough.

Guest

I'm good.

Guest

Good.

Jason Miller

Yeah.

Jason Miller

Well, I mean, I get to do it all, all the time.

Jason Miller

Maybe not at 4 in the morning, but, you know, lesson signs of 0600.

Jason Miller

But I just happen to think, I think.

Jason Miller

My point is, I think that here where I live, and I'm up in the mountains now, but the Bay Area is right there and it's some of the best instrument training in the world, really.

Jason Miller

There are probably parts of like Israel, Lebanon, Turkey that get the same effect off the, off the east side of the Mediterranean, maybe parts of Spain.

Jason Miller

But like, there aren't that many places that get the.

Jason Miller

This deep, thick advection fog and it's, you know, bases at sometimes 200ft and a quarter mile is tops at 5,000ft.

Jason Miller

No wind, no ice, no thunderstorms, no nothing.

Jason Miller

Just a blanket of fog.

Guest

Yeah.

Jason Miller

And you know, you can go experience that and get your ticket wet and make it a vacation.

Guest

Yeah.

Jason Miller

Come out, stay for a weekend.

Jason Miller

And yeah, I'm not the only guy either.

Jason Miller

I mean, I think honestly, if anybody who's listening to this is interested in doing that, that just call any of the flight schools in Palo Alto or San Carlos and they'll get you up there making an IFR vacation.

Jason Miller

Now, all those instructors are comfortable with it.

Jason Miller

You have to be or you can't teach them.

Guest

Yeah.

Guest

And then you have complex airspace to throw into that with San Francisco, with Oakland, with all the deltas in the area.

Guest

So, yeah, it's definitely a little bit interesting out there, that's for sure.

Jason Miller

Yeah, I mean, it's good for that.

Jason Miller

It's not good for understanding other weather.

Jason Miller

So I always like, worry about my students when they tell me they're going back to fly in Virginia or something in the summer, I'm like, okay, let's talk again about thunderstorms just one more time.

Guest

Yeah, there's a difference between, between shooting a minimum to an approach to minimums in fog that's relatively smooth and calm.

Guest

Then thunderstorms are down drafts and updrafts and crosswinds.

Guest

Right.

Jason Miller

Oh, yeah.

Jason Miller

It's like.

Jason Miller

No, you get spoiled.

Jason Miller

It's a.

Jason Miller

I call it a playground.

Jason Miller

I mean, it's not to say that you can't get in trouble.

Jason Miller

Yeah, you, you can.

Jason Miller

But as far as IFR IFR goes, it's benign.

Jason Miller

It's what we would call light ifr.

Guest

I love that.

Jason Miller

You know, even if it's at minimum, it's like, you know, I Don't know.

Jason Miller

Yeah, it's not hard IFR for sure.

Guest

That's good to know.

Guest

Yeah.

Jason Miller

But it'd be incredible practice.

Jason Miller

Just the ability to fly the approach all the way to minimums and then execute the mist and still be in the soup and.

Guest

Yeah.

Guest

And I'm guessing icing is not necessarily something you have to worry about constantly where you are now, the higher you go, obviously.

Guest

But, I mean, in the wintertime in North Carolina, I remember when I was doing my training was about 3,000ft was where the icing level seemed to live.

Guest

3 to 4,000ft.

Guest

So you could sneak a flight in there.

Guest

Uh, if it went higher, you're good.

Guest

But when I did my private pilot training, it seemed like the freezing level is always on the ground in Ohio.

Guest

So it was much different up in Ohio than it was in North Carolina.

Guest

It gave you the ability to fly more hard.

Guest

I.

Guest

Hard ifr.

Jason Miller

Yeah.

Jason Miller

Yeah.

Jason Miller

And, you know, that's, to be fair, a world I don't know a whole lot about.

Jason Miller

I mean, I know that I get away with a lot.

Jason Miller

So in terms of my own personal minimums, I don't fly IFR when the freezing levels are at or below the mea.

Jason Miller

But partially that's because I fly in California, you know, I mean, I know.

Jason Miller

I think I said that to flight shops once.

Jason Miller

And he's like, well, yeah, but I'm in Toronto, so I'm gonna call a different instructor.

Jason Miller

You know, I mean, like, there are folks that understand the.

Jason Miller

The way ice works.

Guest

Yeah.

Jason Miller

In those really cold temperatures, you might be one of them.

Jason Miller

It's a world that I don't have to deal with, at least not yet.

Jason Miller

And so I just make my minimums easy.

Jason Miller

And I fly tons of ifr primarily because of where I live.

Guest

Yeah.

Guest

Yeah.

Guest

Icing sucks, man.

Guest

Stay away from it if you can.

Guest

So stay where you're at.

Jason Miller

Yeah, yeah.

Jason Miller

Once I.

Jason Miller

I think it was Mac McClellan from Flying Magazine.

Jason Miller

He used to write the business, or maybe he still writes the business column.

Jason Miller

I don't know.

Jason Miller

Anyway, he once said that he thought fiki was just silly for any airplane.

Jason Miller

Like, he thought no airplane, zero.

Jason Miller

He's.

Jason Miller

And he flew golf streams and all sorts of things.

Jason Miller

He said, like no airplane should be approved for flight into known icing.

Jason Miller

He said, I don't care what airplane I'm in.

Jason Miller

When I start to ice up, I look for a way to get out, you know?

Guest

So, yeah, it's cute.

Guest

I mean, sometimes you gotta go in and lay it.

Guest

I don't know.

Guest

Yeah, I mean, this is different than talking a 172 or whatever it is.

Guest

But, you know, a lot of these routes are, you're going off to Buffalo and people want to get in and the plane's capable of knocking off ice.

Guest

So why aren't you gonna go?

Guest

You know, it's kind of, obviously there's, there's levels to it.

Guest

If it's too bad you don't go, you go around, you go somewhere else.

Guest

So there's definitely a safety factor there.

Guest

But, but I mean, you're picking up some ice and planes like you said, Fiki flying in and icing, it's good to go.

Guest

You got a hot wing for a reason.

Jason Miller

Yeah, yeah, no, that's true.

Jason Miller

And in an airliner, hey, that's a whole different animal.

Guest

Yeah.

Jason Miller

Like, by the way, when I say I don't fly in freezing levels at or below the meas, that's an aircraft without deicing equipment.

Jason Miller

Yeah, yeah, deicing equipment.

Jason Miller

That minimum is not.

Jason Miller

Yeah, but I think, you know, we have to use caution in a plane like a cirrus, for example, which is technically feaky.

Guest

But when trouble pretty fast.

Guest

One of the last questions I'll ask.

Guest

We can.

Guest

Don't want to keep you too long with this.

Guest

I don't want it to be like a two hour episode.

Guest

But when you talk about going to the IFR checkride, talk about, obviously we had the written knocked out.

Guest

We talked about that.

Guest

It's important.

Guest

Knocked the written out early on.

Guest

Use the ground school app.

Guest

Use whatever you need to do to get it done.

Guest

Mock oral, check rides.

Guest

Everything is in there.

Guest

But talk about.

Guest

I guess I'll say it this way.

Guest

My very first check ride, I was not prepared for ifr.

Guest

I actually feared my failed my IFR check ride.

Guest

Uh, I didn't prepare well enough.

Guest

I just trusted my cfi.

Guest

It was kind of like, all right, let's go, let's go, let's go.

Guest

And I was like, all right, cool.

Guest

Let's go, let's go, let's go.

Guest

And then I got there and it was just like a disaster.

Guest

Uh, then it didn't feel ready for the check ride.

Guest

Just took it anyways.

Guest

But I.

Guest

How do you go into the IFR check ride?

Guest

Do you think it's easier knowing that you know how check rides work from the ppl check ride?

Guest

Do you think it's just a whole different beast?

Guest

Because it's like a different language.

Jason Miller

It's kind of a whole different beast.

Jason Miller

You know, the mistakes, like at the end of the day that I see A lot of pilots make silly things like not like, like they get rushed or they'll be flying around with, with hsis that aren't tuned to any nav signal.

Jason Miller

Yeah, they enter a hold maybe the wrong way just like they get tired.

Jason Miller

So like, like I do a bit of coaching with instrument students going into the checkride.

Jason Miller

I always tell em to bring a Snickers, it's a long checkride.

Jason Miller

Or bring some like blood sugar boost, whatever, you know, picks you up a little bit.

Host

Some piles.

Guest

Coffee.

Jason Miller

Yeah, yeah, like iced coffee or soda or something like that.

Jason Miller

Cause there's going to come a point where you're tired.

Jason Miller

The main thing that will save your life under IFR is the ability to slow the airplane down to recognize.

Jason Miller

I mean on the checkride thread, to recognize when you're getting pushed.

Jason Miller

One of the tricks that I always do to my students and I know there are examiners out there that do it when things are going well, we'll fly an approach, we'll miss the approach.

Jason Miller

And I'll say I know they're not ready.

Jason Miller

Like I know they're not ready.

Jason Miller

They haven't even quite got to the missed approach hold yet or something like that.

Jason Miller

And I'll say, okay, you ready for the next one?

Jason Miller

You know, I'd like to just like nudge them along and see if they go, yeah, yeah, I'm like I'm ready for the next one or whatever.

Jason Miller

What they really need to say to me is no, like standby, I need a second.

Jason Miller

Yeah, like once they're able to say that to me and to air traffic control and understand they need to kind of slow down and create space for themselves.

Jason Miller

I feel a whole lot better about the checkride, that ability to sort of recognize when that's happening, create the space you need to stay in front of the airplane.

Jason Miller

When the examiner sees that there's going to be something that flips in their brain, they're looking for that.

Jason Miller

Yeah, they want to see that, you know, that you can handle that.

Guest

Yeah, they want to see how you handle adversity.

Guest

Every instrument check ride is going to have come to a point where they're going to push you.

Guest

Any good examiner, at least they're going to push you to, to the point where they want to see how you handle it and they want to see if you overcome it and if you just breeze right through it.

Guest

And if you don't breeze right through it, they want to see how you react.

Guest

Right.

Guest

They want to see if you slow the airplane down, if you take a little Bit of time.

Guest

If you ask for vectors off the approach to kind of go hold and figure it out, do it again.

Guest

Those are all good answers.

Guest

The bad answer is just blowing down the ils, just happy, dumb and just smiling and having no idea what's going on.

Guest

You know, if you find yourself in a checkride and you think it's too easy, it's probably because you're missing something, right?

Jason Miller

Yeah, 100%.

Jason Miller

And for CFIs who are listening to this, the way I would walk into what I just said to test your student is, you know, you have to do three approaches.

Jason Miller

So after the second approach before you think your student is fully ready, like they haven't briefed that approach yet would be a great indicator.

Jason Miller

They haven't pulled out the plate and briefed it yet.

Jason Miller

Just say to them when able, tell air traffic control you'd like the localizer Runway three at Hayward next.

Jason Miller

Or whatever air traffic control.

Jason Miller

Air traffic control will do all the work after that.

Jason Miller

If your student keys the mic and says to air traffic control, hey, we want the whatever approach it is next.

Jason Miller

Air traffic control immediately is going to say, okay, I advise when you have the ATIS, turn left heading 030.

Jason Miller

Let me know when you have the one minute weather.

Jason Miller

Whatever they start saying to you, they're going to take you off the task you were on.

Jason Miller

Now, your students should recognize this as a.

Jason Miller

Holy cow, my instructor, I just called this person.

Jason Miller

I'm overwhelmed.

Jason Miller

You know, the instructor introduced this.

Jason Miller

Your student should say like, either tell you, no, I'm not going to call them right now, or when ATC comes back, say, actually I'm not ready for that approach yet.

Jason Miller

I'd like some delay vectors while I get, you know, prepared.

Jason Miller

ATC would be fine with that.

Jason Miller

They'd go, okay, roger, turn left, whatever, 090, I'll give you some delay vectors.

Jason Miller

If your instructor or examiner saw you do that, like a big box is checked, okay, this guy did not get pushed into rushing.

Jason Miller

Did not get pushed into something you.

Host

Couldn'T do for sure.

Jason Miller

That's key.

Jason Miller

So yeah.

Jason Miller

And then scientific method.

Jason Miller

So one of the things that people will see in the app is whenever I talk about flying, it's like everything's a hypothesis until we can prove it's true.

Jason Miller

So like a holding pattern, for example, if you think it's going to be a parallel entry, prove it.

Jason Miller

And there's this little methods we can do to prove that you have the right entry.

Jason Miller

And then, then you can talk in front of the airplane.

Jason Miller

If you can verify if you can guess at it, it prove it, and then say, okay, when I get to that fix, here's the five things I'm going to do.

Jason Miller

You're kind of bulletproof.

Guest

Yeah, one thing I'll say I'm so thankful for flying more advanced fmss.

Guest

When I was doing management training, I was on a standard six pack with maybe a 430.

Guest

But having, you know, G1000s, now having the Garmin G5000 that I flew at the.

Guest

At NetJets on the latitude, having the plane know exactly how to enter hold, it's life changing, right?

Guest

Like, obviously you need to know what comes next as well and be prepared if that doesn't work.

Guest

But, you know, learning how to do holds is pretty hard for me.

Guest

I had to, like, take myself out of the airplane, think about where I was.

Guest

Some people are like, doing this to everything.

Guest

It's like just learning how to do that can be kind of difficult.

Guest

Once you get it, it's like, wow, why did I ever struggle with that?

Guest

But I actually think I watched one of your videos when I was like 21, trying to figure out how to do whole.

Guest

So thank you for that.

Jason Miller

I think I got.

Jason Miller

We have a great system, and first you visualize it on your HSI and you use your thumb to check it.

Jason Miller

Yeah, it's funny, my.

Jason Miller

On my instrument check ride, it was going fantastically well.

Jason Miller

And the guy that I was with was an old Corsair instructor legend, Blue fields.

Jason Miller

He was 89 years old or something like that.

Jason Miller

I think when I was doing my check ride, you know, really, I'm very lucky to have known him at all.

Jason Miller

Yeah, and it was a tough checkride, man.

Jason Miller

Like, I mean, it was tough.

Jason Miller

The oral was tough.

Jason Miller

Everything was tough.

Jason Miller

Everything about Lou was tough.

Jason Miller

Just by nature.

Jason Miller

I mean, it's just like one of these old army guys, guys, Navy guys, really.

Jason Miller

But he must have thought I was doing a good job.

Jason Miller

He must have wanted me to pass because when it came time to enter holds, I was about to turn the wrong way.

Jason Miller

Like, we got to the fix and I was about to turn the wrong way.

Jason Miller

I can say this now because Lou's not alive anymore.

Jason Miller

And I went to turn and the yoke wouldn't turn.

Jason Miller

Like it just wouldn't go the way I wanted it to go.

Jason Miller

And I look over at Lou and I could see his finger, his thumb and his index finger just holding it down.

Jason Miller

He didn't look at me, he just looks straight ahead.

Jason Miller

But he blocked me from turning the wrong way.

Jason Miller

Saved my butt on the checkride that's awesome.

Guest

Shout out to him.

Jason Miller

Yeah, shout out to Lou.

Guest

Yeah.

Guest

Well, I mean, some examiners know, you know, like, they're like, all right, this dude's got it.

Guest

Like, this is clearly like a fatigue mistake or something like that.

Guest

And, I mean, there are some that won't let any mistakes go.

Guest

You know, they're like, oh, sorry, dude, you failed.

Guest

But there are definitely some out there that are like, ah, I got you, dude.

Jason Miller

And you're like, I know.

Jason Miller

This was older.

Jason Miller

This was.

Jason Miller

I don't know if that would fly today.

Jason Miller

I mean, this was.

Jason Miller

Was.

Jason Miller

What was my rating?

Jason Miller

1999?

Jason Miller

2000, maybe.

Guest

Yeah, boy.

Jason Miller

Anyway, kind of a different world.

Guest

Definitely a different world.

Guest

But, Jason, I appreciate you coming on.

Guest

As always.

Guest

I appreciate just talking to you and like I said, we just literally just start talking and feel like we just.

Guest

We'll leave it in, like I said, but just talking.

Guest

Great information.

Guest

So I appreciate coming on.

Guest

We'll complete the series eventually, but we'll do commercial pilot next whenever we have the chance.

Guest

I know.

Guest

Our schedules are so crazy for that one.

Guest

Let's go.

Guest

Let's do it.

Jason Miller

Thank you.

Jason Miller

Thank you, Justin.

Jason Miller

I appreciate being here.

Guest

So thank you for coming.

Guest

Anytime.

Guest

If we want the Ground school app, tell them where to go and how to get it.

Jason Miller

Well, I mean, LearnTheFinderPoints.com is a place you can go.

Jason Miller

I think your viewers have a code, right?

Guest

They do.

Jason Miller

10% off.

Guest

I'll put that down below as well.

Jason Miller

Yeah, I think it's like.

Jason Miller

Anyway.

Jason Miller

Yeah, if it's in the description.

Jason Miller

Or email us to get that discount.

Guest

Yeah, I think it's code Justin.

Jason Miller

Or the app Store.

Guest

Yeah, yeah.

Guest

Learn the finer points of the app store and use code Justin, which I'm pretty sure.

Guest

Or pilot to pilot.

Guest

We'll find out.

Guest

Yeah, but look at the description.

Guest

That's where you can find it the best.

Guest

Yeah, I should probably.

Guest

I should look at that before I said that.

Guest

But, you know, it is what it is.

Guest

Got a little podcast.

Jason Miller

That's all right.

Jason Miller

Yeah, I think it's Justin.

Guest

Yeah, let's go with that.

Guest

But yeah, man, I appreciate your time and I appreciate your knowledge.

Guest

It's just a lot of fun talking to all the time times.

Guest

And if everyone wants any other questions, we can always do a part two.

Guest

So send a question either to me.

Guest

My email is justinilotepilothq.com or reach out to Jason.

Guest

And I'm sure you guys know how to reach out to him.

Guest

So thank you so much for your time and we'll see you later.

Jason Miller

Okay.

Jason Miller

Awesome.

Jason Miller

Justin.

Jason Miller

Thanks.

Guest

Cool man.

Guest

Thanks.

Host

AV Nation.

Host

That's a wrap on today's episode.

Host

Thank you so much for listening to the podcast.

Host

I hope you enjoyed it.

Host

If you haven't left a review yet, please go to Spotify, please go to itunes.

Host

I want to try to get to a thousand reviews on each individual platform.

Host

So go ahead and leave a five star review.

Guest

I mean that'd be beneficial and hopeful.

Host

But if you like the podcast, please leave a five star review on both of those and also write a nice little comment there.

Host

It helps more people find this podcast.

Host

And that's the goal, right?

Host

To get more aviators to find more people in aviation.

Guest

If you already left a review, grab.

Host

Your dad's phone, leave a review on his end.

Host

But AV Nation, I hope you're having a great day.

Host

And as always, always happy flying Pilot.

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