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E320 - Mastering IFR: Insights from Jason Miller on Becoming an Instrument Pilot
Episode 32019th November 2024 • Pilot to Pilot - Aviation Podcast • Justin Siems
00:00:00 00:57:47

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This episode of the Pilot the Pilot Podcast features Jason Miller as he delves into the essentials of becoming an IFR pilot. The discussion emphasizes the importance of preparation, stressing that aspiring instrument pilots should complete their written exams early and be ready for the complexities of IFR flying. Miller shares valuable insights on the significance of understanding the “why” behind instrument flying procedures and the need for pilots to recognize their saturation points during training. The conversation also touches on the differences between flying light aircraft versus larger jets, highlighting how these distinctions impact safety and decision-making. Through anecdotes and practical advice, listeners are encouraged to approach their flight training with a focus on mastering the fundamentals and developing a strong situational awareness.

Takeaways:

  • The importance of understanding risk management as a pilot cannot be overstated, especially when flying IFR.
  • Instrument flying requires a different mindset compared to VFR flying; preparation is crucial.
  • Students should focus on understanding the whys behind instrument procedures, not just memorizing them.
  • It's essential to recognize when you're becoming overwhelmed during instrument training and to communicate that.
  • Establishing a routine and using checklists effectively is vital for successful IFR flying.
  • Feeling comfortable with the aircraft's systems and procedures helps build confidence in instrument conditions.

Transcripts

Host:

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

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Jason Miller:

My name is Jason Miller.

Jason Miller:

I'm a career flight instructor.

Jason Miller:

ve been teaching flying since:

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:

hey're five miles offshore at:

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:

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:

miles offshore and you're at:

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:

ve been teaching flying since:

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:

Jason Miller:

As early as:

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:

ut, you know, lesson signs of:

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, G:

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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