When 1500 Hours Equals 10

Wait, you let a child near Gulley? Did no one warn you?
I figure its best he meets my daughter now as an infant than 2 decades from now out in the field. Create some sense of shame and awkwardness that hopefully won't get swept away by bourbon. All I can do is try.

I would have thought the moustache was warning enough.
Nature's way of saying "Don't accept candy or anything inside this guy's van".


How do you teach dropping a wing? My CFI allowed that to happen organically during stall during Commercial. He said during slow flight stay off the rudders, use ailerons after I dipped the wing and almost spun us. He said that most training planes are inherently stable (especially the DA-40 were we in) he said push the nose forward. Or just let go of the yoke and it will stabilize. I tried it and he was right. But power on stalls was my weak point during training, because they honestly scared the • out of me. We were nose high and slow and the controls were squishy and could easily lead to a spin, if not properly stabilized. Learning that gave me the confidence to be able to do stalls in general, better and with more confidence.
Lol I was nervous with stalls as a 16 year old with 4 or 5 hours and my CFI had me do almost an hour of rollercoaster stall after stall after stall out over the Crystal Springs practice area between SFO and HAF long ago. Of course it had to be on an uncommonly very hot and bumpy day. My stomach was in knots for a day or two and I had to lay down on the sidewalk waiting for my mom to come pick me up, but the next time I was on a roller coaster, I didn't feel it much. Then forever after. It worked. Haha
 
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Some years back Gulley was in LAS and gave my nephew a personal tour of his Challenger. At the time my nephew was really into MSFS. That was so awesome for him to do that. Love that dude.

The nephew, or Gulley?
 
It’s a big Rube Goldberg advice. The only “shortage” was regional captains, which created a certain amount of synthetic scarcity up the food chain for pilots.

Basically todays “low time pilot” at the upper echelon of employers are in the 3-4000 hour mark.
I still feel like that’s not too bad compared to the stories I heard when I got to the regionals and even before. Pre COVID 2019ish that’s about the flight time I started getting calls and even then it was on the low side compared to other candidates.

I know the cadre of pilots who got hired immediately post COVID won’t share that same sentiment because for some that pace of the industry is all they know.
 
Good on you - I'm always trying to convince my kids to ask to go up. One is growing too cool for it, but the other is always down. Had a great UA FO on a delay last year who spent a lot of time giving my very tech inclined son an overview of the cockpit. She even texted me photos of him, which was nice.
This is probably one of the most missed parts about being in the cargo world. There’s something about seeing that spark in a kids eye when they visit the flight deck. It seemed that most could care less about visiting up front in recent years though.
 
I still feel like that’s not too bad compared to the stories I heard when I got to the regionals and even before. Pre COVID 2019ish that’s about the flight time I started getting calls and even then it was on the low side compared to other candidates.
Man, just go back to 2010ish when I joined here, every job available post was like “corporate pilot, aircraft manager wanted. Additional duties include washing the CEO’s car, sweeping office and hangar floors, walking CEO’s dog, and other duties as assigned. Applicant must live on site in hangar apartment in BFE Oklahoma. Running water and air conditioning not included. Minimum qualifications 5000 hours total time, competitive 10000 hours and 10 shuttle landings. Pay $30,000/year, no benefits provided but you can have 1 bottled water from the office fridge per day. Additional bottles $1.50 each. Flight time 50 hrs/year.”
 
Man, just go back to 2010ish when I joined here, every job available post was like “corporate pilot, aircraft manager wanted. Additional duties include washing the CEO’s car, sweeping office and hangar floors, walking CEO’s dog, and other duties as assigned. Applicant must live on site in hangar apartment in BFE Oklahoma. Running water and air conditioning not included. Minimum qualifications 5000 hours total time, competitive 10000 hours and 10 shuttle landings. Pay $30,000/year, no benefits provided but you can have 1 bottled water from the office fridge per day. Additional bottles $1.50 each. Flight time 50 hrs/year.”
I pray to god we never go back to times like this.
 
1500 hours flight time is no different than 1500 hours of anything else. You can have 1500 hours of doing the same thing over and over again or 1500 hours of a multitude of tasks. One of those people will appear more experienced than the other.

Hell I asked my CFI to demo a short field landing for me and he wound up botching it the first time and said “man I haven’t flown one of these myself in a long time” because most of that time you’re building as a CFI is watching someone else fly.
 
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