 Hello everyone and welcome. Our presenter today, Mark Grady is a 6,000 hour pilot. He's also a commercial pilot. He's a speaker, a writer, a humorist, and he goes around the country delivering AOPA safety seminars as well. Mark has a good program for you, so if you position yourself near the back door to escape, you probably won't have to use that strategy today. Please welcome your presenter, Mark Grady. Safety seminars as well. Also the F.A. Production Studio crew. You may not know this, but this studio crew here is volunteering. Folks are at home watching on the World Wide Web. Welcome to you if you're at home and watching on the internet for the safety program. Wish you were here. It is a great opportunity for you to go ahead and take a look at what's going on all over the country here at the F.A. Production Studios. All of these are volunteers that are working here from the control room upstairs and folks who are streaming to all the camera operators. Let's give them a big hand for what they do here at the F.A. Television Studios. Really do appreciate that. Also AOPA, how many AOPA members we got in here? Well great. Oh man, that's a majority crowd I'd say. AOPA puts out all kinds of services that you see on the screen now. I'm from the AOPA Air Safety Foundation which was founded in 1950 as a charitable foundation. They do all kinds of great work including safety seminars like this one, the pincheter courses you've heard about, safety advisers, instructor reports. We do the weekend flight instructor fresher clinics all over the country. Also put out some very valuable publications including the Null Report and some tight specific safety reports as well. My name is Mark Grady. She said I had 6,000 hours. What Kathleen is always reluctant to tell everybody is those 6,000 hours were primarily in a Cessna 152. So folks usually look at me and have some great responses. My two favorite are this fellow who's a safety seminar heckler in Rochester, New York, always hollers out and he has something to say every time I'm up there. This last time I was in the Rochester, New York area. He said, hey, 6,000 hours in a 152. I said, yeah, he said, was that before or after your check ride? And I said, that's all right. I said, we're really, you know, funny. I'm from North Carolina. We have a good sense of humor. I did arrange for him to be ramp check the next day. But that's one of the advantages of having friends at the FAA. So that's a lot of fun. Hey, one of the neat things another guy told me at one of our weekend flag structure refresher courses to very seasoned aviators. They didn't know I was behind them trying to get out in the hall during a break. And they were talking about what I heard one say, that guy say he had 6,000 hours in the 152. Dylan said, yeah, he did. He said that boy ain't got no ambition. But I thought that was a great one too. Most that time was during 10 years as an airborne traffic watch pilot reporter for two radio stations and a TV station in Raleigh, North Carolina. And that was the end of a 22 year broadcast career. I used to do talk radio and used to write and produce TV commercials. And I did actually two years on television like this until the consultants came to town and said I had a face for radio. So they took me off the television, put me on the radio. Hey, one of the neat things about being a broadcast pilot, and those of you who've seen me do a program before you've seen this, but somebody asked me, they do show that again. So I will, I got the chance to fly some really unique flying machines. Because these companies would come to town and they give me free instruction on these really neat aircraft. And then they want me to, you know, talk about their company on the air. So I would do that. And I got to fly a very limited aerobatic routine with the Red Baron Stearman crew. Have you seen those? The boy had a lot of fun. I fell in love with the Stearman after that. And then it's just really neat. And then for the flying machine that just changed my life was this one. If you haven't ever seen this before, if I know type aircraft, hey, I have quite a bit of PIC time in the blockbuster video blimp. How about that? How did this change my life dealing with air traffic controllers? For my size, I don't have a sense of power often. But I didn't this thing. Because I told air traffic controllers, y'all better start being nice to me or I'll come back and shoot an ILS in this thing. It takes 45 minutes to shoot a full ILS in the blockbuster video blimp. Eyes up in Chicago doing nightly seminar. And one of the guys hollered out in the audience, he said, Hey, why didn't you borrow that for this seminar run and asked to shoot an approach into Oh, hey, I said, good grief, why would I want to do that? He said, because when they got the fussing at you could have said, Hey, if Megs was open, I could have gone into there. Those guys are thinking up there in Chicago I know our AOPA southeastern rep Bob Mentor, who's in the audience appreciates that he's working to protect some of our fields and what's going on and flying in their neck of the woods as well. He's sitting beside my wife. So be nice, Bob. All right, we're here to talk to them about single pilot IFR operations. Let me clarify something. I know how pilots are. You have to clarify everything. This is single pilot interested in instrument flight rule single pilot. We get some people show up this thing and say single pilot IFR. What is that? Is it single pilot interested in finding romance? And they think we're gonna meet somebody here. So you just want to clarify that right from the start. This is what this is all about. And I want to ask you a question right from the start. Is a single pilot IFR operation safe? What do you think? What's the best answer? I hear yes, a very definitive yes. Some people say, Well, what is the best answer? It all depends on who you the person that's flying the aircraft. And before we get started, IFR has to do with the weather primarily, doesn't it? You on the early days of instrument flight, where general Jimmy Doolittle up in Virginia was instrumental in helping work on instrument flight. You talk about partial panel flying. That's what these folks were doing when they were setting up instrument flight. So since weather is involved, let's talk about a couple of things here and get a few facts to you. Weather is responsible for more than 25% of all accidents in general aviation. Now, I don't necessarily, although this is official wording, like the way this is worded because it gives you the impression that weather is coming down. It's just slapping these pilots and getting them in trouble coming out of the sky. Could it be some aeronautical decision making involved in this as well? Unfortunately, these numbers get a little worse. 30% of weather accidents happen to be fatal. How about that? And look at this, this may surprise you 43% of pilots involved in weather accidents are instrument rated. Now, I see that pilot logic going off. You're thinking, well, naturally, it is because of the fact that if they're guys that are up there flying in the weather, but if you look at the accident reports, you'll see the instrument pilots are just as capable at suffering some of the things like spatial disorientation as pilots who are not instrument rated. So there are things that can come and bite us whether we're instrument rated or not. In this crowd, for those of you watching at home on the internet, we have a studio audience here at the FA Productions Studio here. All the folks here in the audience, how many of you have an instrument rating? That's right. Anybody here currently working on their instrument rating couple of anybody in here interested in getting an instrument rating, but you're broke. The rest of I see a couple of you interested in that too. Well, the good news is this, despite the statistics, many single pilot IFR flights are made safely every single day. So the key is how can we make those statistics come down and get a little bit better? Because when you start comparing those numbers to what happens in the airlines, our statistics and general aviation aren't quite as good. So how can we make those numbers better? And that's why we're here. So the answer to the question should not be, is it safe? But how can I be safer as a single pilot who is up there flying in instrument conditions? And that's what we're going to talk about today. So what we're going the way we're going to do this is we're going to give you hopefully what's determined to be seven keys that will make us safer during single pilot IFR operations. And because we're up there flying around, we're busy, aren't we? Look at your job description as a single pilot IFR operator. You're the cabinet attendant, the tour guide, the communicator, the pilot command, the navigator, sometimes even a zookeeper on board some some aircraft. Of course, the number one list of that job, you know, we're going to put that in correct order here in a minute. The zookeeper, yeah, it's amazing. Some guys sent me I don't know the whole story behind this picture here. But some of you seen this thing. Imagine being the first officer on this little regional carrier and the captain telling you go preflight. What would you do? See what kind of aeromotical decision making you would put into play on this thing. But getting back to that we are busy. And as it goes back to that famous aviation line, they even used it in the movie Apollo 13, the aviation is, you know, 15 hours of pure boredom ball about 30 seconds of pure terror. And that can happen to us in IFR operation. So one of the keys we've got to remember is number one prioritize, put the proper things that we're doing in the proper order. So let's go back to all of these jobs we've got to do in the airplane and put this in the correct order by only number one, putting our number one job up there. And that's why pilot command flying the aircraft absolutely doesn't change whether your VFR IFR is being the pilot command is our number one job. And we can take some lessons from the guys who fly the heavy iron when it comes to instrument flight. And that is the amount of training that's required. The proficiency level is higher with the airlines because they're always flying consistently in the system. And if we don't always have a chance to do that, especially if we're kind of a weekend operator in aviation, we don't get a chance to stay as proficient as possible. So the number two key after prioritizing is good training. Now, I didn't say just training, but good training and good training pays off folks. You know, one of my buddies is still in the television news business flies one of the news helicopters. They're trying to find out there was a big police chase going on. The cops are trying to pull that blue car. You talk about good training, even though this is the bad guy, I wonder who his driver's ed instructor is. Do you know how they finally caught this guy was a trucker listening to the radio who heard a traffic reporter talking about this and he was able to block the road till the cops got there talk about good training. I don't know who this guy got it from. But it was incredible. So let's talk about the right stuff when it comes to good training and becoming a more proficient or even your initial training for the for your instrument rating. This is where we encourage you. We certainly know there's when you go to a flight instructor, even if they're newly certificate of all those folks know that those maneuvers very well. But when it comes to getting your instrument rating, it probably be good to find an instructor who's had some experience flying a lot in the IFR system. It's a whole different world, isn't it? It's different. And so we encourage you to find somebody with experience somebody that's dedicated. One of the complaints that we hear occasionally about the instructor community is sadly the turnovers high. These guys can go get a job and get paid. That's sad, isn't it? The way the system works. The most valuable tool in aviation safety of the instructor seems to be usually the ones who's receiving the lowest amount of compensation for that. And that's sad. We ever see if I is in the audience here? Oh, wow. Let's give them a hand. That's the most underrated job in America. I'll tell you that. Look what they do, they get an airplane with us. And sometimes they go even know us well, you know, and take that risk. And they do all that just for $112,000 a year. So I don't know if I would do it. And then they train. There's one thing that's important. You want to train in actual IMC conditions. I can't I'm amazed. I'm in a couple of pilots in North Carolina one out in Arizona, who got an instrument rating and never has been in the clouds. Never. And it's different, isn't it? So you got to do that. I love one of our former instructors at the Air Safety Foundation was now up in Alaska now working up there. But I used to love the way he introduced people, his students to instrument flying. He keep them under the hood, no matter what. And then when the first day they actually got in the clouds, he let them be flying for a little bit before he took the hook off because you see what he was doing building confidence when he took the hook off. I'm really doing this. He said he had one big country fellow on board the airplane with him one day and he did it the same way. Got in the clouds, had the hood on after his air flow while he said, take your hood off. That big fellow took the hood off and they're in the clouds. He's flying along. About two minutes later, he turned to the instructor and said, can I put the hood back on now? He liked it better when he couldn't see say some, you know, it is different. You want to make sure you're training an IMC condition. You can tell whether it's physically put before you that somebody's doing that building block system and training in the IMC system and IFR system. That's a good thing to look for as well. Simulation is good. Now, I've talked a lot if you've seen me do a GPS seminar about being concerned about over dependence on technology. But this is where technology can help. Even these desktop simulation programs, Microsoft Flight Simulator, even though you might not can officially log some of them to sit there and go practice approaches and know how the system works with that technology is good to integrate it into your training. Just don't overly depend on that respect as well. So another thing is just time that helps to be in the air. And that's why a good IFR pilot in our key number three here maintains proficiency. Even if you're not flying IFR all the time or don't get the chance to just fly in VFR is helping you with your proficiency. Because think about that. If you're comfortable in flying the airplane and operating the controls when you fly, you're not going to have as much more difficult time in putting those skills to use if things are going south on your you got a really tough weather system you're having to fly around. So maintaining proficiency is extremely important. And that's where going back to this technology can come in handy. These computer based even official ones that you can actually log a certain amount of timing can help. The maintaining proficiency is extremely important. And going back to that proficient IFR pilot. Let's talk about that for just a minute. This is someone that after you get your training or go back for training is someone who regularly practices in IMC conditions. The more comfortable you are the more you do something the better you are at it. It happens all the time. You start a new job, you feel a little confused at first. But after a couple of weeks of being on the job you're comfortable with it and the procedures in making it work. Proficient IFR pilot as we mentioned flies regularly. You're staying in the air playing as much as you possibly can so that you're comfortable in flying it. Here's a big one. Now I know what the rules say but sometimes the rules are different from reality and there's a difference between legal versus safe isn't it? The rules say that you go out every six months, shoot six approaches and do a holding procedure and you know as you're flying an intercept in the course you're okay to legally go fly IFR. But you know as well as I do folks that if you go out there and you shoot the same six approaches, same six airports every six months, you may be legal but are you really proficient? If you're someone who's not regularly challenged by flying in the instrument system, instrument flight system in this country, then please get with one of these great instructors that raise their hand and get an instrument proficiency check instead of doing that that six months I just meet the minimum rule requirements. That's not the way to go. Guarantee it. So please be careful when you're out there flying and keep that in mind that it's better to challenge yourself. In our emergency seminar we held just a little earlier. We mentioned the fact that in a full-blown emergency you're going to react the way that you're trained and that is especially important in the IMC world especially when we show you a real IFR emergency in a little bit and see how that training works. Another good proficiency is soul searching. You want to be a great pilot. There's a couple of things to put into practice. I mentioned this on our Tuesday, similar on Thursday rather as well, and this is important to know. It doesn't matter folks how many hours we've got in our logbook, how many years we've been flying, how many different types of aircraft we've been flying. The bottom line is we're all human and capable of making mistakes. That's one thing aspect of it. The other aspect of it is that if we really want to be a good pilot we have to recognize our limitations. Remember the old dirty Harry movies a man's got to know his limitations and that's true and so a good proficient IFR pilot does frequent soul searching, sit down and determine what are my weak areas so that when you go to do that IPC instrument proficiency check or you go for your flight review you have the opportunity to really study up on those things and work on them and tell those instructors where your weak area is on. Let's go to another key and this one happens to be stay organized. It's amazing how over-dependent on technology this messes with us with all those frequencies and material we need to know in the GPS we might have all of our flight material kind of laying around inside the airplane where we can't access it. Now I tell you this can get us in trouble. Just having access to the information without looking it over before we fly can bite us folks. We've got to stay organized and know where this material is to access it. If you lose the GPS in flight knowing how to get to those approach plates or those frequencies are extremely important. I'm guilty of this. Go back to the blockbuster video blimp. Look on top of the instrument panel here and what a mess I've got. You know there was a chart there's a little clipboard over on the left-hand side with the sponsors I had to recognize and doing traffic reports that day. Now I will you know is this good crock-cock pit resource management? Maybe not. Now let me defend myself a little bit. It's not like in the airship the blockbuster video blimp that you're going to take an abrupt maneuver and four or five G's are going to throw all that stuff off of the top of the instrument panel. It's not going to happen. But in most aircraft it can be a factor if we're not well organized. So check your flight bag and make sure you've got everything you need for the flight. A lot of times pilots are really prepared but they're not prepared for everything. I remember in North Carolina we had North Carolina Wings weekend there. I had a fella come up he was a dentist and he had bought him a 182 and learned to fly in it. He was an excitable fella. He had a whole stack of yellow pads he bring to the seminars he make notes after I did one on survival if you have an all-fair port landing one time. He came up and said I've been thinking about a lot of things you said. I need to go get a new flight bag and new stuff and he had showed me all these notes he made he said in fact I'm gonna do that right now and then he told me hey I know I'm you know I'm flying with an instructor here this weekend. I want you to keep an eye on me when I'm out there. If you see me do anything you know that they may get me in trouble please let me know I want to be good. I said yes sir I'm sure you'll be fine but I'll keep an eye on it. He left the field and he came back and he tracked me down I was taking a break just looking at some planes in the flight line and he said check out my bag he dropped this new flight bag he brought. I couldn't even pick the thing up. He had bought every single flashlight ever made and put in there and pilots love flashlights don't they? But I know we do we keep the flashlight industry in business the problem is we forget the definition of a flashlight don't we? That plastic or metal cylinder for the storage of dead batteries so please remember that and keep all that stuff up to date but this guy came in there he had beef jerky he had bought one of those NASA blank aluminum full blankets and and he had gone out in the field found an avionics shop bought him a handheld radio he put all that stuff in there he said isn't that great and I said you've done well he said thanks he grabbed that stuff and walked off his airplane what do you put it back in the luggage compartment and when he came back from flying that little phase of the wings program I saw him I said now you told me don't get mad but you told me if I saw you do he interrupt I got about that much I said what did I do? And I said all that great stuff you got in that bag and where'd you put it? He went oh man he said I didn't realize then you're right I said I'm not trying to pick on you and I just made the point I said unless you're built like me you can't stand up the 182 and walk back there and get that stuff I can but most normal people can so remember that keep your check on all that kind of stuff another key is this fly well maintained equipment I'm real fortunate I'm my my bride is an aircraft mechanic in addition to being a CFI and I know you know if you flew something she's in I know it's safe and that's important to know especially if you're flying rental aircraft most AMTs in this country do a great job but know these things you'll be surprised how many pilots will show up for check rides today and the aircraft especially with all this equipment coming out radios coming out new GPS going in and even the weight bouncing the aircraft isn't correct isn't accurate so know the equipment you're flying that makes a big difference in you safely completing a flight especially one that's going in the clouds you want to make sure it's something that you're comfortable when you're flying around another key here let's go to another one key number six is this maintain weather knowledge and this is important the more you know about the weather mark twain said everybody talks about the weather nobody ever does anything about it we kind of changed that as pilots having yet we do we make decisions based on the weather and knowing the more you know about how weather systems work especially locally the better you are making decisions about whether you're even with an instrument rating whether it's safe to penetrate that particular cloud there's all kinds of forecasting systems some of you may have seen some of these signs around this is an official NOAA sign and that the stone is wet rain stone gone I like the last one tornado how many of you ever seen a white owning windsock if you've never seen one here's one of those so if you're out in Wyoming and looking for the windsock they are painting them orange so they'll more match now but that's what what one looks like so keep in mind the more you know about the weather the safe we are key number seven here's another one prepare for real emergencies I told you several times this week if you've been to any other seminars we've done I keep emphasizing this because you it's that repetitive thing I hope gets through to you in a real emergency we're going to react how the way we're trained right and that's why preparation is extremely key you know knowing that knowing that is very important and this is where we're coming up to a really kind of serious but scary part to the seminar you see these instruments folks when these things fail it's not good news in single pilot IFR operations vacuum pump failure is a dangerous situation in most general aviation airplanes as a matter of fact over a 15 year period in general aviation 80% of vacuum failure single pilot I am see operation vacuum failure incidents ended up being fatal 80% so what does that tell you and a single pilot IFR operation if your vacuum pumps fail statistically we're going to die how can we and yet what's amazing we get through here you are going to be surprised amazingly surprised at how simple the solution is to bring this accident rate down substantially you know what it's kind of scary what I want to do here is show you an actual IFR emergency this is air traffic control communications take this happened near Albuquerque, New Mexico it is interesting to watch pilots who've never heard this incident before this tape react to air traffic controls handling of the situation because most people seem to be a little critical of ATC when we get back to this we're going to make things show you that everybody involved in this accident goofed up this is one of those sad scenarios in aviation where everything that could go wrong did go wrong in this particular situation now pilots are detailed folks I found that every time I showed this and didn't tell you this somebody will come up and ask this question has this tape been edited yes but only to this extent it has been edited that if there's ATC communications with other pilots not involved in the incident that's taken away and if there's long periods of time of communication with this pilot naturally that's edited out as well what you're about to see is real and when you hear the outcome it will send a chill down your spine let's go and watch this action and it's transcribed on the screen in case you're having trouble hearing the ATC communication let's watch and learn from this November 7 9 November Lima verify your level at two three zero showing you 400 feet low 9 November Lima we've just figured out that we've had a dual a key to stop failure and we've lost so we're going to need to look for some places we've got electric backup systems here but we're having a little trouble holding out to the internet okay let me know if you need any assistance 9 November Lima what's the bottom up the cloud by a word where I am far this time he's his vacuum pump yeah he's basically just blind up there so soon you can get him down to better off he is oh okay thanks I didn't know that 7 9 November Lima you want to start down? 9 November Lima we'd like to start down what are the bases? they sit around 13 9 November Lima we'd like to start down and get below the base 7 9 November Lima Roger descend and maintain 14 14,000 and 14,000 Northside 172 Northside yeah I've got some uh an aircraft out there about seven northeast of the VOR his code is 0704 he's a probable 230 needs to descend down to 14 I guess you lost his vacuum or whatever uh 0704 14,000 is approved tomorrow okay thanks for the 7 9 November Lima contact Albuquerque Center on 132.8 I'll upload for you shortly and I just keep them advised if you need any uh if you need any uh further assistance 7 9 November Lima Albuquerque 9 November Lima we're having trouble 9 November Lima Roger are you going to want to land at Albuquerque then 9 November Lima what you're up to now 9 November Lima we're heading 9 November Lima Roger if I'm heading uh 260 and contact approach on 127.4 127.4 9 November Lima that's me again that 9 November Lima yeah he said if he can get below the clouds he'll go on to liberal so he's heading down to get below the clouds now okay start and figure out what's wrong on he has vacuum tube sausage vacuum tube sausage yes both of them thank you 7 9 November Lima Albuquerque 7 9 November Lima Albuquerque no survivors on board that aircraft let's talk about what happened before we get real specific about the Albuquerque incident let's get some generic stuff about this kind of emergency and see if we can make us a little bit safer this concerned us so much of the Air Safety Foundation a study was conducted about this particular type of scenario well pilots in here's how it worked two dozen proficient IFR pilots and two 10 and two 8 simulators at flight safety didn't tell us specifically what we were looking for want to make it a semi-blind study didn't we and then we failed the vacuum pumps on it and we got the engineers to help out in the way where it wasn't it was you know vacuum pump failure had to happen to you in city assessment there's still pressure in the line takes a little while for that to spool down so it's a slow process but they made it realistic most pilots in the simulator recognized it and it took them an average of a minute and 42 seconds after vacuum failure a lot of time but significant to note that none of those pilots lost their control of the aircraft during that time but here's where it becomes good news bad news the good news is 90 percent of the pilots in that study recognized the problem identified it to the simulator instructor but of those 90 percent of the pilots who participated in that and knew what was going on 50 percent of them ended up crashing the simulator now this brings some questions doesn't it number one question is and is for all the amt's like my bride is what are the chances of vacuum pump failure good way to look at it is a hundred percent isn't it another question though from the pilot perspective is this is based on these statistics that you've seen here today and the outcome of situations that are similar to albuquerque's do you believe that our current partial panel training is adequate how many of you say obviously not raise your hand how many of you still have questions about that raise your hand i'm telling you i saw one couple of you raise your hand you know what you're probably right and i'll tell you why those of you who are instrument rated in this room when you were simulating the failure of your vacuum pumps and that aircraft and went partial panel did you lose control of the airplane no you did not so what's happening folks is putting the practice of training into reality that can save our life now this is going to be so simple most of you are not going to want to believe that this is the answer but please listen to me and let me tell you it is if you want to substantially increase your chances of surviving a vacuum pump failure in a single pilot IFR operation in IMC conditions here's the way you do it do what your instructor did and cover up the instruments that are not working it's as simple as that well all this information coming at us this confusing to us is getting us in trouble in the airplane and by eliminating it we're expecting them to work come back you know miraculous healing of the instruments to take place it's not going to happen and by eliminating that from your scan altogether it forces you to go in to this better partial panel scan please remember that if you got those little suction cup things and a training don't put them in your bag in the back have them accessible if you end up in a situation you've lost everything you know you can't you don't have posted notes or something a dollar bill folded in half will slam into those round gauges and block them really well i know in general aviation it's hard to have more than one one dollar bill on one time but you tear one in half if you have to and put it in there so please remember there's always a way to cover that thing up and make it work so that we can be careful let me go back to this albuquerque incident i heard reactions from you to the air traffic controller we have to remember folks that it less than 10 percent of air traffic controllers on average across the country happen to be pilots and i'll tell you one thing you can go in an atc facility and they'll speak a different language than they than we do sometimes they have terminology we don't use in the pilot community we've got terminology they don't use it's just becoming financially impossible to put all the air traffic controllers through the equivalent of a private pilot ground school to get them all comfortable with all our terms so remember that and remember that sometimes you have to be very specific now this controller gets criticized and by the way she was devastated over this accident over what happened to this pilot i can tell you this that what happened was a severe breakdown in communication you know what this controller didn't understand the significance of the terminology i've had a vacuum pump failure that's obvious didn't know that but there is one thing that that controller is trained for there's another thing that we're trained for is pilots that both of them will get put into play they could have substantially increased the chances of this pilot surviving this incident and that's what what did that pilot not do oh i'm so glad to hear you say that folks please don't ever hesitate to declare an emergency we just had an emergency seminar here our previous one here at sun and fun and i'll tell you it is just scary to me in one particular area of the country i remember going there right after i started doing seminars for the aop air safety foundation and i went to in indiana i went to this town and i mentioned it was a two-part seminar just before the break i said we're going to be talking about emergencies after the break four or five guys came walking up to the room neither one of them heard what the other one asked me and all of them asked me the same question you're going to talk about emergencies after the break i said yes said would you please cover for us when we declare the emergency and what's the repercussions we suffer if we do now put a light put yourself in my position if you were there doing that and it was just that town that they happen in wouldn't a light bulb go off at some what's going on here come to find out that there was a local guy who volunteered to do a safety seminar for the f a a there and they weren't there that night but flyers went out they had a huge packed audience of a broad range of pilots with experience different experience levels and this guy stood in front of that group and he told them that the last thing he would ever do in an airplane is declare an emergency he said i'm just not going to open up my log books to be investigated by the f a because i use that e word i'm gonna do everything i can first to handle the emergency myself and then and only then will i declare the emergency god told me that during the break the f a guy came safety program manager during that time came and told me i was afraid this is going to happen he told me the story so i came back after the break i referred to that i said i don't ever folks ever want to be disagreeable with a fellow aviator but i told that group tonight what you heard during that seminar could literally be dead wrong don't ever has i don't know where this is coming from first of all this thing that you're going to get in trouble for declaring emergency is bunk you know what a lot of pilots have gotten in trouble it wasn't for declaring the emergency it was for the situation they got themselves in that put other pilots at risk it was never for declaring the emergency don't ever hesitate to ask for help in fact the longer you wait the more difficult it's going to be because what happens human nature comes to work imagine you get home from sun and fun you got a letter in your mailbox from the irs and it says hey we've been investigating your taxes from 2003 a couple years back we've found some serious potentially criminal violations on your return however because of it being tax season we ask you not contact our office to discuss this matter until june 1st man what's going to happen to you between now and june 1st you're going to go crazy worrying what are they talking about what's going on here you want to put the fire out the earlier you can put the fire out the better you're going to handle the problem same thing can happen to you in the airplane you're going to build up in your mind worst case scenarios that will make the emergency worse than it actually is the sooner you're asked for help the more options you give for air traffic control to help you and it easier it is for you to relax because you have an advocate with you working with you trying to make things better so don't ever hesitate to use the e-word and but it's just amazing to me how that happened mentioned last similar you know what we gotta say in the north carolina i'd rather be tried by 12 than carry so even if you got in trouble for declaring the emergency so what it's better to get the help and survive than try to avoid number one i haven't met a single pilot i travel i've been in every state in this union including alaska and hawaii doing seminars i've never met one pilot that got in trouble for declaring an emergency not one so don't ever hesitate to do that working with air traffic control you know one thing this pilot could have done to a specific with this controller about what he needed i need no gyro vectors right they were giving frequency changes you've been in the vertigo on out here you know experienced spatial disorientation is a scary thing asking and telling the controllers exactly what you need customer and weather deviations to get avoid getting that situation in the first place by asking the proper questions you can help from getting in trouble as well right ask them what precipitation levels are you painting not just on the air traffic control radar but also the big boys you might you can't put a big weather radar in the sesna 152 but i tell you why by asking the right questions you can take advantage of the people who do have the good weather avoidance equipment another good question is where are the successful deviators going to get around this mess that helps too doesn't it what kind of ride are they getting folks if somebody in a triple seven is reporting severe turbulence and you're in a 172 i wouldn't want to go there so it's just asking these power questions can keep you from getting in trouble you know it's funny working with air traffic control to get to get a bad rap i know i hate this i just did a column in the southern aviator of this month's edition this out at the general aviation use booth over there about this thing about this love-hate relationship with air traffic control and they really are good folks i mean we have issues and but we want to work together now more than ever in resolving these things so we can all get around and you we think the air traffic controllers are out to guess we get mad them to get mad at us we've all got stories about air traffic control i can tell you right now though that if you've ever been frustrated with air traffic control i can have you relax right now because i got them back for all of us i'll tell you i haven't i was indirectly involved in a runway incursion incident at raleigh Durham airport now when i was flying traffic watch i didn't fly to raleigh Durham i had to fly over the general aviation field that was nearby because i need to get out quickly and back in quickly so i didn't want to get tied up in the system i rarely talked to the air traffic controllers in raleigh they gave me my own transponder code and unless i need to get within five miles of rdu i had to freedom to fly a particular altitude all of the triangle area to do my work as a traffic pilot in the border so i had pretty neat but occasionally i have to go into the raleigh Durham airport and mainly when the engineers wanted to work on the broadcast equipment that was inside the airplane and that was the scenario this day now to make matters worse remember i was in the air at six o'clock in the morning the new controllers came on and changed shift at seven o'clock so liam would listen to the radio station i worked on on their way to the tower now in this particular morning they picked on me more than usual they always picked on me they'd go let's go up to sky one of one five get up dig on traffic sitting on top of a charlotte phone book to seal the instrument panel here's mark you know and that was a kind of introduction idea but on this day we had a guy in the studio as a guest you've heard of richard Simmons richard was there now i don't have richard knows i tell this story he's a friend i've worked with in fact when he comes to raleigh on occasion he asked me to be the one to introduce him but he was giving me up the road that day picking on me a lot and richard's amazing guy in fact the raleigh news observer took a story on richard Simmons and they called me up and said you've had to work with him a lot and said what's he like and i didn't hesitate telling the truth he's a gerbil on acid you know and this guy is wound up constantly but he was on the air so the controllers are listening to this coming to the tower that morning that was a day i had to pop up on the tower frequency i didn't have to have control my call signed with raleigh tower with sky patrol one popped up sky patrol one this uh raleigh tower sky patrol one needed to come in and land this morning after hearing all this they decided they wanted to get in on the act morning sky patrol one you're cleared to land on runway three two and no offense little buddy but hold short runway five right and i'm glad i took the highway i said all right hold short five right when i crossed over the active runway the ground controller got in folks i'm not making this up this is completely true stuff i get on the other side of the runway the ground controller say hey good morning sky patrol one if you can reach the rudder pedals you can taxi to the ramp i said to the ramp sky patrol i get up folks i couldn't have asked for this what they didn't know or i didn't know at the time on the other side of the airport somebody had left the brakes off of a heavy transport aircraft i don't want to mention the name of the company but when you send something and it absolutely positively has to be there overnight you use these people and so they left and this heavy rolled out into an active taxiway now one of the controllers say after the fact he said mark when that thing i saw a line guy running if he had called up with it what would he have done i don't know it's a big company may have sacrificed himself by becoming a human chalk i don't know but this was the clincher of this i'm not kidding this happened two weeks to the day after the f a officially announced their runway safety office now you know how it is you got a new job all these people coming up what happened well they want to investigate they've had an active taxiway encouraging at the raleigh Durham airport class charlie airspace over there we need to go investigate hopped on the airplane fly down to raleigh getting the tower to investigate what's the first thing they did listen to the tapes of the pilot controller communications that were going on at the time they were written up for non-standard phraseology with a pilot i see them in town i say i got y'all back i didn't have to do nothing you know they all mad at me and i do have to warn you as your official instructor here today though that all of us have funny atc stories please don't tell them in the town where you live they will give you you'll get you back because i told this our north carolina wings weekend i was a banquet speaker that night and our little airport we had set up a temporary tower for this wings weekend and the controllers were from raleigh tower and i'm telling the store they're sitting in the back you know that's okay two weeks later i had to go to charlotte from raleigh charlotte raleigh to north carolina charlotte north carline for broadcast meeting and it was 800 overcast so i just filed him below 152 the rco at the johnston county airport while his base is run by raleigh so i pop up on the you know frequency there and i said hey raleigh this is sky patrol one ready to pick up my fr to charlotte and i heard the morning sky patrol one stand by to copy your amended clearance i'm not kidding you for he said sky patrol one you're cleared to charlotte via denver he said columbia that's not the city that's the country and direct charlotte i said i accept my new clearance however i need to amend drastically my estimated arrival time at that airport so folks the bottom line is they're there to help this thing you got just got to talk to him don't be willing to communicate one of the big complaints we hear not only from other pilots but air traffic control is pilot we don't listen sometimes before we talk and that slows down the process of communication probably remember when you speak their language and referencing where you are to a local fix one that appears on their scope make deviation request pardon me as early as you possibly can know what you cannot accept unable is a powerful word if you're ever uncomfortable in the airplane air traffic controllers don't get mad at me telling you this because we've worked with we've been doing this seminar all the country called say it right working with natka and working with their traffic controllers and they agree folks if we goof up in an airplane who dies we do if an air traffic controller goofs up who's going home to dinner that night they are so we've got to stay ahead of the game and realize the human errors occur in the cockpit and at atc as well especially if you're in the busy environment of a single pilot ifr operation our next key is to have the right stuff attitude this is really important that proficient ifr pilot has attitudes not the aircraft but theirs you don't take problems with you when you fly anytime especially in the ifr environment we may think when we're in i thought this before you get up in the in the sky and say man when i fly all my troubles seem to go away the key to that is seem to they really don't you know that those problems compromise your ability to handle emergencies and think close carefully you know you shouldn't fly sick or when you're tired as well your reaction time goes down those last busiest times of the flight when you're trying to shoot an approach into an airport when you're most taxed in human nature murphy's law at work that that's when you're more likely to be tired so be careful plan everything your pre-flight planning should consider how fatigued you can be making a four-hour flight in beautiful vfr conditions is less taxing than a 45 minute flight of hard ifr when the winds are messing with you aren't they we need to remember that plus that proficient pilot does that soul-searching to know what your your weak areas are so you're willing to get help so when you when you need it in the form of that good training so a single pilot ifr let's go back to that question ask you before after seeing this today is it safe is it safe could be i like that answer it could be if you have the right attitude about it if you're willing to remember that you're going to react the way you're trained if you're willing to do instrument proficiency checks rather than knocking out you know just routine suit shooting approaches every six months to stay with that so please keep that in mind so that we can be a whole lot safer when we're flying you know what i want to talk to you just in the last couple of minutes since our last presence here at the um it's funding and get off some of the tough training part and talk to you a little bit about another part to aviation we need to address and we've heard a lot you know our the president of a opa phil bore has been all over the place doing uh programs talk about user fees and those kinds of things and i know it's important that we get involved now i don't want to get political up here at all today but i do want to tell you this that i think that just personally that we're missing out on golden opportunities in many cases to tell people the good things that general aviation does because they're missing out they see i i spent 22 years in the broadcast business and i know so i can talk about him a little bit and i've got good friends that are still in it and i get so frustrated to watch them cover an aviation incident on television don't you and so what's happening here the public is getting a very skewed version of aviation aren't they they're seeing this worst case scenario mentioned in the last seminar about this thing about the uh the incident at the with the washington a disincursion remember that and how poorly that boy scared people have to death and yet it was two pilots who admittedly goofed up with that so let's talk how can we keep this from getting out of hand we've gotten to counteract all the negative publicity by telling them the good news first thing we've got to do is we have got whether it's ifr vfr ultralights or a triple seven we've got to fly safely anytime we goof up in an aircraft is sending general aviation naysayers just this fan mail about how unsafe it is the other thing we've got to do folks is tell them the good news participate in young eagles program take kids flying tell them about programs like angel flight they're here tell them about the good things that aviation does i was down in in texas in austin texas a year or so ago my time frame of when this was is messed up is one of the hurricanes came up the gulf coast and messed up new orleans and i was there just after those hurricanes hit and austin was a little bit of turmoil they were bringing a lot of people in i was there to do a seminar in the president of the texas aviation association called me on my cell phone he said mark can we give a presentation here tonight and i said sure what for just curious and you're welcome to but he said we want to give an award to a couple and he told me the story of bob and dan gloris bob is an aircraft mechanic he flies as a hobby but he makes his living working on airplanes his wife dan is not a pilot not a mechanic but she's married to one she kind of keeps books for them at their shop they're based at a little airport north of austin texas and um they're just a really neat couple and they're pretty busy working on airplanes at that airport as you can imagine but when those hurricanes came up and tore up the gulf coast region dan gloris sitting in the welcoming center to their shop her pilots come in they're very frustrated they were trying to go help they had one incident of a pilot said you know what we were trying to get down there to this to make a an angel flight a medical flight for a kid and in route we filed and on the way down there the controllers came on the frequency and they sounded confused they said we just got contacted from fema that their airports closed and then the pilot and the controllers both got discussing what power do they have to close the airport if it's not damaged i'm supposed to go help this pilot ended up saying well i guess i better not take the risk of losing my license for 60 days and not being able to fly these missions at all so he turned around came back to airport in austin dn hearing this story and others decided we need to help she got on the telephone first thing she did was call a radio station in austin texas we need some stuff to carry to these people i don't know how we're going to do this but we know a lot of pilots and they're going to help guarantee it folks in austin you wouldn't believe the response they filled up their hangar with all kinds of stuff to give those folks and then they put the word out that the texas aviation association website we need help folks when i got down there they were a week almost two weeks into that program and you volunteer general aviation pilots and what the public calls our little airplanes have flown tons 17 tons of release supplies to the hurricane victims on the gulf coast where was that in the news i called friends of mine still in the media and couldn't give them the cover that story so we if we tell it ourselves to our friends neighbors civic clubs wherever we get the chance they might believe us in a little more don't you think i hope so you may think well in the big scheme of things does grassroots work yes it does in fact let me tell you tell you a story for i'll leave you here today in 1940 the british government for the british press then just bbc radio and newspapers in britain told the british people this folks we goofed we severely underestimated the presence of the enemy army coming into a place called dunkirk why were they telling the british people this they were actually preparing the mothers and families of these young men that these guys might not be coming home now because they they said we're over tax we don't have the resources to get these guys like a dunkirk or to get help to them what did the british people do folks what happened next is an amazing human character story the british people got in anything that floated and the captain listen to this the captains of these vessels ranged in age from 14 years old up and they went down there and rescued 300 thousand british troops and associated allied soldiers the most successful rescue mission in history and the government had very little to do with it the british authorities did seize a few ships for these volunteer captains to take down there but mainly the people did it folks if we have it within us to do something as amazing as this can't we do something simple has changed the public perception of general aviation if they can pull this off yes we can i believe i'm totally convinced because of all these people that are fighting in every war that this country has been associated with what are we fighting for freedom freedom to fly these lawyer planes and have these freedoms that we have now i was in austin texas exactly a year before and i got there after veterans day in this picture was in the uh in the in the houston newspaper that's houston james on his left houston's named after his hometown to houston texas he like my late father a pearl harbour survivor the guy on the right sergeant mark groinke is easy to see left is lost his left arm is more difficult to see lost his left eye and his left leg isn't there either lost it in the rat these people are fighting for our freedoms and we've got to be willing to do our part by flying safely by flying friendly because people are watching us if they meet you they think all pilots are like you so let's be the good guys and put on that white hat and become goodwill ambassador for general aviation you folks have a great deal of character to sit in here today on a beautiful day like this and those of you sitting at home watching on the computer on the internet what character you have to sit in a safety seminar name another aspect of society that actually sits there and goes to a safety seminar voluntarily general aviation pilots do that all the time we see them by the thousands where we're on the road for the aop air safety foundation we appreciate you being here hope you enjoy the rest of your visit the sun and finally remember let's be nice out there because people are watching us it could be our freedom to fly thank you for coming hope you enjoy the rest of the summer time don't forget to fill out your registration cards in the back i'll be glad to collect those and and and take it back those of you online you get a certificate for watching the seminar as well by going to asf.org on the internet take one of our online courses it satisfies the requirements via f a wings program thanks a lot