I've Lost 4 Friends in 60 Days - Aviation Safety Discussion | Mike Patey

okay I'm going to introduce Mike py who probably doesn't need much of an introduction but I'm going to do it chat GPT style here since he uh denied the request for a bio Mike py is an aviator self-taught engineer experimental aircraft Builder and business person based out of Spanish Fork Utah he's known for dramatically customizing the designs and performance of numerous aircraft P has completed 12 aircraft builds that's wrong right right 13 14 whatever north of that 12 that chat GPT knew about um through 2019 often improving upon the build with each iteration together with his twin brother Mark py uh they're the current record holder for the Transcontinental flight speed across North America P's passion for Aviation safety is evident in his YouTube videos at air shows and with any personal interaction he's inspired many to pursue their dreams of flight and personal aircraft construction his tagline What is it back to work that was a little lackluster what is it there we go is often repeated in his videos and echoed amongst fans as a garment Aerospace Ambassador and close adviser to several Aerospace and defense companies including Pratt and Whitney py has a wealth of experience in aviation in the aviation industry his expertise in aircraft design and performance make him an ideal speaker for for Aviation safety topics how did chat GPT do let's welcome them up here all right how's this working it's good oh wow this is a lot bigger group than I thought i' been hanging out up front okay let me start by turning off this I'm sorry guys airplane mode right okay how about all the way off I'll skip airplane mode go right to off um all right so I a lot of you if you follow my videos um you may know that I have no script I don't plan anything I just build stuff and talk as I go whenever my buddy Ron points a camera at me and uh I tried several times typing down and writing what I was going to talk about today and um I've had a really interesting couple months I'm losing some very close friends in aviation and I struggled and realized I couldn't do it and I thought you know what I'm going to just do what I do in my videos I'm going to come up and talk about airplanes talk a little bit about engineering talk about what's happening in general aviation and and why I feel like we're losing too many of us and uh so this is me officially no plan talking about airplanes and we'll see how it goes so all right guys first of all this is the Utah Community so I'm going to kind of Base this a little bit on the engineering of flying around the Utah Rocky Mountains I'm going to tell you a couple of stories and I'm going to talk about a little bit about da and also as we're moving into the winter months about icing and we'll kind of end up there so first of all we're past the summer months but real quick I want to touch base and tell you one brief story and I want to keep them a little more positive as it's been a very difficult few months for me in aviation um so uh Aviation we up here in the high mountains we call this the high desert the da is really high on the engineering side most of you always you understand it you read it in books you look at your charts you see these lines there's this line that not many people really talk about you kind of got this interpolation where you can open up your book and you see density altitude weight performance and you can do this simple math and what they don't show you on the end of that chart is that line does not stay constant as you are losing horsepower and increasing weight and da coming up that line if you were to continue it starts to go straight vertical where engineering uh and physics and math suddenly come fully into play and we lose our Pilots and uh if you fly within this perfect envelope you're in good shape unfortunately we have a lot of people that have flown in that book and that envelope and that space uh for so long and they just happen to live on the other side of the country and out here in the Rocky Mountains we call them the Flatlanders great awesome Pilots that have opened up their book as much as the rest of us and studied those charts for every takeoff and landing and maybe it's some point they stopped because they know their airplane they know the flying characteristics and they know what that chart looks like and then those Flatlanders come out here to Utah we the high mountain desert it looks and feels like we're down low because the mountains are towering 12,000 ft up um so it feels like we're still Flatlanders we're starting here 4525 ft and going up from there density altitude of this field is upwards of 7 ,000 8,000 ft in the summer and if you're going up to any of these mountains you start approaching 10 12,000 ft some of the places some friends and I go land we are upwards of 16 17,000 ft da um to land well unfortunately we tend to lose people every summer um due to that density altitude they they forget that that book that they haven't looked at on weight and balance that they're now in a territory that they have never experienced in their entire lives and they enter these canyons and uh a very recent one they entered the canyon and when they went in the canyon they had about 10 minutes that they had no idea that the second they made that turn they were never coming out there was no should have would a could have after the turn inbound I went up to the site as I'm on search and rescue and help participate with the aircraft finding the aircraft and removal of the aircraft um the problem is they're so far outside of what they flew for 20 years that they didn't know that that mountain is going to have a downdraft that's going to add this new element the extra people they had add add the new element and the only way out is the way they came in and the turn bank they need to make that exit increases their stall speed beyond return they literally could have flown in that Canyon 10 times that day and died 10 times in a row once they turned inbound and um it's a horribly sad outcome and we're losing too many because I've now gotten to the point where my twin brother and I say oh my gosh did you hear we lost another flat Lander or a new pilot that probably felt 100% certain that that chart they looked at continued like this but it gets to a point where it no longer is feasible so be careful um I have a exper a personal experience where um I second guessed a decision I made on a flight with some buddies in all Bush Plains I've never told this story um we uh had a big group of us five aircraft uh One Pilot uh thousands of hours all in a plane he had been flying once a bush plane for a long period of time we went up in the High Mountain Desert he was from back east and uh we went into a an air strip and uh told them hey you shouldn't come land on this one it's a bit tight um if you haven't done it before we're just going to turn around take back off let's go he came around and he landed and uh him and his buddy and I started looking at the plane and doing some just rough math in my head which is what I love to do and I went over to him and I said hey you know what let's let's throw them in it was Draco at the time let's throw him in Draco it it has a a little less concerned about the extra weight and I can come out of here pretty heavy and we got lots of spare room and he says no I'm 100% fine and I said uh you know it's pretty tight I think let's just do it you're probably right you're 100% fine let's let's let's uh let let's just throw him in mine maybe he wants to ride mine anyway and he he piped up and goes no no no it's it's great we're talking we're having fun together we're flying out here as a group blah blah blah so I back off and I paste which I do all the time I'm having a hard time holding steel right here on the stage because I'm a Pacer uh and I'll try and speed this up I he was about ready to take off and I went over and said you know what I I'm GNA hurt this guy's feelings but I'm taking that guy out of the back of that plane and uh I went over and I said I'm really sorry I I please don't take offense to this I'm sure you know your plane I'm sure you know that you feel like like it gets off in 300 ft this isn't a problem I am not okay with this and I looked at his Pastor I said would you please please jump in my airplane and he for the first time saw probably that I was scared I was not feeling good and he got out and got in the plane and we took off now a couple hundred pounds may not sound a lot but in a bush plane in a high desert it is a lot of difference for a couple hundred pounds he got out we took off and I'm I'm airborne and we're I have a a video this I I won't show it because I love this guy and and I I don't want to do that but this guy took a picture to a video of his buddy lifting off and we watched him go down this dirt strip and dust going everywhere and he didn't lift and he didn't lift and he didn't lift and as he got to the end he pulled up and started mushing at right at a giant Grove of trees and he took the bush tires and tail through the tops of those trees for more than 150 ft and flew out and he's now the story ends everyone went home the the problem here is I know when early flying I was a bit more of a cowboy and and I have uh I crossed the line when I shouldn't have crossed the line and people need me to come home my family counts on me my wife counts on me my kids count on me and I have a whole bunch of my Aviation family right here that I want to keep making silly videos for because they seem to like them so um over the years I've pulled back those those margins every single year I pull back further my brother Mark and I now have all kinds of new policies we've pushed over the years and said not doing that now night flying needs to be turban a twin or a parachute I need some kind of backup we have a policy I'm going to I wasn't going to talk about this but we have a three strikes your out maybe people have heard this before or or done it my three strikes are now anything is a strike and I don't fly and that could mean that a instrument that is non critical to flight that's 100% legal for you to fly without isn't functioning strike one why do I make that a strike cuz I should have that thing fixed so I need to strike guess what nighttime beautiful stars are out sky everything's perfect smooth Sky would be a beautiful night flight it's night time that's a strike two things that are totally noncritical and it can be anything I I didn't get enough rest I'm a little tired strike three anything could can strike out and Mark and I started realizing we were not we were choosing not to fly a lot and then forcing ourselves to fix little items on the airplane about the rest the night before about about what we did in decision making and I believe that's why I'm talking to you guys today I uh I lost an engine in my Lance air Legacy on the way to oshgosh what people don't know is that I was scheduled to be there for an event the day before and work ran a little long and so I was going to leave at night strike one um the weather was mild at best but there was a tiny bit of weather could have flown through it over it strike to and I was believe it or not I was tired I had run run I don't sleep a lot anyway and I run on an abnormally low amount of sleep and I'm working on trying to be better at that but I was a little bit tired and I that night called up people that were counting on me to be at Oshkosh the day before for an event and I said guys I can't come oh something wrong with the plane no the plane's fine something wrong what's up and I said I have a three strike policy and I stried out I'm not going so I canceled an event I let people down and that's hard on me cuz I hate doing that and uh got up the next morning and took off on that flight on a beautiful day and then that engine quit that engine if you just were to look at the math really just was a ticking clock there's nothing the way I flew it nothing about anything I was doing was a tired engine should have been overhauled we can't wait to see what the history was on it it still had time left it wasn't like a Pastime engine that shouldn't be flying it just had a history that isn't documented like the new aircraft where it tatt tailes when you do things wrong and that engine quit on me that engine would have quit on me in that little bit of weather at night about the same location now maybe I could have made it maybe I couldn't but I tell you what when an engine goes off and shrapnel takes out your plane and the the cabin fills with smoke and oil blasts over your windscreen add night to that element and Dead stick 40 mil in IMC for an own madeup spiraling descent to an airport and then try and find that runway in the black to line up with whatever all those lights are you're going to try and hit I don't know I don't know if I could have done it so three strikes you're out so let's talk about this time of year guys I'm I'm sorry I'm a little emotional and I I hope and I'm normally just super happy um but it's they asked me to talk about Aviation safety right in the middle of one of my hardest losses of uh friends and Aviation so I'm going to be a little bit emotional about this topic all right let's talk about the icing we're here in Utah we live in these high mountains talked about da be careful guys let me end right here density altitude will kill you if you don't respect it and then know that there are things out here and rollers and downdrafts that will surprise you and if you think you're and if you're flying near the edge you'll probably be okay for a while one day it will take you out and whoever you chose to put in the seat with you so don't do it so just be really careful guys um I talk about icing because icing we're getting into the winter there's three different kinds of is on aircraft I'm going to talk more about General to the general aviation Pilots out here airliners they really got it good they got the one of the greatest icing systems in the world they're running off the the bleed air heat heating up the wings it's always running it's always shedding it can take on unbelievable amounts of ice they still avoid weather but it has a great system what are we flying for icing a lot of us don't have any de ice at all just stay out like just don't play with it just stay out just run like it's there to kill you because if you don't run often enough it will so uh the two other systems that general aviation is most people use there's Electro explosive there's electric heat but what most people are flying us is TKS and Bo boots so I'm going to talk tell you a couple stories so TKS a lot of you flying cus understand this you got a certain amount of fluid you pump it into the wing it's coming out little teeny tiny pin holes here's the problem with TKS and this is not derogatory I'm just talking about the physics of of what's going on those holes are so small that if you go into icing inadvertent and at night one of your strikes weather strike but if you happen to go into weather and you haven't pre-t returned on your TK s it will plug the holes I did a series of testing when I first got the TKS in a cirrus I've had several cuses and it's an amazing system and if the wing is really wet does a pretty good job of shedding off light icing it's not great at shedding Off heavy icing and all aircraft have problems with that but here's the gamble may be certified to go in but you're playing this game of I have a certain amount of fluid and I don't want to turn it on when I don't need it but if I don't turn it on before I need it I plug up bunch bunch of holes and I got videos of my plane where we had beautiful warm air below uh where we can melt it off we climb up high and we go up IFR and I chose this IFR route back and forth and we'd go in and watch it and play with it and then come back and melt it off and go back just light icing and uh here's what we found if the wing is dry it will ice up and then all the fluid is going to go the path of leas resistance it's going to come out all the other holes well now you got a wing with ice over here little ice over there little back and forth guys it's ice system for the time you chose not to fly you check the weather or you chose to fly but you checked the weather you felt it was good it shouldn't have icing but icing changed along your route temperature changed now you have it don't go in it icing deicing systems should only be for the surprise not because I have it and I'm going to use it it will get you in trouble your stall speed's going to go up um the other kind of di Ice uh and then also obviously you know you guys you have a certain time limit on that ice so if you get in something you can't get out it's going to be a mess so uh just be careful boots are great a lot of people um boots have been around forever I think it's you have unlimited pop it shed it just keep popping that uh and I'm going to tell you a little bit a little story about uh I'm going to tell you two stories both of me and my brother involved in one and and then me and another let me skip past boots let me go to an airplane Mark and I were flying on the northwest coast and we were in a 421 both these stories have my 421 involved I had that many many years ago I flew I don't know a thousand hours on it this is pre all the new technology this goes way back old old school VR flying um we are flying up high pressure above the weather and all a sudden we hear a radio call um asking ATC for help and uh said we're icing up we're in trouble we need to get out and uh I'll shorten up there's a longer version um my brother uh talks about and uh put in a book but we hear this guy with a panic in his voice call out and atcs what do you need he says I need lower I'm picking up ice I need to get down so ATC lowers them down and and he calls out and says hey I need lower I'm having a hard time keeping the plane up I think I'm in trouble and ATC calls out that phrase that I've heard before which is a really hard phas phrase to hear when you're the pilot how many Souls on board that aircraft it was a sess 172 he said four souls on board and uh and then he keys back up and he says I can no longer hold altitude I've got too much ice I'm going down now my brother and I are sitting above this weather smooth sky clear sky Stars beautiful and we're just listening to this unfold for a way too long amount of time and it's just heartbreaking every second seemed like an hour and then uh ATC says uh uh well I if you turn this way um I can give you lower he's in the mountains so he turns Bish heading he says okay go lower and uh on one of the mic UPS you hear a stall horn buzzing you got four people in an airplane you're icing up and you're asking to go lower because the airplane's not keeping up and then you're up in the air above it listening and you hear a stallord going off it is the most heart-wrenching thing you can ever hear and then the guy goes Roger going down and gives him another vector and then he gets to this point where ATC says you're going to be dropping out of radar contact and you're in mountainous terrain I'm going to give you one more heading and wish you the best of luck because I'm not going to have radar contact or radio contact now that guy is in a non di aircraft in the mountains with four people at night and uh he has no more options he's just like the guy flying into a canyon that the second he turned in he was never coming out and uh fortunately CU I got to have a good story because I'm such a downer all a sudden we hear shortly after this mic go up and we hear all this screaming at first we thought it was like we're going to crash and it was like we made it we're under the clouds the ice is coming off we can see the city and it was just like it ended just like that like everybody's going home to their family and the Mark and I are up there just like you know wipe the sweat off we're dying you know but guys this incident that Mark and I listen to is happening every day we just heard stories of people that didn't go home those are the ones you guys are hearing about the ones that everyone passed away on you guys were making a lot of bad choices and I right here will say I have made enough I hope to not make anymore and I hope to focus more on Aviation safety because I would bet that almost every pilot in this room has said you know what that wind was awesome and I kicked my Rudder and I leaned my AER on and man I just greased it in in that unbelievable wind I'm an awesome pilot the other side of that story is this guy that wind was too much it was beyond me beyond my airplane and I crashed the difference from I'm an awesome pilot man I stuck that Landing in this crazy wind feel good about yourself and the I total the aircraft and families didn't go home is that close it's that close I would love to hear everyone say gosh it was dead calm skies were blue beautiful flight I greased it in and if I didn't everyone has a right to make fun of me because there was not an ounce of wind and then bounce it and it's okay we're all we're good with that but guys these decisions are happening every day and we're losing our Pilots every single day there's things you can control and there's things you cannot control I'm going to tell you two two things one two two more stories and I'm going end it uh one with me one with my brother so I'm going to go to the Second Story on icing just because it's winter flying we need to be safe all those years ago two decades ago I'm flying this 421 it doesn't have onboard weather doesn't have anything it didn't even have a GPS if that doesn't age me a little or or let you know my budget at the time was slightly different I had no GPS in the aircraft at all we're talking old school lauran stuff you check the weather in advance you make the best decisions possible you fly weather systems weren't as good back then things Chang change storms creep up coming back night flying a 421 coming into Provo City Airport over here weather was supposed to be good with light scattered small Pockets now we don't hear the stories we used to hear hanger chat guys go back 20 years a lot of younger guys in here older guys will know what I'm talking about the new technology we know where the weather is if if you don't have it on your plane some kind of a garment or any kind of product that's telling you what the weather is where it is in real time just get it cuz it's just silly not to it's the cheapest safest thing you can do we didn't have that option at the time you checked the weather five hours in advance and you took off did a 5H hour leg and you landed home so I'm coming back on a three and a half four hour leg and we have this this thing that old older Pilots used to talk about which was the surprise icing where it's supposed to be good it looks good if there is any moisture it's tiny pockets in the weather man was wrong really really really wrong and on that flight you found something that just about wiped you out of the sky well I had one of those I flew all the way home perfect start to an approach and I'm dropping through this Canyon over here coming into Provo and right as I start dropping in I hit icing that was like nothing I have ever experienced then which had only been a few years and nothing I have ever experienced since because I run so far away from that stuff I I can't even tell you and I hit icing that felt like I was being shot at with a 150 caliber guns I mean it was just pelting the aircraft I kick on everything I already had kick on all the DI systems and the boots are for the most part I'm pretty proud of it like it's shedding and all I got to do is get from that mountain to that airport I'm almost home this is a short flight there's no diversion there's no nothing I'm on an approach I'm going to land the airplane sure don't like this crap well I start noticing that my air speed is dragging I start pushing up power and it keeps dragging I get over here to Fairfield and I look down and instead of doing an approach my power is at top of green both engines are all the way up and I am barar holding air speed but my wings are looking pretty good like what is going on like in my mind I'm thinking something's wrong with my engine something's wrong with my plane I didn't put out my flaps I didn't put out my gear I'm just coming over Fairfield what is happening and uh I realized there's got to be ice somewhere I'm not seeing that's on this aircraft and I started finishing the approach and on the rest of the approach I start making the DME Arc in Bound for your old the your newer Pilots you may not fly many of those but a DME Arc is always fun in hard IMC when your plane doesn't want to fly with no GPS you're spinning dials you're hand flying and doing an arc in and I get to where I'm turning final to keep the airplane alive my throttles are to the stop and both engines are into the red full takeoff power over the top over the gate because if I don't this plane is coming down no question I have no gear out no flaps out yet and I am over the top on this 421 light load and so I'm coming down final and I go whatever I'm packing on this aircraft is so draggy and so heavy I'm coming in hot I got a big Runway and I am not going to use that white art for nothing Blue Line let's stay way above it and uh for I didn't die here I when I got down and touched that Runway um this loud crash happens and the airplane just goes boom like this I'm on the runway going what what just happened I'm instantly instinctively kicking the rudder trying to thinking I'm something's going on and straighten it back up the plane's just like this on the runway taxi off I'm like okayy that that's the worst icing I've ever experienced out of nowhere surprised us we don't get those super crazy surprises because none of us would fly into a dark purple thing labeled with hell and spinning circles on our cool new instruments that we didn't have back then cuz that would be a really bad idea because you die um I didn't die I got off the Runway stop no Tower I look I climb out of the plane on what happened to my gear like is it folded halfway under is it like what's going on I look I look down One Wing is clear up because the Gear's full High and the other Wing is cleared down on the ground cuz the gear is full of squat the boots look pretty good but the underside of the plane on some of the draggy areas has started catching ice and picked up what I estimate to be several thousand pounds of ice on a 421 now 421 is a Heavy Hauling packing monster there wasn't many people in the plane and I'm on low on fuel and that thing did not want to fly I had thousands of pounds of ice on my aircraft One Wing when I landed dropped it all on the runway the other Wing hung on to it and just tipped the gear squatted on one side to the ground the other one up light and uh we ran out and took off chunks of ice that big off that 421 if I had been not on Final Approach and that hit me out there it's one of those surprise ones that we used to read about not as much now where plane went into heavy icing and they didn't come out so guys icing is real even if your plane is built for it which the 421 was it doesn't mean it can handle anything Mother Nature can throw at you it will take your wings off it will take your plane down it will stop Flying you will not have a choice and I don't care how Maverick or Top Gun or awesome you are you're now at the mercy of Mother Nature and that aircraft and the engineering that goes behind it so um be careful make smart choices stay out of that stuff if you can fly in the daytime fly in the daytime if you can just take away what he mentioned just before me it's usually a series of things take them all off the table don't don't don't think about it don't question it now here's another last story and then I'm going to end it guys this one sometimes there's things that's out of your control or could be in your control but it's hard to catch I almost lost my twin brother Mark many years ago we've both had a few experiences this one I can honestly say I don't feel was any decision making on his part sometimes things are just out of your control maybe an engine failure you know is out of your control but was the weather the light daytime those are in your control and so you have a chance of gliding out and Landing well my brother Mark uh got a call from a friend and says hey I need to get to an event can you fly me and my buddies in this aircraft it's one of our airplanes as a favor we love to do favors anything to fly we're in so we get down and this guy shows up with a bunch of bunch of boxes of U brochures to go to an event and Mark says well how many guys you got and he goes well I brought a couple more guys it's going to be four it's going to be six now so well that's every seat full they're all big guys Mark's like well we can't take the boxes simple it's physics math engineering right boxes are out or those two guys are out we're absolutely not going to happen and uh the guy's like oh we have to have them we have to have them we have no other options nope so Mark helped them take the boxes that been packed out packed him over and said find someone to drive them to the event you're going to have to do without brochures well got everything ready got the guys loaded pre-flight Wai and balance they're good to go my brother Mark is going down the runway and uh start seeming like it's taking a little longer he's like well it's warm big guys I'll be off shortly and he takes him a little longer but everything says he's got all all kinds of safety margin that's here at this airport right here on this Runway and he lifts off and it starts to fly but it just doesn't want to do really well and now he's at the point of no return and the fence is coming and his stall Horn's going off and he's holding the nose down he's trying to build speed and he's telling me the story like nothing is making sense This Plane should be flying it should have tons of power it should have margin and he melted it all the way out trying not to make a turn um at 10 to 50 ft a minute and sometimes sinking at 50 ft a minute and finally got up on step to where he could get the plane moving fast and uh get the plane stable and then return to find out what's wrong with this aircraft he landed the airplane looked around and said guys I don't know what's going on and then he saw the expression on a couple of the guys' faces he says what aren't you telling me and one of the guy says I'm so sorry I don't know how you got the plane back I thought I had just killed all my friends he says what's going on he says when you went in to the restroom before we took off I told the guys to help me load all the brochures back in the aircraft and we hit it with our jackets that plane was so fcg I don't know how the thing stayed aoft so overloaded you never want to hit a bump might not keep the wings on it guys Mark is a sharp guy he's awesome and he still kicks himself today about that flight he says I went to the bathroom I should have gone back and double checked the luggage to see if someone did more and I'm like how do you how do you beat someone who's lying to you when you already took it out and said like sometimes things are out of your control so here's what we need to think about guys there's a lot in our control and there's a lot that is out of our control the stuff that's out of our control we can't plan for it if someone sneaks hundreds of pounds into the furthest back of an airplane and lies to you about it after you took it out and returned it that might be out of your control if you find icing that was never supposed to be there that might be out of your control but if you chose to take off at night with weather or heavy load or into the mountains or terrain you haven't been to or or an airport you never landed at and anything that can add up strikes and all those things are in your control take them off the table I have done things in aviation years ago that make me sick I'm ashamed of the choices I made in my earlier flying and I am fortunate enough to still be here with my family and I'm I am here speaking after losing four of not just my fellow aviators we've lost way more in the last two months four of my flying friends in two months that I fly with and I lost an engine in an aircraft and was fortunate enough to get it down and my friend kraton King that I lost just before Reno was my business partner the four friends I'm talking about are the guys I call to go play with and they all stopped flying or flew West in the last 60 days and I'm not and I'm struggling with it guys I have flown one plane since losing my friend and one time up in my helicopter and it soothes me but I am struggling guys we need to stop dying stop making bad choices because I love Aviation and I'm not giving up on it but it is a hard time and I'm really sorry that my super excitement of Aviation is on a low right now but I tell you what if my friend kraton were standing right here he would tell you guys to freaking get up and he would crack a joke and make you laugh and say go fly but make good choices cuz Aviation makes us happy and every time we get two inches off the ground we are alive we are doing things that almost no one in the world ever gets to do and it is magical and it is amazing but we need to take a hard look at ourselves and stay home when there are any little things so that the day that that the things you can't control sneak up you get to fly right through them and get it on the ground go high five your friends and hug your families I love you guys I love Aviation let's be safer let's do better let's tell our friends to make better choices let's make our own better choices and when we land that really awesome crosswind I kick but you want to high five your friends landing at least high five your friends and then pause long enough to say should I have been in the air at all to have such a cool Landing that I get to hide my five five my friends about all my Rudder all my Aeron and greased it in maybe you shouldn't have been up not saying you should or shouldn't but I want you to ask that question did I make a bad choice to get me into this super cool Landing anyway I'm going to leave it at that I love you guys I love Aviation don't give up on it let's just keep more of you around and more of the rest of our family around thanks so much about to work thank you Mike okay we're going to get some chairs up here for Q&A let's do it when you think about everything that they shared today I don't know that there was anything that was Earth shattering right as Pilots we get taught all of this stuff in our basic training we get instructed on all the uh fundamentals of Aviation and best practices we get tested against it um I love the new FAA um uh training that that puts us in real world pilot decision-making scenarios uh to sort of test like what are you going to do in these situations and yet we we get trained on how to answer those questions to pass our Pilot's exam and often as we get out flying we start slowly starting to push the envelope past what we would have ever done in a check ride or something like that if we were answering the questions the right way uh in my own life my wife Amber I owe a lot to her in terms of my focus on Aviation safety I'm a younger pilot I bet I'm probably one of the least experienced ones in the room um but when I started flying one of her requests was I want you to report on every uh plane crash that happened in Utah and I want to be able to ask you about it and you give me an explanation that's how I got to know Juan Brown here right I would go sneak out watch his videos and come back and act like I knew what I was talking about um but the power of it was it brought to my mind all these themes um there was another great book I read by Paul Craig called The Killing Zone show of hands how many have read that book it it's an really fascinating book He's a professor up at Utah State in their Aviation Department if I remember right and he analyzed what was sort of the difference statistically between GA pilots and airline pilots and why why are GA Pilots having more crashes and you know over time in discussions with my wife it was like One Pilot versus two pilots uh one engine versus two engines uh it was the amount of recurrent training that you get it was the discipline in the airlines of weight and balances is literally right before takeoff every single flight the weather discipline everything there was just all these things that are just super um structured in disciplin that creates uh what we have today which is one of the safest Aviation uh Records in history in the part 121 world that our our commercial airline and uh stuff live in um so to me um that was a huge inspiration to try to apply that in my own flying and then I had another uh local Aviator here Brad Brown on the field who I know Mike knows and and a lot of us in this room here know but he's been one of my mentors and one of his comments to me uh was Mark if you're going to be a pilot be a professional pilot or don't be a pilot and his whole mindset was just just focus on trying to be as professional as possible so um but I really love having both mikee and Juan out here to to share their passion of Aviation to talk about these fundamentals here so we're going to do a Q&A and we need your help for this right we've got some questions that have come in through the live stream we're going to start with those but if you've got a question right now that you can think of we've got a roaming mic throw your hand up just so we can um sort of line you up but we're going to start with a question question for Juan that came in let me just see here for Juan uh this is from uh Mr casy 10 on the live stream uh what is his top three recommendations regarding safety for the single engine GA Community with regard to currency proficiency and training well that's it currency Proficiency in training he answered his own question uh one of the hardest things for us to do in GA is to fly enough if we buy our own airplane you need to fly that airplane about 100 hours a year to even justify owning the darn thing so many airplanes sit around and don't get flown so you got to remain current proficient go out and fly stay in the books keep studying and as I mentioned before go out there and practice continue to practice those Maneuvers that you've learned don't get stuck in the Rut of just going somewhere for lunch uh all the time but go out there and practice your maneuver stalls Falls and spot Landing short field Landings awesome Mike you wanted to add anything to that no I think he hit it spot on I think uh the the only other thing it that I would add to that is a selfcheck um mental check uh on where you are on your health your sleep your personal life and then um make sure that you're going out like Juan said your phone off are you are you completely clear are you mentally as clear as turning your phone off as far as that distraction of other distractions in your life because uh I I had a friend tell me that he almost died because he was distracted mentally on a personal matter at home and uh I I don't have time for that story but check yourself mentally you need to be prepared so the I'm safe checklist you know running through that um one of the things I know I experience speaking of distraction I I'm a business owner a lot of of my use in the aircraft is flying to business meetings stuff like that and it's hard sometimes to not be thinking ahead to the meeting when I got to fly the aircraft and and be present at hand which is why I often fly with the second pilot for those things almost always okay we got another question here Robert asked um or sorry Timmy I'm gonna uh mention here he says does does he uh do you guys find flying stick and Rudder helps with flying big iron so as you guys fly larger aircraft you know does the Cub flying you do Mike or Juan does that stuff help improve what you're doing in larger aircraft it does uh flying the Boeing trip 7 from LA to Los Angeles our flying skills are atrophying at an alarming rate we will hand fly the aircraft to maybe as little as 1 or 2,000 ft and it's highly recommended Ed that we get the autopilot on we are automation managers flying the big aircraft coming into land it's recommended that we keep the autopilot on manage the automation all the way down until I break out of the weather and I can see the runway or about a th000 feet or maybe 2,000 feet tops out of a 30-hour flight I'm getting just minutes of of hand flying uh opportunity there and besides if you hand fly the aircraft much the trip 7 there's just not much to it it's just a big video game and you're just putting the flight directors uh in the correct spot and that's about it auto throttles are doing a lot of the work for you so we had an interesting argument on on a flight just recently the the fo in the right seat wanted to kick the autopilot off at the top of descent and the captain being sarcastic he says oh yeah right we should have never put autopilots in these airplanes we always hand flying no put the autopilot back on and then I piped in and said if you want to hand fly these things go get your own aircraft and keep your hand skills up by flying your own airplane aesome yeah I um I had an experience um I love hand flying I I actually my 421 I talked about um I hand flew everything the autopilot was not very trustworthy in that aircraft and constantly was going in the shopping and uh so I I learned to hand fly steam gauges was my crash roots for thousands of my hours with all steam gauges and no GPS's and uh I can tell you that staying proficient in your hand flying skills stick and Rudder all the basics is really critical um and I can think of one experience to be fast but I was coming back from Mexico in one of my Jets uh fully loaded took off bumpy but uh just uh return flight home twin engine comfortable safe and an autopilot died on me coming back from Mexico and I hand flew in the flight levels to stay above the weather and then it turned into moderate turbulence and the last several hours was at night and uh a lot of those flights to Mexico you have no radio communication for periods of time and you really have not a lot else going on and can tell you right now that it was nice to know that when that plane rocked and tipped and that I instinctively was pushing Rudder Aeron control and holding for 4 hours um hand flying in in turbulence that's exhausting and I think basic stick and Rudder is going to help you keep that plane upright if you ever have to do that I don't recommend it it was a long flight it's a really long flight going I got a hold 50 ft or less in turbulence but anyway one of the things I heard uh that I thought was just a great recommendation is some of the newer aircraft uh Cirrus and other stuff a lot of people they'll get up 400 feet and press the autopilot on and uh somebody said no just always fly it to top of uh your top of climb and just get in the habit of uh flying that up there okay what other questions do we have any in the audience here yep one up here Roger what do you got you can yell at [Music] out what's your so Roger's asking how do I go about um doing these accident investigation videos uh there's so much information out there on the internet today first I had to break down this huge barrier this huge stigma of let's wait till the final report there anything else is speculation well I say baloney there's a lot of information out there now and we can share the facts as we know them now and can begin to start reminding people and learning lessons right away so um I start with something like the aviation safety Network boom they've got the facts there and usually they've got some good links in those links may be the adsb data Flight Aware boom let's take a look at that uh FAA database pilot Pilots records um and then there's usually nowadays with so much video coverage cell phone coverage there's usually video evidence of something that's happened so lots of real-time video evidence or pictures of what has happened so between those different sources all begin to put that together and just try to get to out a preliminary report of just the facts that we know so far and then I'll go in and say without specul ating instead I'll I'll phrase it that this is what investigators will be looking for and go into some of the various possibilities of what could have caused that accident then we'll get months later we'll get a public docket that's a lot of work to Wade through Page thousands of pages of public docket and pull good information from that to do a video report and then shortly after the public docket will be the NTSB final report but that's two years down the road and there are some obvious answers that we could could have spoke to right after the accident happened so that's kind of part of the philosophy behind it and the process that I go through and the workflow is quick you can tell by my crappy editing skills it's like I'll wake up in the morning there's a story I'll research it and then I'll put uh put stuff to camera I will only film I will edit as I film and usually right there at the desktop at home and I'll usually will have it up by 2:00 that afternoon so that's a quick quick workflow awesome we got another question we'll get a mic over here in the meantime just before that question another one from uh our live stream atio asked um how do you help your passengers especially non-aviation flying friends understand your personal minimums Mike you want to give any recommendations on that yeah um non-aviation friends is kind of a a funny phrase because almost all friends are Aviation so Mike has no non-aviation everybody that was non-aviation is now is now Aviation so we converted them um you know I I think it goes a little bit to the the same thing a similar question which is is how do you get the wives of spouses comfortable when they're not comfortable how do you get the people that the new guys to to get comfortable and I think it's to just be really candid and uh just talk to him very openly and say there are risks don't try and convince them otherwise there are risks we mitigate those risks here's what we're doing to do that and i' like to just be very open and uh let them know why it is going to be a safe flight and if something goes wrong what we have prepared to to get back down on the ground safely and uh if they're still okay with flying let's go and if you're not I completely understand because uh general aviation does have a higher risk level than the big aircraft and that's just a fact and I I don't want to hide that from anyone so I have found that uh letting people know there's risks and here they are usually make some go oh I knew there was but I like you I like you telling me about it let's go fly oh there aren't any now you get into to debate about but I heard well no it's risky I'm going to try not to be risky and the best thing you can do is be as professional as possible with your non-flying passengers treat it like an airline flight and treat just fly as smooth and comfortably as possible in the best weather you can find to not scare them off of Aviation my first exposure to Aviation was with a guy that just immediately started doing steep turns and Mild aerobatics and just about turned me off to the whole concept of going flying trying to make me sick and that's not the way to introduce people to Flying I I'll just add to it but um when we fly for our work the first plane we started flying was this uh twin Diamond da62 over here and one of the first things we do kind of backing up what Juan said is we tell everybody hey safety's our number one concern and just like in the airlines we may cancel the flight due to weather we may cancel due to Mechanical like there's other things and our ability to recover from those I.E mechanical issue or something like that is not like the airlines right so uh we did a flight out to uh Southern California somewhere um went to go start up had ECU failures and we sent our passengers home on a commercial flight while me and the other pilot worked on testing it so just setting those expectations in my mind as early as possible that this is this flight is subject to cancellation um you you don't have to force a flight to go through um or or believe that like your flight must always go through you know kind of acknowledge it like other people do okay question back here in the room oh you want to Dad oh I I have a story if we have time I have a 8 to 10 minute story but I I really want to end on a happier note so if we have time you let me know I'm happy stories from now M if we have time go ahead after yeah my question uh is um coming from the point I'm just about to turn into the nonkilling Zone um that's arbitrary number and I'm excited about it 300 hours 300 hours right but I keep reading about accidents and keep reading about people ATP pilot 10,000 hours 5,000 hours 4,000 hours is like what chance do I have in and the question is do you see the difference between the type of accidents the type of negligence or whatever might be involved between those Killing Zone pilots and those with a thousand of hours well maybe just to add to that question because I think you bring up a really interesting point with ATP level Pilots airline pilots that end up in what I would consider more general aviation aircraft and then they get in trouble do you want to talk a little bit about sort of that transition and and why do we see these 10,000 Plus our airline pilots sometimes run into trouble as they jump into smaller aircraft well one thing is they are jumping back into general aviation for probably the first time in years um a lot of airline pilots get to that part of their career where they don't want to have nothing to do with general aviation um and then other Pilots will jump back into it after a long stay away from it I've remained in general aviation my whole career and I've always owned airplanes bought and sold airplanes so if you jump back into GA um with a long pause in your career you're back in The Killing Zone you're back in that 300 hour thing real quick and in fact you're possibly even more so because in the airlines everything is taken care of for you I've got dispatchers I've got mechanics I've got a full weather Team all I got to do is show up on time and drive that airplane in general aviation it's all on you you and the average airline pilot may have a rough transition period transitioning to to that back to general aviation love that okay this is a good question uh for both of you guys but this is from John he says for us student Pilots how can we evaluate our CFI to ensure that they have the same safety emphasis that I do so if you guys were going to let your kids learn to fly and had to pick a CFI that wasn't one of you how do you help him evaluate a good CFI oh boy so that's that's a really good question guys because um my twin brother Mark and I have had our kids go through this process and knowing the risks in that 00 hour starting phase is really high and that's where our flight instructors are at typically um I told my son I have a list of friends so it's a little easier for me um and Mark's kids also um however we said but if you want to use this school or that school find the least arrogant pilot is more likely to be the safest pilot find the pilot that is saying I'm still learning but I will be safe the guy who is the Arrogant pilot especially at 2 to 300 hours scares me to death I I I it's a hard one I I want for my kids I want to find a higher time one but they aren't always available not everyone gets that choice but if I can't pick and I'm at a school and there's going to be I got 300 hour p instructor to 800 hour instructor which one find the one that's counseling is go in and say to the who's the one that counsels because of wind more often who's the one that uh has celled more flights than anyone else and that might mean he's not very good or he's uncomfortable but I'd rather have the guy that decided to counsel who isn't a Top Gun I'm the best of the best um teaching my kids than someone who's um arrogant I love that one of the things I did when I was starting my pilot training is I interviewed the chief pilot and asked them which flight instructors in the school they would refer their family members to and I got two out of like five or six of the instructors in this one one school and I said okay those are the only instructors I'm going to work with um one thing though for uh John I think who asked this question online is in that book The Killing Zone as they analyze the safety records Flight Training is even though it's your first you know roughly 50 or 60 hours it has a really high safety margin and part of that is because Flight Training um put you in a very tight box um typically speaking and so the the flight instructors are taken off uh out of the same air airport every day they're doing the same exercises every day and and that is what helps create a really safe environment um I think the the bigger question that a lot of young Pilots as soon as they pass their private pilot certificate should ask is with 50 or 60 hours and one cross country am I really that prepared to start doing 100 200 mile cross countries um uh with no nobody else tethered there and I think you know if you're following everything your instructor said and you're doing everything there I think I think you'll be good but that's when I think the real learning starts is uh all of a sudden after that and if you look at a lot of flight instructors they uh they'll go hundreds of hours uh of Flight Training that's all dual instruction before they really start uh in a part of their career where they're soloing these young pilots and so um when I started in my late 30s finished at 50 hours and all of a sudden wanted to go fly I thought you know I'm going to keep bringing somebody with me for a while and I learned more on all that CrossCountry flying than I I feel like than I did even in the in the first 50 hours um having an instru next to me just flying with another pilot yeah flying with another pilot who is way more experienced than I than I am okay uh we had another question did we back here any other questions oh one in the back and then um we got two more online so kind of like to get on the student pilot thing I went to like a popular 141 school out on the east coast and I actually ended up leaving due to safety reasons um in training because of how the instructors were just pushing you through as fast as you can just to take your check ride and had degradated um like learning and they were teaching other students their degradated learning and it would just ended up being uh just a cascading effect of uh instructors were on their phone texting uh like texting the dispatch hey uh sorry the plane's going to be back late we're on their phones and just the rush kind of of them just build time to get to the airlines do you see this kind of like the accident we probably saw two weeks ago of Bowling Green where the student was with an instructor who was Snapchatting the whole entire time telling him that this guy's Forest Gump and and slow do you see this becoming a kind of a bigger problem in the industry of Quick Time building quick get your ratings and then we're at a a record uh pilot shortage right now so we are desperately short of pilots and so flight training schools are spooling up like crazy you got crazy growth right here at this airport for flying training so these sort of problems are going to be a natural part of that progression unfortunately hopefully that's more of the exception but oh my gosh yeah that's scary okay Mike you had a question online that was asking they said uh wait I lost it here Mike congrats on the pool build progress can you share any updates on airplanes you are currently building yeah that's what I want to know yeah um there is a there's an aircraft I'm doing an STC project on I can't share it but I am working on that feverishly it is uh a whole lot of papers and then a little build and then a whole lot of papers and Little Bill but I'm super excited about that project and I will announce that later um I just wrapped up a a military project I finished up I'm really excited about I can't talk about that one either but it's Aviation and it was a lot of fun what I can talk about is two other planes uh we're building my wife's building a carbon Cub right now and uh it's about ready for fabric I'm excited about I've been building one right alongside her um I have Scrappy so I'm just going to sell mine but it seemed more natural for us to build two planes together and then uh when my carbon Cub's done I'll I'll just uh Let It Go and my wife can fly her so that's been really fun that's coming close and then uh and then I have started tinkering on uh Draco I haven't officially started it at all but you know uh whenever I get a chance we sand off some paint we do a few mods I did hack the Wings off and started some changes there not off but kind of I cut I cut them the ends off and making small wait well I cut the whole front of them off and well I cut a lot of things off it but rise again but I haven't officially started it but yeah missing a lot of stuff right now um but I'm really excited about that it's going to be really really fun who who wants to see Draco fly again yeah project Phoenix yeah we're excited is your are you re the the one that I crashed no no no no I I I actually have done something really really special with drao that's a little bit emotional and I hope to do great things for Aviation I I'm not prepared to announce it yet I'm still working on it but I've done something with Draco and it's been a lot of work and it's been over a year of effort and and we'll get to that later but the the original Draco is no more but it will live on but what about the uh the racing airplane oh the racing airplane the racing airplane I have not had time to touch it uh been still looking for an engine I've got one um sitting showed up in my hanger I haven't opened the box yet it is a little more powerful um but I'm not I honestly don't know if it'll fit I have a different has a different size fuel controller and a few things but I got to open it up and see if it work the challenge with this is the plan's way over there and the engines here uh I haven't had a chance to even open the box between everything else I've got going on so I don't know when that one will will go but that one will be uh when I finally decide if the engine I've already bought for it which is a a a first run engine hasn't it's not even halfway to its first overhaul and a first and a fresh hot section new engine new engine uh yeah I'll talk about it later so but but but the thing is if it doesn't fit then then I'll uh overhaul get another engine but it we don't know yet and then I'll have to load up a trailer and bus and drive out and do the whole thing there and fly it back so oh just just a minor project yeah weekend project but did we see one more question out here yep of all the airplanes you've flown which is your favorite and of all the airports you've landed at which is your favorite and why go ahead go first well there airplanes and motorcycles you need a favorite airplane for each specific Mission so you need a whole hanger full of airplanes it all depends if you want to fly aerobatics I personally love the pit special that was one of my favorite airplanes that I ever owned and had the pleasure of flying if I want to fly airliners I got to choose the 757 it's the most overpowered hot rod Ferrari airliner there is um at warbirds it's got to be a P-51 but I've never had the opportunity to fly one yet so it depends what airplane and what mission yeah I I'm GNA I'm going to mimic that that is like asking me that question is like and I might want a few more um so I have this uh problem where I grow in hangers not so much what's my favorite plane but the short answer is uh it's it's a lot like Juan just said um Draco is magical to me it was the plane that when I hit the throttle one person or four people in it high and hot loaded or empty you just started laughing like literally you you everyone in the plane's face goes up because it drops you in your seat and just goes and that one uh it was just a giggle machine it was just a riot um and then the other uh turbulence I've had I've got so many hours on that plane that plane is just a bullet and to have something with so much power that you can't use more than half of it on the runway because it will turn itself off the Runway um that plane you can't even go Full Throttle till you are geared up flaps up and through 160 knots before you can wind it up and let it go and when you even get up at the speed it will do going down the runway uh you're literally could steer with your throttle if you went ahead and used all your foot to the floor you can steer with throttle but you're already sunk in your seat and blown away at what it's doing you come off the ground you tuck the gear up flaps up and you're going like crazy and you go oh yeah yeah I got 500 more horsepower and you just boom it is unbelievable and so fast and I I don't care what kind of pilot you are and it never gets old when they when ATC says uh a uh 7 707 mik mic uh watch it your 12:00 you're overtaking a jet um turn 10 degrees right and you're like yeah that's a good day it's a good day uh what was your record for uh taking off here to the top of temp temp oh so there's a video out there you can watch that there's a video of turbulence uh racing around Temp and back um it I don't remember the time it's very short minutes somewhere around 12 and a half minutes yeah I I don't even remember as long enough ago but let me tell you something about that video that video is out there racing around uh temp um that video was turbulence with 690 horsepower so when you watch that video and it's doing four or 5,000 ft per minute while still doing a ground speed that's mind- numbing um that video is so outdated from what turbulence is capable of turbulence now um can do 10,000 ft a minute um and uh be making some serious ground if you I I need to do a video about that when I bring it back even if I just put the same motor back in it that video I that that aircraft I raced to uh Las Vegas against my Premier A1A jet um and to give you an idea that Jet's 460 knots and uh my brother had it and I took mine because we needed more seets than the premier had I sent him down the runway first on Spanish Fork right here it is something unique to have a jet go take off in front of you that's 460 knots capable you take off and beat him to Las Vegas by 2 minutes even though I'm not 460 knots capable it climbs so fast at such a high ground speed that I'm nose overlevel going through the eye and that Jets playing catch up not leveling off for 20 minutes um that that plane now of course that that Eclipse would pass it to to go into Texas but like here to Las Vegas I can beat a 460 knot jet because this time to climb is is is staggering okay we're going to see if we got one more question if not we're going to wrap up and then go from there right here my plan is to go toer aines but I really want to enjoy my journey getting there you guys have any advice just enjoy it the uh the airline thing uh how old are you right now I'm 26 okay you're in good shape the main thing with the airlines is seniority is everything so generally the quicker you get there the better seniority you'll have and the better your career is overall so if you can um expedite that or or be as efficient as you can getting to the airlines that's that's a strong consideration and that's not much of a problem nowadays in the old days that was a problem nowadays you can get there pretty darn quick so other than that uh enjoy enjoy it while you can it's GNA be it's it's not all G to be fun it's you're gonna be feeding from a fire hose and you need to be able to learn like that you need to be able to learn to drink from a fire hose Because by the time that you get to the airlines they don't have the extra time for extra training they've got a set training program you have to get through that pipeline like everybody else in the required amount of time and you may only get one or two extra days of training Max so you got to be able to learn real fast so it's not as much about enjoying the journey as it is being able to learn real quick but it seems like you found a way to stay in general aviation as you've been in the Airlines and and to me you know part of why I I love the topic of safety and everything else is is we need to be reminded of that we want to increase pilot safety but at the same time I feel like general aviation the part 91 flying it is some of the best flying that we get to do and enjoy so hopefully you can stay involved in that let's give Mike and Juan a huge round of applause good job God dang I've got something for each of you guys of Aviation man nobody else doesn't like he does yeah I've got something for each of you guys we did a hanger 107 Aviation safety Advocate award for each of you Mike thank you all right and uh for you Juan great thanks you sir thank you both for not just your videos online that all of us love to watch but also the messages that you give that inspires Us and other aviators not just to have fun but to have fun and and stay safe at the same time so thank you both thank you right thanks all right thank you for those who are here in person uh these guys are going to be sticking around for a minute so definitely take the opportunity to shake their hands and get to know them and uh for those of you online we'll we'll be signing off here shortly and hopefully uh you can make it here to the next one if you did not directly RSVP the QR code uh is there for you so you can RSVP even now after the event learn about other events we do here in the future so thanks again thanks for uh being here at Spanish Fork and hanger 107 and for uh this awesome Flyin we did today thank you thank you Mar

Channel: Mike Patey

Views: 481,609

Keywords: Air racing, turbulence, Draco, mike patey, STOL aircraft, Bush Flying, Flying Cowboys, Mark Patey, Mike Patey, Pylon Racing, Patey Twins, Fastest Turbo Prop, Turbine Lancair, Turbine Legacy, Hillside Landing, Crosswind Landings, Water Landings, Water ski airplane, Best tugs, Grip lock ties, Back to work, Carbon Fiber Molds, Carbon fiber layout, how to carbon fiber, custom parts, world record aircraft, experimental, super cub, engineering, how it's made, red bull, aviation

Id: X1nXjPhGrwY

Length: 80min 50sec (4850 seconds)

Published: Sun Nov 05 2023