SPC #70 – Let’s Talk

So welcome back SPC listeners.

So glad to be back with another episode today.

And this one's going to be a little different.

I think.

That there's some event coming up soon, but I just can't remember what it is.

Let's see if I can figure it out in episode 70.

Of the student pilot cast.

Let's talk.

Oh, that's right.

Oshkosh EAA air venture is coming up.

I hope you're headed there, but if not, I'll try and bring a

little bit of the flavor of it.

If I can.

So for today's episode.

I want to bring you up to speed on where I was at in my training.

I let you in and non some Oshkosh information about my plans.

Lay out some plans for air venture in the next few episodes.

So a little bit about the podcast.

And make a big announcement.

So let's get through this quickly so we can all get back to finalizing our

plans and packing for air venture.

All right.

So first I'm going to start with a training update.

So if you've been listening, you know, I got back to training after

like 11 years off, early last year.

And the plan was to hit it pretty hard for awhile.

I had just completed my flight review.

Uh, to get current again, and it was time to start my instrument rating.

Start the training for that.

Anyway.

Again, I was training at red rock flight school.

A, part 61 school at Falcon field airport in Mesa, Arizona.

That's K F F Z.

And I was excited to get going.

I think when I was finishing up my private training.

And I had heard all kinds of stories and things about the instrument rating.

Some things I heard were kind of scary.

And some were kind of exciting, but.

was, well, I was all in and ready to go.

I would do some ground training, a bunch of flying under the hood or in my case.

Foggles and.

Gotta remind me to tell you about my modified old man.

Foggles that I.

That I use, but we'll save that for another episode.

I would end up doing some of my simulated instrument on a basic

training device or simulator.

And I'll talk about that a little bit, but it'll mostly be just me.

My account of flying the SIM is it's very, very different than flying

an airplane, as you can imagine.

So unless I was using video, which I wasn't, it doesn't make sense to share

details of that, but I'll let you know what my experience was like doing that.

I'll take you as usual.

All the way to my instrument rating checkride.

And then we'll start tackling what would come after that, whatever that may be.

So you can expect the next little while on the podcast to take you

mostly through my instrument rating.

Which I hope will be interesting to you all it.

I know I was loving it, so I hope you'll love it too.

I'd love to hear your questions or suggestions on what I should talk

about and what I should cover from my experiences going through this training.

So if there's anything that you want to hear about, please,

please, please let me know.

And I will include that in future episodes.

The instrument rating is widely thought to be the most cerebral of the rate ratings.

The one that makes you think the most.

Um, and so far I tend to agree.

I think there's a lot of philosophy and study of human nature in the CFI training.

But to me that's a lot less technical and vast and, and kind

of difficult to grasp than what you cover in the instrument rating.

So, yeah, so far in my young flying career, the instrument has been the

biggest brain challenge for the vast amount and complexity of the material.

So yeah, I was excited to tackle it.

And I'm excited to bring you along to.

So let's talk a little bit about air venture.

So I'm going to be.

I'm going to be at AirVenture from Tuesday the 23rd through Saturday, the 27th.

And I'm also going to be, uh, an adjunct or, um, Uh, helper, if you will.

For Lightspeed aviation.

So a lot of the week you'll find me.

Uh, around the, uh, Around the Lightspeed tent or the Lightspeed booth.

Um, I should be there.

Probably from Wednesday through Friday during the day, maybe a little more.

I don't know.

So feel free to stop by and say hi.

I would love to see you.

Um, the Lightspeed booth is number 2 59 and it's just north.

Of hanger B um, it's right next to the hanger though.

Um, Lightspeed has wanting to gather some comfort information

and feedback from show goers.

So while you're there, if you have time come by and find me, and I'll help you

get started participate in the survey where you can try on various headsets

there's and competitors and other ones and other ones, and give feedback.

They're doing some market research and some stuff like that could be kind of fun.

And like I said, I'd love to see us.

So come by if you can.

You can also check out their new headset, which is the Delta Zulu.

It's got some great features.

I've been flying with it for months.

Um, and I, I really love it.

So you can come by and check that out.

If you haven't already.

And best of all, if you come by, we'll get to hang out a little bit and

that's kind of what it's all about.

If you're not there.

Don't worry.

I'll try to get the flavor of the event and talk to a lot of

folks and I'll pass along to you.

What I, what I find out.

And hopefully that'll be interesting and helpful for you for you as well.

I'll have a lot less time this year than I usually do when I met at

Oshkosh to gather content and so on.

Um, I even other years I've always felt rushed.

There's always too much.

I've got too many appointments for interviews and too many

things to see people to talk to.

And all of that.

So I always feel rushed.

Uh, but it could get even more interesting this year because I'm

going to be spending so much time.

At the Lightspeed tent, so wish me luck.

And like I said, come by love to see ya.

Um, at least it would, maybe I wouldn't do as much walking as I

normally do, but maybe I'll get to meet as many people as I normally do.

So come on by, but I'm looking forward to it.

It's going to be exhausting and it's going to be amazing as usual.

And I'm really looking forward to it.

So as far as the podcast goes, I may squeeze in my first

instrument rating training flight for next Tuesday's episode.

And that'll be that.

That'll be my first full day at the show.

So I'll be running around.

Doing all sorts of stuff at air venture, but I could schedule it to come out.

Then if I can get it edited and finished before then, Um, so you may get that next.

And it won't, won't be Tuesday, but we'll talk about that later.

It'll probably be Wednesday.

Um, but that should come out.

And then after that, Um, hopefully we'll have a bunch of stuff from Oshkosh that

we'll be able to share with you as well.

And that might not be regular.

It might not be once a week.

We might release some things.

Uh, on the podcast feed.

Um, more often than once a week, it depends on our wifi access.

And when we can get things out, like I said, Oshkosh week is exhausting.

Lots going on.

So bear with me.

If it does take me a whole week to get the next one out.

Um, but we certainly won't skip a week or anything like that.

Um, publishing a couple of features in the weeks after Oshkosh as well.

Before we get back to the regular scheduled instrument training.

Um, but it all depends on what I'm able to get.

Like I said, and, um, you know, what I can put together

in the short time that I have.

So, um, anyway, we'll, we'll see how it goes, but I'll definitely be releasing.

I'll definitely be releasing some stuff, uh, about and around Oshkosh.

All right.

All right.

And that leads me to the big announcement I was talking about.

And that's that I'm going to be moving the podcast release day to Wednesday.

I know it's shocking.

Everybody's probably, Oh, actually that's not the important part.

The important part is the reason I'm moving it to Wednesday.

So I'm actually going to bring in a special guest to help

me make this announcement.

And so Tiffany, Tiffany Wolf, I'd like you to come in.

Why don't you introduce yourself to the student pilot cast?

Audience.

Hey, student pilot cast, this is pilot Tiffany from the pilot cast

way back in the day and I'm so excited to be here with Bill again

because we have a big announcement.

I bet some of my, uh, some of my listeners, my old time listeners

probably remember the pilot cast.

So you'll remember Tiffany really well.

We

were, uh, partners in crime, I guess, maybe without the crime, hopefully.

I don't know.

But, but we, we had a good time on the pilot cast and why don't

you tell them what we're doing?

Flightline

with a similar style podcast and we are calling it the flight line podcast,

podcast, baby.

Yeah.

So a little bit of hanger talk.

Um, hopefully being able to tell some really wonderful stories and

share adventures with you guys.

I've been traveling a ton for work, and I get to do that in a

beautiful citation Mustang, which will be flying to Oshkosh this year.

I'm excited about that.

Super nice.

I'm a little jealous.

yeah, it is pretty.

It's It's a little bit different than a 1 72.

It's kind of hard to go back, but

flew a 182 in there once as pilot in command and once as a passenger.

And, uh, I think your experience might be a little bit different in the citation.

This is true.

Yeah, this time and many other times I'll be flying in a human mailing tube.

So, I think you're still going to have a lot better time than I will flying in.

human mailing tube.

It's funny.

I did just

a jet, a big jet that I'm not in the cockpit of.

got it.

Got it.

on their kids and put them in the mail.

I was I was envisioning you bill with a couple of stamps all over you

and some box in the back of a train.

Well, that's kind of what you feel like in the airlines these days.

So, I mean, they might as well stick a stamp on you.

Oh,

and I looked at my ticket and I went.

Wait, there's double digits on here.

12.

There's 12 seats.

that's amazing.

Yeah.

So I guess that's important too.

You're going to be at Osh, right?

Yes, absolutely.

So we'll be gathering information and content and

ideas all over the place, right?

Should be able to bring some cool stuff in the new podcast.

What do you think?

I think it's wonderful.

Last year I had a friend, um, their, her son was excited to learn how

to start flying and he's just about ready to take his check right now.

It's crazy.

Uh, but he came out to Oshkosh

make sure he's listening to the student pilot cast.

That'll help him.

He will be.

Uh, but it was fun.

He came out to Oshkosh and him and his dad and I was kind of telling

him some of the tips and tricks and they're looking at me like.

We're just here to see the airplanes.

I'm like, okay, okay.

There's a lot more to that.

The next day they gave me a quick call and said, okay, we're on tip number 10.

So they, they had taken it into account.

Like, no, there's, there's a lot more to Oshkosh than just rolling in and your

sneakers and sitting on the grass all day.

So I'm excited to, to be able to bring some of those stories.

I know some people that work up to it by walking like 15, 000 steps every day

because When you're at AirVenture, if you haven't been before, I think you

probably walk about 20, 000 steps a day.

So sometimes people work up to it.

I'm not saying I do that, but there might be some people that do that.

that's

No, it's going to be fun.

And,

From antiques to warbirds is a bit of a trek.

it's a long one.

And when you're waking up early and you're trying to see if you can grab a ticket

in the Ford tri motor, Because you didn't think ahead and you have to go every

morning all the way to warbirds from camping That is a long long walk at five

in the morning and Again, not saying this happened to me, but every morning trying

to do it and not having any tickets left

really?

a lot of walking

Oh my god, did you actually get a flight in there?

No, we ended up going in the Bell helicopter.

They were booked every day.

We just weren't quick enough.

But anyway, we are gonna, we are going to be gathering some information

and having some fun at AirVenture.

And we're going to bring as much as we can to you.

Um, and you know, our, our releases at the beginning might be a little

haphazard because we're going to be.

In Wisconsin, and we'll try and get things out when we can, but we'll

really good there.

It's really good.

It's not, uh, but we'll, we'll get some stuff out and, and, we'll start

releasing on a regular schedule, on Tuesdays, uh, like I said, and so I'll be

moving student pilot cast to Wednesdays.

So it's going to be fun, right?

We're excited.

Yeah, I'm excited.

I think that there's a lot of great stories out there and wonderful

people and incredible, you different industries that we get to explore.

And so I'm looking forward to bringing on some different guests.

And, um, actually, I'm also looking forward to trying to hit up more air

shows this year, since now I feel like we have to, since we're the flight

I know.

I mean, Somebody has got to do it.

I know.

podcast might as well be it.

Yeah.

So, yeah, so our first episode will just be kind of a reintroduction

to the both of us and what we're going to be doing with Flightline.

We'll release that hopefully this week, right before Oshkosh.

But, there's going to be, there's going to be a little trick in there.

We're going to.

Release some Oshkosh hacks for those of you who are going.

So we'll have a few hacks in there to make your experience better,

more interesting, uh, maybe a little easier, maybe not 25, 000 steps a day.

I don't know, something like that.

But, but, uh, Tiffany has some stuff up her sleeve,

you where the coolest place is at Oshkosh and it is not actually on the flight line.

but you'll find out about it on podcast.

Right.

That's right.

All right.

Bill, I'm high fiving you virtually.

so anyway, yeah, we'll get that out this week and obviously, um, and then,

uh, we'll get you some stuff, right after, so we're excited to be, going

again, together with the Flightline podcast and we'll see you there soon.

Awesome.

So, well, there you go.

Because of OSH.

My releases might get a little haphazard for the next week or two,

but it'll probably be more, not less.

Than usual and Tiffany and I wanted to get the flight line

podcast announced to you guys.

So head over to flight line, podcast.com.

Or in the next few days, Just check your favorite podcast players for the first

episode, which should release soon.

We, like I said, we wanted to get that announced before

we headed out to the show.

And we'd love for you to check it out.

We'll be releasing new flight line podcasts, as we mentioned.

On Tuesdays.

And also, as I mentioned, I'll be switching to releasing new

SPC episodes on Wednesdays.

Like today's.

So remember they're two different shows, so subscribed to the flight line.

Podcasts separately from this one.

Now.

As usual.

I love hearing from all of you.

I've been getting a bunch of messages from listeners since I've

started releasing episodes again.

So I really appreciate that.

All of you really sincerely.

I appreciate it.

So please keep the feedback and the stories coming.

I love hearing about your training and your airplanes and

your airports, your adventures.

All of it.

It's always about the people.

We always talk about that.

Right?

It's all about the people.

And while I invite you along, Into my training and into my cockpit with me.

It's only fair that I get some stories to write.

So reach out if you want to, you can find me on Twitter or X using at bill will.

That's Bravo, India, Lima, Lima, whiskey, India, Lima.

And through email I'm bill at student pilot, cast.com or

bill@flightlinepodcast.com.

Either one will work.

Or just use the contact link at the top of the website.

At student pilot cast.com.

If you want to reach out to Tiffany she's at tiffany@flightlinepodcast.com.

And I'm sure she'd love to hear from you too.

So.

It's time for another air venture.

I can't wait.

And I'm excited to see any of you that are going as well.

We mentioned this in the first episode of Flightline once we release it,

but Tiffany, Tiffany and I will be at the Lightspeed tent or booth.

On Wednesday at four o'clock.

If anyone wants to come by and say hi, so please, please do.

We would love to see.

See you again, if we've met before or meet you for the first time, if we haven't and

while I'm bringing you the beginning of my instrument training in the podcast,

I'm currently working on additional certs in real life in real time.

Uh, additional certs and ratings even now.

So the training never stops.

I know I'm going to have a great time at Oshkosh.

But I'll be looking forward to getting back and doing some more of my flying to.

I'm going to be an even better pilot.