Midlife Pilot Podcast

You earned the ticket. Now what? Most VFR pilots get their certificate and then spend the next few years doing pattern laps and $100 hamburger runs, never quite working up the nerve for the big trip. There's no checkride for cross-country confidence, so nobody teaches it. This week, Brian, Ben, and Ted dig into everything that happens after your training ends and the open country begins.
The guys get into the gap in pilot training nobody talks about: en route weather reality versus departure-and-arrival thinking, why personal minimums need a methodology for ratcheting (not just a number on a card), and how to think about your airplane as your responsibility for three days on the ground, not two hours in the air. Plus the stuff that bites you in the real world: dead iPads in one-million-degree Texas heat, self-serve fuel pumps that put a $3,000 hold on your only credit card, progressive taxi at unfamiliar fields with crossing runways, and knowing where you're going to put it down when the engine quits on departure from an airport you've never seen.
Ben finally lands on the right runway at New Smyrna Beach, Brian watches his commercial rating show up in the airman registry, and a bathroom-wall sticker in New Orleans pulls another listener out of a training slump. Brian also announces The Long Way, his new four-week ground course built on everything learned VFR-ing all over the country, available now at makesmallcorrections.com.
Whether you're the pilot talking yourself out of the trip or the one who goes far but knows some of it was luck, this one's for you. You don't have to be IFR-rated to Ted yourself all over the United States.
Mentioned on the show:
Ultimate Pilot's Guide to Becoming a Midlife Pilot, 2nd edition: https://midlifepilotpodcast.com/#guide
Fairchild C-123: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fairchild_C-123_Provider
New Smyrna Beach Airport: https://www.nsbairport.com/
The Jerk: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Jerk
The Long Way — Cross-Country Confidence for VFR Pilots, a four-week ground course: https://www.makesmallcorrections.com/
Air Facts Podcast with Gita Brown: https://airfactsjournal.com/2026/06/podcast-dads-logbooks-with-gita-brown/
Gita's 2025 Dad's Logbooks article: https://airfactsjournal.com/2025/08/dads-logbooks-keeping-a-daughter-on-course/

Brian is hiding from CMA Fest, Ben is back from the British Virgin Islands, and Ted has finally sprung the Egg from a two-month annual. Time for an Information Whiskey episode.
Brian gets back in the air after his exam binge with a visit to Full Stop Aviation at Union City, where he meets a 1,000 horsepower Reno racer, then executes a strategic family airstrike to the Virginia mountains and reports that Lucy's autopilot vertical hold now sounds like logging into America Online before giving up entirely. Listener feedback from Chris H. sparks a debate on whether heavy dual time before the private checkride is a red flag or just life happening. Community accomplishments include a PIN code for the DC FRZ, a 9,000 foot density altitude wake turbulence encounter, ten Young Eagles in one day, an LSRM-I sign-off, and fresh grief for everyone hand jamming a Garmin 430 in actual.
Then things go deeper. Brian unpacks his new video "Trip. Fall. Succeed." and the photograph he took of a family at Huntsville Executive just two days before they were lost in the Montana Aztec accident. It's a thoughtful look at how aviation talks about tragedy, and how Ron Horton's challenge to become instructors gives all of this weight and purpose.
Plus: episode 200 hits this fall, and the crew wants your votes for a very special non-event event at a no-place place. Hudson Corridor? New Orleans? A Denny's in Topeka? Send votes to midlifepilotpodcast@gmail.com
Tonight's bit of wisdom: "Success is stumbling from failure to failure with no loss of enthusiasm."
Mentioned on the show:
UCY - Union City:https://www.airnav.com/airport/UCY
Full Stop Aviation at UCY:https://fs-aviation.com/
Luke's Landing:https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCOrpUYt-M4Qosktmet7Jnfg
FlightChops video, going to UCY - Have You Ever Truly Experienced "Severe Turbulence"?https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UUrGSFulrwI
TUPJ - Lettsome International, British Virgin Islands:https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terrance_B._Lettsome_International_Airport
EP182 - DPE Ron Horton Part 1:https://open.spotify.com/episode/5yl5pJ0rvFXpg5nxNL7xTw?si=1XbAa1HlQKmC5oP5Xfaghw
I was today years old:https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/i-was-today-years-old
FLARE Bourbon distillery:https://www.flarebourbon.com/home
Checkmate Barry using the Icarus electronic foggles:https://www.ainonline.com/aviation-news/business-aviation/2026-04-27/training-icarus-device-inoculates-against-iimc
Redbird AATD (simulators):https://simulators.redbirdflight.com/
Brian's new YouTube video, The Midlife Way: Trip. Fall. Succeed:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tCim9wvwmO0
Blancolirio video about the family flying the Aztec:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b7kT0_Jns0Q
Brian's video on monetizing tragedy, The Economics of Exploitation. Aviation's YouTube Problem:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=129nlBPpVAI
Jim Morrison, No One Gets Out Of Here Alive:https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/No_One_Here_Gets_Out_Alive
NEW, New Orleans Lakefront Airport terminal building:https://lakefrontairport.com/about/
Connect with the show:
Everything Midlife Pilot Podcast:https://midlifepilotpodcast.com
Patreon and Discord:https://patreon.com/midlifepilotpodcast
Live on YouTube Mondays 8 PM Eastern:https://youtube.com/@midlifepilotpodcast
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If you haven't listened to Episode 182 yet, go back — this conversation picks up about five minutes later. Ron Horton, DPE extraordinaire, returns with the crew to finish what he started: a data-driven, story-rich tour through what actually happens on checkrides, what actually trips people up, and what a lifetime of examining pilots looks like from the other side of the table.
In this second half, Ron walks through his color-coded scorecard of common ground and flight failures — weather, cross-country planning, airspace, and the takeoff and landing tables that trip up nearly half of all students. Spoiler: if your entire weather education came from ForeFlight, you and aviationweather.gov need to get acquainted. We also dig into why so many students arrive with no mechanical intuition whatsoever (one applicant had never cut grass — and had someone for that), why VOR navigation has become a near-lost art, and what it means when a student shows up with a perfectly calligraphed weight and balance that they clearly didn't do themselves.
Brian gets called out — gently — for overthinking his commercial W&B scenario, which as it turned out had absolutely no landmine in it at all. Ron also makes the case that showing up with a pre-tabbed FAR/AIM you bought online is a very different thing from showing up with tabs you put there yourself. And he closes with the phrase that stuck with Brian after the checkride: What's time to a hog? — a farmer's wisdom about taking the long road when the long road is worth it.
Mentioned on the Show:aviationweather.gov: https://aviationweather.govSeth Lake (VSL Aviation) YouTube: https://youtube.com/@VSLAviationJason Miller — The Finer Points: https://thefinerpoints.netFreedom Aviation Network: https://freedomavnetwork.org
Connect with the Show:Website: https://midlifepilotpodcast.comPatreon: https://patreon.com/midlifepilotpodcastYouTube: https://youtube.com/@midlifepilotpodcastEmail: midlifepilotpodcast@gmail.com

The crew is joined by Charlotte-based Designated Pilot Examiner Ron Horton — 60 years of flying, Wright Brothers Master Pilot Award, AOPA Regional Instructor of the Year, and the man responsible for both Brian's and Ben's commercial certificates. Ron comes armed with something most DPEs don't bother with: actual data. Over 500 checkrides' worth of it, color-coded spreadsheets and everything.
In this first of a two-part conversation, Ron unpacks his checkride pass/fail rates across private, instrument, commercial, CFI, and CFII — and the numbers will either comfort you or send you back to the books. (Spoiler: the instrument rating is harder than you think, and it's increasingly the avionics' fault.) We also dig into the sobering reality that the average student now takes 103 hours to reach their private checkride — up from 81 just five years ago — and what that 36% creep in dual hours says about the state of flight training. Plus: why soloing students at 40 hours dual is, in Ron's words, "staggering," and why the instructors who never ask a DPE what went wrong are the ones who keep sending unprepared students.

Mentioned on the show:
* DPE Ron Horton: http://planevisions.com/
* Seth Lake- VSL Aero- How to Read a Jeppesen SID and Star (Made Simple): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2osAEHUpKjw
* FlightInsight- How toRead a Jeppesen Approach Plate: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aQViPd5XYk8
* EGCB - Manchester Barton Aerodrome: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manchester_Barton_Aerodrome
* Thorndike's Law of Effect: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Law_of_effect

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Brian's got a shiny new commercial certificate, Ben just logged 25 hours in three days in a flying potato over Florida, and somehow nobody declared an emergency — so naturally, it's time to talk about flying like a professional even when nobody's paying you to. From sterile cockpit discipline to weight and balance on every single flight (yes, everyone), the crew runs through a practical list of habits that separate polished pilots from the yank-and-bank crowd. Plus: a listener who went from ICU nurse to CFII at 54, a fuel tank horror story that will make you check yours right now, and Mark prepares to hand a large sum of money to some people in the Czech Republic who have definitely sent him pictures of his actual airframe. Probably.Mentioned on the show:
* Time Building Mafia: https://volare.aero/timebuildingmafia
* The Calm Cockpit Podcast: https://calmcockpit.com/
* TL Sparker: https://www.tl-ultralight.cz/en/ultralight-aircraft/sparker
* 0W3 - Hartford County Airport - Churchville Maryland: https://www.airnav.com/airport/0w3
* PHKO - Ellison Kona airport: https://www.airnav.com/airport/phko
* SISKIND: Do Easy: How Fast Can You Take Your Time? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Oqsg-iW3KBw