
← Midlife Pilot Podcast7 jul · 45 min
EP188 - Go/No-Go: Honoring Your Minimums When Everyone Else Is Leaving
<p>Ben's coming back to McCollum with his wife in the right seat and the winds at 340, 18 gusting 28, basically direct crosswind, and he's already named the two north-south runways he'll divert to if he doesn't like it. That's the whole episode in one scene. We dig into go/no-go decisions, built around the Go/No-Go channel where you post a flight before you fly it and let the group reason alongside you. No bravado, no armchair quarterbacking.</p><p>Brian makes the case that scrubbing a flight you could have made is still a win, because you're teaching your future self the call was sound and next time the conditions could be worse. Erica Gilbert's 1,000-foot ceiling minimum comes up, and the story behind it: three emergency returns after takeoff inside 30 days. We talk through the real question under an IFR deck, which is how much time you want to find a landing spot when the engine quits, not if. The hardest scrubs are the ones 900 miles from home with work in the morning, so grab your meds and your underwear.</p><p>We also read a remarkable letter from Bruce, a 45-year-old monocular MMA coach who spent two and a half years fighting through medical denials to earn his certificate. Plus accomplishments from Teddy's second Mooney, an M20J flown Texas to Minnesota, and Checkmate Barry's 14-maneuver flight review, the Piston Peasant shirt Ted designed, and a second cohort of Brian's VFR cross-country course after the first sold out. If you can't be a good example, you'll have to be a horrible warning.</p><p><strong>Mentioned on the show:</strong></p><ul><li>THE LONG WAY cross-country course: <a href="https://www.makesmallcorrections.com/">https://www.makesmallcorrections.com/</a></li><li>PISTON PEASANT shirt: <a href="https://midlifepilotpodcast.printful.me/product/piston-peasant-shirt">https://midlifepilotpodcast.printful.me/product/piston-peasant-shirt</a></li><li>New website: <a href="https://midlifepilotpodcast.com/">https://midlifepilotpodcast.com/</a></li><li>I FLEW ALL DAY AND LANDED AT THE SAME AIRPORT shirt: <a href="https://midlifepilotpodcast.printful.me/product/i-flew-all-day-and-landed-at-the-same-airport-unisex-classic-tee">https://midlifepilotpodcast.printful.me/product/i-flew-all-day-and-landed-at-the-same-airport-unisex-classic-tee</a></li><li>Erica Gilbert's IFR masterclass: <a href="https://www.gilbertaviation.com/ifr-course">https://www.gilbertaviation.com/ifr-course</a></li></ul><p></p>