Pilot's Discretion Podcast, episode 118
Whether he’s circling the globe in his Bonanza or crossing the Pacific in a Gulfstream, Adrian Eichhorn says he monitors four key risks on every flight. In this episode, he explains why they matter and how preflight preparation is the key to preventing mistakes. An expert on multiple topics, Adrian also shares night flying tips, lessons learned from a decade of borescope use, and some wild stories from his long distance flights. In the Ready to Copy segment, you’ll hear about the strangest airport Adrian ever landed at, why he loves the Bonanza, and what he learned as strategic nuclear advisor to the President.
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Quotes:
- Four key risks: “before any flight or any mission, I focus on four things… when I'm distracted, in a hurry, complacency, and fatigue.”
- Why GA pilots have to work harder: “the support as an airline pilot is tremendous, where when we're flying our GA airplanes, it's us!”
- The key to safe flying at night: “I think the biggest challenge is just always having a plan B.”
- Why the Chart Supplement still matters: “it's the single source that you can go to to find out what lighting you either have or don't have.”
- How to ease into night IFR: “Go out, get current on a night with a full moon, and then gradually work towards making it a more challenging night flight. Because you have less leeway”
- The value of borescopes: “if I was king for a day, I would eliminate the compression test and make a borescope test mandatory.”
- What to look for on an exhaust valve: “you look for symmetry. That means the valve is rotating and the heat is being distributed evenly around the valve when it exits the exhaust port.”
- The key to engine longevity: “it's a simple answer to a question which we could talk about for hours, but that is simply keeping that cylinder temperature down.”
- Highest avgas price on the round-the-world flight: “I paid $26 a gallon and you had to buy it in a 55 gallon drum.”
- The fun part of a long flight: “the real enjoyment was the preparation that went into the flight to eliminate all the potential risks, the preparation of making the airplane as perfect as it could be”
- How Adrian stays awake on long solo flights: “that's a simple one word answer, how you stay awake. It's called fear.”
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