On his way to Sun ’n Fun 2023, the engine on Josh Harnagel’s Bonanza quit, leading to a forced landing in a cow pasture. While no one was hurt, Josh learned a lot from this harrowing experience. He shares those lessons in this episode, including why partial engine failures are hard to diagnose, why hope can kill you in an emergency, and what he has changed about his habits since the incident. Josh works at Redbird, so he also offers plenty of practical tips for using flight simulators to maintain proficiency, whether at the airport or at home. In the Ready to Copy Segment, you’ll hear the biggest marketing mistake flight schools make, the best Bonanza model, and Josh’s favorite Texas barbecue.
Quotes:
- Finding out how you react: “It’s kinda nice to know in that situation I don’t panic. I know that for a fact now.”
- Why hope can kill you: “I have SmartGlide in the airplane and so I have a little blue ring on my PFD that’ll tell me how far I can glide, and if it wasn’t for that I probably would have tried to make the airport.”
- How sims helped him get back in the Bonanza: “I’ve flown the sim more in the last six months… than I’ve ever flown it.”
- What habits changed: “I am very active in looking for off-field landing spots… I look at Google Maps of the airport before I take off.”
- Real world IFR training: “I don’t think we do a really good job of teaching what it’s gonna be like in the real world.”
- Why CFIs don’t like to use sims: “Sometimes there’s just a mismatch… The instructors are there to provide training, the student is the there to achieve a goal.”
- How to use sims at all stages of training: “The airplane is a terrible place to learn, so we don’t introduce anything in the airplane. We always do it in the sim first.”
- The biggest mistake flight schools make: “We don’t teach the idea of being PIC early enough.”
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