Pilot to Pilot

Carson Stilson built his own Zenith Super Duty kit plane in two and a half years and about 1,200 hours, then flew it to Oshkosh. He shares what building an experimental aircraft really takes.

Carson never planned to build an airplane in his thirties. He did it anyway, while working full time and raising two young kids. He explains why he chose a Zenith over a tailwheel kit, why he did most of the build himself, and how he kept going through the slow stretches. One of those stretches came a few weeks in, when he accidentally threw away half his airplane's skins.

In this episode:

• Why Carson chose a Zenith: STOL performance, cost, and no ground-loop worries
• How the Zenith rudder workshop led him to buy the kit
• Builder Assist vs. building it yourself, and when to get help with the engine and avionics
• "90% done, 90% to go": wiring, final assembly, and the last six months
• Putting a Lycoming IO-390 on a Super Duty for high-density-altitude backcountry flying in Utah
• The DAR inspection, the first flight on July 4th, and flying to EAA AirVenture Oshkosh
• Why experimental and kit aircraft, along with MOSAIC, could be the future of personal aviation
• Carson's dream fleet: a bush plane, a 200-knot family hauler, and a show plane

Thinking about building a kit plane? Send this to the friend who keeps saying "someday."

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A Designated Pilot Examiner shares 5 tips to pass your checkride, plus the story of his engine failure and landing on Chicago's Lake Shore Drive at 3 PM on a Friday.

Johnny Ginley, a young DPE and fellow Ohio State aviation alum, explains what examiners see from the other side of the table. The advice applies to private, instrument, commercial, CFI, ATP, and type-rating checkrides. Many checkrides end before they even begin because of missing flight time, a bad endorsement, or aircraft paperwork that can't prove airworthiness.

In this episode:

• Logbook mistakes that disqualify applicants, and why airlines still want clean logbooks years later
• Proving airworthiness: inspections, ADs, and why a printed status sheet isn't enough
• "Know your numbers": why cruising at 2,300 RPM needs a reason behind it
• Don't force the flight: making a go/no-go call when the wind picks up on checkride day
• Don't force the landing, and the one maneuver where a go-around now counts as unsatisfactory
• Average checkride pass rates and how the ACS changed the CFI oral
• The throttle cable failure that put Johnny on Lake Shore Drive, and how he got back in the cockpit afterward

Got a checkride coming up? Send this episode to someone who needs it. You can read Johnny's full article in Pilot to Pilot Magazine.

Pilot to Pilot Magazine
Get your copy at https://pilottopilothq.com/mag

Our Sponsors
Please support the companies that support the show.

Aero Tow: The Aero Tow T2 moves tail draggers and medium twins up to 15,000 lbs. Pilot to Pilot listeners get $100 off with promo code PILOT100 at https://amigoaerotow.com

Textron Aviation: Owner support from the people who built your aircraft. Learn more at https://txtav.com

Avemco Insurance: Pilot to Pilot listeners save 5%. Call (888) 635-4297 or visit:
Aircraft owners: https://avemco.com/4297-owner
Non-owners: https://avemco.com/4297-non-owner

Garmin: Plan, file, fly, and log with the Garmin Pilot app.

Allworth Airline Advisors: Watch "The Hot Seat," an on-demand webinar where airline benefits experts answer pilots' open enrollment questions. Register at https://allworthairline.com/justin

Steve Giordano left a senior captain seat at Allegiant to build Nomadic Aviation Group, one of the most trusted ferry operations in the business. He breaks down how a ferry flight actually gets quoted and flown — lessors, permits, DARs, tankering fuel at $18 a gallon — what trips really cost, the margins behind them, and what he looks for when contracting pilots. Plus the Alice Springs COVID runs, Equatorial Africa thunderstorms, and the operational failure in Korea he still calls his worst.

Pilot to Pilot Magazine — Volume 003 is out now. Get yours at pilottopilothq.com/mag

Sponsors — please support the people who support the show:

• AeroTow — $100 off an AeroTow T2 for Pilot to Pilot listeners. Use promo code PILOT100 at amigoaerotow.com

• Avemco Insurance — Save 5% as a Pilot to Pilot listener. Call (888) 635-4297 or visit avemco.com/4297-owner (owners) or avemco.com/4297-nonowner (non-owners)

• Textron Aviation — Built for lifelong aviators. Plan your next chapter at txtav.com/stepup

• Garmin — Plan, file, fly, log with the Garmin Pilot app

• Allworth Airline Advisors — Register for their latest webinar at https://allworthfinancial.com/airlines/lp/runway-for-retirement-webinar?utm_campaign=airlines+-+more+runway+for+retirement&lmls=Partner+Channel&lmld=Pilot+to+Pilot&ad_version=Social

Nik Fialka has watched pilots lose the job before they ever sat down.

The Spitfire Elite coach and Ready 4 Pushback host joins us to walk through his ten rules for the airline interview — five things to do, five things that'll sink you.

The first one starts tonight, not the week your application gets picked up. Nik's habit: after shutdown, open your notes app and write down one thing that happened on that flight. The disagreement with your instructor. The divert. The passenger you went out of your way for. Do it for a year and you'll never be the candidate staring blankly when someone asks for a conflict story.

We get into paperwork nobody wants to think about until they need it, and why a gap you find today can take months to fix. Logbooks, too — Nik's line is that your logbook is your dissertation: you don't just present it, you defend it. Cover page, totals that add up, no white-out, addendums for the errors you find. As one airline logbook reviewer told him, don't make me pull out a calculator.

Then the other half. Why hiding or shading your data ends the interview faster than you'd believe. Why adding a previously undisclosed failure after you've been invited is a very different conversation than adding a new type rating. The pilot whose expunged record still got him fired for failure to disclose. And the one Nik is best known for — the candidate in a conference room full of finalists who dropped an F-bomb at the wrong moment and never made it to the logbook review.

The bigger point underneath all of it: from the second you leave your house, you're being interviewed. Be good to the Uber driver, the gate agent, the hotel desk. Jobs get won and lost when you least expect it.

Pilot to Pilot Magazine — Volume 003 is out now. Get yours at pilottopilothq.com/mag

Sponsors — please support the people who support the show: • NEW SPONSOR ALERT I'd like to welcome AeroTow to the Pilot to Pilot sponsors! check out their AeroTow T2 Engineered for easier maneuverability, the AeroTow T2 is versatile for a variety of aircraft. Its universal cradle provides a seamless towing experience ( Pilot to Pilot listeners can save $100 by using the code in the podcast!) Avemco Insurance — Save 5% as a Pilot to Pilot listener. Call (888) 635-4297 or visit avemco.com/4297-owner (owners) or avemco.com/4297-non-owner (non-owners) • Learn more about the exciting innovations at Textron Aviation today… just go to TXTAV.com • Garmin — Plan, file, fly, log with the Garmin Pilot app • Allworth Airline Advisors — Register for their latest webinar at allworthfinancial.com/justin • Allworth Financial - https://allworthfinancial.com/airlines/lp/runway-for-retirement-webinar?utm_campaign=airlines+-+more+runway+for+retirement?lmls=Partner+Channel&lmld=Pilot+to+Pilot&ad_version=Social 

In 1999, a handful of people gathered at a dusty Namibian airfield to meet two men flying weight-shift microlights around the world. One of them was Mike Blyth. Watching from the crowd was a boy who had never left the country, whose family couldn't afford much flying, and who had no real concept of where these men had come from — only that whatever they were doing, he wanted to do it too.

Twenty-five years later, JP Schulze has flown around the world himself, built the first Sling High Wing off the line — designed by the same Mike Blyth — and become one of the most distinctive filmmakers in aviation.

This one took a while to make happen. We finally met at Oshkosh this year, and JP is candid about being a naturally shy person who ended up with a career in front of a camera.

He grew up in Namibia with no art classes and no creative outlets, thinking in German and Afrikaans, teaching himself English from the Discovery Channel at eight years old. He was taking the controls of his dad's microlight at ten. He funded his first licence by free-diving for crayfish, selling snake venom, and restringing tennis rackets.

The around-the-world trip nearly didn't happen twice. Sponsors walked after a Cirrus ditched near Hawaii and the CAPS pull ran on every news channel — nobody wanted their logo on a small plane over an ocean. So JP and Louis Cole self-funded it, and JP is honest about what that cost: the fourteen-hour legs, the multi-hour shouting match somewhere between Fiji and Kiribati, and the weight of being responsible for a non-pilot's life for the first time.

In this episode:

• Meeting Mike Blyth in 1999 — and building his airplane twenty years later
• Growing up flying "sketchy" weight-shift trikes over the African bush
• Why Southern Africa has a GA scene almost nobody expects
• Moving to New Zealand at seventeen and rebuilding from scratch in a third language
• Meeting Louis Cole on a sand dune and having his life change in a day
• Signing with Discovery, then watching the money disappear
• What flying around the world actually took — and why he'd do it again
• Insisting on being the first to build the Sling High Wing, then helping write the manual
• Why he refuses to post weekly, and what that has cost him
• The sunglasses he built because a $350 pair costs $10 to make
• Why print still matters, and what we both think is at stake

We also recorded a second conversation about the around-the-world flight itself — that one is exclusive to the magazine, with the audio released free a year after publication.

Happy Flying,
Justin

Support JP - otavi.co best sunglasses for pilots

Pilot to Pilot Magazine — Volume 003 is out now. Get yours at pilottopilothq.com/mag

Sponsors — please support the people who support the show: • NEW SPONSOR ALERT I'd like to welcome AeroTow to the Pilot to Pilot sponsors! check out their AeroTow T2 Engineered for easier maneuverability, the AeroTow T2 is versatile for a variety of aircraft. Its universal cradle provides a seamless towing experience ( Pilot to Pilot listeners can save $100 by using the code in the podcast!) Avemco Insurance — Save 5% as a Pilot to Pilot listener. Call (888) 635-4297 or visit avemco.com/4297-owner (owners) or avemco.com/4297-non-owner (non-owners) • Learn more about the exciting innovations at Textron Aviation today… just go to TXTAV.com • Garmin — Plan, file, fly, log with the Garmin Pilot app • Allworth Airline Advisors — Register for their latest webinar at allworthfinancial.com/justin • Allworth Financial - https://allworthfinancial.com/airlines/lp/runway-for-retirement-webinar?utm_campaign=airlines+-+more+runway+for+retirement?lmls=Partner+Channel&lmld=Pilot+to+Pilot&ad_version=Social