Pilot to Pilot

By Justin Siems

Pilot to Pilot is the podcast for anyone who flies — or dreams about it. Host Justin Siems sits down with airline captains, bush pilots, CFIs, and everyone in between for honest conversations about th... more

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The podcast currently has 377 episodes available.

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Number 1: He's Owned 12 Airplanes in 25 Years. Here's How to Buy the Right One | Mark Woglom E367
Mark Woglom has bought and sold roughly a dozen airplanes in twenty-five years — a new Cessna 182 he learned to fly in, a Baron he never got comfortable in, a pressurized 414, a Cheyenne II XL, four separate Cirrus SR22s, a Vision Jet, a TBM 960, a Citation M2, and the CJ3+ he flies today. Six weeks ago he added an Icon A5, because you can't go sightseeing in a jet. Along the way he built a framework for making the decision the rest of us agonize over. In this episode we cover:The three F's — finances, features, and function — and why mission is the one most buyers skipThe "fourth F": buying the wrong airplane, and how to avoid itWhy he never trusts manufacturer range claims, broker enthusiasm, or forum consensusHis normalized fuel reserve method for comparing aircraft honestly, apples to applesReal rules of thumb for insurance, capital cost, maintenance, and the ancillary costs that ambush new ownersWhy he took a five-year break from flying while still owning an airplaneWhat changed when he decided to earn a type rating in his mid-fiftiesWhy his wife's headset ended a turboprop purchaseNever get plane poor — and why a fuel stop isn't the end of the worldWhether you're saving toward your first 172 or wondering whether the step up is worth it, this one's a masterclass in buying with your head instead of your heart. Happy Flying, Justin 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
August 18, 202658min
Number 2: I flew around the world and built a plane w/ JP Schulze E368
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 laterGrowing up flying "sketchy" weight-shift trikes over the African bushWhy Southern Africa has a GA scene almost nobody expectsMoving to New Zealand at seventeen and rebuilding from scratch in a third languageMeeting Louis Cole on a sand dune and having his life change in a daySigning with Discovery, then watching the money disappearWhat flying around the world actually took — and why he'd do it againInsisting on being the first to build the Sling High Wing, then helping write the manualWhy he refuses to post weekly, and what that has cost himThe sunglasses he built because a $350 pair costs $10 to makeWhy print still matters, and what we both think is at stakeWe 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
August 25, 20261h 32min
Number 3: How to get hired at an airline with Nik Fialka
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
September 08, 20261h 3min
Number 4: E362: A Career Changer's Road from Orchestra Halls to the Airlines
Pilot to Pilot Magazine — Volume 002 is out now. Get yours at pilottopilothq.com/mag Sponsors — please support the people who support the show: • 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) • 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 allworthfinancial.com/justin • Learn the Finer Points — Save 10% off your first year at learnthefinerpoints.com/justin. You plan for everything when you fly. But have you planned for life after the cockpit? Download the free guide from Allworth Airline Advisors https://allworthairline.com/justin. His uncle flew F-18s in the Marines before becoming a UPS MD-11 captain. His dad plays organ. His twin sister teaches choir in Texas. And David spent the better part of a decade as a professional tuba player before a global pandemic, a family hotel, and one YouTube rabbit hole set him on an entirely different flight path. In this episode, David traces every step of a career change that most people would have talked themselves out of — the 141 versus 61 debate, the flight school that felt like family, the stage check that became his most memorable moment as a CFI, and the three-to-five-minute orchestra audition that taught him everything he needed to know about showing up prepared. His advice is simple, honest, and hard-won: don't chase the end goal. Just be the best version of wherever you are right now.
June 10, 20261h 14min
Number 5: E352: From Oshkosh to Lakeland: Gene Conrad on Running Sun 'n Fun's $7M Aviation Spectacular
What does it take to run one of the world's largest aviation events? Gene Conrad, President and CEO of the Aerospace Center for Excellence and Sun 'n Fun Aerospace Expo, pulls back the curtain on Florida's premier aviation gathering. Growing up in Oshkosh as the son of an airport director, Gene counted aircraft at EAA AirVenture as a teenager to see who had more planes. Now, he's running Sun 'n Fun—a six-day event that costs $7 million to produce, attracts over 60,000 attendees, and requires coordination with everyone from the U.S. Navy Blue Angels to Amazon Air operations. In this episode, you'll discover: - The real costs of running a major aviation event ($700K just for tents!) - How Sun 'n Fun coordinates with Amazon's massive Lakeland hub - Why they're making major schedule changes for 2025 - The difference between running an airport vs. running an air show - Future expansion plans including new 40,000 sq ft air-conditioned exhibit buildings - What makes Gene happiest: closing the airport because there's no more parking space - Behind-the-scenes secrets like the Island, the Swamp, and Chick-fil-A coming to the event Gene also shares candid insights about working with 3,000+ volunteers, learning from his biggest mistakes (like the WiFi disaster), and why his ultimate measure of success isn't attendance or revenue—it's making sure everyone goes home safe. Whether you're planning to attend Sun 'n Fun, curious about aviation event management, or just love air shows, this episode delivers insider knowledge you won't find anywhere else.
February 03, 202659min