Air Wagner..... He’s baaaaackk.

MooneyDriver78 said:
My only comment is he scales up the approach plate so much because I think he uses that for horizontal guidance, that’s why he was off the glideslope, the HSI is secondary?



Tom
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If he turned off all the personal electronic devices, he would either:
- revert to being a decent instrument pilot
or
- crash
 
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Reading these posts is entertaining and predictable in regard to the ones that hammer this guy ("Jerry Wagner") about the mistakes he makes. Pretty much the same ones that belittle and criticize posts on here (and they usually have about 12,000 posts to their credit- the professional POA posters).

I don't know this Wagner guy, this thread has made me go and watch a few of his videos, and no, I really don't get the vitriol and hate coming his way. If you want to see some crazy sh^%t come to my little non-towered field and see some of the hi-jinks out there. Makes me enjoy flying into Houston Hobby or Dallas Love Field just to get around some professional pilots.

In my humble opinion, if this Wagner guy is not to your liking just stay away from watching his videos.

BTW - I watched the Malibu guy too. I like the couple that I saw. I darn sure like his airplane. It sure would be nice to have a pressurized airplane. That is my new dream.
 
N1120A said:
No, I'm attempting to prove that people will complain about anything he does.
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Some will. He’s become a whipping boy. He earned it by exhibiting poor airmanship on an epic scale then defending said performance on occasion.

it’s obvious that you are defending him because you think the criticism is to broad and he’s not really that bad. You even said you are based near him and he has a reputation as being a nice guy that tries to do a good job. Whatever. Being a nice guy and trying doesn’t make someone a good pilot.

I know some glorious *******s that are really good pilots and work well in a crew environment.

Wagner reminds me of a friend I used to have. He was a great guy. Everyone on the field got along with him. He was always willing to share and listen. He made decisions to move into higher performance aircraft and started having issues. We all talked to him. He kinda listened. Eventually decided the advice was sound and settled on selling the new hotrod... after one more trip. Now whenever I’m in town I stop by the memorial tree we planted at the airport and say hello to my friend.

unless this new video represents the edge of his performance bell curve ... meaning if this video is the new limit of bad performance he’ll most likely be fine. If he continues to fly the way he has in past videos I would recommend picking out a tree.

nothing personal. Just an observation. We settled on a silver maple.
 
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midlifeflyer said:
Best line and lesson in the video was Jerry saying he wasn't going to narrate as much as usual because he needed to focus on what he was doing.
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He should do his narrating when he edits the video at home in his comfy slippers, the difference between him "flying a plane" and "hamming it up for the camera" is insane.

It's easy enough to add a second audio track. Since he wants to be an online personality, this will fit the mission perfectly. He can get one of those ridiculous Blue Yeti microphones that are favored by podcast douches and other 'influencers'.
 
MooneyDriver78 said:
My only comment is he scales up the approach plate so much because I think he uses that for horizontal guidance, that’s why he was off the glideslope, the HSI is secondary?



Tom
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You know I was thinking the same thing today. Looking at how far he zooms in on the plates, I think he’s using the geo referenced aircraft as primary nav on approaches.

Just looking at how abrupt some of his inputs are on the hand flown approach, I think his instrument scan is lacking. Not that doesn’t happen to a lot of us when we fly too many autopilot approaches and not enough hand flown.
 
Stephen Shore said:
Reading these posts is entertaining and predictable in regard to the ones that hammer this guy ("Jerry Wagner") about the mistakes he makes. Pretty much the same ones that belittle and criticize posts on here (and they usually have about 12,000 posts to their credit- the professional POA posters).

I don't know this Wagner guy, this thread has made me go and watch a few of his videos, and no, I really don't get the vitriol and hate coming his way. If you want to see some crazy sh^%t come to my little non-towered field and see some of the hi-jinks out there. Makes me enjoy flying into Houston Hobby or Dallas Love Field just to get around some professional pilots.

In my humble opinion, if this Wagner guy is not to your liking just stay away from watching his videos.

BTW - I watched the Malibu guy too. I like the couple that I saw. I darn sure like his airplane. It sure would be nice to have a pressurized airplane. That is my new dream.
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He’s had his YT channel for years. You haven’t even scratched the surface on his videos because he deletes the ones where he flat out violates the FARs. Even vids where he hadn’t violated FARs, he’s exhibited high risk flying at low level and a macho attitude of “flying on the edge.” It’s obvious that he has no professional flying background with any emphasis on risk management and CRM. His lack of SA is made up for because he’s gotten accustomed to doing the same thing over and over again.

Personally, I don’t see what pilots find interesting about his vids other than learning from the mistakes he makes. So he flys a C421 to local airports in the Oakland area??? Fascinating.:confused:
 
weilke said:
If he turned off all the personal electronic devices, he would either:
- revert to being a decent instrument pilot
or
- crash
Click to expand...
You haven't been watching long enough. When I started watching it was six-pack, no panel GPS, paper charts and a Garmin 396 or 496. It wasn't any better.
 
TipTanks said:
He is asking for feedback folks!....
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And throwing shade at @Radar Contact in the process...

Stephen Shore said:
I don't know this Wagner guy, this thread has made me go and watch a few of his videos, and no, I really don't get the vitriol and hate coming his way. If you want to see some crazy sh^%t come to my little non-towered field and see some of the hi-jinks out there. Makes me enjoy flying into Houston Hobby or Dallas Love Field just to get around some professional pilots.

In my humble opinion, if this Wagner guy is not to your liking just stay away from watching his videos.
Click to expand...

The problem is that Jerry, and every pilot who flies like him, hurts us. Pilots that don't follow the FARs tend to have crashes and **** off the general public. That means the rest of us will face more airports closing, higher insurance rates, and more government regulation. Every single GA-loving pilot should stand up and call out Jerry as the bad actor that he is, and if we can't get him to quit flying and quit posting YouTube videos of his bad flying, maybe we can at least keep other people from emulating his atrocious techniques.
 
N1120A said:
IHe's exceptionally kind and good to talk to, and values safety.
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I have to say something here. You’re being misled by a friendly nature and charisma.

Even with all of the Internet silliness surrounding him... that he bring upon himself...

There’s at least two very high time CFIIs who’ve reached out to him offering assistance with getting his instrument flying skills back to the level of his certificate. He refuses their assistance.

He does NOT value safety. He TALKS like he does. Big difference.

He doesn’t fly to standards and refuses help in doing so. Period. Full stop. Doesn’t matter how “nice a guy” he is.

If you do see him regularly and have any rapport with him, someone breaking through his beliefs that he’s “fine” or even “good” at instrument flying is the only way he’ll ever get remedial training.

I think he’s plenty bright and could fly those airplanes to better than his certificate standards, if only he would shut up and let a CFII who understands how to break machismo is to show the pilot they don’t even hit minimum standards for their certificate and then beats really hard on them to break the bad habits and instill new ones.

He needs an ass kicking in a cockpit with a crusty CFII who won’t believe his ********.

“Tell me where you are on this approach right NOW, and what’s next. And don’t reach for a gadget.” He needs SA beat into his habits.

He does that, he’s probably got the skill to fly much much better than he does. But his YT “fans” are clueless and keep his delusion going.

Breaking out at 45 degrees of bank and whatever the zoomed image of the right side ASI said is deadly serious and wrong. He doesn’t get that. Video after video. Unstable approaches, needles flopping all over the place, lost on the plate, always the controller’s fault on everything... Is not the result of valuing safety.

It’s the result of TALKING like you value safety. The damn evidence is in the videos. And he has to take a LOT of them down.

It’s a complete lack of self-evaluation and a delusion that the negative commenters aren’t correct.

Anyone else sees those comments they take them to heart and call up a CFII to work on it.
 
denverpilot said:
He does that, he’s probably got the skill to fly much much better than he does. But his YT “fans” are clueless and keep his delusion going.
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I think this is a big part of the problem. His YouTube following has him in a bubble of non-reality where he gets support for every thing no matter dumb or not. bolsters his macho issues.

I also think there’s often a bit of “must-make-a-video-itis” that plays into his macho hazardous attitude. Gotta be the first one to shoot this approach today because it makes for a cool video. Otherwise, why would any sane person shoot that approach just for fun? He didn’t need to be there, it was a pleasure flight.
 
Salty said:
I also think there’s often a bit of “must-make-a-video-itis” that plays into his macho hazardous attitude. Gotta be the first one to shoot this approach today because it makes for a cool video. Otherwise, why would any sane person shoot that approach just for fun? He didn’t need to be there, it was a pleasure flight.
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I don’t even mind that part. I’ve gone flying in the rain and shot approaches because flyable IMC here is rare.

But he could take a CFII along and get a real workout on camera if he wanted to... his fans would applaud that just as much as a bungled approach...
 
Salty said:
Otherwise, why would any sane person shoot that approach just for fun? He didn’t need to be there, it was a pleasure flight.
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Why do people climb mountains or ski down from them ?

Nothing wrong with a competent instrument pilot flying an approach to minimums just for the challenge of doing it right. And if you are good at it and have some video editing skills, there isn't anything wrong with publishing a video so others can learn from it.

But that's not Jerry.
 
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weilke said:
Why do people climb mountains or ski down from them ?

Nothing wrong with a competent instrument pilot flying an approach to minimums just for the challenge of doing it right. And if you are good at it and have some video editing skills, there isn't anything wrong with putting publishing a video so others can learn from it.

But that's not Jerry.
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I think there’s a big difference in attitudes between being the first to climb a face and being the first to shoot an approach in bad weather.
 
Salty said:
I think there’s a big difference in attitudes between being the first to climb a face and being the first to shoot an approach in bad weather.
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I havent seen any approaches in bad weather. All of them are in weather an instructor could take a student to shoot approaches.
 
weilke said:
I havent seen any approaches in bad weather. All of them are in weather an instructor could take a student to shoot approaches.
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He is scary enough when the weather is IFR. No need for rain or snow. Have a look from about 6:40 at this approach into KAUN (Auburn, CA):

https://streamable.com/usuwo?fbclid=IwAR1o0tKsSql5kJvik_zR_egk-nPiYcjgo5UaPuXKGJ6MTDxch5lSCBxr1q4

This was saved by somebody as he pulled the original video from YouTube. The raised fist after landing means "Wow, I can't believe we're still alive."
 
DesertNomad said:
He is scary enough when the weather is IFR. No need for rain or snow. Have a look from about 6:40 at this approach into KAUN (Auburn, CA):
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I was talking about there being nothing wrong with a competent instrument pilot making videos of approaches to minimums in benign instrument weather.
 
weilke said:
I havent seen any approaches in bad weather. All of them are in weather an instructor could take a student to shoot approaches.
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I’m specifically referring to his proud statements of being the first one in on a morning the minimums were debatable. Both before and after he made a big deal about nobody else being able to get in. Add a camera to that and I think it shows his priorities are in the wrong place.
 
Salty said:
I’m specifically referring to his proud statements of being the first one in on a morning the minimums were debatable. Both before and after he made a big deal about nobody else being able to get in. Add a camera to that and I think it shows his priorities are in the wrong place.
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Agreed.
 
weilke said:
Why do people climb mountains or ski down from them ?

Nothing wrong with a competent instrument pilot flying an approach to minimums just for the challenge of doing it right. And if you are good at it and have some video editing skills, there isn't anything wrong with publishing a video so others can learn from it.

But that's not Jerry.
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The problem for Jerry is a competent proper approach to mins looks pretty damned boring on a video.

Much more dramatic to break out at a 45*, unstable, with a fist pump in the air for saving the landing!
 
I was just listening to the latest Airline Pilot Guy podcast and they had some feedback about Mr. Wagner’s...approach. Episode 403 around the 2:19:00 mark if anyone is interested.
 
Radar Contact said:
I get it...trade in the beautiful wife for an unattractive one and no rear facing cameras. Glad he’s willing to teach filming/YouTubing in addition to flying skills. :)
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I about spit out my coffee.

Have you seen how he treats his wife in his older videos? Pretty rude really. He essentially calls her a dumbass and tells her how she’s wrong if she even speaks.

Would be hilarious if y’all could do an identical cockpit video to him talking to his wife to throw shade back his way. LOL LOL LOL
 
They’d have even better Top Gun Wagner footage if they would’ve save some of the old vids that he deleted.
 
midlifeflyer said:
Even on Streamable, there are TOS.
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Nah they’re talking about his copy on his channel.

He removed that, drove to the airport, shot a video of himself standing next to his airplane saying he doesn’t know if he should take it as a compliment or be offended, and reposted the video after that.

And the YT fanboys are stroking his ego already. It’s priceless.
 
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