Of course, this is the same forum that constant craps on Jerry Wagner for not crashing his plane, so...
Oh no. Multiple forums do that. This place is tame compared to the pro pilot forums, when it comes to Jerry.
They’re all especially impressed with his unstabilized cowboy approaches in cabin class twins and the whole getting lost intercepting ILSes in IMC and coming out of the clouds in 30 plus degrees or more of bank angle and pushing ten degrees nose down with a windshield full of houses.
It was one of those forums, where they’d been following him for years in the same thread, where someone zoomed the instrument panel up so everyone could enjoy it, months and months before any GA forums even knew who the guy was.
Multiple pro forums have been on to that guy for years. If you hunt around you can find the threads and even some screenshots of all the videos he’s taken down.
A few enterprising bored 121 and 135 folk even download the videos and post them in out of the way servers now for posterity. Or at least claim to. I try to catch them before he yanks them down and usually manage to.
Quite a few of the screenshots, zooms, and video links were at those forums months before here. Along with even better commentary and snark.
If anything this place and numerous GA FB groups and even snarky ol’ Reddit are way too kind to Jerry. Mostly because GA groups really only “found” him in 2020.
His antics go back many years.
Should see his old videos of how he talks to his wife as he prattles on for the camera about how great a pilot he is, verbally abusing her at any opportunity.
GA forums haven’t even found those videos yet. My wife watched one with me. She was, shall we say, unimpressed. Haha.
The series of videos where internet pressure got him to pretend he was using a checklist for a short stint — while making fun of them in each video — really impressed the pro forums too. They had super nice things to say about that. LOL
GA forums are super late to the Jerry game.
Vast majority of those old videos magically disappeared — long ago.
I’m going to guess I stumbled across his detractors about two years ago, and I think
@midlifeflyer has me beat by a couple more years since I’ve seen him comment elsewhere.
The two of us are downright kind compared to the pros. I suspect it’s that we both teach and hold out unreasonable hope the guy will listen to someone someday.
The pros usually begin with something along the lines of saying they’d happily toss him out of the aircraft without a parachute. They’ve been stuck on a six day trip with someone that bad before, and have zero tolerance for it. No interest whatsoever in teaching him anything or even attempting to.
About the only thing I haven’t seen yet is anyplace running an official dead-pool on the dude with real bets as to date. Nobody truly wants him dead, but he’s constantly trying to get there.
Mark and I have even commented that he does seem to have some skill with energy management, VMC... but his IMC instrument skill set and ability to always blame his avionics and autopilots in, what is it now, three aircraft?
That is at pure “legendary” status at this point.
Do I think he’ll survive? If he manages to purposefully or accidentally avoid much, if any, IMC to minimums on any regular basis, and doesn’t have any real emergencies while in IMC... yeah probably. He cowboys twins around at low level quite a bit, but does seem to understand his energy state when doing so.
Anyway. Thread derailment but truly this place is kind to that guy.
Should have seen the comments elsewhere about the videos he posted when flying with his brother in a jet. LOL. OMG I about died laughing. Never seen a better odd couple video of two pilots in a cockpit.
The commentary was mostly about his poor brother having to listen to him the whole time. Brother made a few mistakes too, but was about three light years ahead of the airplane than ol’ Jerry was, most of the time.
Those are worth looking up if they’re still posted. Truly bizarre. Mike has the patience of Job.