Hello, I'm Brandon Martini, a commercial pilot and flight instructor.
And I'm Carson Vasquez.
I'm a private pilot.
And you're listening to the Aviation Mentors Podcast sponsored by Stratis Financial.
So buckle up because the aviation mentors are taking off.
Welcome back everybody to another great and fantastic episode of the Aviation Mentors
Podcast.
I think we're down to seven days as of when this comes out till Oshkosh, or at least
till we leave to Oshkosh.
And I think it's what, 10 days, Carson, before we get to Oshkosh?
Yeah, you get there a little later than I do.
I'm going to be there from the 20th on.
Oh, wow.
So I get a little bit more Oshkosh time than you.
Absolutely.
Well, I'm excited for it.
I'm sure all of you know we are, especially after the episode that came out two days ago,
talking about flying into Oshkosh for the first time, which was pretty fantastic.
Today though, we actually have a impromptu podcast recording.
And I'm actually in Texas right now visiting my mom and her friends.
And so we decided we want to have her on the podcast.
So my mom, Debbie Martini, is our guest today.
And we've been talking about having one of our moms on the podcast for a while, Carson,
and it finally happened.
Yeah, it's definitely a special guest, right?
I mean, how often do you get to have your mom on your podcast?
That's pretty cool.
It is fun.
So welcome, mom.
Thanks so much.
Pretty amazing.
I'm super excited.
Yeah, you've only been on the receiving end of the podcast for so long.
Now you finally get to be on an episode.
It's awesome.
Thank you for being on with us today.
I really appreciate it.
It's good to see you.
So the first question that we usually ask is, how did you get into aviation?
But you're not quite a pilot, are you?
Oh, for sure not.
Yes.
Instead, we're going to talk about a lot about how you feel with branded flying.
So my first question for you is how do you feel when you found out that Brandon wanted
to go and become a pilot?
What was that like?
Well, I have to be honest.
At first, I was very, very nervous and I said, absolutely not.
He said, I want flight lessons for Christmas.
I want everyone just to give me money or certificates for flight lessons.
I said, no, no, no, no, you are way too young.
You are not going to go fly a plane.
We are not doing that.
Okay.
Christmas comes along and what does everyone get him?
Money and certificates for a local flight school.
I finally just had to give in.
He already had the certificates, already had the money ready.
He was going whether I was going to like it or not.
And he was of age to go ahead and do it.
So I just had to embrace it.
So here we are.
By the way, I think I was 24 or 25 or 26 when I did this.
So it's not like I was like 14 years old.
And remember one of our first 10 episodes or 15 episodes, whatever it was, I think we're
close to 90 now.
So they all kind of blend in for me.
But one of our first episodes was an episode, Are You Too Young to Fly?
And we had Austin on it.
And Austin was 11 at the time.
And we decided that Austin was not too young to fly being his father.
And my mom's saying that I was in my mid to late 20s and I was too young to fly, which
is pretty hilarious, actually.
Yeah, but what your father's going to say, what your mom's going to say are two very
different things.
I can't imagine that she was very excited for you to fly.
You know, that's not something fun.
My mom didn't want to let me fly, but she still did.
Same thing.
Exactly.
Yeah.
So my turn for the next question.
What did you think the first time you ever saw me fly an airplane?
I was mesmerized.
I was just, whoa, he is really doing this.
Like he is following his dream.
He was following his passion.
It was amazing.
I have to say that I was in awe and couldn't believe it, but it was amazing.
And what a journey it's been since.
Yeah, it's definitely been a journey.
And I don't know, I'm still kind of in disbelief every time I'm flying an airplane.
I'm like, what am I even doing up here?
Is this real?
Like, where am I at right now?
I don't know.
Which pill did I take?
The blue one or the red one?
I'm not really sure.
Well, it's definitely a weird feeling.
It hits me like once every two or three months where I'm just like, wow, I'm actually a pilot.
I could fly an airplane.
And Brann has been flying a lot longer than I have.
So I can't imagine that makes you feel either.
Exactly.
No, just to watch you guys, you guys, I mean, of course, because I'm a mom, you guys are
so young to me and you are up there just living your dream.
And it's really amazing.
I love it.
Yeah.
Well, you know better than everyone else that Brann is going to be persistent and figure
out a way to do it.
So seeing him fly has got to be pretty big accomplishment for you.
But I'm sure you weren't always that confident in him.
So when he started flying, what were some of your biggest concerns for when he started?
Well, I was just I was really nervous that he was up by himself flying.
But then I did kind of know that they always say in an airplane is much safer than down
on the street.
There's a lot less planes up around you than there are cars on the street.
So that kind of helped me get through that.
But I still kind of a little nervous about the clouds.
And I don't know a whole lot about the inside of the plane and all those instruments that
you guys all figure out.
You guys know what you're doing.
So it still makes me nervous.
But I'm 100 percent confident in his abilities that I'm OK with it now for sure.
I'm also pretty confident his abilities, considering I've flown with him so many times.
And I got to say, my mom's probably about as confident as you are because she lets me
fly with him.
So Brandon, you're obviously doing something right for all the moms to trust you.
Exactly.
No, for sure.
I think that's why whenever I've done demo flights in the past, there's people that just
say I'm only flying with him and I have to somehow convince them to fly with somebody
other than me because I don't have the time to do all those demo flights.
So it is nice having having people around that have confidence in my flying.
I know it took a long time for me to feel 100 percent confident in my flying.
I know that when I first started out, I think I've talked about this when I first did my
first passengers, which was my son Austin and my sister Ashley and her now husband Andrew.
I said, I don't know, looking back at it, I was like, there's no reason I should have
taken all of them up in the air.
So with that, I'm kind of curious.
How did you feel when I took up your daughter, her soon to be husband?
Not at the time, but now he is, and your grandson up for their first flight with me behind the
wheel.
It was pretty crazy.
It was it was a nerve racking feeling.
But I again had 100 percent confident in you.
I remember the day that you said, I'm going to take you to lunch, mom, I want to go fly
you somewhere for lunch.
And I was like, OK, but, you know, trying to let you know that I'm not nervous in the
least bit.
I get to the airport and I see these little, little tiny planes and I went, oh, so is it
that plane over there?
And I'm looking at like a 10 passenger plane or something.
And you're like, no, it's this little red one right here.
I was like, oh, no, but that's old and that's small.
We can't go up in that.
No, but but I'm trying not to let you know that I'm still nervous because again, you're
my son and I 100 percent trust you.
And I'm going to let you know that I'm good with this.
So I get in headphones on.
We get ready to go and we fly to San Diego for lunch.
And that has to be one of the most memorable times I've ever had with just the two of us
flying to go have lunch.
I said we need to do that again.
But I saw the passion that that you had now through your eyes by me being up in that sky
with you.
I was just like, wow, we were flying over the ocean.
It was so beautiful.
I saw the confidence you had and I knew this was the right path for you.
And I then was not nervous anymore.
I'm curious.
So I know we've believe it or not.
So I've done a lot of airplane flying, but I think I've only flown with you two times
actually maybe more than that.
But two that I remember, I know the first one went to San Diego.
Do you know where we went?
Did we go to Castle Manchado for Mexican food or do we go to the other place at Palomar
with like the blue ceiling and they had like airplanes painted on it?
Was that the one we went to?
I'm pretty sure it was that one, right?
Yes, it was.
It was just the airport cafe.
Yeah.
So it was that we actually went to Palomar CRQ.
I couldn't remember which one we did, but I was pretty sure it was CRQ.
But yeah, we went over there and that's a pretty big airport.
There's a lot of big airplanes flying around.
By the way, I think I picked that because it's exactly 50 miles from Riverside or Chino,
whatever.
No, we took off from Chino that day.
It was exactly 50 miles from Chino or might be 52.
So it counted as a cross country.
That's the whole reason why I picked it because I didn't have my instrument rating at that
time.
So it was kind of neat.
But actually, I'm going to kind of skip Carson's question because we've kind of answered part
of it.
But I'm going to ask a different one.
So I did another flight with you and my second flight with her was actually with my sister
Kristen as well.
And we went in a twin that I don't know if you know this, but you're going to find out
right now.
I think I only flew this twin two or three times ever.
And it was a Cessna Skymaster and it was a push-puller.
I had no business flying it around that much.
I barely knew how to fly it.
I mean, I really know how to fly it.
I mean, it's an airplane, it's an airplane.
But I hadn't flown this particular airplane more than a couple, three, four hours at the
very most.
So how do you feel about that flight?
Because I know we flew down to San Diego again, but we went like this round robin circle.
And it was super, we went all the way down towards like San Diego airport and we took
the coastline all the way up and went over John Wayne and then came back around.
How did you feel about that flight?
Because that was a little bit different.
We didn't land for lunch or anything, but it was in a way different airplane.
By the way, the plane was twice the size.
Exactly.
No, it was much bigger.
I think I felt a little more comfortable in the plane, but not really knowing that you
weren't as confident in that plane.
But good thing I didn't know that at the time you handled it just like a pro and I would
have never even guessed that.
And I would put my life and myself back up in any of those planes with you.
You have just done an amazing job, amazing journey.
I am so, so proud of what you've accomplished here.
Oh, I appreciate that.
One other thing in that airplane, I don't know if I told you, I had an emergency landing
in that airplane a couple of months ago.
Maybe six months ago, I declared an emergency.
I didn't think the front nose gear came down on that exact airplane and I ended up landing
it.
I actually did a crazy maneuver.
Carson, I told you about this one.
No, your mom and I are both just waiting for the story.
You better start talking.
I shouldn't know this.
I'm thinking maybe you should have kept this one to yourself.
It's okay.
I don't tell my mom about things going wrong in the planes either.
Don't worry.
So, okay, I'll tell the story on the podcast.
It's kind of an interesting one.
I didn't even have to fill out any paperwork or anything with the FAA, so that was nice.
But I did have fire trucks ran and all that stuff actually.
Cory, who's a friend of ours who's a CFI, he actually recorded this whole incident.
So I have the video.
We can ask Cory for the video.
He has a video of me.
I don't know if he has any audio on it, but he definitely has a video of me landing the
airplane, which I have to say was pretty good.
But you just have to bring that up.
It was a smooth landing because you thought you didn't have a gear, right?
So that's why it's such a nice landing.
It really was.
No.
So I took off in the same Skymaster and it was owned by somebody else at this time.
When I flew with you, I owned the airplane and I had it for sale actually.
And then I sold the airplane to this gentleman.
He hadn't learned to fly yet.
He wanted to learn how to fly.
So he was actually living in Torrance and he wanted me to bring the airplane to him.
So I said, okay, I'll bring the airplane to you and we'll go learn to fly in Torrance
for the day.
And then I'll just come back in the afternoon.
I'll fly it back home.
So I take off and I put the gear up and then the gear warning horn starts blaring.
Just like that.
Just as annoying as it sounds to all of our listeners listening to right now.
It was that annoying in the cockpit, right?
So the only way I could get it to turn off was to put the gear down.
So I put the gear down and of course my lights weren't working on the gear.
So I checked the circuit breakers.
I did everything you're supposed to do.
I pulled the P.O.H. out.
I circled the airport for probably 45 minutes and I just did a holding pattern above the
airport.
I mean, I didn't have an issue.
And then I did a low pass, a slow low pass so the airport could look at my gear.
And they said that my main gear, my left, my right gear were fully extended.
And they said my nose gear, I quote, does not appear to be fully extended.
So that made me feel great.
So I ended up flying around in circles for 30, 40 minutes or it could have been 10 minutes
for all I know.
I mean, it just felt like forever.
And then I decided, hey, I want you guys to go get fire trucks.
So I told them grab fire trucks and I want fire personnel available for me.
And I handled it just in a professional calm manner.
But inside I was nervous.
I was a little scared.
I mean, I was about to land an airplane with no nose gear with a rotating propeller in
front of me, which is not exciting.
So I came up with this plan when I was up there and then I told the tower, hey, I'm
ready to land.
And my plan was I was going to come in as slow as I could.
As soon as my mains touched, I was going to cut the mixture to the front engine while
trying to teeter totter the nose of the airplane because it wasn't my airplane.
I want to try to save the engine if at all possible.
I know that was probably a crazy thing to even think to do.
But I knew I was in control of the airplane.
So I wasn't too nervous.
So I landed on the mains with the nose really high, the tail really low, and I cut the engine.
And then I just let the airplane slow down naturally.
And then I just I buckled my seatbelt as tight as I could.
I turned off the mags as soon as I was ready to let the nose fall down.
I cut the mixture and turned off all the fuel.
Like I practiced it in the air like four times before I did it.
So I knew exactly where my hands had to go.
And I cut all the power.
I cut everything off.
I cut all the mixtures.
I cut all the fuel and I let that nose come down and I feel it roll.
And I took off my seatbelt.
I ran and jumped out of the airplane.
By the way, everybody should really see my my hand movements right now because I'm like
reenacting it.
So you know what the color commentary we need is?
We need the color commentary of your mom's face right now.
She's rolling her eyes every time you said it's OK.
She looks shocked.
She looks like she's about to hit you.
She's shaking her head.
I'm more scared of Brandon than I am to be in a situation.
I mean, this is terrifying situation for him.
So I put the airplane down and then my friend who is like the operations manager, his name's
Roger.
He comes over because I have a relationship with Roger for years.
He comes over to me with his fire truck and he looks at it and I get away from the airplane
and it looks like we're good.
And needless to say, there was an issue with the with the wiring or something.
I don't remember what the issue was, but the lights did not turn on.
Once I put it on the ground, the gear was fully extended.
I found out that it doesn't look fully extended in the mirror and it doesn't look fully extended
from the tower.
So it's just because the nose gear on that airplane is so short.
And at this time, I probably have 30 hours in it, but I've just never really noticed
how short the nose landing gear looks from the inside of the airplane when it's fully
extended.
Mixed with that gear horn and mixed with the lights not working and mixed with me doing
emergency gear procedures, it ended up being a stressful situation.
But end of the day, it ended up working out just fine.
I did all my training.
I did all the things that I was supposed to do that you're confident in my abilities with.
And now we get to tell this story on a podcast.
And I didn't have to do any paperwork.
I ended up taxiing the airplane off the runway.
Ended up being a fantastic day.
And I went about my day after that.
I didn't even talk about it, obviously, because Carson's never heard about it.
And neither is my mom.
So there we go.
It was just another day in the office for me.
So how do you feel about that story?
Yeah, that that's nerve wracking for sure.
I couldn't even imagine how you must have felt at the time having to go ahead and figure
out a plan, having a game plan.
That makes me nervous.
But I'm so glad that that it turned out perfect.
It turned out better than perfect.
The airplane was able to fly again.
That was even better.
And it flew again recently.
I've seen it flying.
She's going to change her checklist to call your mom.
She's going to put down the emergency checklist, by the way.
Yeah, on the top of it.
For all future incidents.
I am every time he flies now, it's it's due the checklist and mommy's on it.
By the way, it doesn't matter.
It doesn't matter how old you get.
It's still still there.
It doesn't matter.
Yeah, it's a mother's love and a mother's concern brain.
And that's not going away.
So I don't think so.
I don't think if I'm 60, it's going to matter.
It's not straight from her mouth.
There you go.
Yeah.
Cool.
Well, Debbie, thank you so much for being on with us.
It's always great to see you.
And it's awesome to have you on the podcast.
It's definitely about time.
Yes.
Thank you.
It was super exciting.
I was quite nervous, really, when he asked me if I wanted to do this.
I was like, I don't know, is this live or can you edit it?
But it all worked out great.
Loved it.
Thank you so much for having me.
What's funny is the only person who's messed up on this podcast today was me.
And I'm the one who we're going to have to edit out and not her.
She messed up at all, which was fantastic.
So by the way, none of you will know that I messed up, of course, because Phil will edit
it all out and it'll sound so perfect.
But but still.
Yeah, we actually we actually make quite a few mistakes.
So it usually happens every once in a while.
But you know, Debbie, it's pretty cool that even though you're not a pilot, I'd like to
say yet, but I know I know how you feel about it.
It's OK.
It's not for everybody.
And after I've seen Brandon fly, it probably wouldn't be for me either.
But it's always great to have another perspective and get the perspective of a parent and the
parents concern and trust and the whole journey that you've you've had along with his journey.
It's really awesome to see.
So thanks for being on with us.
Thank you so much.
And thank you, everybody, for listening today.
I hope you enjoyed it from my mom's perspective and on seeing everything from her eyes.
And just a reminder to everybody out there, there's you should send this episode out to
your mom if she's nervous about you learning to fly.
I guarantee that it'll ease some of her nerves for sure, because it's just one of those things
that every mother is going to have to go through or father.
I mean, I know whenever Austin solos one day, I'm going to be very nervous as well.
It's just one of those things that you have to get over as a parent.
So make sure that that you send send this over to your mom, have them listen to it.
And that way you can really enjoy it.
So thanks again for being on the podcast.
And if anybody listening today would like to reach out to either one of us, you can
also reach us at Brandon Aviation Mentors dot com or Carson at Aviation Mentors dot
com.
And don't forget to come visit us in the Stratus booth coming up in just a few days by the
time you guys hear this.
So it's going to be super awesome.
We're excited to be there.
We're in the indoor hangars booth 1053 and 1054.
So we'll see you guys then.
And as a wrap up for the day, remember, we're here to guide you in your aviation journey.
So fly safe and enjoy the ride.
See ya.
Bye.