All right, we're ready for departure here at the Pilot Project podcast, the best source for stories and advice from the pilots of the RCAF. I'm your host, Brian Morrison. With me today for a second time is Vic Weston. Listeners will remember Vic from our episode on phase three, helicopter Training. Vic, thanks so much for coming back and being on the show.
It's always a pleasure, Brian.
We'll go over Vic's bio quickly in case any of the listeners haven't listened to that episode, which I highly recommend checking out. Vic joined the military when he was 17. After university, he was posted to Joint Rescue Coordination Center in Victoria, BC. He earned his wings in 2012 and was posted to 417 Combat Support Squadron in Cold Lake, Alberta, to fly to Ch 146 Griffin. He was posted in 2017 to four four four combat Support Squadron in Goose Bay, Newfoundland and Labrador, and to the Combined Air Operations Center, or Chaoc, in 2018 in Winnipeg. In 2020, he was posted to three Canadian Forces Flight Training School, or three CFTs in Portugal Pariah, Manitoba, where he continues to instruct today on the Bell 412 helicopter. Today we will be focusing on his time flying combat support on the Ch 146 Griffin. So, for listeners who would like more of a background information on Vic, how he got into aviation, how his flight training went, I highly recommend you check out the episode on Phase Three Helicopter Training, because we go through all of that there. We're going to go past that now and go straight to when Vic was posted to Cold Lake. So, Vic, I don't think we covered this the first time. What was it like when you got posted to Cold Lake? Was that what you were hoping for?
Yeah, I was hoping to go search and rescue. And I remember my course director when I was graduating, basically gave me the option of, hey, I can either get posted to 408, which was tackel in Edmonton, or I get posted to 417. And I had never heard of 417 before at that point, so I actually had to look it up in Wikipedia to find out where it was. And yeah, as soon as I saw hey, it's SAR. I'm in. And, uh, so I got the posting message and, uh, we were renting a place just outside of Portage and we packed that up and drove up there and yeah, it, uh, was great. I checked in in September of 2012. I was very fortunate. There was a period in which guys were having to basically sit and wait for the Otu after graduating, but I was super fortunate. I kind of showed up just before that period, and I had some really great mentors up there who got me flying basically right away. Yeah, it was a bit of pretty small adaptation process from, uh, going from the Outlaw here to the Griffin. Obviously, the Griffin at that time wasn't set up for GPS instrument flying. Uh, you could still use the GPS to navigate, but just it wasn't certified for instrument flying.
Okay.
And there were some steam gauges where we have a partial glass cockpit here. Right in the outlaw.
If I could just quickly when he talks steam gauges versus glass cockpit for the listeners, steam gauges are the older gauges that are traditional gauges. Like you might picture glass cockpit is everything is electric. It's LCD screens. And all of your gauges are on the screen.
Yeah, exactly.
Was there any temptation to take that tackel slot?
No.
That wasn't interesting to you?
No, I was always a star guy.
And everybody was going tackel basically back then, right?
No, there was a mix, for sure. There, uh, were guys who one per course would typically end up either SAR or maritime.
Yeah.
But out of a course of how many?
Oh, out of like, four.
Okay.
So it was pretty reasonable. And I did reasonably well on course, so I had a couple of hiccups here and there, but, uh, overall, I, uh, went through it not too shabby. And, uh yeah, there wasn't any cormorant slots open, unfortunately, at that point, so it was either that or tackel.
Are they still sending many guys straight to cormorant, or it's largely a second tour aircraft now, right?
Very much so, yeah. So the only people they are sending to the cormorant out of here are guys who have experience and are patching over to helicopters or, uh we had a former SARtech or instructor.
Right? Yeah.
Or instructor. The only guy who came and was winged and then sent to the cormarant in my time here was Kent Stanway, who, uh, he was a former SARtech.
Well, those guys can do anything.
Yeah.
I mean, pretty much.
Back to, uh, cold lake then you were there with your wife, right?
Yeah.
And so how did you guys find that as a community? And how did your wife find it, being in? Because cold lake is a bit isolated. You hear some people who love it and some people who it really wasn't for them. How did you guys find it?
We actually really liked the isolation, so, uh, we had a blast both in Cold lake and in Goose bay.
Yeah, true.
Because you guys had two fairly isolated postings.
Yeah.
And cold lake is not that bad. You're only 3 hours from costco. Uh, that is really the metric of how isolated you are. True. And there was a walmart right, in cold lake where in goose bay it was a five hour drive to the nearest walmart even.
Yeah, that's fair.
But we really enjoyed it. I mean, granted, the thing is that we had a young family that we were starting up there, so we had our first two kids when we were in cold lake. Uh, so we were kind of in that stage of our life where we were not really in the stage of life where we're going out and partying all the time, we're going to bed early.
Yeah.
I mean, similar to Portage as a student, I didn't find Portage too fun. As a parent, I love it here. It's a great place to live.
Exactly. This is not the place to come if you are a single guy. It is really the place if you have a young family that you're wanting to raise. You're talking portage or cold lake? Yeah, we really liked it up there.
You guys found it a good community.
Yeah, it's a great community. They had all the amenities that we needed. Like, they have food, dentists, all those sorts of things. And really good community centers and really good events for the kids. Uh, very similar to here.
Yeah, we loved it.
Pivoting away from that and just getting back into combat support. What does a combat support squadron do exactly?
So the history of combat support is that we were always kind of a base utility flight.
And what does that mean?
So a base utility flight was kind of all the aircraft that support the mission. So, for instance, back before 417 was up there, it was called base flight. And, uh, you had all the guys who were flying red air for the fighters were part of that group. And, uh, you had the base utility helicopters. And originally it was the Iroquois, the 212. And, uh, then they subsequently got upgraded to the 412 when they came online between 93 and 95. Then the red air guys got privatized. So that's what top aces is.
Okay.
They're essentially they play red air.
Uh, when you say red air, you mean like enemy forces?
Yeah, enemy force. So it's basically where fighter pilots go to retire. Unless they go to air Canada.
That's right.
It's funny, I've ran into guys who are our generation that are moving on over a couple of years ahead of me.
So Top Aces is a private company. They have a whole fleet of various very cool aircraft. And the Canadian forces contracts them to play enemy forces in various roles.
Yeah, they work with the army, navy, and air force.
So what exactly then do you guys do?
So our primary role is to be a search and rescue aircraft for downed fighter pilots is our primary role, at least when I was there. And then subsequent to that, we are a base utility flight. So for instance, like I talked about in the last podcast, there was, uh, a lot of low level repeater stations. So that when you're in the low level environment, your radio traffic does not travel very far, it doesn't propagate very far. So they have a bunch of towers in the air weapons range that can take your signal and repeat it so that you can have a farther reach and we would go and maintain those. There were also a lot of targets up there so they would have, like, a tank formation that's made out of plywood. And the fighter pilots would receive a target package of this. And we would go out and maintain them and make sure they actually look like something. As opposed to match sticks. Yeah, as opposed to match sticks. And there were fake runways, there were all sorts of stuff there. So, uh, we just tried to maintain those so that, uh, they were of utility for the guys.
So a bit of a jack of all trades position.
Yeah, very much so. And we would also do, like all aircraft. We're a secondary national SAR resource as well. But because we have Sartechs, we have a hoist, we are much more tasked than the majority of other aircraft.
Yeah.
So you guys are still part of the search and rescue community?
Yes.
So all the pilots and flight engineers and Sartex are all part of the SAR community. So we get posted around within that community. Now, subsequent to my time there, both Cold Lake and Baggettville have been turned over to, uh, One wing. And one Wing is it's, uh, the Tactical Aviation Group. So they're now taking over those two squadrons four, three, nine and 417. And then they're transitioning into One Wing right now. So the next Co, I believe, for both squadrons will be Attack LCO. And then they'll start moving their people in and, uh, the SAR folks there will be posted to a different SAR unit.
So what's the implication then of it becoming part of one wing? Does that mean they're going to try to develop combat search and rescue capabilities?
I don't know. To be honest with you, I don't think we'll ever get to combat SAR because that's a very intensive thing that requires, like, a whole package.
Since we are on the topic, CSAR or Combat SAR, can you explain what that is and how it's different from what you guys were doing?
So, combat Search and rescue is probably the most elite form of search and rescue, and it's really only done by, I believe, the Americans. I think the Dutch and the Brits, I think, are the only people that do it within NATO. And basically what they do is they do what we do up in Cold Lake, except they do it in a hostile environment. And so you have a fighter pilot who was shot down. And it's not just the helicopters are just one small part of this. You also have the suppression of enemy air defense. You have fast air, you have tankers, you have airborne early warning.
You got PJs or para jumpers who are going to jump out of the.
Back of a Hurk. Yeah, it's all of those pieces tied together that make Combat SAR. You really tend to hear about the PJs and the helicopters, but it's a whole team that goes in and does that.
Yeah.
When I was in Kuwait, we got a tour of the CSAR facility and through basically their rescue coordination center and all that stuff. And it was very eye opening. I totally had pictured they'd talk about, well, some Apaches are going to come and these various aircraft are going to come with rescuers. And you think, okay, that makes sense. But then you see the extent of the operation and it is massive.
Yeah, it would take so much of our resources.
Very comforting, though, when you're one of the pilots that they might come to rescue to see that big team there, and all of them are like 8ft tall.
Yeah, that's true. All the PJs are just muscle for years down, uh, not to be messed with. Those guys seeing them operate is always pretty, uh, interesting.
Can you give us a quick outline of the Otu or the operational training Unit course?
Yeah, so we do the same Otu that, uh, One Wing actually does.
So you folks do that with the tackel folks?
Yeah, we we absolutely do. So we go out and we check in, engagetown. I did mine January to March of 13 and I think it was me and one other fellow that were the only SAR folks there. And then the rest of them were all One Wing guys.
So what was that course like?
What did you do?
We start out with the basics. They basically convert you from the Outlaw to the Griffin, which is quite short, but there's a few different things. Like we fly some things differently, we have a few different checks. So we do that initial conversion phase and then you do a, uh, short instrument flying phase and then you move on to the TAC phase and basically you start out, uh, very basic single ship operations and then you'll move to two ship operations and then you start incorporating nights onto that. It's always just layering on one thing after the other. Right. You build the foundation in your flight training and now we're building the first floor with the Otu.
Okay.
Was it fun?
So much fun. Yeah, it was so good.
You guys were doing the tackhill course. So did it give you any little twinge of like I kind of wish I went tackle.
I mean, it is cool what those guys do. I'm not taking anything away from them. They do some really awesome stuff, but I enjoy the low flying. That part is really cool. I enjoy the formation flying, the tactics I find very interesting, but I like not also living in a trench, so I'm soft like winter tires. Uh, I hear you. I like my hotel rooms, thank you very much.
Yeah.
What's the, uh, training and upgrade process like for combat? Sport pilot?
It's actually pretty quick. Once you're down the Otu, it's actually a nine or ten flight conversion over to SAR. So you are basically just working on the meat and potatoes of SAR, the hard SAR skills.
Yeah.
So Hoisting, uh, searches, things like that is really what you're working on. So you go out the first trip, you're just working on doing some hovering out of ground effect station keeping, those sorts of things, listening to the con from the flight engineer telling you which way to go. And then on the second trip, we actually go with Sartex. And it's really when the rubber meets the road is they go out and watch you do your first hoisting sequence, and they give you the thumbs up or the thumbs down. They make or break you. And the SARtech said, yeah, good to go. And so he hopped on the line and went out.
Did that feel like a lot of high stakes or high pressure thing to have someone on the line for the first time?
Oh, yeah, for sure. It's the first time you do a confined area at the school, too, is the same thing. I want to do a good job, but I'm also a little bit nervous as well. And it would be my worst nightmare to put a guy into the trees or to harm a SARtech, because that has happened operationally. Uh, that was always like one of my biggest concerns was like, hey, are we keeping our guys safe when we put them out on the hook?
That probably leads into the next question, which is, what did you find was the hardest part of the job when.
You started just being that really solid first officer? You get taught 20% of all the things you need to know, and I was really finding out that other 80%.
Which is more of a learn through experience type.
Exactly, yeah, building that experience was really like and some of the emergency handling can be tricky, too.
Where do you think that pilots tend to struggle in combat support?
I think it's really when they go for their aircraft captain upgrade, because now they've gone from being a first officer to the mission commander. And really they've had some experience. They've seen how the magic is made. But it's dealing with all those choices that you have to make. You have to make a lot of really quick decisions in order to get a mission done. And we all know that a mission never survives. A plan never survives first contact with the enemy. And for us, we don't have an enemy, but we have reality, and the weather is our enemy.
The circumstances in SAR, you're not going out in typically not in easy or fun circumstances. You're going out because someone has an emergency and it's probably happened in bad weather.
Exactly. I remember multiple times the weather was bad in Cold Lake. My wife and I were out for a walk, and I said, oh, this is good SAR weather. And an hour later, you get the old phone call. It's like, oh, yeah, that checks out. And we also have worse weather limits. We can accept more risk than civilian agencies. So, for instance, the air ambulances are not able to go in as bad a weather as we can.
So do you guys do air ambulance flights?
We will do that for them. In normal conditions, they have fantastic service ability and they're always able to go. But in those kind of edge cases where it's bad, uh, weather or they're on another tasking, we could help them out. But generally, uh, speaking, it's quite rare. Okay, yeah, uh, it's definitely the upgrade because of that whole decision making piece.
Right.
Everybody who gets that far can typically fly. That's not the issue. They've clearly demonstrated the levels prior to their upgrade trip. It is just the constant things evolving, things changing constantly that folks really struggle with, trying to deal with. And that's typically where you'll see folks fall off, is in the decision making. And it's very dynamic. You have very little notice and you have to come up with a hasty plan and get out the door. And you have this initial plan and then there's going to be things thrown at you to force you to change your plan. And you just got to be willing to adapt. You got to be flexible. You got to just deal with it as you go.
Did you find that you gained that experience organically as being part of the community and doing the missions that you were doing, or did it require some extra mentorship? I guess basically what I'm asking is, if that's where people tend to struggle, then what can they do to overcome that?
So I think I was highly successful because of my time at the rescue center. And it may seem counterintuitive, but I had a whole lot of tabletop practice. And it's not just you kind of.
Had the god's eye view of what a Star mission looks like.
Exactly.
And there's a lot of pieces that are completely opaque to the average pilot, but you kind of get to see when you're at the rescue center. And so I kind of knew what the folks at the rescue center were looking for when they would say, hey, yeah, this is happening, i, uh, would know what questions to ask. And that really helped. And there was one thing on my upgrade that I distinctly remember that paid off from my time at the rescue center. So, emergency beacons, they will put out like a whoop whoop sound on 121 five, which is our standard emergency frequency. So everybody, all of Air Canada pilots and WestJet and any other aviators out there typically are monitoring that frequency passively. And anytime that something is transmitted, they will receive it. So this beacon will go off. And I remember there was one case when I was at the rescue center was that we were getting this beacon and we were having a real heck of a time running it to ground, like just locating it, locating it because it felt like it was moving around. And it wasn't like we would follow the needle to where we thought it was and the needle would swing and then it'd be somewhere else. And it turned out that the emergency transmitter was near a high tension power line. And something about the high tension power lines, I don't know what the science behind it, but ultimately it will transmit it much more effectively down the power line than it will propagate in any other direction. So I remember that I was doing a search and I had my direction finding equipment working and I flew over a power line and all of a sudden the needle swings. And I remember thinking to myself, and, uh, we're using a training frequency. We weren't using 121 five for that, but the needle swung and then it swung back. I was like, oh, that's super weird. And then I saw the power line there and I remembered, hey, this is something that can occur. And so I'm like, okay, I'm going to follow this power line. And I just knew. And then, lo and behold, yeah, the guys are set up right underneath the power line. Imagine that. And, uh, then we affected the rescue and just those little pieces, right. Being able to talk competently about the satellite constellations that we have and how that all plays together with our modern.
Emergency locator transmitters with, uh, SARSAT and all that stuff.
Yeah, exactly.
So wrapping this back into kind of how you can overcome those challenges, it sounds like a big part of it is industry knowledge and just experience, right. Having the experience, learning from the people who have worked at joint rescue coordination centers and just knowing the equipment well, knowing how it works, knowing the little, uh, quirks that various types of beacons have and that kind of stuff.
Well, and knowing how everybody within your organization operates is a big part of it. Right. It's not just, hey, how does my crew operate? Or how do I operate? That's great when you're a first officer, but then when you're becoming a mission commander, you need to know how the flight engineer operates. You need to know how the SARtech operates. You need to know how the maintenance staff operate. You need to know how your headquarters.
Is going to operate, and how was this search area defined, how did they come up with this?
Yeah, exactly. Because you may get a piece of data from somewhere else that's not the rescue center that could really narrow your search. It's not only important to try to draw that stuff in, but to, hey, make sure it's passed on so the next person searching will be able to help narrow that down.
It sounds like a really interesting, dynamic set of taskings.
I love it. It's great. I mean, when you're able to help somebody and rescue them, it's amazing. I remember we did this mission. I was not a member of the crew on this mission, but it was essentially a lady who was having a baby, but was having a lot of trouble having the baby. And we were tasked to transport her from just outside of Cold Lake down to Edmonton, which was the major baby ICU. And again, because it was terrible weather, we got tasked with it because it was outside of the, uh, air ambulance's envelope of accepted risk. So our guys went and did the mission. And I think it was two or three years later, we were at an air show and this lady came up and started talking and she said, this is my baby. That's life you saved. And I had two young kids at the time. It was trying to keep a stiff upper lip, but, uh, it was very emotional to just normally we don't get to see that. We normally hand a patient off to EMS or a hospital, or we hand them off to the police if they're fine. But generally, we don't get to see the good news or the bad news.
You don't get to close the loop.
You don't get to close the loop. Exactly.
That's pretty common in, I think, a lot of places. Aside from tackhill, basically.
Oh, uh, you get to close the loop big time.
Tack Hill. You're closing the loop all day, every day because you're living with those guys. But when it comes to most of the rest of the jobs in air power, it's only a part of a bigger picture. Yeah, that sounds amazing.
Yeah.
Uh, you're just a small cog in the big machine.
That's right.
It's always interesting when you get to kind of zoom out and see the whole machine a little bit more and how it all fits together. It's pretty cool.
That is really cool. Can you take me through a normal day on a combat support squadron?
Yeah.
So you show up to work 08:00, roughly. You go take a look at the weather, meet up with the crew, and just talk about what's kind of going on. Normally, in the summertime, we would tow the helicopter out onto the ramp. Uh, in the wintertime, it would really be based on the weather, if it was any kind of risk of precip, we may not tow the aircraft just so that if you have freezing rain or something like that, it can be often tricky to get it off. You have to drag it back inside.
Or, uh, precip being precipitation.
Yeah.
Sorry, that's all good. Me and my short word.
No, it's good.
And so that would kind of be the first start of our day during Maple Flag, or like a big, uh, error exercise that we would have. We would actually be on a faster response time. So we would go out and we would actually start the aircraft, do all the systems checks, and then shut it right back down and top up the fuel. And everybody would take their gear out, put it on board, and on, uh, a major exercise, we're 15 minutes to skis up, and then during the day, it's an hour typically. And then at night, if there's no air operations happening, we're 12 hours, just like every other secondary SAR resource.
Okay.
How many times a week can you expect to fly on a training mission?
We would typically do two or three training trips a week, and then there could be some utility on top of that, but typically four times a week, depending on serviceability.
About four flights a week?
Yeah.
That's actually very solid.
Yeah, it was great. It's sometimes feast and famine.
Yeah.
It'll vary.
Yeah.
But you typically have a person or two out the door on some form of training.
What kind of more specialized training courses.
Do you guys do? Once you get a little bit further down the line, you'll do the AMPAC course, which is an air mobility training course, when you're starting to get ready to become an aircraft captain, and that's just kind of wargaming a bunch of scenarios and just prepping you to be that, uh, aircraft captain. Things that you don't necessarily talk about in the squadron. But we take a week, we go out to Trenton, we kind of commiserate with a bunch of fixed wing guys and a bunch of other gives you.
Some big picture type stuff.
Yeah, big picture type stuff. And you run through different emergencies. That's a big one. The searchmaster course is another big one for us in the SAR community.
Is that a requirement to be an AC?
No, not a requirement to be an AC, but it is basically a headquarters position. If there is a major search, they'll task somebody from the squadron to go out and be the search master.
Okay, so that's like coordinating the entire search.
Yeah, coordinating the entire search. And they'll probably send somebody from the rescue center, too, if it is a really major search or a major air disaster. So you tend to get a, uh, small headquarters stood up pretty quickly for that. So those are kind of the big courses. There's not really a ton. Of course. It's a lot of exercises that we do.
Do you guys do the mountain flying course?
Yeah, mountain flying course, of course.
That's an amazing helicopter pilots do that.
Yes.
I've heard that is, like, the best course in flying.
Yes, 100%. It's so well done and the folks there are so eminently qualified. It was just spectacular. It is everything you think that flying should be. When you think about, like, hey, I'm just going to go for a magic carpet ride in the mountains, like, right up against the terrain, it was so darn fantastic. And, I mean, you're on full TD, you're in a hotel suite, you're living your best life.
That's awesome.
Every exercise should be like that.
That sounds really good. Yeah, this is kind of sales pitch time.
This.
Is the thing I really like to do. So in 30 seconds or less, if I'm a pilot in training, somebody who's say on their rotary course right now, why should I want to go combat support? What makes it unique and who would it appeal to?
I think it appeals to folks that are wanting to get into search and rescue. I mean, now it's kind of the one wing piece, but we still have goose Bay is still combat support, and it's still within search and rescue. A goose bay is amazing. I loved it in my time there. And, uh, it is isolated, but it creates such a glorious community. The flying is some of the best flying you'll ever do.
Yeah.
You're not going to shoot weapons, but you don't do that anyways as a pilot. Some other guy shoot.
There's only one community where the pilot's shooting weapons.
Yeah.
But it is everything you think that helicopter flying should be, and you're doing good. And other than the fighter force, it is the pointy end of the stick. Domestically, you are actually doing the business. You're not going to LARP and Wainwright, you are going out and doing the business. When you are called out after hours.
You'Re doing what you train for.
Yeah.
You are employing your skill set.
Can you tell me about the best or most rewarding day that you had on the aircraft in combat support?
One that comes to mind was, uh, when I was in Goose Bay, actually, we had these two guys who were out doing a giant canoe expedition. They were doing something like 800 watershed in Labrador.
Wow.
And, uh, they just had some bad luck. They were very well prepared, but they had some bad luck. And, um, they got swept out of their canoe. And then their canoe got hydraulically held underwater.
Like from the current?
Yeah, from the current in the middle of this rapids. And the two guys were able to get all their gear out and were kind of on the side of the river, and they had hit their emergency beacon. And, uh, the Cormorant had tried to go in there at night, but the weather was too crappy. So we got tasked the following day, and it was like the most amazing SAR flight where everything just went perfect. The weather, it was kind of crummy in the morning, but the sun came out and it cleared it all off. We flew down there. It was like, 115 miles to the south of Goose.
So not too far.
Yeah, not too far. It was a single bag of gas. And we pulled the folks out, flew them home.
Everybody was safe and sound.
All's well that ends well.
They must have been pretty happy to see you guys.
Yeah, but they were under this misconception, and this is something I actually do want to talk about, is that we do not cost recover in the military.
Yes, I've heard this story before that people will get rescued, and the first thing they'll ask, they'll be with a busted leg, getting hoisted up into the helicopter. And they're saying, I can't afford this. How much is this going to cost me?
$0. We will never charge you if you call us. Please, I implore you to always call early. If you are in bad shape, you're worried about something, the weather's coming in, do not wait until you're at the point of breaking. Call us before free helicopter ride. We will not charge you. We will come and help you if you are in trouble.
Yeah, that's an important message. I have a good friend who's a SARtech. You know, Dylan showed out to his podcast, the SARtech Beauty. I hear from him all the time that the people they rescue, it's, uh, such a common question. You got to figure if people are wondering, that often enough. The people who do call, there must be a lot of people who don't call because they're worried about that.
And you're doing me a favor. I get to come and employ my skill set. If I get to help you, that's all the better. So please call us. And this is what we train for. We have this great system in Canada where we don't charge anybody. We just go out and help people. And that is truly amazing. Not only that, but it's like, hey, you have these cheap personal locator beacons that are out there. It's always a great thing to have. You can register it and say who you are, who the contact information are. There are even, like, ones that now will send two way text so you could say database stuff, yeah, I have a broken leg, and the rescue center will you can send that off, and the rescue center will get that and they'll say, helps on the way. And that is a massive part of just having that ability to carry on through that. You could be cold and tired and injured, and it's very easy to give up at that point. But when you have that reassurance that help is on the way, it is truly amazing how that can reinvigorate you.
So for the next question, I always ask people, what was your best day in the aircraft? And I always ask people, what was your hardest day in the aircraft? But the truth is that you and I both know what your hardest day in the aircraft was. On, uh, November 28, 2016, near Four Wing Cold Ache, tom McQueen was part of a two ship formation for an air to ground training mission when his plane crashed into the ground, killing him instantly. Now, Vic, you are one of the pilots that responded that day, but Tom was also one of your best friends.
Yeah.
How long had you known Tom?
Uh, so I met Tom. I think the first time we really got to know each other was on phase two, but I had met him a few times before, like, he was on land survival with me. And we kind of knew each other a little bit through phase one as well. But it was really on phase two when we were both in Cobra flight on the same course, that, uh, we really got to know each other. And I really became really good buddies with them. And you always tend to become good buddies with people when you're in the thick of things, right? It's always the tough times, make the strongest friendships.
So how did that day start for you?
So I was actually flying when it happened. I was out doing some sort of resupply or utility mission. I think it could have just been a proficiency flight. I'm not sure, honestly, I don't remember what I was doing. But I was the aircraft captain, and I was flying with, uh, another fellow who was, uh, he was also a fairly experienced guy, too. And we were just out doing our thing. And so this happened a few days before that. They had done a tabletop of a crash, and we initially got alerted by tower calling us on guard.
And for the listeners, guard is the emergency frequency 121.5 and saying, uh, hey.
Come up on tower frequency. So we were down in the low level, up in the air range, and, uh, we were bingo gas. We were on our way home at this point, and I turn over to tower frequency and I hear a lot of chatter going on and people talking about being on scene commander and things like that. And I check in, say, hey, yeah, we're on frequency. And they say, yeah, there's been an aircraft crash in, uh, the air weapons range. And first question is, I'm assuming it's an exercise. And I say, hey, is this exercise or real world? And they say, no, it's real world. I take one look at the gas, there's no way I can go anywhere with the gas I have. So we're trucking home, and plus, we're not a full SAR compliment. We're just a utility crew. I don't even remember if we had a flight engineer on board at that point. And we blast home, it's full tilt boogie home. And I get the aircraft on the ramp. The sarbird, which we had pulled out and checked before, was sitting there. So my copilot turned off this aircraft and I just ran over, jumped in the other one and started it up. And then the CEO at the time, he was the mission commander for the flight, and the SARtech and the flight engineer jumped in.
So you became the copilot now?
Yeah, I went from being the aircraft captain down to being the copilot. So it's very interchangeable, those roles.
What was going through your mind?
Just, hey, we got to get the mission going, we got to get this guy. It's cold out, it's November, so let's get out there.
Yeah.
November and cold lakes, no joke.
Yeah, it was surprisingly not that cold, but it was still like cold enough where it's like and the fighter guys do not carry enough B 25 in their little seat pack so they're going to be cold when they're out.
And B 25 is the cold weather survival gear that pilots bring with them when it's below zero.
Yeah, they just don't have the room and so it's always, hey, let's get out there. And there's also the risk of suspension trauma, which they wear their ejection harness and if they were to say go and eject into a tree, they may be suspended by their thing. And what happens is you essentially cut off your femoral arteries. They act as a Tournique your weight, and that can lead to a lot of blood poisoning and other bad things. So it's very vital that we get to them quickly.
So you were just thinking like, speed is the key.
Speed is the key, right? And just getting out there, we'll be back in 2 hours and we'll go crush a couple of beers at the mess and celebrate and uh, yeah, life's good. And just by the fact that I've heard people, nobody really saying anything super negative, uh, that was kind of like, okay, yeah, like that was in my mindset anyways. We, we get launched and from the time of the initial alert to the time we were on scene, I think was about an hour and we had a 30 minutes transit up there from the air base so it was a very rapid turnaround. And uh, as we're approaching, the fighter guys are talking us onto the scene and uh, we see a shoot and we think, oh, okay, we're kind of like gearing up to go and check the guy, see if he's all good and kind uh, of move on with our life. And I'm flying and I pull us into the hover and we put the SARtech in right away and he goes in and alerts us that, hey, yeah. Unfortunately uh, the Aviator did not survive and we pass that on in our standard message format to uh, the headquarters and then once we know that the pilots succumbed to their injuries, we initiate a recovery and salvage operation.
So, do you guys land?
We didn't land at the spot because um, it was kind of a swamp and uh, there was a lot of deadheads so there wasn't like a suitable spot where we could actually land. There was always trees in the way.
Yeah, I, ah, just want to clarify that deadheads are like dead trees that are dangerous and that they could fall at any moment.
So we displaced and landed at a nearby spot and we were communicating with our SARtech on the ground. Basically what ended up happening was the headquarters told us to come back and get the initial flight safety team and uh, the folks to safe the seat because the seat was not actually used. So there's still a whole bunch of rockets and, uh, explosives.
Okay, so you needed like, an EOD type scenario.
Yeah.
There's a few folks who work on the seats, and they're trained, and if there is, uh, a crash, how to go in and neutralize all those things.
So that the rockets don't go off.
Yeah, so they don't go off unexpectedly.
And we're talking about the Ejection Seed and the rockets that drive the Ejection Seed.
So we left our SARtech there and basically with orders to, hey, cut us a spot, like, cut down all the trees so we can land. Right. Not quite in the crash site, but just adjacent to it.
I'm guessing a place that still preserves the crash site.
Exactly. Yeah.
And we always tend to go downwind of the crash site, but with the F 18, there's a lot of carbon fiber. So we actually stood off to avoid that kind of downwind. Uh, like debris clouds, debris cloud, and anything burning, like burning carbon fiber. It's like asbestos. It's very toxic. Uh, we went back, got those folks, we came back and, uh, we started the recovery operation. And at this point, I still had no idea it was Tom.
Yeah.
What's changing in your mind as you guys go from a rescue to a recovery?
Really, like, the big thing that we're looking for is we want to preserve the cause factors so that we know that because this could save lives in the future. Right. If we know that, hey, there's something it is a very mature aircraft, the F 18. But things can still go wrong, especially as the aircraft becomes more legacy, is things start to TX that maybe you didn't expect.
TX, meaning, uh, like expire or just.
No longer work as expected. So that was kind of our thought now.
So you were still fairly clinical?
Yeah.
I mean, you have to be you kind of have to put up a barrier, and, uh, there's no two ways around it. If you let it in at that point, you can't function. So you need to put your feelings in a box and put it on the shelf. And, uh, you readdress that later.
Was that difficult at the time, or you just found this came automatically?
It's just automatic. You have to be automatic with it. If you're not, then perhaps searching rescue isn't the right fit for you.
So what happened next?
So we went and we were doing the whole recovery and salvage operation.
Were you the crew part of that?
Uh, yeah, we were out helping because we're bodies that were out and there, and it's a limited amount of people we can carry at any given time. And then, uh, we were kind of getting into, hey, we need to repatriate the remains of the victim. So the air weapons range covers two provinces, and it covers part of the province of Alberta and part of the province of Saskatchewan. It's about 50 50, actually.
Okay.
And uh, he ended up perishing on the Saskatchewan side of the range.
Does that mean he has to go to the Saskatchewan Coroner's office?
Yes.
They were not allowed to repatriate him to Cold Lake.
That must have been kind of difficult.
Yeah, it was very frustrating. But it kind of leads into that whole how search and rescue can kind of be that very dynamic thing though, in that we went out to go and recover him. And I still had no idea at this point when we were going out to this is the last one of the day. We're going to bring the last people home and bring the remains to the corner. It was dark, it was already dark out by the time we were departing.
Had you been involved in recovering the remains?
Yes.
That's hard.
Yeah, we flew out and we knew we were having to go to a little town called Pierceland that is just on the Saskatchewan side of we're right on the border. There's a border town. So we were taking the remains to Pierceland. So we go up and just stepping back a second. One of the things I remember still not knowing who it was and I talked to the DCO of my unit and I asked her, I'm like, hey, do you know who this is? And she took one look at me and she said, I'll tell you when you get down. When Jill told me that, hey, she'll tell me. I'm just so grateful to her because I don't know if I could have gotten back on that aircraft. To be frank, I could have been a blob on the floor. I think if, uh, just knowing that and being young and not ever having to really deal with any adversity in.
My life, it really shows you the wisdom that she had there because, oh.
My goodness, amazing to hold that back in that moment.
You don't know if people are going to resent you for holding that back, but she made the professional decision to keep you. There's no choice. You're already out there.
Jill's a total pro. She is so wonderful. We ended up going to get the remains. We brought them to Pierceland. And surprisingly for a town that is super tiny, it has two airports. And we found this out the hard way because we look up in the CFS, uh, or the Canadian Flight Supplement which is uh, basically it's a guide of all the airports in Canada. And the airport that was in there was a private airport. And we go and land and uh, we were told to expect like the corner and the RCMP to kind of be out there. And we're like, where is everybody? And so we land next to the apron and uh, we send the SARtech out, hey, maybe they're in the hangar. Just staying warm or something. And he goes and opens the hangar and we must have tripped a silent alarm because there was this truck that a minute later that came down the road and it was just flying. You could tell it was like, going because its headlights were, like, going up and down and up and down and up and down as it was going down this dirt road. And in that time, we had called the RCMP member and said, hey, uh, where are you? We're here. And he said, oh, you must be at the wrong airport. So we start rolling up and the flight engineer is signaling to, uh, the SARtech, hey, come back, come back. And this car pulls up as we're just departing down the runway and we ended up going to the other airport. We told the RCMP member, hey, we don't know where it is exactly because it's not in the CFS. So turn on your lights and we'll find you. And you just look underneath the night vision goggles and you can see the red and blues. And so we ended up landing there and, uh, that was when I found out it was my buddy. We have a mutual friend, uh, who, uh, we went through on Cobra flight together. And, uh, I saw him and I could see that he was really down and out. It's like, hey, man, lost one of your best buddies, that sucks. One of your squadron mates. Because I knew it was at his squadron and, uh, I didn't really get a chance to wave to him or anything just because it was a pretty somber moment. And then the SARtech gets back in and was like, yeah, that was his best friend because they grew up together. And, uh, that was when I found out.
That was when you realized it was Tom?
Yeah.
So what went on in your mind then?
Honestly, it was a very short flight home.
But you still had to fly home?
Yeah, we still had to go from Pierceland back to Cold Lake to shut her down for the night and, uh, yeah, uh, it was a long trip. 16 miles can be real long sometimes. And, uh, we landed, shut down, went home. I told my wife we had a big cry about that. And, uh, then, uh, I ended up calling my buddy up and, uh yeah, so we ended up having a hot wash, uh, with a few other guys. And, uh, when you say hot wash, kind of just talking about a debriefing of kind of what happened. And they told me the fighter perspective and I told them the rescue perspective and we had a few drinks and that's all you can really do is be together and be together and grieve. And my thing was when I found out is I didn't want to take leave. I wanted to be part of it and make sure that I'm doing my part to help and to be useful. And, uh, I ended up flying Tom's folks who are just the absolute best people in the world, like absolute salt of the earth, amazing people. I was fortunate enough to fly them out to the site and it was truly an amazing thing.
It must have been really emotional.
It was very emotional. But we kind of flew down this river as we were coming back just because the weather was pretty bad and there were all these eagles. And I know that really gave them a lot of feeling of peace. Peace really helped them kind of be at peace with what happened.
Uh.
Uh, that was my day. It was less than spectacular, to say the least.
I remember that day. I was working in ops at 405 Squadron in Greenwood on the Auroras. And, uh, it was terrible. It was terrible to you get the word there's been an accident. You get the word that someone is dead and then you just wait to find out who. And I had a couple of my best buddies were on Fighters. I knew Tom. I didn't know him extremely well. I just remembered a guy with a huge smile that was always on his face and absolute legend. Yeah. Just a funny, high energy, big, uh, smile guy. And, uh, it was an awful I'm getting shivers thinking about it. It was such a hard day.
But he was getting married in three weeks. Yeah.
Uh, I remember that he was engaged and yeah, just about to be married as well. It was really tragic.
Yeah.
But you know what? I try to just use his legacy to always do my best and really try to do him proud. Right. That's all we can do at this stage, is, uh, hope that he's proud of who we are and what we've done and just keep moving forward.
Right?
Yeah, absolutely. I just want to say to the listeners, if you are curious about this, we're purposefully leaving out the details of the incident itself and kind of what went down and how it happened. Because we'd prefer for you to get that from the official flight safety report from the RCAF, which if you Google it, um, Tom McQueen, his call sign was Toast. Um, and if you look up Swift.
Three Two, swift Three Two was the.
Flight the flight number. You can find the accident report and all the official Causation analysis and all of that stuff. And we're just going to stay away from that. This is about the human experience of it and kind of talking about some of the realities that you'll face sometimes in this job. And that's why we're here talking about this. And we're really also trying to treat the story with deep respect because Tom has a family, tom has a woman he was going to marry. And it's important that we just treat this very carefully. Now, obviously, I would assume that that day left quite an imprint on you. Would that be correct?
Oh, yeah.
Are you comfortable telling us some of how that affected you?
Yeah, absolutely. So I didn't realize how it affected me. I just went through the motions for the next week, and then I knew the squadron chief over there, and I told him, hey, I want to go to the funeral. And he made it happen. Absolute legend of a guy. So I got to go to the funeral. The fighter guys were awesome enough to include me kind of in the honor guard, which was I'm really thankful to them that, uh, they thought of me.
That's a huge honor.
Yeah, they thought of me, and they were awesome enough to include me. So thank you to all those guys who thought of it. It's sad that we tend to only see all our friends when tragedy strikes, because if there's any silver lining, it was gained to see a lot of my friends that I hadn't seen in a long time and then kind of back to work. It was very much just back to the old grind of things. And, uh, I didn't really take inventory of where I was at. I was young and foolish and didn't have any experience with tragedy, not like this. And I went to kind of a post crash. We had a whole bunch of medical follow ups. And it was one of those where I realized, hey, I'm not good to go right now.
What made you realize that?
I think it was just that I was very angry.
Over what?
Nothing. It was just that there was this anger that was there that's not pretty atypical for me. I think anybody who knows me knows I'm not a very angry person.
Yeah, absolutely.
And that was like, whoa. It really kind of made me put the brakes on everything and say, hey, I'm not good to go right now. And allowed me to kind of go and seek help. I went and saw a social worker. She was fantastic. She was a wife of a fighter pilot. So I admire her bravery for sitting there and hearing me talk about these things and not holding anything back. And I was really admired her bravery for that. And then just time to process this all, and I look back and there's incidents in your life where you think, hey, how did I because I'm okay now. I really am. And, uh, I've been able to process it all and grieve, and we've been able to kind of not let this drag me down. And, uh, a large part of that is just understanding the whole process of PTSD and really, uh, understanding that it's two components, fundamentally, and this is very simplistic. I am not a medical doctor by any means. Please do not assume that I know what I'm talking about. But this is generally my very simplistic understanding, is that post traumatic stress disorder is really caused by something very abnormal happening, coupled with some very strong emotions. So an example of that is you saw an elephant in a grocery store. That is very abnormal, but it's kind of funny. No real strong emotions attached to that. Or you lose somebody and that's very sad. But we all know that that's the most sure thing in the world is that we're all going to, uh, one day pass on. But it was the fact that you have this very abnormal thing. I've never seen an aircraft crash before in my life prior to this. Normally, if I've arrived at an aircraft crash, it was like the fire has been put out, or it wasn't as right now as it has happened.
This was fresh and raw.
Yes.
And I had never processed up in that point. I had never processed an aircraft like that, where it was like, normally I would always stay on the aircraft and deal with it, but we were like, shutting down and going out into the wreckage.
Yeah.
And then plus, it turns out you help recover remains and it turns out to be one of your best friends.
Exactly. And that was where the strong emotions couple in.
Right.
And so I was afraid that yeah, I was not going to be good. And luckily, I had a very supportive team up. Like my co was amazing. I had some other great leaders and mentors up there that really kind of helped me through it and really gave a lot of encouragement. And, uh, four months later, I had to go and do my AC upgrade as well, because I was going from a first officer to an aircraft captain. I was very senior first officer when this all happened. And, uh, just going through and dealing with it and, uh, there were scenarios where there were crashed fighter jets and dealing with that was my mentors were very sensitive about that with me and, um, just checking in after and it was great. I was very fortunate. And that was one of the best things about Cold Lake is I had just fantastic mentors from top to bottom. I wouldn't be where I am without them.
Do you have any hesitancy or concerns about returning to SAR?
No.
Even when I was in Goose Bay, I was able to process and still conduct missions effectively. And now that there's been a significant more time has transpired since then, I know I can still do it. It's just a matter of, hey, do I still remember how to do it? Do I remember how it all fits together? It's been a few years now, but, uh, yeah, I definitely think that again, with the great mentorship and great leadership we have, I think I'll have no problem getting back in the saddle.
Yeah, that's really good to hear. It's always great to hear that somebody who goes through something like this has had the time. And space to heal, and especially been given that support by their command structure. It's so, so important.
And I'll say, too, I'm better than what I was before. Because now, before you lose anybody, you kind of have this, like, oh, you don't take it seriously.
Cavalier.
Cavalier. You do not take it seriously. And then you lose friends and see people go down to other things, and it gives you a certain gravity that you have to treat this job with and made me a much more fundamentally, more serious person.
You'll hear this all the time, but if you stay in aviation long enough, you will lose some friends. Yeah, I've had several friends over the years that have passed away in various accidents. And it's just part of knowing enough people and enough time passing.
Yeah.
I just try to honor Tom any way I can.
I was going to ask, do you.
And your family do anything to honor Tom or to remember him?
We usually just like, I don't do anything on the 28 November. Like, that's kind of my Remembrance Day, you know, like, I go out and I honor our veterans, obviously, on Remembrance Day. But, you know, that's really my day of where I really just honor Tom. I mean, I did name my third child after him just because that we really wanted to honor him. And, uh, I was blessed by his folks, who I am very thankful for, that they let me do that. So I'm very grateful to them. It always seems that tragedy befalls the best of us. Brian. Yeah, we really did lose, like, the eminently qualified guy. I think he topped every single course he was on and did it with such humility and grace that if that can happen to him, it can happen to anyone. And I would say to people that if you are feeling confident or you feel that you're indestructible, you are not. And that is something to really check yourself on because that is when you will get yourself into trouble.
Thank you for sharing that. There's a lot to be learned from it. And I think that these stories deserve to be told because I think people should know more than the one paragraph that I read about Tom. Um, I think people should know about what that day was like and that it was hard for you and that people were affected because all of that was in service of Canada.
Well, and I think we got to mentally prepare our people because they're going to see some bad at some point in their life, and I want them to go in eyes wide open. Hearing this could help. Right. Uh, and sharing your story right. That not only I think is good, but it also, hey, maybe help the next guy.
So we're going to shift gears back into a couple of questions as we close out the interview. As you've moved into Instructing, what is something you miss about being operational.
It's m definitely the dynamic nature of it. We are teaching guys the basics here. We're building that foundation, and so we really don't get super deep into all the weeds of all the things we do post flight training. Although today, actually, as we're recording it, I went out and did a guy's final trip. And so we kind of do like, a bit of a mission where we were simulating, hey, there was some flooding going on, and we're going to go pick up the Prime Minister, and he wants to go and see the people who are helping. Right. And that's a mission that could happen. So we kind of give them a little bit of that, a little taste, just to try to prepare them a little bit more for, uh, the real world. And, I mean, we didn't have that when I was a student. I think it's great. I wish we had more. Obviously, we have the constraints of the amount of hours we're allowed to, uh, fly, and we're trying to produce the best product, the most efficiently. But, yeah, that's what I miss. I miss working with the Sartex and the flight engineers and, uh, just the crew. Yeah, the crew just such great folks. That is the best part about our job.
Working in a crew is so fun.
Well, and it's just the people are the best part of this whole institution. I know that sounds cliche, but it's so true. It's so true. It truly is. And you're working with people at their best, too. You see, like, people just leaning into things and getting after it, and it's always impressive to watch.
Did you have a call sign? And if so, what's the story behind it?
So my call sign is Dee Dee, which is short for Dee Dee Mao, which, uh, I believe the translation is Go, go fast. And it came from, actually, one of my first trips in Cold Lake. I just gotten qualified as a utility only first officer. I hadn't even gone on the Otu yet. So it was the first four months of my time there. And I was out with Jill, actually, and we were out at the Cold Lake Municipal Airport when I was on phase three, kind of stepping back. I'd been shown by one of my instructors, we did this flight after our final clearhood test back in the day, that we would go out and just have a fun flight. And we were converting from doing all of our training in the right hand seat over to the left hand seat, which is where we would do all of our instrument flying, all our night flying, and we would go out and have this kind of neat flight. And one of the things my instructor showed me was to do a downwind departure and you kind of turn around the tail of the helicopter and depart downwind and she called it a Dee Dee Mao. So anyways, I'm up in Cold Lake, and we're at the Cold Lake Municipal Airport, which there's the air base, and then there's this tiny little municipal airport that's about 510 miles to the north. So I'm up there. I'm like, yeah, I'm just going to Dee dee Mao out of here. And I start turning to the right and departing downwind. And, uh, I think the AC and the flight engineer just, like, looked at each other, go, who the heck is this guy that they sent us? Dee Dee. What? So we had, like, a discussion about standard calls and building people's mental model. Right. They didn't have a hot clue what I was doing. They'd never heard that term before.
Yeah.
And that's pretty uncomfortable when someone's like, all right, I'm just going to bust a move here.
And I think that was my first time flying with them both, too, so really great first impression. I'm a master of first impression. Right. Of course. Uh, it was like, I think two or three years later that we did the fighter guys do their call sign ceremony. And so we had our call sign ceremony, and that ended up being my call sign was Dee Dee.
Live and learn.
Yeah, but I mean, that's exactly, like, the perfect call sign, right?
Yeah.
Because it is supposed to kind of be a little tongue in cheek a little bit, remind you of one of your shortcomings. And for me, I know my weaknesses are being that guy who just wants to go go fast. And also, I tend to have some non standard radio calls. Non standard crew calls.
You're a non standard person?
Yeah, I'm a bit of a non standard person. That's a great way to put it, Brian. I don't know whether that's good or bad.
It's good. That's where your charm comes from.
Yeah.
Majuna sequois.
That's right.
Last time we had you on, you said sleep was the most important thing that you do to stay ready. Do you think that that's changed or would you still say that's the case?
It's so important. And it was really the crash with Tom that really made that vital and really got me kind of in that whole space with it because I wasn't sleeping from Tom. Um, nightmares, intrusive thoughts, not so great things were happening.
All the classics.
All the classics. So it really got me, like I did, like, a full sleep hygiene thing where I was like, my wife always makes fun of me for my it has to be super dark in here. I can't operate with any light on.
I'm the same way.
She's always chair for me about that, which, I mean, fair, I am a bit of a pre Madonna. Oh, I need to wear my eye mask if there's any light. But you know what? Especially when you're parenting, you need to be well rested. Or, uh, aviating parenting or aviating are the two where you really need that bandwidth that, uh, a good night's sleep gives you and like your mattress, I went all out, man.
I always ask people what advice they have for a new pilot. Do you have any new advice for a new pilot?
Maybe.
Based on some of the things we've.
Talked about today, I think just stay humble and really monitor yourself. Be a good self. Monitor is a key one. Right? Just, hey, how am I doing? Versus my baseline. We see that a lot here. When, uh, folks come here on a career course, they're away from their support network. It can be very highly stressful. People who are very resilient can easily drift from that green into the yellow into the orange, and before you know it, you're in the red and you don't know how the heck you got there. And it's so insidious that, uh, you really have to monitor and have some key things like, hey, am I sleeping well? Hey, how's my emotional state? Have some reflection of how am I doing? That's key. I know Pete, uh, Musters, he always talks about the Am I safe?
I think it's I'm safe. It's an acronym, basically, that tells you all the things you should check before.
You actually fly it's on the wall, which is how I know I don't have it committed to memory. Sorry, Pete. Love you, bud. But it really talks about all those key metrics and you need to be monitoring those. And so it's like, I can tell, like, hey, I didn't get a good night's sleep. Well, I'm not the best dad I could be, I'm not the best instructor I could be if I don't get a good night's sleep. So I still stand by my sleep. Maybe a little humility, that's always good for me. And yeah, just keep putting the nose, the grindstone, getting after it, and try to always see the positive in everybody too. Right? That's the other one I know. Uh, if anybody really knows me, I'm a bit of a poop magnet to say the least. And, uh, that's really structured me as who I am and why. I tend to give people a lot of latitude. Be hard on yourself, for sure, but give grace to other people. Somebody screwed something up. Well, maybe they're having a bad day. Maybe, uh, try to make an excuse for them. I was very foolish on basic training and got my 3000 PSI finger out once when I was a, uh, little inebriated. I could have been taken off course, but the PO at the time said, hey, I know you're going to go and do great things. Because he came and asked me the next day when I was not inebriated and I was as deeply ashamed because I was a fool. But, uh, he said, hey, you're going to go and do great things.
Uh, well, people deserve second chances.
Yeah.
And I've been given them.
So.
Yeah, as have I.
And so it's always important to give lots of grace and really try to be empathetic and try to coach and mentor people as opposed to hammer them.
I think that's a great way to wrap this up. That's, uh, a really great piece of advice. And we get a lot of advice about being a pilot, but part of being a pilot is just being a good person and how you treat other people.
Being a dude, being a dude or due debt or a dudette. I'm equal opportunity. That's right in the dude's fear.
Okay, Vic.
Well, I just want to thank you again for coming back here. I want to thank you for your time. I want to thank you for being willing to talk about some really difficult topics and for opening up to me and to the audience. I know that that wasn't completely easy for you and I'm very grateful for that. So thank you so much.
Hey, it's always a pleasure.
Brian. All right.
That is going to wrap up our episode on combat support as well as the story of Tom's death and how that affected Vic. For our next episode, we're going to learn a little bit about what it's like to be a student as we check in with a student who is currently on phase two, scott Harding. Scott is part of a trial program where they skip most of phase one and move straight onto phase two. Listeners will remember this from our episode on training delays, which, if you haven't checked out, is definitely worth your time. Do you have any questions or comments about something you've heard in this episode? Or would you like to ask us a question? Would you or someone you know make a great guest for the show? Reach out to us at thepilotprojectpodcast@gmail.com or on all social media at atpodpilotproject. We truly love hearing from our listeners. We want to thank all our listeners for the continued growth we've been experiencing and remind you that we still need your help with the big three that's like and follow us on social media. Share with your friends and follow and rate us five stars wherever you get your podcasts. That's all for now. Thanks for listening. Keep the blue side up. See you.