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What does it take to make it in the intense world of fast jet flight training in Moose Jaw? What does courage and honesty have to do with excelling in flight, and staying alive? Jules shares some tips for crushing it while in Phase III Hawk training and why it’s important to be honest about your faults and work to improve them.
The Pilot Project Podcast is an aviation podcast that aims to help new pilots learn what it takes to succeed in the world of flight, to help people in the flight training system learn what they may want to fly, and to give Canadians and the world a peek into life on the flight deck in the RCAF. We want to help pilots succeed and thrive! We interview real RCAF pilots for their exciting stories as well as the lessons they've learned along the way. We'll learn their tips to develop resilience and the tools it takes to make it in flight training.
THIS TRANSCRIPT IS AI GENERATED AND WILL CONTAIN SOME SMALL ERRORS. IF YOU HAVE ANY QUESTIONS PLEASE CONTACT thepilotprojectpodcast@gmail.com. We understand the importance of good subtitles but currently as a one-person operation we just don't have the ability to edit these in a timely fashion and keep episodes coming out regularly. Thank you for your understanding!
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 is Julian Daintree, the deputy commanding officer of two CFFTS in Moose Jaw, Saskatchewan. Special thanks to my Phase Two instructor, Blake McNaughton of Snowbirds fame for hooking me up with Julian for this interview. Jules, welcome to the show. Thanks for being here.
Yeah, thanks for having me, M. It's a fun thing to do.
So we'll get into Jules bio to, uh, establish his credentials. Jules earned his wings in April 1991, he was posted to Edmonton, flying the CC 138 Twin Otter with 440 Squadron. He worked as an instructor on the CT 114 tutor in Moose Jaw from 1994 to 1997. In 1997, he did an exchange posting with the United States Air Force in San Antonio, Texas, flying the T 37 Tweet. In 1999, he began instructing in Saudi Arabia at King Faisal Air Academy on the PC nine peacemaker. In 2004, he returned to Moose Jaw to instruct on the CT 156 Harvard, switching to the CT 155 Hawk in 2008, after a tour as a staff officer at two Canadian Air Division or two CAD. From 2010 to 2012, he returned to Moose Jaw, where he worked as a standards pilot on the Hawk, the Wing Flight Safety Officer, the current Ops officer at 15 Operational Support Squadron, a flight training device instructor. And starting this past July, he began as the deputy commanding officer of two Canadian forces flight training school. In total, he has amassed about 6800 hours of flight time, with 3200 of that being instructional. Today we will be focusing on his time in Moose Jaw, particularly flying the CT 155 Hawk. So the first question I ask everybody is, what inspired you to fly? Where did flying begin for you?
Well, I think it was something that I just always wanted to do. I actually grew up a lot in, uh, the UK as well, and where my grandparents, uh, when I went to school in Bretton, Wales well, Wales was, of course, one of the low level flying areas for the RAF. So my grandparents house, you name it, it basically flew over the house at 200ft tornadoes, phantoms, harriers, Jaguars, uh, Vulcan bombers.
That's awesome.
Yeah.
And a smattering of other things. So from about ten years old, when I made the decision that that's what I wanted to do, it was a playground to go to my grandparents house and then just watch this. And it was inspiring to see these things raging around, and I wanted to do that. So, yeah, it's always been something I wanted to do.
That's awesome. So every day was an air show there?
Hey, pretty much all you had to do is just sit there with a pair of binoculars and wait.
Those are some really iconic aircraft, too. Harrier. A tornado. Vulcan. That must have been really amazing.
Yeah.
I remember being on the golf course once, a place called Kravitz. I was put off my putt by a Vulcan bomber flying off of my head.
200Ft.
That's really cool. That's funny. Some of these questions are a little different when I talk to someone who's got as much experience as you do. But how did your flight training go in the forces?
Yeah, quite well. You know, it was good because, you know well, we started off with primary flying training in Portage. Uh, you know, at the time was on the musketeer.
Yeah.
And then went on, um, to fly in the tutor and, you know, got about time, and I was about 200 plus hours at the time on the airplane. It was highs and lows and long days at times. And I would say I was not the best through moisture, but I certainly wasn't the worst either.
Yeah.
Middle of the pack.
Yes, I'd say so. We reasonably like top three, I think. But, uh, like I said, you had some good days and some bad days. Luckily, I have a lot of good instructors who, because of their wisdom and guidance, helped me through the lows. Uh, and I learned a lot from them. Those lessons that I learned from them, I also use today when I teaching my students.
What do you think is one of the biggest ways or tips that those instructors would have given you to overcome some of those harder times?
Patience. Yeah, because I always tell this because I've taught in FIS a lot as well.
FIS is the flight instructor school where.
Pilots learn to teach that students are not trying to make errors in order to annoy students are making errors because while they're students and it's the instructor's job just to guide the students to making smaller air and making sure that along the way that they're not hurting themselves or destroying the aircraft, which some students try to do.
Oh, yeah, lots of students try to do that.
Yeah.
But it is just one of those things, i, uh, think. A lot of patience and a lot of guidance and understanding. It's important if you want to be a good instructor, it's important to realize or remember as to what it was like to be a student.
Yeah, absolutely.
Somebody had to teach you how to do this whole thing. So it's a gift to be passed on to other people. Sometimes it is more trying than others. Like when you're strapping in for, like, the 10th time for another if one you're like, okay, here we go. Because you already know the errors. A lot of the airs that are going to be made.
You ended up instructing on the Hawk in Moose Jaw, but you had already had a bunch of instructional stints. So was the Hawk always an end goal?
Not necessarily an end goal, but, you know, I've been flying, like, the, you know, the tutor, the Tweet, the PC Nine and the T Six for a long time. And it was just that the opportunity came up to switch over to the Hawk, and it was an opportunity that I jumped at just because it's a fun airplane to fly. So it's just a little different. It's not cosmic as far as the jet is concerned, but the performance of the airplane is substantially more than the aircraft that I've flown before.
Was that challenging at first to move up to something that was that high performance?
The speed was the biggest issue on the Harvard. Like, when you do a local departure, you basically do it between 160 I think, if I remember, Riley, up to about 180 knots, whereas the Hawk at the time, we were doing departures at over 350 knots.
So twice the speed, basically.
Yeah.
So the anticipation required just to catch up to the jet, that, to me, is the biggest part, is just the speed difference and learning to anticipate far enough ahead of the airplane to be able to successfully complete whatever sequence that you're trying to complete.
I would imagine that along with anticipation, really knowing your drills and doing that chair flying and being very familiar with, this is what I have to do next, and next and next must be really important.
Yeah, very much so, because you don't have time to sit there and kind of okay, second guess. Well, what should I do now?
Yeah.
You don't have time to say what's next?
No. For instance, when we're flying the low level, like, we're down at 250ft, where we're doing 7 miles a minute. So if you're sitting there just for less than 10 seconds or so, you've gone about a mile from that time. And whatever you were thinking about, well, the opportunity may have passed by to actually execute whatever you were thinking about doing. So you don't have time to sit there and try to regurgitate, to remember something that you didn't learn quite as well as what you should have. We're flying something a bit slower. Okay, I know I have to do this in probably about three or four minutes. How did I do that again?
Yeah, you've got time.
Yeah, you got time to kind of think about it a little bit. Whereas on the Hawk, you don't. Having said that, after a while, when you catch up, uh, personally, to the speed of the airplane, you find yourself with more time actually to think about things.
Yeah, that makes sense, too. I mean, you adjust. Right. You go from flying, especially if you had any private time before the military. You fly a Cessnat. I don't even remember what speed it's.
About 90 knots or something.
Yeah.
Uh, yeah, 100 knots, maybe. And then all of a sudden you're going twice that, and you catch up to that, too. So I imagine that that process keeps going.
Yeah.
I mean, getting into flying training, like, I remember the first time flying around in the tutor, just doing 240 knots in a traffic pattern. I remember thinking to myself, okay, God, there's no way I'm going to catch up to this thing. But you do.
Well, you have to. You do or you don't make it.
Yeah.
It's either that or go on to find a different job.
That's right. So Fastjet is probably the stream I'm least familiar with in terms of how the training works. And I know that they have some extra steps. If you're doing rotary or multi engine, you do phase one, two, and three, and then you're off to your operational unit. Fastjet has some extra steps in that process. Could you elaborate a little bit on how that works?
Sure. So the idea of it is called push down trading. So you don't want to learn some stuff on the Hornet that you could have done earlier.
Why is that?
The expense, you know, just pure simply because flying the Hornets, uh, I don't know what the cost is, but it's, you know, it's probably like 20, $30,000 or more per hour on the jet. So if you can learn how to do certain things on an airplane, for instance, like the T Six, that costs just a couple of $1,000 an hour to fly. Well, then that's where you want to learn it.
So just pure efficiency.
Yeah.
Ah, you just try to, uh, learn it on an airplane. That's a lot cheaper than raging right at a horse.
Yeah.
So after Phase Two, which is a common course for everybody, if you're selected yet in Moustache, then you'll go on to Phase Three, which is more advanced aerobatics on the T Six. And then you also do more advanced formation work, clear head work. Uh, you do cross countries, for instance. Like, you'll go off in a Canadian and a US cross country. And, uh, we're going to have to do all that kind of stuff, just if I could.
The T Six is also known as the CT 156. That's the Harvard Two, or the Americans call it the T Six. Texan Two. And Clearhood is flying with reference to the ground. It's flying in non instreaming conditions.
Yeah.
Visually. So, uh, they'll do that, and then once they've finished on that, then that's actually the point of graduation where you're going to graduate and get your wings. And then there's a couple of roads now that's available with the hop. Basically, we're going to start flying and Moose to next summer. Just with some of the issues that, uh, we've been having with the jets, they've decided that they're going to pursue other auctions as far as the training to get into the Horn.
Do we know what that's going to be yet?
They're going down to NJP. So the Urinato Joint jet pilot training down in, uh, Wichita Falls, back in, uh, Shepard yeah, down in shepherd. So we're sending a lot of students down there to fly the T 38, the Talon, right? T 38 Talon, yeah, that's right. And then they'll get proficient on the jet and then they'll do what's called IFF, which is introductory to fighter fundamentals, basically like our fighter lead in training that's conducted on the Hawk. Once they finish that, then they rotate back and go up to Cold Lake to do their FPC, which is the fighter pilot course on the Fat.
I had a friend who was on one of those when we first started sending guys down to NJP. It's quite a course. It's very intense, but it's a really cool environment. It's always awesome to do some work with the youth staff and see how they do business. And Wichita Falls. It's a nice area. It's close to Dallas Fort Worth and it's pretty cool.
Yeah.
South of Oklahoma City and north of Dallas.
Yeah.
The other ones they'll do is, uh, once they graduate out of Phase three on the Harvard, then they'll come over to the Hawk and then once they graduated the Harvard, they'll do, uh, phase four transition, which means we convert them onto the jet. Then they go up to Cold Light for the fighter laden training and then they move over across the airfield to four, uh, ten squad or divide the F 18. So what I mean by pushing out training, you know, is like when they're doing air combat maneuvering or basic fighters or maneuvers BFM, they'll do it on the Hawk rather than starting it on the Fat, which obviously would be rather expensive. There's a lot of extra steps in there. But those are the two that they are currently using. There's some talk about sending some students over to Italy, I believe, to use their program. I can't remember exactly which jet I think is a three, four, six. Like I said, we're going to stop flying the jet probably in loose to May or June next year.
Okay.
And then it'll be at the end of March of 2024 that the Air Force itself will start flying the airplane. So for 19 will have the last students.
So it's a bit in flux right now in terms of how jet training is going to look in the next twelve months.
Well, yes and no. The last students, like I said, are going through on the Hawk, but the avenue for just pushing more students down currently into Nga is probably, I'd say the easiest one because we've already established it. So 410 is already aware of the input standard of somebody who's graduated from Edgy.
Right.
So they know how to work that into their training.
Exactly. Yeah.
So they're already familiar with okay, what the person does know and what they don't know, and then they can manipulate their training plan to adjust it as required. So right now we've got the two, the guys are coming off 419 and then the folks coming off of Edge.
So what's the training and upgrade process for a Hawk instructor at Moustache?
Well, it depends a bit on where you've come from. Most people, like, if you are in the school, we have taken T Six instructors and moved them over to the Hawk, but they would have to have like, at least, you know, two or three years experience on the T Six prior to moving over to the Hawk. Or if the folks came back to us from the fighter stream, then they just went directly into the Hawk. So you go into, uh, instructor School front seat to get proficient, to fly it from the front, and then you move into the back seat, uh, learn how to fly it from back there. Then you end up doing what's called your category ride. This means that you get blessed to be what's called the Seacat Instructor. The C Cat Instructor is just your baby instructor, if you will, and then hopefully get about 100 hours of instructional time. And then you'll upgrade into what's called the BCAT Instructor. The, uh, BCAT Instructor is more, call it the working rank, if you will, of the instructional world. That's where the overwhelming majority of the instructors will be, or they should be. And then once you have supposed to be up to about 500 hours on instruction, but we can work around that, then the person will be looking at becoming an Academ. And the Acad instructor. The difference between B and the A is really that the Acad instructor could teach instructors, okay? Acad instructors, the instructor who would sit in the front and actually, similarly being a student, and you come up with and make mistakes like a student might, and hopefully that the person in the back would be able to recognize those and address those issues, and off you go.
That's a challenge. Like I was saying before, I got a good chunk of the way into my flight, uh, instructor course, including that portion of the course, we were just kind of getting into that stuff. And it's challenging at first. It's pretty amazing, where if I had, uh, about 2000 hours of flying time, which when I was a kid, I would have probably been amazed by, to hear about someone who had that much. And now I realize it's not as big of a deal, there's always something to learn. But, yeah, I was very humbled by how challenging it is to sit there and analyze what the other person is doing and trying to come up with why are they doing that and that kind of stuff.
Yeah, because just Tina, when you're actually doing it yourself, well, you don't necessarily think about it. I submit. Like when you think about when you first started driving a car, when you're driving to work on back, do you actually think about how you're driving the car to work and back? Probably not. But if you start now trying to teach somebody how to do that, it's a whole different skill set that you have to develop before you just do it. But now you actually have to teach it so you analyze it a lot more. So by analyzing it a lot more you actually learn a lot about the sequences and things that you're trying to do.
Well, that probably leads into what I was going to ask next, which is what is the hardest part of the job when you first start instructing on the Hawk or in general?
I think it just goes back to learning those skill sets of analyzing what a student has done and why they have done it and providing them with tips and techniques as to how to fix or do better than what they just did, because they may have done it just fine. But you're always striving to improve your performance, no matter what you're trying to do or how good you are at it. Yeah, learning those instructional tools like the root cause analysis, good points, bad points, ways to improve, all that kind of stuff and FIS can give you the tools. But the best thing to do would be an FIS would be to go through the entire course and teach each individual mission. But clearly, obviously we're not going to do that. So we just give the course members an FIS. About ten missions of really flying from the back seat and teaching. And then like I said, this is when you get your seat cap, you go downstairs. The parting wisdom is, well now you can go downstairs and actually learn how to struck.
It's kind of like when you first become an aircraft captain and there's no replacement for experience. You have to go out and do it.
Absolutely.
That is exactly it. When we talk about simulation in our training there was a lot of stuff that we can substitute wine. Like when I started playing on the tutor, we had the cockpit procedure trainer. But now we have the flight training devices where you can actually do aerobatics, you can actually do circuits and all the rest of it with the visuals and whatnot. So it has been able to take actual flying training and moving it into the sip. But that will only take you so far. There is no substitute for actually getting out there and doing it.
What would you say was the most fulfilling part of your job, flying the Hawk?
Well, not necessarily just on the Hawk, but I'd say in general, um, as far as an instructor is concerned, it's just seeing a student that maybe is struggling with something and then guiding them to their AHA moment when they actually, uh, okay. Now they understand as to why they were doing what they were doing and helping them towards getting better and maybe making that transition from the level three to up to the level four, which is core standard for a lot of different things. That, to me, is the most fulfilling part, having them come back and shake your hand and say, thanks for your help, for getting me to, uh, the end of the course. And I don't see that I don't get them to the end of the course. The students all do that themselves. I just hope them gets to the end of the course and that's all it is. That's the most rewarding part for me.
Yeah, that's really cool that you guys get that chance to be a part of that and help somebody. They're really achieving their dreams while they're on these courses. And it's pretty special to have an opportunity to be part of that.
Yeah.
You're one piece of the puzzle, mhm, that helps them. Obviously, there's many pieces to the puzzle because you've got the GPTs, the ground based training systems, guys who initially teach them all the aircraft operating instructions and teach them the instrument appliance procedures, all the ground school and all that. People who teach them in the FTDs, and then you move on to the airplane.
An FTD is a flight training device and is similar to a simulator being.
A phase two, phase three, uh, phase four transitions. So there's many, many different people have their fingers in the pie of a person who finally graduates and the support staff on top of it. If you're not getting paid or your administration, that's all part of an air traffic control. It's an entire team. What do they say? It takes a village to raise a child. It takes an entire team who graduates? Uh, a student. It's an entire team.
Aviation is one of those things where it's really easy to you see the pilot flying the airplane, but there's 100 people probably behind him or her making that happen.
The maintenance is a good one. I do the test flights or do some of the test flights on the airplane. And I don't go out there with my fingers crossed, hoping that the engine or the flaps aren't going to fall off or the other ones aren't going to work properly. I don't worry.
We have a team you can trust.
Yeah.
I put my life into their hands when I strap that jet on. I am trusting that they're giving me an aircraft that's going to work properly. They're minor bits and pieces that don't.
But well, that's part of the, uh, Tesla shakedown, right? I've done them on the Aurora as well. And it's a trust process. You trust them and you go out and you make it happen. And you work together collaboratively to get that plane back online.
Yeah.
Ah, very much.
What does the normal day look like for a Hawk instructor at Moustache.
You come in, uh, probably a couple of hours before your mission. The typical brief time up for the Hawk is about an hour and a half prior to take off. You run through the card or whatever the sequences are that the student needs to do on that particular mission. You'll brief it, you provide them with the tips and techniques to take airport. Then you'll run down, you get all your gear on, uh, walk over, sign the airplane out, strap it on, taxi out, the typical mission. And moose shot on the Hawks about one point war to about 1.5. Then you come back, you sign the aircraft back in, get decided, go up, debrief the mission, which could take 15 minutes if it was a really good one. And it could take 45 minutes or more if, uh, the student had some difficulties or whatever the complexity of the mission was. And then for student, go off and get some delete, where the instructor then has to sit down in front of a computer, roll off the card. So, yeah, if you total it all up, it'd be four plus hours dedicated just to a single mission. And then maybe you're scheduled twice. So there's your eight hour, nine hour day or more for me. Then I end up back in my office and opening up my computer to see how many emails are there.
That's when the admin begins, though going.
Flying is actually a nice escape from the office.
Yeah.
Do you get to fly fairly often still while you're serving as DCO?
Not as much as I'd like. I know, um, I'm scheduled for, like, two trips tomorrow, but that's a little unusual for the most part. If I can, I'll probably try and fly I like, a couple of times a week.
That's good, though. That's a pretty good pace still when you have all that other work as well. Obviously it's nice to fly every day.
But yeah, flying every day is not my job. Being DCO is my job. Whereas the guys actually the ones who are flying a couple of times a day yeah.
I mean, they're the line instructors. That's what they're there for, right?
Yeah, that's their job.
What does the students daily life look like when they're on the hot course?
It depends on what they're scheduled for. They may be scheduled for one or two events, typically a day. So they'll come in, uh, early in the morning and make coffee.
The lifeblood of aviation.
Yeah.
They'll put up the brief. They're going to brief us on the weather. We've introduced that just so that they could mission planning as to what you would do on a squadron. So that's been introduced.
I've heard that students have a lot more of an active role now in the, uh, briefings.
Yeah, like I said, we turned it into they're the ones. Okay, so are you telling me that we need X whether to be able to go out and accomplish, for instance, a clear head mission. The hog takes over. 6000ft to Loop. So are we going to be able to go out and do the aerobatics or not? And the students will actually have a say, well, based upon this, this and this, I think we can get the mission in. Okay, well, then we'll go into an Avocratic is to develop that skill so that when they graduate and get onto the squadron, that's not the first time that they're having to analyze the weather and come up with a go or no go plan to whatever you're trying to achieve.
They are going to eventually go on, and they're not going to have a copilot. I mean, they'll be a wingman. They'll have a lead, I imagine. And I know that that's probably some of the similar dynamics, but they're still the AC of their aircraft, so they really have to be able to make.
Those calls if you're by yourself 99% of the time. Well, when you think about the F 35 that's come along, you'll be solo all the time.
Yeah.
And I mean, most people, when they start, that is not the case. Most other pilots, maybe all other pilots I think start out as a copilot when they start on their operational aircraft.
You said it before, that may start out as a wingman, but it's unusual. You still have crew resource management, but instead of on the flight deck, it's within the formation.
Yeah, it's very interesting.
Yeah.
But you do have other duties in the fact that you are flying that aircraft for 100% of the time. So the single pilot mentality is something that is developed for them to be the ones to make the decisions as opposed to a little bit more of a group discussion as to whether or not that they're going to be able to go.
Yeah, and it's a totally different mentality as well for how you manage emergencies and all those types of things. Unfortunately, at this part, Jule's headset died, so he may sound a little different for the rest of the interview. Since things are about to change in terms of not flying the Hawk any longer, can you just sort of tell me what skills do they learn through the phase three Harvard course and then what do they need to learn on the jets before they show up at Cold Lake to start learning the F 18?
Okay, so on, um, the phase three, compared to the phase two, it's just more advanced aerobatics.
Right.
On the basic phase they just do loops, rolls, maybe cloverleafs, whereas on the phase three they're going to do max performance of the aircraft, taking it into the vertical, uh, max performance turns, and they do forced landings as well. So there's a lot of energy management type maneuvers that they have to learn. So as far as clear, it's more max performing the airplane. On formation. They'll do some tactical formation. So they'll do a line of restaurant, used to be called Double Attack, and learn how to maneuver a two ship. So delay turns a double Attack, that's kind of formation. They'll learn some formation leading as well on the Hawk is low level navigation. So you'll learn actually how to simulate the weapons selections, uh, and whatnot on it as well. If you do high approaches, you learn how to take the airplane on the road, learn the single seat aspect of flying. IFR so, you manage everything. You manage the radios, you manage the Navajo, you have the pubs out, you organize your cockpit so that you can fly instrument by yourself.
Did they ever fly solo on the hook?
Yeah, we'll teach them solo. I mean, there's not a great deal of solo flying, but yeah, absolutely. They'll probably fly clear hood. Missions will be about three or four, uh, solos in the clear hood.
Awesome.
Just one in the formation as well. There'll be some of the NAV, not so much on the if, but they can do, like, a student out and back.
Oh, that's very cool.
Yeah.
Build a little confidence.
Yeah, exactly.
Yeah.
It's a cool feeling the first time you do that.
Absolutely.
Yeah.
All right. I think that's a pretty good quick outline of what they need to do to, uh, get ready to get on the F 18. I think we've probably covered where students tend to struggle on the Hawk. You've talked about just a need to anticipate and the increased speed of switching over to the Hawk from the Harvard.
It's also the altitude, especially on low level NAV because we go down to 250ft in the Hawk.
Uh right. And it's 500 on the Harvard, right?
That's right. Yeah. Because we have radult in the Hawks, we take it down to 250ft.
A rattle is radar Ultimeter and uses radar to show your instantaneous height above the Earth's surface. And that's really low.
What happens is because your mission cross check time is a lot less when you're down low like that. And then you start sticking another airplane because we'll do it in formation as well. So we'll do double Attack down with 250ft with another aircraft.
Wow.
So it's quite amazing how losing a couple of hundred feet makes the task at hand of flying around at low level and managing a formation makes it much more difficult.
Well, I mean, your reaction time is so minuscule if something goes wrong at those speeds. That's very intense.
Yeah.
You spend a lot of time looking for threats.
Yeah.
Be the near threats, far threats. But then you're cross checking your wingman and having to make the decisions.
Well, not to mention, like, adjusting your timing to points and confirming that you're on track and all those different things. Right.
Yeah.
On the Hulk, it's a little easier because we're doing 420 knots. So the effect of the wind is fairly negligible as far as creating a timing error.
Oh yeah, fair enough. Are they using GPS on those?
It's a GPS updated Ins and that's.
An inertial navigation system which uses gyros or are they laser gyros?
Yeah, laser gyros. But we have the HUD, so that makes it a lot easier as well.
HUD, uh, most people probably know that one, but heads up display, it displays a bunch of the flight information right in front of you on a screen overlaid on what you can see already outside.
Yeah.
So we're lucky in the fact that we don't actually have to map read per se. Not like what you would have learned.
On the Harvard okay, yeah, that makes sense.
You know, big, medium, small. That's not necessarily what we kind of.
Do well those are the very basics to a visual navigation right.
And those are the basic ones.
Yeah, that makes sense, of course, because you guys are training like you'll fight and it's not as if you were on a ground attack run or some sort of low flying operationally you would be relying as much as possible on the equipment that makes that safe.
Right? Yeah.
To be honest with you, it's more of a capacity tester more than anything else. There's very few air forces in the world who are currently using a lot of ultralow level flying in order to ingress and egress out of the target area.
Well, conflict has evolved a lot and so has threat systems and air defense systems and all kinds of stuff.
Yeah.
What qualities do you think are important for a student to bring to the table to help them succeed?
Honesty, being willing to accept responsibility for your errors and also your shortcomings.
That's really tough at first too.
It can be.
When you first show up to military flight training and to evolve that habit of just saying, yes, I did that.
It's not something that I think most people do an awful lot of in their life prior to getting to places like Moussa where you're going to be going flying for an hour and a half and people are critiquing your performance over that hour and a half.
Well, it's a no excuses environment too right. It's very cut and dry. Everything is done at the most efficient possible amount of hours, and there's no time for excuses or, oh, well, this is why I was doing it that way. Because at the end of the day, unless there's, like, a relatable reason of, hey, you need to adjust how you're thinking about it, the real answer is that wasn't correct, and we need to correct that.
Yeah, basically just that people are used to providing excuses and we're not necessarily interested in excuses, we're interested in success. Success or failure, regardless. Okay, if it's a failure, then let's analyze it and see what we can do better for the next time. It's a harsh reality for some people when they come here to realize that they are going to be critiqued, they are going to be found wanting, like I was found wanting in areas.
You'd be hard pressed to find a pilot who's never been found wanting in some way.
Absolutely. Yeah. You will falter at some point. You will find your limits as to whatever they are. But you just got to be honest and truthful and just say, yeah, that was me. I screwed that up and all right, well, what are we going to do to make it better?
Right.
Well, next time I'll try and do this and that's all there is. So a lot of honesty, time and effort and a lot of studying involved to get better.
Yeah, the studying is definitely a key piece. The flip side of that coin is what qualities do you see sometimes hold students back?
Some people come here and just think they've watched Top Gun ones too many times. Think if they come in with a lot of attitude, that's what pilots are. Attitudes has got some bonuses to it, as long as it's properly focused. But if you have a student who comes in with a lot of attitude, who thinks that they're all this and that, and it's just like, yeah, uh, guess what? You're not as good as what you think you are. You have watched out one too many times. So it's time to roll back that attitude and refocus it to something a little bit more positive. Because if you come with an attitude, well, guess what? That's just a challenge for most instructors to readjust that attitude.
Now, we had talked about your favorite part of the job, instructing. What are some of the most rewarding experiences you've had in the RCAF?
When I was on 440 Squadron, uh, we did a couple of rescues, uh, on the helicopter that crashed.
Yeah, you mentioned that crash helicopter. Can you tell me a bit about that story?
I think it was a Bell 206 or something along those lines. It was funny because I know it was around the time that the Toronto Blue Jays were in the World Series.
92, 93. I think those are the years they won back to back.
Yeah.
And this helicopter was I think it was up near Fort McMurray, and they were coming back. It was at nighttime. And there's something, but if you go over a certain angle of bank and the fuel is below a certain quantity, that you can actually flame out the motor. And I guess that's what actually happened. So they managed to flame out the motor and crashed into a lake.
Oh, wow.
Then we went out there. We got called out in the middle of the night to go up there. And we eventually did actually find them, but they were all fine. And they've got to get themselves to shore up so the Sartex didn't have to jump, which was very disappointing for them. But we did throw some equipment down to them. But the funniest part was that they were like, no, we're fine, but what's the score?
That's great.
Yeah.
And then, uh, we did meet them. They managed to get out the next morning. I think they got out. Uh, somebody got up there and the RCMP was Cadoos and actually extracted them because no one was hurt, I think, of the crash.
Oh, yeah, that's a good one.
Yeah.
The weird one, you know, one of the biggest honors was, uh, to be a pallbearer for a friend of mine who, um, unfortunately was killed in the crash a number of years ago.
Do you want to tell us a little more about that? Are you comfortable with that?
Yeah. No, that was Brian Mitchell. He was actually my instructor going through Moustache, one of my instructors. And unfortunately, uh, it was back in October of 2008, unfortunately, he was playing a tutor with the snaps that crashed, and, uh, both he and Chuck Senegal were killed.
Was that his tech, or was that the one with the photographer?
No, he was the voter technician.
Yeah, I remember that one. That was right before I graduated university. That was a tough one.
Yeah. Uh, it wasn't fun, but, uh, Brian was a friend of mine. Uh, to say it was rewarding, but it was an honor to be one of the last people to be close to it, if you will.
Yes, we talk about this every now and then on the show. That is one of the realities of aviation, is sometimes the worst happens, and sometimes that happens to your friends, and you have chances to honor them and honor their memory and to remember them well. And sometimes that can be a bittersweet thing, but it can be a really special thing, too.
Yeah, we experienced that pretty early on my course, like, I was on 89 seven, and just after we had Solo Ah, we lost one of our students, ian Ah Bell, who was killed in a crash. Um, so, yeah, it happened to our course pretty early, and, uh, over the years, I've lost a number of people. Which brings us full circle to why you want to be honest and not try to hide your errors and whatnot. Um, because eventually, sometimes those errors can kill you. So I said being honest and just accepting. Yes, I missed that up. That's why it's so important to understand that your instructors are not there to give you a hard time. They're there to make you better.
Yeah.
It's easy to forget that it's not just about getting through. It's not just about making it through the course. It's about becoming the best and safest pilot you can, uh, because your life and other people's lives will count on that.
Yeah. Aviation is unforgiving at the best of times, and military aviation is even more unforgiving because of the environment that you fly in.
I'm going to ask you for a couple of stories. Um, what is your coolest story as an instructor?
The best flying in the jets, probably when you do a tactical, like a two ship, low level mission, that's probably some of the most fun doing flybys. We used to do it a lot more over Mosaic Stadium for the Rough Riders back in March of this year. I was lucky. We did the flyby for the heritage classic in Hamilton.
Awesome.
Yeah.
Just stuff like that. That's kind of fun. You get to take the jet away day or shows or whatever, and it's instructing is good. That's the actual true reason as to why I have a job and why the jet exists here. But it's nice to actually use it for other things as well.
Yeah, it's cool to go and kind of have a perk and do something cool with it. And I grew up going to air shows. That's probably half of why I love aircraft. And what a cool thing to be able to do something like that is to do a fly past.
Yeah.
What was your hardest day on the Hawk?
Probably I've had one or two cases where I was the guy that had to fly, like the last mission, if you will, for somebody who was struggling. And I took him flying. And it was my job, uh, at the end of the day, to say yay or nay. I give them 100% to try to get them over the hump or whatever it is that they're having a problem with. But at the end of the day, and I say this with all honesty, you have to have the courage to, uh, make the decision. Because if you just carry the student or don't have the courage to make the right decision, then you're not doing yourself, especially the person that you're trying to train, any favors. Because as we talked about, military aviation has a lot of dangers to it. That has probably been the worst days. When you come back, you have to debrief the mission. It's pretty clear that the student has not done well. You're looking at the kids saying, I'm sorry, but this is the end of the road. You're not going to go any further.
Probably are there instances where, let's say somebody has done phase three? Harvard has their wings. Things on the Hawk don't go as well as you may hope. We know that flying on a fast yet is very demanding. Are, uh, there times where you guys might say, hey, you know what? This isn't for you, but maybe you're suited for something else that's still a flying position in the Air Force.
Yeah, we've done that where it's pretty obvious that going from phase three onto the Hawk, that there was some more maturing needed. A lot of times we've done in the past is we'll rotate that person back into, uh, being an instructor.
Well, you can experience a lot of growth as an instructor.
Right.
It's a very demanding job in the ways we've talked about, in your capacity to observe and take it all in, while really explaining what you're doing and why it makes a special kind of growth happen as a pilot.
Well, exactly.
I mean, it's taxpayers money, right. So our job is not to try and waste that money and to try to be what's best for the person involved. So sometimes, like I said, we'll just say, okay, you're going to stay here as an instructor for a few years, but then we'll reattack with, um, sending out the Hornets, and that strategy has been very successful.
You mentioned that. Now, as a DCO, you fly about two to three times a week. Moving into a leadership role as a pilot, do you find that that's the biggest thing you miss is just the ability to fly every day?
Yeah, probably, because when you get involved with personal administration or whatever, can I honestly say it's my favorite thing to do in the Air Force?
No, I have a question for you, actually. A lot of pilots don't want to move up the chain.
Right.
A lot of guys just want to be a flyer, and that's it. What are the upsides of, uh, buying in and moving up the chain and moving into a position of leadership?
Well, one of the things that people have to understand, uh, may sound a little odd or whatever, but you don't necessarily join the Air Force to be a pilot. You join first as an officer, moving up the chain or whatever. What's one of the biggest things you can do? Well, you can affect change the lower ranks. You put policy into effect. At the higher ranks, you can make policy. How many times have you had a policy that you really didn't like very much? If you rank up, guess what? Now it's your chance to actually make that policy.
That's your chance to go from complaining about it to, uh, fixing it to.
Doing something about it.
Yeah.
Have you found that rewarding to be able to affect that change?
Yeah.
That's probably the best part about being TCL.
We're getting down to the last, uh, few questions here. We've talked about what makes a good pilot. You said the courage to be honest. Do you have any other qualities you think are important in a pilot?
Uh, just a good work ethic.
I mean, it might be obvious, but why do you think that's important?
Well, you won't get very far if you don't have a good work ethic, because you probably just won't put the time and effort into learning what you're going to learn. And that inability to work hard will be exposed pretty quickly because of the pace and the knowledge that you have to be working at. Because military flying training is a little bit different from civilian flying training, if you will. Civilian flying training. If you don't get something, well then basically you crack open your wallet and you do that mission again. Right. Whereas in the military, yeah you do get some remedial missions or whatever. But not only do you have to learn what you have to learn, but you have to do it within the time that we're telling you that you have to do it.
Yeah.
This is really important also for everybody listening, especially those who are thinking about pursuing this as a career. This is no joke. The work is intense, the courses are intense. There's a ton of stuff you have to learn. I think a lot of people can easily picture the fun part like we've talked about when you're sitting in the cockpit and you're doing the stuff we all picture when we think about being a pilot. But there's so much work that goes into the background of making that happen.
Yeah, but that's what comes with the territory. If you're not prepared to work hard, well then guess what? You're in the wrong business.
Yeah.
It's worth it because otherwise we wouldn't all be doing it. It's an amazing job.
Absolutely. I've been at this for 32 years.
At the end of the day, it's a huge privilege to be able to get through all of this and succeed and then spend your time on these really crazy aircraft that the average pilot will never get to touch. The question we always finish with is looking for advice to a new pilot. So when you answer this, we're thinking about somebody who maybe is in air cadets or has done a little bit of flight training or maybe not at all, but are thinking about a career as a pilot. What piece of advice would you give them?
Talk to people who have been around a while and they'll be honest with you and uh, let you know as to what you're in for so that you go into whatever you're going to do so that you go into it with your eyes open. There's a few people I've heard about people who come to Moustache and then they VW out of uh, voluntary withdrawal out of it and say, well, I didn't really know what I was getting into. I get it. People don't know what it's like to pull a lot of g. I totally understand that aspect of it. But some people are just like, I didn't know how much work it was going to be. The truth of the matter is that, uh, the better prepared you are, the more information that you can glean from those who have been there and done that, uh, the better off that you'll be so that when something comes up, it's not going to be a big surprise to you.
Yeah, I mean that's part of why I'm making this podcast actually is I want people to go in with their eyes wide open and experience greater success because of that I also remember guys who left Moose Jaw because it's not what I thought it was going to be. And you think, man, so you went through Air Crew Selection, you did your aptitude test interviews, you went to basic training, you did primary flight training, and then you get all the way to Moose Jaw. And now is the time where you decide, I don't think this is for me. Ideally, you save everybody a lot of time and money and effort, including yourself, and you figure that out before you do any of those big steps.
And, uh, I get it that some people are doing things not for the right motivation. Perhaps they're doing it for somebody else. Well, my dad was in the military or somebody else. Well, then it's some reflection needed to identify as to what your motivation for being here is.
Yeah, because it needs to be intrinsic.
Yeah, it has to be, you know, it has to be something that you really want, because if you don't have the want, the need, the motivation to do it, then you will not be successful.
Yeah.
A military aviation is not forgiving and if you're not motivated to try to, uh, do it properly, well, then you're probably going to end up in trouble.
And I think that's also true of going fast. Jet, a lot of people want to be a fighter pilot.
Right.
They join they want to be a fighter pilot. Why? Well, I watched Top Gun or because jets are cool. They are. Fighter jets are cool. There's no two ways about it. But I was going through Moose Jaw and I actually remember Blake, who I said connected us. He was trying to convince me to go fast yet, and I just didn't want to do it. And I'm thankful I had the, uh I don't know if I'll call it wisdom, but I knew myself enough to know that it wasn't for me. And if you're going to go fast yet, you need to be doing it because that's like your dream, because it is super intense. It's a lot of work. It's a very intense environment. And if you're going to succeed, that's going to be coming from within you.
Yeah.
A lot of the guys going up there, they live and breathe what they do. I'm not saying that other people don't. I know that there's helicopter pilots and multiangle pilots who live and breathe what they do as well.
But you got to find your niche.
Absolutely. Yeah. But I know the fighter guys are quite often the ones that are most invested in what they do. The environment there also encourages that because when we're going all the way around back, you spend all your time solo. Well, you could because your solo just sit back and relax and just kind of slough things off. But no, you're always trying to make that perfect final turn, the perfect mission. You and I have been around long enough, we know that that doesn't exist.
No, that's right.
Uh, what is flying? And says, well, it's a takeoff followed by a whole series of errors and corrections back to the ideal, followed by landing.
Yeah, I think the fighter world just breeds that as well, because there's a lot of courses, like we said, phase one, two, three for rotary and multi, the fighter guys have a lot more stepping stones to make, and each one of those is intense in a new way. Like we said, you got to be ready for those tough days, and you got to be ready for all that hard work. And it's not all going to be pulling G and looking cool. It's going to be a lot of work. And that's the same thing that, uh, you could say about flight training as a whole in the Air Force.
Oh, very much so.
Yeah.
It's just that their environment in particular is rather unforgiving.
Jules, thank you so much for taking the time to do this interview. I was really glad when Blake connected us, especially once I saw the awesome level of experience you had. It's been really great that you've taken this time out of your, uh, busy schedule to chat here, and I think that this will be a great learning experience for the people who get a chance to listen to this.
I'm glad to do it.
Yeah.
Thanks for having me on.
Yeah.
Thank you. Okay, everybody, that is going to wrap it up for our episode on phase three, fast Yet Training. Thank you so much for joining us. For the next episode, we'll be talking with my good friend Pete Musters about the world of tactical helicopter aviation, or tackle. Pete is an inspiring guy with lots of great stuff to share. You don't want to miss out on the horizon. We've got a chat with Brigadier General Mike Adamson, commander of the Canadian space Division, to talk all things space. We'll also be sitting down with some of the officers who manage the basic training list as well as fleet readiness so that we can talk about training delays and what's being done to solve them. Do you have questions or comments about what you've heard or have a topic you'd like to hear us cover on the show? Send us an email at, uh, the pilotproject podcast@gmail.com or reach out on all social media at at podpilotproject. As the podcast continues to grow, we still need your help with the big three. Share with your friends like, and follow us on social media and follow and rate us five stars wherever you get your podcast. That's all for now. Thanks for listening. Keep the blue side up. See ya.