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, Bryan Morrison. With me today is my very good friend, Ryan finn. Later. Welcome to the show, Ryan.
Hi, Bryan. Happy to be here.
Ryan graduated from flight training in 2011 and was posted to 440 squadron in Yellowknife, Northwest Territories, flying the cc 138 Twin otter, where he participated in various northern operations and exercises such as nanook and nevis. In 2015, he was posted at three cffts, where he instructed on the ct 145 King Air for four years. In 2019, he completed his contract and continued flying with westjet on the 737. In late 2020, he made the decision to re enroll with the rcaf and was reposted to three cffts and continues to enjoy instructing. Today, we will be focusing on his time on the Twin otter. I think I've asked you this before, but where did flying begin for you?
For me, actually, it began prior to the rcaf. Probably back as far as I can remember. We lived in London, Ontario, on, uh, a street, I think it's called castas Avenue. In London, Ontario. And it's very close to the airport. So I grew up seeing aircraft over my house, essentially at all times, day and night. And that really kind of fostered in me a love for aviation and just being around aircraft. So, as I grew up, that never really left me. And, uh, I was lucky enough to have parents, uh, who were supportive in that and, uh, were able to, uh, help me get flight training, uh, from a very young age.
So you learned to fly at London International?
Yeah, I learned to fly at London International and probably what school? I think it was called aero Academy.
Yeah. Okay.
I'm really close to diamond there.
Yeah, I learned at Diamond Flight Academy in London as well. But I think I did some training at arrow as well, at one point. Yeah.
And I managed to get my ppl before I had my driver's license.
Oh, that's awesome.
Yeah.
And your sister flies, too, in the Air Force, right?
Yes.
UM, so did she do something similar?
UM, no, paula didn't necessarily do something similar, but I feel like she knew, probably from a younger age, that she wanted to serve in some capacity. She started her career as a Mars officer at rmc and quickly saw the light and switched over to pilot.
Man, you don't hear too many people who go from Mars to pilot. No, because, uh, Mars is a really tough trade, but you don't usually hear of somebody switching from a very tough trade to another very tough trade.
Yeah. Some mars officers going to scream and yell at me, but I'm pretty sure mars officers, basically they're a naval pilot, right?
Yeah, they're the command team of the ship.
Yeah. So she just went from one pilot job to another pilot job, I think.
Awesome. So you did phase two on the grobe, right?
Uh, no, I did phase two in moose.
Okay. How did you find your flight training experience overall?
Overall, the one word I would nail down in my flight training experience would be delayed. There was some challenges with maintenance at the harvards when I was trying to come through probably a number of people in the vintage of, uh, our vintage. We're having some issues with that and some delays.
I remember back then you could check online on the status of your course that you were loaded for on the Harvard and you would see them get what they call zero loaded, where the course would basically be canceled and everyone would get pushed to the next one. And it was just happening over and over again. The wait was years.
Yeah. So I think we're definitely a lot better at our training program now.
I think it's a lot more streamlined now.
Yeah, it's definitely more streamlined. There's still some delays here and there and at the otus, but I've heard that that's moving along much nicer now, overall, UM, in terms of the quality of instruction I had, I was really happy with how my training went. I would say delayed, but it wasn't delayed in the middle. It was a lengthye delay before a course would start. And once I was on the course, they all went fairly fast.
That's actually a very good point. I waited almost two years to go in the Harvard, but from there I had like two weeks or three weeks maybe, between phase two and phase three, which was great because I got a little chance to rest and recover. But I was ready to go again and still current in my knowledge and my skills when I went to phase three. Did you have any times where you struggled or what was the hardest part of training for you?
I think I was fairly lucky or fairly proficient with the experience that I walked into the flight training program with. One of the most challenging parts to me was actually flying the Harvard in a straight line. And I think that catches a lot of people off guard. They're like, well, why is flying the Harvard in a straight line the most challenging thing? I did have enough flight experience at that time. I had come and flown the grobe, where we were still doing some loops and rolls, uh, prior to phase two. And, uh, on my first flight in the Harvard, I got very airsick and was very confused. And that lasted for a few flights.
Yeah. Well, a lot of people get airsick on the Harvard. I felt a bit nauseous on my first flight, and I'd never been air sick before that. ah. I've always heard that it's something to do with how you're fastened in at, like, five different points very securely. And it's something to do with kind of how the engine works and every little movement of the plane you feel. Right.
Yeah. uh, my instructor basically said the torque effect of the engine in front of you makes the aircraft, like, kind of corkscrew a little bit through the sky the whole time.
That makes sense.
And you can't really perceive it, but your ears know what's happening. So it took a long time to be able to get through a flight where I didn't come down incredibly sweaty. Not because flying straight level was hard, but because I was trying not to throw up in my helmet the whole time.
Yeah. It's not fun being nauseous and you're up there to learn and you feel the pressure of, I got to make the most of this. I can't be that guy who's getting sick.
Yeah. If, uh, I were to just come off of that. I think the next hardest point of training was the transition from phase one and phase two. Sit in the plane and do everything to moving to phase three, where you're sitting in the plane and not necessarily doing everything, but making the decisions and including another pilot. That was an interesting we call it, uh, a paradigm shift.
Yeah, I remember. So when you get to multi when you get to phase three and you're in a multi crew environment, there's PM and pf, pilot monitoring and pilot flying. And I remember reading that in my checklists and just having no idea what it even meant and what the significance was. It took a while to figure all that stuff out. That was definitely tricky. It's funny, now that you mention it. I remember in The sims and you're dealing with emergencies and things, and your natural tendency at first is just to not even accept for the checklist items. Not even really include the person beside you because you're just so used to being a single pilot.
Yeah. Now you're sitting there flying and something happens. You just say, okay, uh, run the drill, please. Yeah, please. I hope you know the drill. And just wait for them to do it and focus on what you're doing as well. So creating that, UM what would I call it?
Bond or that the cohesion the cohesion.
Between a crew was interesting to sit with another student and start doing that.
Yeah, for sure. Did you have any times where you felt like a lot of pressure or stress or any failures or anything like that?
UM, I actually failed my prefit or the final flight, phase three. uh, twice in a row.
No way. Yeah.
So I failed that flight and then I failed the additional training flight. On that.
You must have been really stressed out.
Yeah, I was struggling to really understand where I was going wrong after getting all the way to that point on that course. And like, okay, well, I just have to do this, and there's one more flight and I'm done, and I'll get my wings, but I'm at the last flight to make sure I can do it, and I can't, and I don't know why. And having an instructor that was able to just explain that you're able to do it, you're doing everything right, but you're not actually telling me what you're doing. And to find out that, like, oh, I'm actually not including my copilot.
So it was like a crm issue, which crm is Crew Resource Management, which is kind of the catch all phrase to describe your interactions as a crew.
Yeah, exactly. He basically said the human component. Like, you need to make sure your crew knows what you're doing. Even if you're right, you just need to voice that. And I'm a naturally quiet, soft spoken individual, so becoming more outspoken or being louder was actually noted on my reports.
Quite often, which it's funny, because when you're on Phase Three, you're like, It's me and my co pilot. I get it. It's important. But once you move on to an, uh, aircraft where you might have a crew, one of the biggest things you have to do is constantly, if anything's going on, you need to be updating the crew right in the middle of a mission. Whatever you're doing, briefings front to back, they're letting you know what's going on tactically. UM, I'm obviously speaking in terms of the aurora, but how many crew are on the twin arder? Is it just two pilots or do you guys have an engineer?
Two pilots and a flight engineer.
Yeah, I thought so. It becomes even more important again, right? Because even though it's just three people, you've got three brains to work with and to take, uh, advice and knowledge from, it becomes more important as you get onto your operational aircraft.
Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. That lesson really paid me a lot of dividends in the end that you need to be more outspoken or louder. UM, and still something I really worked on today.
But eventually, obviously, you passed.
I did.
UM, did you have anything that you did mentally to help you kind of push through the stress of that, or was it just basically put your head down and get through it?
I, UM, want to say I put my head down and got through it. But looking back on it, one of those flights was on a Friday afternoon. So I was really excited to go into the weekend, and then I was really stressed to go into the weekend instead. So just getting together with the other students on my course, the other pilots, or soon to be pilots, going to have a drink, going, uh, into town for dinner and just talking about actually how they messed up and how I messed up and realizing, hey, you're not in this alone. You can put your head down and get through it, but your course mate in the next room probably had the same issues earlier in the week. And getting all that experience on how to get through that stuff and talking through it takes a lot of the stress away. Like, oh, I'm not the only one who's doing this.
Yeah, that's great. uh, I mean, that's something we've kind of emphasized in a bunch of these interviews, is that flying is a team sport. Whether you're talking about your crew or whether you're talking about a big thing of the pilot world, at least certainly in the military, is those times where you sit around in a group and chat about something, you've learned, something that happened that you hadn't seen before, just having those talks and learning from each other. So it's good that you guys were even doing that back then.
Yeah, I think it was instrumental even in my phase two course. Like, we had a really great group on phase two. The, uh, entire course would sit in a room and do our red page practice. And, UM, we were hauled into a room near the end, of course, and the instructors and the commandant kind of asked, like, what are you guys doing? And how did you get this far? Because you're the first course that has gone this far without a failure.
Okay. And the answer was that you guys were tight and working together.
I honestly think it was it was a really interesting thing to come to realize. We were like, oh, well, you mean not everyone talks or sits in a room and practices what they're doing together or discusses their errors with each other to learn from that? He's like, no, that's crazy. And I think there's a lot more of that happening now.
You know, what I remember from back then, though, is it really depended on the people, because sometimes you, uh, had people that everyone was very close and supporting each other. And I've always found that one of the best ways to confirm your own knowledge is to talk it through with somebody who isn't getting that, and you can explain it to them. And by explaining it, you know it more too. But there was also groups of people who viewed that entire phase of their life as, this is a competition, I need to get the aircraft I want, and everybody I beat is me being one step closer to getting what I want.
Yeah, I think there's still a little bit of that, but there's so much.
Well, there will always be competitiveness, because at the end of the day, only one person can be top. And everybody knows that there are no guarantees, but the closest way to guarantee what you want is to be the top candidate.
Yeah, I think you can still be supportive of everyone at the same time, UM, while putting more emphasis on yourself to do better than taking someone else away from the best they can be.
Raising somebody else up will never pull you down. Right? Yeah, I think that's as simple as it can be said. And speaking of getting what you want, the next thing I wanted to know was, was twin Otters what you asked for? uh, was it a surprise to you?
Uh, no, twin otters is absolutely what I asked for, and I'm not sure I knew I wanted it in phase two, I knew I wanted to fly transport, UM, or fixed wing. That was a goal of mine, whether or not I went jet or transport, not anything against the helicopter crew.
But I just didn't interest you.
Just didn't interest me as much. I already had my ppl and really liked the fixed wing atmosphere of what I was imagining for my own career. And, UM, once I got into phase three, I think it was, UM, a few of the instructors here locally, uh, as I was going through training and learning a bit more about what those fleets actually do, twin otters, uh, I'd say grew on me pretty quickly, and I knew I was very interested in, uh, flying that.
Was there any suspense if you were going to get what you wanted? Or did you have any indications that you would probably get what you had asked for? Is there interviewing? Is there any pre interviewing? Because that's a semi isolated posting. Right?
There is. And I'm not sure how they do it now. In fact, I still think they do it a little bit backwards. It depends on when your courses are coming up up there. There is an isolation interview for yourself and your spouse just to make sure you're comfortable with where you're going to be living, UM, that the medical support that is up there will be available to you if you have any special needs or, UM, your family has any special needs. And, uh, that process actually happened for me after I was told that I'd be going to 440. So coming out of the school, they had chosen me to go to 440. However, I I didn't actually receive that posting until I finished the medical screening.
Okay.
It's not really dependent on an interview process. It's it's more medical and making sure your family is prepared to be up there.
Actually, you're talking about your family and the process for getting approved to go up there brings me to a question I was going to ask you eventually anyhow, which is what is it like for you guys and for your families to live up in yellowknife?
To be honest, although the military places, UM, an amount of emphasis on it being a, ah, semi isolated or a northern posting. uh, I think yellowknife is very much like any other Canadian city.
Okay.
Uh, we live pretty, uh, close to Winnipeg now. And honestly, I think Winnipeg is colder most of the time than Yellow Knife is. Just the diversity and the fun and the quirkiness of living up in Yellowkife is just really exciting if you're in the right time of your life.
Yeah.
So younger, like maybe young. Thirty s I went up there actually when I was about 25 with the military. UM, and it was really fun and exciting. And there was amazing pubs and wonderful food.
Yeah, there's great restaurants up there. We flew out of there in the aurora and, uh, actually, I really liked Yellow Knife.
Yeah, it's really in the winter, our city gets a little bigger because there's now ice roads to travel. It gets different parts or different communities. So there's so many interesting and fun quirks that change just with what time of year it is.
So you guys get isolated communities that can only get to Yellowknife when there's ice roads.
Yeah.
That's crazy.
Uh, or the ice roads for some of them make the drive to Yellow Knife five minutes. And when the ice road is not there, it's an hour. Right. So they got to go with the long way around. Yes, it was very exciting. Just fun to live up there.
How is the sense of community? Because it's a smaller unit, I have found that that lends itself to a stronger community.
Yeah, I don't think I know unit cohesion in a smaller community like that can really grow and foster. And, uh, there's about 50 people at 440 itself. There's also, uh, jtfn Joint Task Force North is based up there. So, uh, there's lots of smaller units. I wouldn't call them larger in any way. But connecting with those people, even your maintenance techs and your personnel, there isn't really, uh, an officers versus ncms.
There's not like a strong divide.
There is really no strong divide up there because there's so few of you that you come together and you go out for dinner with, uh, anyone who's interested. They're not, uh, divided in that way. So for my time up there, it was absolutely phenomenal at the unit.
That's awesome. Did Amanda enjoy yourself up there as well?
Yes, in fact, every summer after getting posted down here, we would take a trip up there for about a week and spend some more time with some friends that we developed up there because it is such an amazing community.
That's awesome. So let's circle back around to the Twin otter. And can you just outline what does the Twin otter do? What's your job? What kind of taskings do you guys tend to get? What is it like?
Well, the twin auto is painted yellow. It used to be stationed out of Edmonton. And there was one a, ah, small contingent that would be up in Yellow. And I we were a sar resource for a long time. Much earlier than my time at 440. UM, and I was, uh, posted up there in 2011, as we said, so we never really repainted the planes. You could think of us as a really small gray painted perk.
Yellow painted herc.
Yellow painted herc. Yes. We're essentially strategic airlift for north and communities, and we do a lot of work with the Rangers.
Yep.
Moving them in and out of communities for their exercises. We've moved, uh, things from atvs, snowmobiles, barrels of fuel, food, anything that we can fit through our cargo doors. We've moved for the Rangers or the army, or as part of, uh, nevis, kind of moving back and forth between alert.
What is nevis?
Uh, Operation nevis is kind of run at the same time as boxtop.
Okay, so boxtop is cargo, uh, to alert, right?
Yeah. So while, uh, trenton, nor berks or C, whoever's, kind of deployed into that role. So while they're while they're moving food and supplies to, uh, alert on nevis, we're moving smaller amount of food or supplies down to eureka in support of eureka and the alert.
So it's kind of like a support up to boxtop.
Yeah, exactly.
Okay. You mentioned barrels of fuel. uh, if I remember correctly, you guys will also carry barrels of fuel to make fuel caches in the Arctic, right? For yourselves.
I, uh, wouldn't say we do that very often, but we do strategically place fuel for other units.
Oh, it's more for, like, Rangers for their snowmobiles and that sort of thing.
Yes, rangers for their snowmobiles. We do actually move a lot of jet fuel or probably Arctic diesel, which is essentially the same thing. But, uh, we'll move a lot of fuel into caches, uh, such as tanker, if you're or we'll move it out onto the sea ice, uh, barrel or two onto the sea ice somewhere so the Rangers can stop by and fill up their snowmobiles. And then, of course, we go back and remove those containers so that they're not, uh, contaminating, uh, the environment anyway.
So you guys do, UM, nevis in support of boxtop for basically keeping northern bases resupplied. Do you guys do any kind of presence patrols or, uh, that sort of thing, or the aurora regularly did, uh, presence patrols, which is why we fly out of Yellowknife, which is essentially we'll fly over northern communities and sort of fly over top and say, hey, we're here. You're part of Canada, and we care about you. And, UM, this is our land.
Uh, yeah, I guess in that respect, everywhere the tornado goes is almost a presence patrol, because that's true. The airports there are so sparse and so distant, uh, you know, on average, about 300 miles between each one, that our presence is really just showing up for fuel. So you can't keep going after that.
But largely your work is cargo.
Largely our work is cargo or moving people back and forth.
So airlift.
Airlift.
Okay. Honestly, I didn't realize that. I don't think I had a clear picture of what the twin owner did. Do you guys get much SAR work?
We don't get a lot of star work. We do have, uh, a few doors, or we can put on the SAR bubble. You've probably seen pictures of it, uh, with an enlarged window in a few places and that's so someone in the back can actually stick their head out and look all around, have a better field of view. We, uh, also have the Sardor or the door that lifts up that allows, UM, us to draw parachuters or, UM, Sartex. However, we just don't have that capability or Sartex up in the north. I do recall off of, ah, nanook in a call it maybe a family or a father and son, a fishing boat had gone missing. And at that point, we're actually close enough that we can start to help. One of the most interesting or best ways that we were able to help with that was we found another fisher, UM, on a sandbar and were able to land on the sandbar and go talk to them.
Wow.
And we discovered that this group was not, in fact, who we were looking for, but they had seen those individuals and they know who they are and they know what the boat looks like and which way they were going the last time they saw them.
Wow.
And with that information, we were able to find them, I think, 20 miles off the coast, and their engine had died. And they've just been floating in the water for two days.
Oh, my goodness.
So within landing and finding that out, we were able to find them in, I think, about an hour in the ocean.
That's amazing. That's incredible, too, for people listening. That's something I'm sure we'll talk about at some point. But the ability of this aircraft to do short field landing and takeoff is almost something that needs to be seen to be believed. And, uh, for them to be able to land on a sandbar, there's not many aircraft that can do that. Certainly no other aircraft that can do that in the Canadian forces that are fixed wing anyway. So once you get to the unit, obviously you're going to go to your otu, your operational training unit. UM, where do they run that course?
So we run our otu in house, uh, largely with some very, very good instructors. uh, so we'll run our ground school there and we will, uh, actually fly everyone back down to Toronto to run the emergency simulator there, which is not Level D in any way. There hasn't been many produced twin outer simulators.
When you say a Level B, can you explain what that is in loose terms?
In loose terms, it would be the full motion, full visual simulator that you kind of imagine when you think of an airline pilot going into a simulator.
It'S essentially what it's certified for by Transport Canada.
Yeah. And the Twin otter one is not that it does have a little bit of motion to it, but overall, it's just a procedure strainer. I would put it maybe one step above the best thing you could do in your house if you wanted on a flight simulator.
Yeah.
Okay.
Just more fidelity in terms of how it looks.
Yeah, more fidelity. And again, some really experienced instructors on Twin Honor systems. So that's, uh, kind of where the bulk of your ground school knowledge and emergency knowledge will come from. And then you come back up to the unit to learn the differences between, of course, that simulator and what our aircraft actually looks like. I think the otu process, once you're back at Unit is about two to three months before you're qualified as a First Officer, which, uh, is very quick in terms of a lot of other units, I think. And then you just have to wait for winter for another two weeks, applying on skis to qualify yourself on those.
So what's the total time?
Total time, I think about three months.
Oh, wow, that's nice. And so then you're a first officer.
Then you're first officer.
Awesome. UM, what's the upgrade process like for you guys?
Yes, uh, so I alluded to it a little bit. You have to wait for different seasons to experience everything that the Twin otter can provide. The upgrade process, UM, from First Officer to captain, we'll see you kind of become a utility captain first. I think a lot of units have something like that which allows you to go from airport to airport as a captain and transport goods and cargo or people or do whatever we need to.
Do, essentially, like a nontactical aircraft caption.
Yeah. And then from there, you'll start to get your checkout, uh, essentially decision making on austere landing strips. Can I land there? How to determine if you can land somewhere you've never been before.
So actually, I think I've heard you explain that before. I remember it being pretty interesting. So we'll come back to the upgrade process. Can you explain how you check out if you can land in a location?
Yeah, so it's one of my favorite parts of being a, uh, Twin otter, uh, captain or flying in. The Twin otter was being tasked to go somewhere potentially for the first time and running that decision making process with your crew on whether or not you could, in fact, do what you've been asked to do that day. And it starts with, uh, a higher wrecky. So we get over the site and you'll orbit for a while. You'll include your flight engineer, you include your copilot. And what you're really looking for is, does this look wet or muddy? Is the space too narrow for our, uh, wings versus trees? If there's any trees in the area, is there any large ruts that we can. Obviously see you get appreciation for what the wind is doing. And we traditionally train our pilots and what's the wind doing? Look at the Windsor.
Yeah.
There isn't one.
Right.
So what's the wind doing? Look at the wind sock. Or where are other people landing? Or uh, all those things that were taught in phase one, two, and three don't exist anymore, so so how do you do it? If you have a body of water somewhere, you can, you can actually see which way the waves are going.
Yeah.
So that that will tell you yeah.
Especially the spray.
Yeah. Water spray, tree movement. Is there any leaves or grass down there? And you can start getting appreciation for which way the window smoke.
It kind of reminds me of, uh, when I was doing my ppl, my private pilot license for a precautionary landing. I learned a thing, I think it was owls, obstacles, wind length, surface is, uh, it sort of like that where you're kind of checking each of these things.
Yeah. Essentially. That's exactly what I'm taking you through now.
Okay.
Is there anything there? Is there any obstacles? What's the wind? After that, we'll go into a lower wrecky pass, which is usually about 100ft, where the copilot will maybe be looking more diligently at things on that surface that we're trying to land on. And the flight, uh, engineer and pilot will be timing at a certain distance. Right. And then we'll come back up, spin it on our Cr six and go, okay, well, that's actually 2000ft. We have more than we need.
And the Cr six, also known as a whiz wheel, is basically, UM, a disk shaped slide rule that lets you do some, well, a lot of actually pretty amazing calculations. But essentially you can use it to do time, distance, uh, calculations and things like that.
Yeah. And then if all that is still sound, if everything is still good, we'll move into our lowest pass, or if we're still not entirely sure and we haven't committed to the landing. Another tool we have in our bag and that we've trained and practiced for is basically, UM, a main wheel drag. So, UM, we're trained to come in and land at a particular flap setting, usually kind of mid flap, and we'll land and hold enough power on that our nose wheel will not touch the ground and we're just putting weight onto that surface with our wheels. And at any point that we go, oh no, it's not good.
What are you feeling for when you do that?
We're feeling for roughness or severity of the surface. We're also assessing whether or not it's soft or there's actually water underneath. UM, is it mud or rock?
If it's like boggy or that kind of thing?
Yeah. And the fe sitting in the back can really get an appreciation for bog or wet because they'll start to see it spray right away.
Okay.
And at that flap sitting in speed. If the Fe calls go or anything, it's essentially just bringing the power back to take off and the plane will lift off the ground. Just because of how much flap we have or how much lifting surface we have available to us, it gets us out of that potentially dangerous spot or wet spot without sucking us into the ground.
That's really cool. I can't imagine there's too many pilots in Canada that that do that sort of thing to test, uh, a landing surface. So we talked about the upgrade process. We were kind of part way through that, actually. UM, you were mentioning that part of what you need to learn is is to do what we just talked about, assess a surface and what else?
Yeah, so you'll learn to assess that surface. That's really, I think, one of the primary things that we're looking for in the, uh, 440 captain, UM, upgrade process, because it's one with the bread and butter. And, of course, UM, through winter, you're going to get your ski qualification, your ski checkout, and the aircraft captain ski checkout is very much the same in that, UM, you could be tasked to go to a sea ice location, or you could be tasked to go to a river location, which has its own hazards. You, UM, could be tasked to just go to a lake right. And being aware of the hazards or the ice conditions that are present in.
All of those locations, you're talking about when you say rivers and lakes, you're talking about frozen frozen lakes.
Yes. For the winter ski qualification.
Okay.
The Twin otter has wheel skis, which allow us to run a hydraulic system that brings, uh, basically a boot sitting, uh, in front of our wheel, down and under to complete a full ski. And then you can retract that.
I didn't know that. So I had assumed you have wheels or you have skis. You guys have a combination system?
Yes.
That's really cool. I didn't know that. That makes sense, because I know you guys really prioritize versatility, but, uh yeah, I had no idea. So tell me more about you were talking about how you have to learn about how to use these skis.
Yeah, it is a really fun process to learn how to fly a ski plane and go and land in various locations. One of the easiest starting locations is actually just a lake.
Right. Because you had mentioned that you guys go into frozen lakes and rivers.
Yeah. And, UM, lakes are usually, uh, a little bit more i, ah, want to call them, ah, I guess isolated from a lot of winds and elements. So snow that falls on a frozen lake, UM, can typically be a little soft and more even. So that's a starting point for landing. But you have to learn, UM, essentially that same drag that we're talking about, uh, with the main wheels. Uh, once you've learned that in the Austere or off runway environment pays you dividends as you come to the ski environment. You really need to know how to do that because we're going to drag our mains over that snow, come back into the air and assess that with the crew and the fe to determine if the main wheels found a crack in the ice or the main skis, I should say. And you'll see that because water will start bleeding through the snow where you were just putting that weight.
So where's the fe doing that?
Uh, he'll be sitting in his seat.
In the back, and he's looking outside.
To see that maybe, uh, not necessarily in the drag itself, but as we come back into the air, he might pop out of his seat and help the pilot assess, UM, what what their seat?
Did you get water spray and that kind of thing?
Yeah, exactly. And from there, if everything looks good, you'll go in for your first landing. And, uh, even learning, uh, or understanding that as you land a ski plane on snow, the ski and the snow create friction which heats up the surface of your ski.
Mhm.
So if you come to a complete stop, shut your engine off and say, this is great, throw the keys away and want to come back the next day, your plane very well may have just frozen to the lake.
So what do you do after you've.
Come to a stop? You will wait 30 seconds, power up and move one ski length. Wait 30 seconds, power up, move one ski length and usually if you've done it three times you've now moved the ski over some cold snow and it's transferred that heat and you do it again and that kind of washes you of all wrongdoing. At that point, it should be fine.
Yeah.
Wow UM but just learning the intricacies of flying skis was really fun and challenging at the same time to understand what different ice conditions exist.
What do you think was the hardest part of learning how to do that?
I would honestly say the hardest part of learning how to do that was keeping your landing straight through the snow and picking something, anything in front of you to try to stay straight without adding too much side load or drag through the skis to make sure you could get into the air as fast as possible. I don't want to throw myself under the bus too much here, but more often than not after I got back into the air, I could see a big snow banana because I was turning slightly right or slightly left the whole.
Takeoff roll or take off slide, I'll say it's challenging.
Yeah.
So you start out as your uh, fo. You get a chance to see some off to your locations and how to assess the ground you get a chance to fly on skis and how to assess ice and snow and then basically, you're ready for upgrade to AC. Or is there more to it that.
Is part of your upgrade and category upgrade process? You need to know how to do all those things to have a viable chance, I would say, becoming a good AC on the 440 Squadron. Of course, the final step, and I think it's probably the same in a lot of squadrons, is a route check or a mission check, where you will be placed in charge of the entire event for the week or number of days, or that particular deployment, and you'll be given the aircraft. And we'll have one of the training captains essentially, uh, sitting behind you or acting as your fo and verifying that you are making good decisions and that you're not overloading yourself. And in fact, if you don't know the answer to a question, what is your response to that? Do you just call home for help, which is completely allowed? Like we're saying, aviation is a team sport, so if you need to call someone else for their opinion, did you do it, or did you think you could do it on your own? So just an evaluation of decision making on that trip is kind of the final step to getting, uh, up to captain at 440.
It seems to me that at least in the military world of aviation, it's very important to know certain things off the top of your head. Obviously things that you need to access right away. But there's a whole other realm of knowledge that's like, hey, you know, it great, but if you don't, you need to know where it is and how to get to it, and you need to know the situations where I haven't done this. I need some advice. And to have that personality that's not afraid to ask for help, yeah, absolutely. So that does it for the upgrade process. Let's talk about what it's like on a normal day as you walk in the doors at 440 Squadron. What does your day look like? What's typical a day in the life of a pilot at 440?
There's kind of two scenarios there. I work operations for, I would say, the duration or majority of my time there, which is four years. But walk, uh, in for the day, check your operations emails, see if there's any, uh, requests for effect, or request for essentially, UM, employment of the Twin otter, and determine whether or not we can, in fact, accept that request or if we need more information. So, like any job, there's a bit of UM, paperwork or admin which varies based on your role at the squadron which uh, could take the better part of an entire day or it might be fairly quick. But uh uh, the doors themselves, as you walk in, you actually walk right into the maintenance floor because it is a really small unit, a small building that, uh, we actually share with the RCMP in their aircraft up there. So you walk right through, basically, the maintenance floor, say hi to the techs every once in a while, brings them coffee, donuts, keeps everyone happy, see what aircraft maintenance is going on, uh, that day. And at that point, they might be pushing a plane out onto the ramp for training or for deployment.
Do you guys do your daily brief and that kind of stuff? As a unit?
It's a smaller unit, and, uh, we'll usually do it obviously changes with, uh, Co to Co. When I was there, I believe we did a weekly brief on, uh, tuesdays or wednesdays, just kind of recapping where the last week was and where the next week is going. UM, and everyone was included in that and, UM, kept everyone in the loop. But, uh, it is a very small unit, so, UM, a lot of that information kind of gets to everyone before those meetings really happen. UM, but of course, they still need to happen because not everyone has a chance to sit in front of a computer and check their emails. And then whether or not you're flying that day really dictates the rest of what's going to happen. And a day, uh, in the life of 440, if you're going out for a mission, will be, again, you're going to show up, you're going to walk through that maintenance hanger floor, meet up with your fear, your crew, verify you've got your paperwork, your request for effect is your passenger, is your cargo. Here. You push the plane outside, load it up, or load it up inside, depending on how cold it is, and get ready for your mission, do your pre flight checks, and in a way, you go. Uh, one interesting or notable part at, uh, 440 is, well, a lot of our aircraft could probably go out and back somewhere in a day, depending on how long their mission is, or leave for the day and return home. A lot of our movement of cargo or passengers takes us too far away in our crew day to come home. Okay, so, uh, even somewhere from yellowknife to whitehorse is usually at least, ah, an overnight or a two day trip.
And when Ryan talks about crew day, crew day refers to the number of hours the crew themselves have worked. And there's very strict limits as to how long that can go for safety reasons, it often ends up as a limiting factor for how long a mission can go, or what you can do in a day.
Yeah. UM, and even westjet or other airlines, every pilot has a crew day that they must stay within. Yeah.
And they're critical, they're critical for safety and for quality of life and for many things.
UM yeah. So that trip will probably take you overnight. A deployment or an operation, such as nevis or nanook, UM, or Nalbit, whichever you may be participating in as a crew, will take you anywhere from, uh, a week to a month. We, UM, have enough pilots that, uh, we like to cycle everyone through to get that experience. So we're not, uh, deploying for six months at a time in any sense of the word.
It's nicer for the homelife, too. So how many days in a week, typically, can you, uh, expect to fly?
I wouldn't necessarily put it in days of the week. I might put it in days of the month. If there's an operation already underway and, uh, you're on, say, second roto, uh, you might not see, uh, a plane for two weeks and then you'd be on up. You probably fly six, 7 hours every day for two weeks. But I would say if we're going to go for a week, on average, you're looking at, uh, probably three or four flight hours, maybe three to five flight hours a week in terms of, uh, a mission or some training or uh, a quick out and back across the lake.
So we've talked about what's involved in getting trained on the aircraft and upgrading. Where do you think pilots tend to struggle when it comes to flying the Twin otter? What's the most challenging part?
I might put this as a two part, there is pilots who will struggle just with the, UM, prospect of, of moving the Yellowknife or coming to the squadron in general.
If it's unexpected.
Yeah. If it's unexpected. I would honestly say that most pilots, after they've been there six months to a year, absolutely love the community and what's happening, but there's a bit of a shock to moving to a community like Yellowknife if you're very used to a, uh, place like trenton or Toronto.
To be fair, though, to support what you've said. I think everybody I've ever spoken to who was posted there had overwhelmingly positive things to say about it.
Yeah. It's a wonderful place to work after that shock wears off, if you weren't really looking for it or expecting it. UM, the next challenging piece sometimes takes a bit more training is the austere portion of landing somewhere new and understanding where or how to land the aircraft and really just making sure that you can land there safely without damaging the aircraft, if you can. And from the air, making the decision to say, well, no, uh, we can't go here, is sometimes hard when you know you've been tasked to do something.
Yeah. So if you've been asked, hey, we need support in this position, and you get there and you think, man, I just don't think we can do this.
Yeah. It is with everyone's type A personalities as a pilot, it is really challenging to get to that spot and look at it and come home with your cargo still and say, I can't go there.
Yeah. Because we want to make it happen.
Yeah. So that is, uh, a challenging thing to wrestle with internally.
Yeah. Well, you have to develop that ability to make a decision and stick with it and not let the external pressures push you into a corner that you don't want to be in, uh, in terms of safety. And that can be really challenging.
Yeah. And especially, UM, of course, communication is taking leaps and bounds every single year while I was there. There is a sat phone available on the aircraft, but it's not like I could pull my cell phone out at every single stop and check my emails or pull my phone out and call back home for decisions or advice. Right. So a lot of your decision making does rely on you as a crew to make that decision together. What the fee says, you've really got to go with that and make sure the aircraft is good. And ultimately, there isn't a lot of I don't want to say not a lot of oversight, but there isn't someone over your shoulder there to help you all the time. So making sure you are happy with your decision, your decision is sound, is challenging, and a little bit stressful at times as well.
I think there's, like, a phase when you become a new AC, and it seems like all of a sudden, all the things you've never seen before appear, and you have to make all these decisions. And it is stressful when you want to make the right call, you want to get your job done, but you're thinking, I have never seen this before. I, uh, think this is the right decision. And that's a tough place to be. But as we kind of joke, that's why they pay you the big bucks, right? That's why you signed up to be a pilot. And that's what the upgrade process is for, is to help. Hopefully, by the time you get there, you probably haven't seen everything, but you've had enough mentorship and decision making that you can figure it out. So there's, uh, a lot of unique parts about flying the Twin otter. One of those is that you guys operate in northern domestic airspace. Most pilots in Canada fly in Southern domestic airspace, and one of the key differences between those is that in northern domestic airspace, it's almost entirely uncontrolled. In southern domestic airspace, you're going to find a lot more controlled airspace, which this is getting a little bit academic, but essentially there's different rules in how you operate in each type of airspace, and it's very important for a pilot to know, what airspace am I operating in? What are the rules, how do I stay safe? How do I make sure that I am properly deconflicting with other traffic, how do I make sure people know where I am? And, uh, there's different procedures for those, depending on where you are. What are some of the unique challenges that come from operating in northern domestic airspace?
I think you kind of hit the nail on the head there, Bryan. In that it is largely uncontrolled in northern domestic airspace, uh, at least at the altitudes the Twin otter flies. We don't typically bring that aircraft over 8000ft if we can help it, because we're not pressurized. So we like to stay or above 10,000, I should say, for the Twin otter, essentially 50 miles outside of Yellowknife. As you're flying north, you, uh, make the switch, UM, and then you're flying in all true and flight levels, which is interesting. So I could be at flight level three 50, UM, as, uh, you'll switch back to 2992 and everyone. So that's one of the ways we all do conflict, mhm, is no one flies on an altimeter setting unless you're getting close to an airport to land. No one flies standard everything.
And this is a bit academic again, but when Ryan says 2992, that is your altimeter setting. Normally, when you fly around in Southern Domestic, you set your altimeter to match air pressure for where you are. And that makes sure that everyone is operating on the same altimeter setting. So that when I say I'm at a certain 3000ft, that's the same 3000ft that the next guy is, uh, measuring. Up north, there are not as many reporting stations, so you can't get accurate air pressure. So everyone operates on standard altimeter settings, which is 29.92 as well. When he says true, normally we operate on magnetic headings. Uh, when you're in the Arctic, or rather, when you're in Northern Domestic airspace, you operate on true headings.
It is a little bit challenging, uh, keeping everyone in the same spot or mentally understanding where everyone is. Uh, there is still radio controllers in a lot of those places who can help you with winds or any other traffic that they've heard that is coming in and out.
But it's more of an advisory service, right?
It absolutely is an advisory service. And, uh, just staying on top of your radio calls. I probably can't count the amount of times while flying up in Northern, uh, domestic, just flying along maybe 150 miles to any airport. And I think to myself, that little spidey sense goes off, a little pilot spidey sense goes off. And, well, you know what I should do right now is I probably just make a radio call. Everyone that I think is out here, which in your head, you're like, uh, Big Sky, Arctic. I'm the only one here. And every time I make that radio call, six other guys, oh, I heard a radio call, it's my turn. And invariably, two of those planes are within 50 miles of me going the opposite direction or we're going to cross paths. So it's very kind of eye opening to know how many aircraft are actually up there at all times. So staying on top of your comms is really important.
So those are some of the challenges of flying up north. Uh, what would you say is the best part of flying into remote locations in the Arctic.
Honestly, the best part of flying into remote locations or some of those small communities is, uh, meeting the new people, meeting people who live there year round. Everyone is, uh, so friendly and welcoming and inviting, and I don't know if I want to say it's the best part, but it's definitely the most memorable part is some of the hotels or places you're staying up north are really not what most Canadians think of when they're staying at a hotel. Close. ah. To our border here, where most people live. So, UM, the scenery is really beyond compare. Like seeing that tree line fly underneath you, and all the trees disappear, like, literally in a line. In a second, you might see a shrub you think is a tree. And just moving over the tundra is really interesting and beautiful to see.
I think you've mentioned before, too, that the Arctic is, like, littered with wrecks, isn't that right? For aircraft?
I wouldn't necessarily say littered, but there is there is a large number of aircraft hulls and locations within, I'd say, 50 miles of almost every community or airport up north. There's going to be one aircraft somewhere that missed on an approach, and that was all the fuel that had left, and they glided it into the tundra somewhere. And just by nature of where these wrecks are, by the nature of where they have crashed, there's just not the resources to go and recover those things. So they've been there for, I don't want to say forever, but since they've crashed, and they all have a story, and they're all just incredibly interesting to read about. One of the ones that, uh, I was really happy to go and see and be a part of was DC, uh, Three crash near, uh, Pangartung, uh, which was actually a 440 aircraft at the time, uh, on a Star Search. Okay. And, UM, there is enough tundra or ESCAR and ESCAR for everyone, just because I'm talking about it is basically an old, UM, glacial build up of rock and stone that was pushed into a line as the glacier was moving. And when the glacier receded, it left basically a small hill in the tundra full, uh, of gravel at his level. Okay, so they're just natural runways.
Oh, wow. Like a gravel plateau.
Gravel plateau, yeah.
Cool.
Uh, and if you look at a vnc or a M map, uh, escrows are actually on there. So you can see where a lot of these things are. And they're, uh, pretty easy landing spots for the tornado. So there's an ESCAR near this DC Three, and I got to go there with some of our 440 members to go and see this wreck. And there is even, UM, a monument there with their names on it. So, uh, we went there to clean it up and make sure everything was.
Kind of honor the site.
Yes. And there is another monument for that aircraft and that SAR search in Yellow knife itself that we take care of once here as well.
That's awesome.
So seeing some of those things and just understanding the fragility of aircraft and working in the north is, uh, really, uh, eye opening. It's awesome.
Well, it really speaks to the challenges that we were talking about and the unforgiving nature of flying in the north. You talked about these guys running out of fuel after they do a missed approach. It's not like in a lot of the well, certainly not in the States where there's an airport everywhere. But even in the southern portion of Canada, you've typically got quite a few options within a fairly short distance in terms of aviation, if you're having issues, uh, for an unexpected reason or the weather changes and you can't make it in, but that's not the case up there. It's unforgiving if things change. The way the twin outer can just kind of go everywhere and anywhere is really neat that you guys have that ability to no other aircraft could just go land. Well, the helicopters, but no other fixed wing aircraft can just, oh, hey, there's a rack here from our squadron. We can land on this pile of gravel and go, uh, under that site. I think that's really special. Okay, so we have summarized a lot of what life is like on the Twin otter. If you had 30 seconds to convince me if I was a new pilot, I'm on phase one or phase two. I'm trying to decide what I want to fly, why would I want to fly the Twin otter and what kind of person would that appeal to?
I don't want to just say the younger crowd, but, uh, anyone with a young family, uh, you go up to Yellowknife, your family is going to love that community while you're at work. And they're always going to be close to you at the end of the day because the town itself is fairly small. So you're hop skipping a jump from your home life to your work life. The aircraft itself can deploy and fly anywhere. And while you're doing that, you're given a lot of autonomy to ensure you can get the job done, which doesn't happen in a lot of our larger fleets with a bit more oversight, UM, and larger fuel bills. So something to consider is your decision making is going to be rewarded. And if you're a strong, good pilot, you're going to love flying up there.
Awesome. That actually reminds me, uh, thinking about opportunities you had. Did you not go to antarctica?
I did fly there.
Can you tell me quickly about how you ended up flying a twin outer in antarctica?
Sure. Yeah. I hope they still do it. I'm not sure what COVID has done to some of our exchanges in the rcf, but a little known rcf exchange is, uh, 440 Squadron with the chilean Air Force. UM, out of, uh, punter enos, where they fly those Twin otters and they fly them between punter enos and, uh, base at guardo frey in antarctica. We do a small exchange with them. At the time, we had done it, essentially, I think, every other year, or we would go down, and then the next year they would come up and we would go down. And I was given an opportunity to go on that exchange and learn how they fly there to an otter and, UM, fly in a different snow and ice environment than what we have here, and, uh, fly on glaciers in antarctica.
That's amazing.
Which is amazing. And it is incredibly challenging and interesting in the way that they've developed, uh, or thought of how to do that. We don't have glaciers. Well, we do have glaciers in Canada, but they're different. They're more broken and rocky and, UM, typically on the top of a hill somewhere. So to fly on an antarctic glacier like the entire dome of that is very interesting.
You know, you talk about reasons to go 440. How many pilots, uh, in Canada have flown in antarctica? I would argue very few.
Yes, I have flown and landed in the Arctic and antarctic Circle.
Yeah, that's amazing. This probably dovetails into some of that, but what is your coolest memory from the Twin Otter?
Yeah, uh, I think we were just starting to blend, uh, that one topic into the other and being able to make new friends in South America. And, uh, I was actually in antarctica on my birthday, and that's really cool. It must have been in our indoct brief somewhere. I can't remember telling them, but the base commander there knew it was my birthday and had a bottle of Crown Royal Canadian rye flown to antarctica to, ah, celebrate my birthday, UM, which was amazing. It was really special. That's probably one of my, uh, favorite memories.
Yeah. That is amazing. UM, do you have any funny stories from the Twin Otter?
Uh, countless, countless funny stuff stories from the Twin honor everyone who works, UM, at 440, UM, was an absolute wonder while I was there, and, UM, vfes were so much fun. And, UM, I guess one of my funniest stories is we were moving, uh, some mod tent, packs of sheets and blankets and just a whole bunch of, essentially, fabric. We didn't have the poles, the other guys had the poles.
And a, UM, mod tent is a modular tent. It's basically the standard. You picture an army, a long army tent that is a mod tent. They're modular. You can make them a bunch of different sizes. And, UM, they're made out of fabric with a metal frame.
Yeah. UM, so we had a lot of the fabrics, and we had, of course, tied them down properly at the beginning. And, uh, me and the, uh, copilot were up front. Could hear a grunt here or two. Lots of work. Things were being thrown around in the back, and by the time I finally turned around to see what the fe was doing, he had made himself a big pillow fort in the back. And all I could see was his eyes. And what did you do? It's my pillow fort. You can't get in unless you know the password. Uh, UM, the copilot and I looked at each other and kind of nodded, and we knew what we had to do. So, uh, we may have unloaded a bit of the GS just to watch his pillow fort float into the ceiling, came crashing down on him, and it was, UM, it was pretty funny.
That's awesome.
And then we made him, you know, strap it all back down for a safe landing destination. Of of course. Course.
Can you think of a day that you would say was your hardest day on that aircraft?
Yeah, actually, and my hardest day on that aircraft was, I want to say I, uh, was flying out of yellowknife to go to a resolute bay, and, uh, what makes this the hardest day really, was the weather and the length of time the mission took. And we had a member up in resolute bay who had a bit of a medical issue. So we took, uh, the last plane out of yellowknife to go and, uh, to recover that person so that they could see, uh, a doctor. Weather threw a number of challenges at us, trying to stay away from icing. To keep our wings clean so we could continue landing and getting fuel without getting stuck, so we could get to that member. And of course, once we got there, we had a decision to make which was already given to us, or we were offered it by various, uh, command levels, which was, if you feel comfortable, you are authorized as much crude as you need to get him home. So it was fairly serious.
UM, UM, this, uh, has come up in other interviews, but one of the reasons you can break rules, we have certain situations laid out. These are the times you can break rules, and one of them is to save life.
Yes. So, uh, to get him and bring him back, UM, the weather made it a challenge. And ultimately, as we're flying our approach into yellowknife, the crew could definitely feel that fatigue. And even after landing and shutting down, and we're at the squadron again, and now everyone's safe, and we know we've done our job. I actually realized I was so tired, I couldn't get into my car and drive home.
Wow.
So I, uh, had to get amanda to come and pick me up. But that was not challenging. It didn't feel challenging at the time. But on that landing, after kind of all that adrenaline is done, you feel like you've done a good job. You realize, oh, man, I'm kind of done here.
I've always felt that one of the hardest things about being an Air Force pilot is the days when you have to put yourself to the point of utter exhaustion. I think that there's not too many things less pleasant than being exhausted and having to stay awake to keep performing this life and death task. And, uh, it's really, really tough. But, uh, you guys made it happen. It's awesome. Can you think of a day we may have covered this already? Can you think of a day that was your best day on the Twin Otter?
Almost every day on the Twin Otter was my best day. Such a fun machine with so many fun people that any time I got to climb into it, it was absolutely stunning.
I think you might have just topped your 30 seconds or less. Why should people fly it?
That's what I should have said. Every day is the best day.
That's awesome. Did you ever get a call sign, uh, while you're flying?
Uh, Twin Otter kind of didn't really become who I was, which was good. But as I was learning, uh, it was, uh, one of the first nanooks that I was on. I think it was the first nanook I was on. ah. And I was still a first officer, and I was learning austere. And, uh, I went, UM, in every location I went that day, I managed to sink, uh, the aircraft into the dirt. Even if an aircraft had already proven it as a safe place to land before me so that I could get down there without sinking an aircraft into the dirt. I had an innate skill of finding.
Exactly where you could find the soft spot.
I could find the soft spot and sink the tires up to the hubs and inevitably have to shut down and get out with a shovel and dig the wheels out in a ramp so that we could pull out and then take off again.
So you guys have, like, equipment on board to dig the aircraft out?
Yeah, we'll carry at least a shovel, and we'll brief if we're carrying shovels or wooden boards. UM, so we have a few recovery techniques just in case. And, uh, in a single day, I needed to use those recovery techniques three times. UM, and, uh, when I got back, I was labeled quicksand for the rest of the op. And luckily, that did not stick. I, uh, started to find places that I could land without sinking. So it was good.
That just sounds nightmarish.
It's a lot of digging.
Yeah. So you have had a fairly unique experience in that you have transitioned from the rcaf to westjet and then come back to the rcaf. So did you find that the airlines were looking for rca pilots? Did that give you an advantage?
I don't think in terms of my application itself, or reaching out or trying out that career path that, uh, I was necessarily favored. One, uh, pilot over another. Uh, lots of other pilots with lots of experience are hired as well and they have more jet time or more airline experience. And for someone like that, walking into another airline is probably a lot more seamless. Whereas it was a significant jump for me in terms of even flying orders and rules.
Did you find once you were hired that your rcf experience gave you any advantages in terms of work attitude or that your level of training had helped?
Yeah, absolutely. UM, I think as I walked into that job and was going through the training program that the training system we have here absolutely set me up for a success. I am very comfortable with changing aircraft now or changing airframes. I know what to expect going into simulator training. I know how to, I don't want to say pick and choose what I need out of the aois, but I know what information is important for me to read and retain.
We do emphasize strong aoi knowledge, strong emergency procedures. I think more than many civilian, uh, outfits might.
Yeah. And we are getting away from it a little bit now, which I am thankful for, but the amount of exams that we have to write every year really brings in a lot more knowledge retention, even on flight rules and orders.
But they also help you to know what's important.
Yeah, exactly. So I feel like I walked into that training environment very well set up for success with the, with the rcf training and aircrafts, which is that we, we're kind of expected to be able to do the rcf.
I'd like to hear that because lots of people join the rcaf as a pilot and this is their 25 year career plan. That's great, but not everybody wants to do that necessarily. I think it's important to consider that this is also a good method of making your way if your dream is to be in the airlines. I would argue that the rcaf is one of the most exciting ways you can kind of earn your chops towards getting in the airlines. You're going to get into a more interesting aircraft much more quickly in your career and then it's going to set you up well for that second career if that's where you decide you want to go.
Yeah, absolutely. I loved all my time at westjet. I think, uh uh, if a few of your listeners listen between the lines and know that I left in 2019 and I came back late 2020, there's a there's a there's a reason.
There were there were some global circumstances.
There'S some global circumstances there, UM but that's not to say that I did not like westjet over the rcf. And that's not to say that I didn't like the rcaf over westjet when I made that switch. It just, it seemed like at the time, a really good time to make that career switch and try something different if I were to say as I moved to westjet and, UM, was flying for them, I was really happy with flying. One thing I started to kind of miss, or started to feel almost left out of, per se, would be the people and the friendships of the rca that was there. I felt like, now I've got to recreate something there. But our pilots at westjet are across Canada. So making that relationship or finding people to come over for a drink seemed like it almost was now impossible.
And you're not always flying with the same people.
Exactly.
You could be flying all the time with people you don't know.
Yeah. And then, UM, I was really liking that work environment and working with the people that I did have a chance to work with.
I have heard overwhelmingly positive things from people who have gone on to the airlines. UM, and I've said this. I did, uh, my interview for phase two training with Lauren Armstrong. She flies triple seven for Air Canada. Uh, and we said it then. There's nothing wrong with your career will evolve. You may decide to stay in the Air Force, you may decide it's time to leave. You may do both, uh, over time, and there's nothing wrong with that. You explore different avenues, and aviation is multifaceted, and there's many ways to work in the industry. We're down to the last two questions. These are my three favorite questions. The, uh, first one is, what is the most important thing you do to keep yourself ready for the job?
You do have to think about that a little bit. Just because I've probably been doing it for so long that I don't know that I do those things. Yeah, I think, uh, the most important thing I do to get ready for my job is just, UM, like a self check in the morning. Everyone can wake up in the morning and know if they feel good or not good. And then from there, you begin, uh, to start your day. So, do I feel well rested? Am I feeling ill? Is something stressing me out that I need to address before I go flying? UM, I think an important self check is really part of any day, but especially if you're going to climb into an aircraft. So after that, which I think is the most important thing, would be that, uh, I get a coffee. I get a coffee before I go flying, and then deal, uh, with any repercussions from the coffee before I'm in the plane.
Uh, that might be the answer I'm most on board with so far. Coffee. And the necessary, uh, actions after a coffee are really, really key before you go flying, in my opinion. What do you think makes a good pilot?
Honestly, I think what makes a good pilot would be more, uh, mentality than anything. And it would be that a good pilot would realize they're probably not good all the time. And there's something that can be learned out of every situation where they weren't good all the time. And even if they were good, there's something that you can always learn about aviation to keep yourself safe and to keep you and the aircraft safe at all times. So learning from every situation all the time, I think it would be what makes a good pilot.
I think that's a great answer. I like that a lot. This is our last question. Part of the point of the show is to encourage people to get involved in aviation, encourage people to pursue a career in the rcaf if they think that's something they're interested in. So, Ryan, you've got a ton of experience. You are a standards pilot. Uh, you're an instrument check pilot. You've flown the Twin Otter in the Arctic. You've flown for westjet. You have a lot of experience. What would your advice be to somebody who is just starting out, who is either looking at getting their private pilot license or they want to join the Air Force as a pilot, what advice would you give them?
I think my advice would be start now. Even if you're not really sure and you're just exploring that opportunity, why wait with the application processes or making, UM, that plan to put, uh, some money away to start flight training? So if you're interested in any way, but you're still not sure, take that first step towards what you think is something that you want to do. So I would say to those people who are still sitting on the fence, start. And if you get three steps down the road or you need to use that savings for something else or that application process didn't work out, then at least you know. But if you don't take that first step and you're always wondering, then you're always going to watch the planes flying over you being the, uh, one in the front. That's great.
Okay. That actually does it for all of our questions. So, Ryan, I want to thank you so much for taking the time out of your day to come here and chat and, uh, to share some of your experiences. I really enjoyed that. So thank you so much.
Thanks, Bryan.
Yeah. Okay. That's going to wrap things up for our interview with Ryan and flying in the Arctic in the Twin Otter. For our next episode, we'll be talking with Jackie ruiz. Jackie will tell us all about life on the Canadian shinuk, as well as about the day her and her comrades performed a medevac for wounded UN. peacekeepers in maui after an Al qaeda attack. Haven't heard that story before. That's okay. Neither have most Canadians. Now you can hear as well. We are still working on our episode on training delays and what's being done to solve them, so stay tuned for that. Do you have questions or comments about anything you've heard or have a topic you'd like to hear discussed. Send us an email at the pilotproject podcast at uh@gmail.com or reach out on all social media at at podpilotproject. As always, we'd like to close by thanking you for your support and asking for your continued 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. Thank you for listening. Keep the blue side up. See ya.