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What does it take to make it through Phase II Flight Training at Moose Jaw? What is it like to fly into Baghdad in a C-17? How do you takeoff in formation and stay safe in the clouds? Learn this and more in Episode 2 of The Pilot Project Podcast!
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.
Bryan: 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 coursemate from way back in 2012, Lauren Armstrong.
Lauren: Hey, Bryan nice to chat with you again.
Bryan: So, before we get started, we'll talk about Lauren's credentials. Lauren graduated from flight training in 2012. We were on the same Wings course here at 3CFFTS, and she was posted to 429 Transport Squadron in Trenton, Ontario, flying the C17 Globemaster. In 2016, she was posted to 2CFFTS in Moose Jaw, Saskatchewan, where she instructed on the CT-156 Harvard II for three years. In 2019, she released from the RCAF in order to pursue an airline career with Air Canada on the Boeing 777 out of Vancouver, BC. Today, we will be focusing on her time as a Moose Jaw instructor. The only caveat we want to give today about the interview is, that Lauren's information is a few years old. It's been a while since she was regularly instructing a Moose job, but phase two is likely still very similar to her time there, and any advice and general outline, of the course will still apply. So, Lauren, we trained together, but I actually don't know this about you. How did flying start for you in high school?
Lauren: I suppose I was kind of floundering. I wouldn't say grades wise. I mean, I wasn't a rock star, but I wasn't bottom third, I wasn't top third. I was a mediocre student, mostly because I was having fun with my friends. And I wanted to find, um, a career that would basically pay me to travel. I had done a fair amount of traveling by then. My mother had taken me on a few trips to Australia, to China. I'd seen a few places, let's just say, for a teenager. And one day, in front of some family friends, they asked me, what do you want to do? And I said, Well, I think I want to be a flight attendant. And my oldest brother kind of looked at me funny, and he said, why would you be the flight attendant when you could be the pilot? And it just had never occurred to me. And if he hadn't said it, it wouldn't have planted the seed. And then he and my mother took me out to the local airport for an intro ride one day to see if I liked it. And I could be biased, but who wouldn't like that? We went up in an airplane, and, he let me do the takeoff, obviously not the landing, but put my hands on the controls and fly around right overhead Niagara Falls. Actually, that's where I'm from. Yeah. And I landed, I said, yeah, that's what I want to do. And that was pretty much it.
Bryan: I haven't thought about this in a long time, but my parents got me an introductory, ride out of Waterloo, Wellington when I was a teenager. And it is really cool. It's like an eyeopening experience.
Lauren: Plus you get a, bird's eye view of your hometown, which we've been driving around for our whole lives. And then to see it from above, it's just a whole different perspective.
Bryan: Did you do any flight training before you got into the forces?
Lauren: I did, yeah. I actually went to UVic, University of Victoria on, Vancouver Island for one school year. So basically eight months. And in that time, I got my private license out at Victoria International Airport, flying a Katana DA20 I want to say the two seater. It's basically a glider with an engine.
Bryan: Yeah, I flew on that, too.
Lauren: Yeah, it's pretty slick. It was a lot of fun. And then I ran out of money and I moved home, moved back to Niagara Falls, Ontario, for what was supposed to be a summer. But, uh, you know, a summer turned into maybe a summer or two or maybe even three, actually. I was in a tourist town, so I started bar, attending waitressing, doing all typical tourist town things. But the whole while, I kept spending all my tips and everything on getting my commercial license. Filling your boots, you know, when you got to fill your boots to get the hours. So I actually ended up getting my commercial license while I was bartending and waitressing. I took a couple of tourists up randomly a few times. That was fun. And then I still had no money, and I had started a degree, and I didn't finish it. So where to next? Well, I need to finish a degree, have no money for flight training. The Air Force sounded pretty good by then.
Bryan: How did you find your flight training in the forces?
Lauren: We went through together. Bryan, I don't know what your week was like, but Monday to Friday or Monday to Thursday was just stress, stress, stress. Try to keep two flights ahead in your preparation. Friday you go to the mess and have a few pints and then maybe a few more. Saturday, you do something fun as well, but more kickback. Relax. Sunday you did laundry and, uh, got ready for the weekend. And then occasional Friday, you'd cry in the shower.
Bryan: Definitely. There's always lots to cry about.
Lauren: It was stressful. What did we do, 1.2? So basically, you have 1 hour every day in the aircraft. And if you're double turning, maybe 2 hours every day to show them what you got to show them that you're learning. Really is what it is. Show them that you're capable of learning. It is stressful for the students.
Bryan: Those are super intense hours. Like, it's funny when you say it like that. It doesn't sound like a lot. But, man, that hour and 15 minutes in the plane is every step of it. From the second you start walking around the plane to doing your pre flight checks and everything is very, very intense and intentional.
Lauren: Students, their hearts are racing, they're sweating. They're wearing gloves, they're wearing long sleeves and everything. And then you're under the canopy of the Harvard two, which is basically a magnifying glass just heating up the cockpit. And, uh, yeah, they're sweating and they're stressed.
Bryan: So you end up flying the C 17. And that was your first choice, right?
Lauren: It was my first choice, and I was lucky enough to get it.
Bryan: Yeah. And that was a good fit for you?
Lauren: It was. It was drinking from the fire hose because you go from the King Air in Portage la Prairie onto a wide body Boeing product. So when somebody says APU it's auxiliary, uh, power unit, I didn't know what one was. So you're really starting from the bottom. And we do all our training in the States because we only have five C17s, USAF owns 240, some odd of them. So we purchased our training down there. So I went down to Altis, Oklahoma, for three months to get schooled up. And then you come back to Unit and you start learning how to fly all over Cologne, Germany, into theater, into Iraq, into, uh, Afghanistan, into Bamako, Mali, all over Africa, all over the Middle East. You kind of give your life to it. You give your life to learning that machine. And the crews that you work with, we work with some really fantastic people in the RCAF. So the load masters, the technicians, your fellow pilots, you kind of get a group and you all share some good times. So it's a lot of fun. It's stressful, but it's a lot of fun.
Bryan: That sounds great. A lot of aircraft, We have our typical places we operate out of. Right. But you guys are just everywhere.
Lauren: Yes. The running gag is, when we land, where do you think the tasking message is going to have us go next? Because it was never what was on it. Wait for your phone to ding. Oh, now they want us to randomly go into, uh, Lossiemouth, Scotland, to go pick up an Aurora engine. Oh, you just want us to fly into Scotland? Uh, just off the hip. All right.
Bryan: You guys brought my coat to Lossie once. I forgot my jacket and we needed parts because we broke down. So Melissa drove my coat into work and you guys flew it over for me. And it still has on the label, it says, delivered with care from 429 Squadron.
Lauren: Yeah, we were all over. We are a kind of an odd platform in that sense. I mean, we do strategic airlift, but we do it wherever they need people and equipment. Mostly equipment, but also troops. So really, we're supporting the army? We're supporting Disaster Assistance Relief team. We do the DART So whenever there's, uh, an earthquake or something, we do that as well. So it's a high capability unit.
Bryan: Yeah, for sure. So once your time was coming to close on the C17 you ended up at Moose Jaw. How did that come about?
Lauren: Basically, I just drew the short straw is how it worked out. Uh, we all know that right now, as it stands, it's four year posting. So you're at any posting for generally four years as a junior officer, as a senior, then it's probably two. And then you go on to the next thing. And I had upgraded, so that was good. And I was looking forward to serving out the rest of my time at 429 as an aircraft commander. But instead they asked me if, uh, there's any reason I couldn't go to Moose Jaw, which is the moment I knew I was hooped.
Bryan: That's when you knew you were going?
Lauren: That's when I knew you kind of sort of, yeah. But honestly, Moose Jaw is a great posting. If you are married and have a young family, you're home every night and you're home every weekend. It is perfect for families. As a single person, I was thoroughly unimpressed. In fact, I had a pretty big chip on my shoulder for the first eight months going through flight instructor training. But I realized quickly that I would have to, uh, shed that or at least take off as much as I could of it in order to succeed. Because you can't be at a posting you'd absolutely despise being at, which I didn't. The students made it great in Mooshaw. I just kind of said, Listen, uh, when I'm flying, I'm here, and when I'm not, I'm at CrossFit.
Bryan: Yeah. And I mean, like, in anything in the Air Force, you can be miserable anywhere, happy anywhere. Right?
Lauren: Yeah. It's what you make of it. I really had to do a number on myself to say, listen, am I going to do four years in Moose Jaw miserable the whole time, or am I going to find pieces of it to love? And I did. And you know what those pieces were? They were watching your students flourish. There is an immense value or gratitude that, uh, you develop when you watch students go from zero to hero Right. So it's fun watching them succeed.
Bryan: Before we get into actually talking about the Phase Two course, we should probably talk a little bit about the Harvard Two. The Harvard Two is the aircraft students train on in Phase Two flight training. And it is an incredible aircraft. It has a max speed of 316 knots, which is about 600 km an hour. It can fly up to 31 000 ft. it has the Pratt and Whitney PT Six engine, which is probably one of the most reliable and safe turboprop engines that exist. It also features a Martin Baker ejection seat, which has saved many lives in our training fleet. It's fully aerobic. It's very fast and powerful, and it is an absolute blast to fly. I would say it is still the most fun aircraft I have ever flown. So can you briefly outline the phase two course?
Lauren: Yeah. So basically, the phase two course is, uh, a course broken down into four parts. You're doing ground school for the first, I want to say a month or two or so.
Bryan: Yeah. Without flying.
Lauren: Yeah, without flying. Before you even hit the flight line. Right now, it consists of approximately 80 hours. And the bulk of those hours is dedicated to, uh, two of the four types of flying. The four types of flying you're going to learn are clear hood, uh, instrument procedures, lowlevel navigation and formation flying.
Bryan: And for the listeners, clear hood is flying visually with reference to the ground and looking outside.
Lauren: You're going to start out with clearhood so that you develop a sense for setting a known attitude and known power settings and seeing what an airplane can do. You're also going to develop your cross check and your basic instrument flying knowledge by flying instrument flights, When the weather is less than ideal. you'll do two initial tests in those phases, but then you'll continue on, uh, doing those two phases until you're done one of them. At what point you will start, uh, your low level navigation phase? Low level navigation also has a test at the end of it, and so does formation flying. So at the end, you're going to be doing six tests. It takes about, uh, how many months does it take to finish?
Bryan: That depends. Like, are you starting in October and you're going to be trying to fly through the winter? Do you happen to get there in, like, February? And you do your ground school through the worst months, and then you start flying in the best months.
Lauren: So, yeah, it's definitely, uh, I would say, at least six months. Yeah.
Bryan: And it's an intense course, too. It's not super long, but it's a high intensity, high pressure, both externally and internally. It's a very make or break time in your career.
Lauren: It is exactly a make or break. Uh, some of the students phase three will go on to get their wings out of, uh, that course, plus a bit more an extension. But you gotta get through phase two flying in order to get those wings.
Bryan: What's an average day look like for an instructor at Moose Jaw?
Lauren: An average day. You're expected to do two sorties a day, depending on how many, uh, waves there are that day. So everything depends on how many waves. Usually there's four, but sometimes there are five waves. So you might fly first and third wave, or second and fourth, or you might fly first and fifth, which really sucks because it's like you fly in the morning, you fly last.
Bryan: Yeah. That's a long day.
Lauren: Yes. However, it ends up. If you're trying to fly with a particular student because maybe they're stumbling in something, then you kind of go out of your way to make sure that you fly with that student to help them on their way. Basically that's it two sorties a day. And the curriculum you start to know by heart. Teaching the first few clear hoods and the first few instrument lessons is pretty labour intensive, I guess I'll say, because there's a lot to brief. The briefings and debriefings are pretty intense. When you first start meaning lengthy and involved, there's a lot to cover And then hopefully their eyes haven't glazed over and you still haven't gone flying yet. And usually go look at their card before you go with the student and see what they're struggling on. See what levels they need to get for this flight. What you really need to focus on.
Bryan: What'S it like to be on the other side of that instructor door. Right. Remember when we were students, you knock, you stand attention, there's like a thing you read on the door that tells you how to present yourself. You have to be ready for them to challenge you with a red page.
Lauren: Yeah, it kind of ebbs and flows. When I was there as an instructor, they still do that, but other times they aren't so hard on it. Depends who's in the instructor shop. But I can tell you being on the other side of the door is a lot better than being on the student side of the door.
Bryan: So once you finish your course and you finish FIC and you got on the line, what was the hardest part of the job?
Lauren: I guess trying to cater to each student's learning process or like everybody learns differently. Right. And trying to know where the line was, uh, of um, overwhelming students or uh, maybe not pushing them enough if they were performing really well. So like one of my first primary students I'm not going to say name, he's probably out flying operationally right now. So students often get sick the first couple of clearhoods. It's not uncommon they'll get sick. And if they do, you're supposed to, uh well you're supposed to do a couple of things depending on the level, but basically come back and land, get him out of the plane. He's not learning anymore, right? He's not paying attention. All he can think about is, holy God, I'm going to throw up. But instead I said, oh, are you feeling better? And he said, I think I'm feeling better, ma'am. I took him back to the pattern and did like two patterns doing sixty s and twos. Like, there's the lake that you need to know, there's the farm you need to know. And I'm sure he wasn't taking any of it in. And then we landed in taxi back. And in retrospect, I laughed. I'm like, that poor student, he's throwing up. And then I give him back control. And then I go around the pattern two more times. These are things you need to learn from. Like, he wasn't paying attention to anything.
Bryan: He wanted to be okay, but he.
Lauren: Wanted to be okay. He wanted to say yes. Man, he was. But I could hear him, uh, ralphin' so you got to learn when they've had enough, when they're not taking in any more information, that's the end.
Bryan: What did you find was the most fulfilling part of your job?
Lauren: Watching them go from straight and or level, as we like to joke, uh, one of the other never the same. And then eventually, they're not only are they doing straight and level, but they're doing it off, uh, a few feet off the wing tip of one of their friends in formation. At the end of the course, watching that whole cycle of taking them from, uh, basically not knowing a whole lot about aviation to basically the fundamentals of flying. Right. Like those fundamentals. Now, I'm with Air Canada, and I can tell you the cross check is something that, uh, we take for granted as we get senior because we've been doing it so long. But teaching it to newbies and being part of the building blocks is rewarding.
Bryan: Yeah, for sure. And the cross check is when you're flying, uh, in instrument conditions and you can't see where you're going, you have a series of instruments in front of you that are giving you all that information. But it's a real skill to learn how to keep your eyes moving to all the different instruments and taking all that information and kind of combine it in your brain. And that's done through a cross check that you learn specifically how to do and what pattern to follow. Do most students succeed on phase two?
Lauren: Yeah, I would say yes. There are certainly people who don't, but it's not like, uh I think it was back when you and I did it, Bryan. There was a fair amount of people who failed out still. Most people, I would say, made it through, but there were a fair amount of people who wouldn't make it. I don't know whether to say failed out.
Bryan: Oh, they get cease trained. Right. It's not for everybody.
Lauren: Cease trained. Yeah, exactly. There are some that do, but I would say that most people do, uh, make it through phase two.
Bryan: But there is no shame in coming out, giving it your absolute best, and then finding out this isn't for you. At the worst case, you've had an adventure and flown an incredible aircraft. And I know that that must be very disappointing, but you go out and give it your all right, and that's all you can do.
Lauren: Yeah, exactly. Actually, in my time there, there were two students I can think of off the top of my head that were fine. They would have made great pilots, but they just turned around and said, this isn't for me. And that was new to me because when we went through it, was, I'm going to go until they tell me no. Um, but now it seems like the younger generation is having a look at the stress levels that you have to kind of get used to on a daily basis. And that isn't always. Moose Jaw is not reflective of the unit, but it is certainly reflective of a baseline level of stress that I would say is higher than most professions.
Bryan: Oh, yeah. There's no doubt that this is a high stress job. You're always being evaluated. You have tests every year, even once you've made it and you've been a pilot for a decade. You still have tests every year that are make or break for your career. And it's a life or death industry. It's a highpressure job.
Lauren: It is high pressure and a Moose Jaw. Basically all week you come down and you get told some things. You did good and you did well at. But mostly it's what you need to improve. So that can be difficult over a lengthy period of time to consistently here that you need to improve so many things every day.
Bryan: Yeah. It's easy to forget that you're doing a very exciting type of flying. A lot of the time we're kind of wrapped up in what we're doing or where we're trying to get to or whatever. And it's easy to miss the forest for the trees, I think.
Lauren: Yeah, exactly. You want to be good when you do it. You want to execute it with skill. And then you kind of forget to take the 3 seconds. Maybe not always, but sometimes you forget to take the 3 seconds to just think, oh my God, this is so cool.
Bryan: Yeah. The best days were the ones where I remembered that you're flying aircraft and you're out, uh, doing stuff that when you were a teenager, I would have done anything to have a day like that. And that's like a regular work day. That's super, super fortunate.
Lauren: A few of the moments I remember most as a student is when the instructor would say, I have control. Listen, for the next 5 seconds, you just sit back and relax and enjoy. It didn't happen often. It still doesn't because the bulk of the time is obviously for the student training. But every now and then I started doing it as an instructor. It would only be a few short seconds, but I'd say I have control. For the next 5 seconds, just look out and smile and breathe. Just be happy to be here because this is really cool.
Bryan: Do you think that the, uh, performance coaching and psychology that they do now is helpful?
Lauren: Yes, I do, actually. They have like a whole other program there for performance coaching, I guess, in other words, which didn't exist when you and I went. I think it's a good thing.
Bryan: Yeah, it's something I try to bring up every now and then because one of my interests within aviation is just stress management. And how do you maximize your performance and sort of minimize the damage that that high level of stress does over time? And they're learning things that I've eventually learned basically in therapy. Like they're learning things that I wish that I had learned when I was in my early twenty s. And I think it's great. It's always interesting to see people who are actually dealing with these students while they're on course and see how that changes things. Where do you think that students tend to struggle in phase two?
Lauren: Clearhood seems to be a stumbling block for, I would say, most students at some point, just because it takes you from basically straight and or level all the way through to performing basic aerobatics. And that is a steep learning curve. And some students struggle to hang on
Bryan: Yeah, especially over the course of quite a bit less than 100 hours, because you said about 80 hours for the whole course. So I don't know how long the clearhood phase is, but it's obviously going to be half of that probably, or less. That's not a lot of time. Like that's barely the minimum amount of time to get a private pilot license and to go from not flying to flying aerobatics.
Lauren: Not only that, but it's the number of maneuvers they need to learn. So they're not just learning how to do one type of approach and landing, they're learning how to do a normal, A flapless, • a final turn. Then you're evaluating them on basic, uh, maneuvers out in the area. Right. So you're going to evaluate their loop, their role, their basic aeros.
Bryan: Given that the struggle, in your opinion, on phase two tends to be the breadth of things they have to learn in the clearhood phase, and that there will be some stumbling at some point in that, probably, what do you think they can do to overcome that? Because part of the goal of the show is to help pilots and training and help people who want to take this on as a career.
Lauren: Yes. I think one of the biggest things they can do to help themselves throughout the course is talk to your coursemates, get together with them because your course mates are going to land and they're going to say, listen, I did this really well, but I really screwed this up and you got to share that. And they're going to say, what did you screw up and what could you have done but learn from each other? Because if you have to make all the mistakes yourself, it's going to be a very tough course for you. If you can listen and share when you make mistakes and come down and tell your coursemates. Listen, when I went out, I thought this was the correct way to do something, because I thought I was being smart and efficient. And it turns out that there's a reason they don't teach it this way because it's really, actually unsafe and whatever. So share with your coursemates. That's number one. Number two, and this is easy to say and very hard to do, no matter how soon you are. But Taylor Swift, shake it off. What's done is done. When you screw something up and you know you have try to not dwell on it in your brain, just say, okay, I messed that up onto the next maneuver. It's the snowball effect, right? They'll mess something up and then their mind won't be on the next maneuver, and then they'll kind of mess that up and then it snowballed into the whole flight. Coming at it with a good attitude. Always ready to learn. When your instructor is trying to tell you something, do your best to pay attention and listen. And if there's a reason that you can't, then speak up. I've had students, we landed and they said, oh, ma'am, actually I didn't want to tell you, but they didn't know how to fix the volume. They couldn't really hear me the whole flight. And I'm like, listen, you got to tell me this at the beginning. I'm not going to be angry, but let's fix it so we don't waste an hour of you not being able to hear me.
Bryan: Yeah, uh, you're there to learn, right? I remember distinctly a feeling of being afraid at any point revealing a shortcoming or a weakness to my instructor. Like you almost wanted to. OK, I'll ask one of my friends after how to do that because it is kind of embarrassing. Oh, I don't know how to turn up the volume. But you're learning how to use like a hundred different switches and you've never used this comms panel before, or any comms panel before, maybe,
Lauren: Or you thought you know, how it worked and you thought you were doing everything to make it work and it's still not. And now you feel like a conehead if you ask.
Bryan: Or it could be broken or something.
Lauren: It may be, yeah. So just, uh, speak up if you're not getting, uh, the learning that you should, or if you're confused or whatever. Always make sure things are clear in the cockpit.
Bryan: This actually sort of dovetails into the next question, which is what qualities should a student have? What are some good qualities in a student that tend to help them succeed?
Lauren: Resiliency, for sure. Because we are going to tell you every day things you need to improve on. You know, you gotta be a certain amount of resilient to come back from that and say, okay, and take it with a good attitude and say, then that's what I'll work on. That's what I'll go read about in the SOPs. And I'll ask my friends about maybe how they're doing it, what are their techniques? Or maybe another instructor say, hey, is there. An instructor that you feel closer to, that you've seen in the ready room or whatever.
Bryan: just very quickly. SOPs are standard operating procedures.
Lauren: But basically get at it. If you're told you need to improve something, which you will be every day, then take your time to go and read what you can about it. Talk to other people about it. Do your best to get a little better at it. I'm not saying you're going to be, uh, level five the next day, but if your instructor sees that you're making an effort to be better at the things they said you need to be better at, that's a huge component to success.
Bryan: I'm friends with lots of instructors and they care a lot and they work a lot, but it's very frustrating when they're putting their 100% effort into it and a student is not.
Lauren: I will say that's rare. Uh, but it does happen. There are students that tend to think that they can not prep. They're kind of outliers with their coursemates in the sense that they just don't really feel like the need to converse with them or ask them about how they're getting better. They have a big ego and they're not really listening. Those students tend to not do as well. Even if they're talented and naturally good aviators, eventually they're going to stumble. They're going to struggle to come back from that.
Bryan: I'll say this, if you're listening to this and you've done some flying before, maybe you've been in Air cadets and you've gotten your pilot's license or however it is that you've got some flight experience. If you think you're pretty hot, that's great. If you've done well and things have been pretty smooth for you, that's great. But if this is starting to sound like you, you don't think that you really are going to have to work hard. You've always been able to have it come fairly easily. The idea of working with your peers doesn't sound very attractive. You either need to second guess if this is a thing that you want to follow or you need to change those attributes. Because there is no getting by on your own and flying, it's a team sport. And Lauren mentioned that one of the best things you can do is talk to your buddies, talk to your peers, learn from their mistakes, talk through your mistakes. So I think you said this is rare, right? Like you don't run into these people too often in flight?
Lauren: No, it's very rare, but when it happens, it's kind of like a brick in the face. You're like, oh wow.
Bryan: It's like spectacular. It's shocking. So don't be that person. If you have these tendencies, that's fine. It's another thing to work on. But don't show up to flight training in the Air Force thinking, I'm going to do this all on my own. I don't need anyone's advice and I don't have to work hard because I'm good at this. You won't succeed.
Lauren: No, you won't.
Bryan: We've hinted at this a couple of times. But how do the students compare now to when we went through ten years ago?
Lauren: The students are all still very keen. They want to be there as pilots, and especially as an instructor pilot. We get to deal with people who want to be there. They want to show you that they're trying. It's a very positive experience in general. One thing they do now, which wasn't how it was when you and I went through Bryan, is, um, the students prepare the whiteboard, they prepare the weather, and they kind of give a briefing, like a general plan. So when the instructors walk in, they are expected to say, well, on my last flight, I did this and this really well, but I struggled with this and this. So today, ma'am, I think we should go out and try to get my levels up on these two, uh, maneuvers, because I need to work on these. And also give me the weather, have a look at the wind, the cross wind considerations and all that. So we go in there and now they give us a briefing.
Bryan: They do that on phase three here, too. And I didn't realize that that was a change they had done. Maybe they've done that across flight training now. I think it's great. It's a little higher pressure, but it makes them take more of a stake in their own training. Obviously, like values and stuff change with each generation. But do you find that overall, it's still the same human experience going on over at Moose Jaw?
Lauren: I'd say in broad strokes, it's the same. Yes, they're a little changed because ethics and values and morals are constantly changing with every generation. But any given Friday, you're going to walk in the ready room and there's going to be a bunch of students and instructors all eating pizza, all watching aviation films.
Bryan: That's great.
Lauren: Exactly. So some things never change. Right?
Bryan: I know that the goal of the forces has been to increase diversity, and they've been talking a lot about that in the last few years. Have you seen any change in the makeup of students? Uh, do we have more women coming through?
Lauren: Have I seen any significant change? I would say no. Personally, I haven't.
Bryan: But that takes time.
Lauren: It does take time. I have seen some of the new dress, uh, uh, regulating, like hair. Uh, now guys are allowed to have ponytails and all the rest of it. I don't see any issues with that. When it first started happening, uh, there were some older guys who were kind of crotchety about it.
Bryan: But there will always be somebody who doesn't like change. That's just human nature. I usually ask this question kind of closer to the end, and before I ask it, I'll use the same caveat that I use when I chatted with Dawn. Lauren is here because she is an excellent pilot. She's got tons of experience and because we knew each other, we trained together. And I think she has a lot of great experience to bring to the table. But she is also a woman. So I would like to ask how your experience has been as a woman in the forces.
Lauren: Personally, I've had nothing but great experiences as a woman in the Air Force. I can't say every woman would have the same response, but I'm just going to talk about my personal experience. And my personal experience was that, uh, sometimes I guess it can feel, I'm going to say lonely and that's not quite the right word I'm looking for. But throughout my training you were kind of used to it. There weren't many females going through and all the ones I happened to go through with were awesome. And then on Unit, I worked with a great, uh, bunch of guys mostly. I mean, there was only two other female pilots of the whole unit. And I went literally around the world with these men. You know, we flew into theater together. And I can tell you that I never really had any issues. If words were said or things were said in jest or joking, that did go too far a handful of times that I would say, uh, guys, that's a little and the minute I said it would be taken. Oh yeah, that's a bit sorry, Lauren. I'd like to think I had a thick skin. I like to joke about most things. You do have to have a thick skin. And you have to understand that when you travel as a crew into different places around the world, what people do on their personal time is theirs to worry about. As long as they show up, everyone knows the job they have to do. They're ready to work, ready to have some fun while we're at it. I think I was always lucky in that regard, that we always had a good team.
Bryan: And the thing is too, when you're on the road as a crew, there is a bit of melting of your coworkers, but you're also friends. And I think it's a little bit different probably from other types of jobs where you travel for work were like, yeah, you're going to go out for supper and maybe a drink after. And that's sort of expected of you as a professional. Mostly if you're hanging out on the road, you're hanging out because you want to, because you like hanging out with everybody and they're a good bunch of people and your friends. There is going to be a certain transition from your professional environment to your social environment. And yes, that's going to come with some differences in how you interact. But of course there's still, just as you would with any of your friends, you're going to keep things appropriate, right?
Lauren: Yeah. Uh, exactly.
Bryan: You wouldn't hang out with your friends in normal life, and say weird stuff that makes everyone uncomfortable. So you had a pretty positive experience in the forces?
Lauren: Yes, I did.
Bryan: Thinking about your entire career, including your time on the C17, • what was the most rewarding experience you've had in the RCAF?
Lauren: There was one flight, well, two flights actually, one after the other in sequence, that I think back on. And honestly, uh, I feel like that was a different person flying it. And that is the flight we did out of Kuwait into Baghdad, uh, in Iraq. And we landed in there doing basically, uh, a tac landing on night vision goggles to a blacked out runway. Except for obviously there you got something called the box in one. Anyway, it's just something that we used in practice that I hadn't really used in practice. We trained it, but never really done it. And here I am as an aircraft commander finally doing it, which was very cool. We ended up pumping flares, uh, which was not fun.
Bryan: No way.
Lauren: The C17 • will pump flares if it thinks something's being shot at It to trick the missile into thinking the heat signature of the flares is the engine. But, uh, it was set to something that we thought maybe that was just a reflection, uh, because we had to go through some weather. There was no other way to get around the weather we had to go through. It wasn't crazy, but we thought maybe that set the flares off. We're telling ourselves, yeah. Anyway, so we landed in Baghdad. Now you have to do a hung flare check because you might have loose ones that didn't actually shoot all the way and we get all that done. And then we finally took off from Baghdad and into Erbil, northern, uh, Iraq to deliver what we were supposed to deliver. And actually our flares, the detector, our countermeasures dispensing system again detected something and we flew into urban and northern Iraq and offloaded what we were offloading. And then we're pretty light because we only had to go back to Kuwait. So we didn't have that much fuel, uh, because we didn't need it. Uh, which meant my FO could do a um, max performance takeoff. So we held the brakes and threw the power up. We're off the pavement in no time. Speeds coming up, which is good if you want to pull back and climb very quickly. First you got to get a lot of speed and then you can crank back on the controls and really climb. And uh, he cranked back on the stick. And both of us kind of went because neither of us had ever seen that turns to chevron at a certain degrees Nose up. We've never been light enough and fast enough in a climb after take off to pull that nose high, you know?
Bryan: Yeah. And what Lauren's saying is on your attitude indicator, it's got lines to give you degrees of pitch. But when you get into an extreme well, I won't say extreme, but when you get into a certain nose up attitude, it turns into chevrons, because that's outside of kind of your normal regime. But they were so light that they had to pitch way up.
Lauren: But that was neat. That whole little round robin out of Kuwait into Baghdad on night vision goggles to a blackedout runway, pumping flares, and then into Erbil getting rid of our load, and then being able to do a max performance takeoff. You know, it's something I think about now, and I think, oh, my gosh, who was flying that? Was that me. Was that really an aircraft commander during all of that? And yes, I was. It just seems like a lifetime ago, and now I'm at Air Canada, where it's a, uh, lot more tame.
Bryan: Yeah. It's pretty crazy to think back to those days because I spent seven months in that air base in, uh, Kuwait, and, uh, I flew all over Iraq. And it is crazy to think back. Do you have, uh, a coolest story as an instructor? What's the coolest trip you did?
Lauren: Honestly, one of the coolest ones I did wasn't instructing at all as an instructor. You're allowed to take the planes on the weekends and go pretty much kind of wherever you want. And we took four of them, so eight instructors took four airplanes, and we flew in, uh, box formation in transit, because it doesn't make sense to fly right off the wing. But we flew all the way to, uh, Montreal.
Bryan: Oh, awesome.
Lauren: Yeah. And came in there as a floor ship, which was pretty cool. They were pleased to see that. And we landed, and then we had a great weekend. It was a long weekend, so, um, we had an extra day.
Bryan: I think one thing that's important for people to know about that is the reason instructors do this is for training. Instructors are responsible for a certain amount of training outside of the flying they do with students. Because when you're teaching your students doing most of the flying. So instructors do have to get out there and fly.
Lauren: Yeah. We have to stay proficient, too.
Bryan: Yes. They're working very hard as an instructor, and it's one of the perks of the job, basically, that you're allowed to do that and take it somewhere and go somewhere new. And it's all very good training. But, uh, anyways
Lauren: it is very good training. So when you're allowed to take it on the weekend, it's a special treat. And it actually makes the job a whole lot easier to swallow if you're someone like me who didn't really want to end up back there in the first place.
Bryan: Well it is super good for morale?
Lauren: It is. Yeah. And eight of us had a great weekend. And then when we went to take off, we were taken off in, uh, two pairs of two. And the guy in the tower, you could tell was just baffled because it was instrument weather. It was, you know, marginal weather. And we said, yes, we were saying, we're going to request takeoff. But he knew there was basically two of us taking off in formation. And he kept saying confirm. You're taking off two by two? Yes, we're taking off two by two. So you're going to fly formation into this weather? We're like, yes, we're going to fly formation into this. He just couldn't wrap his brain around it.
Bryan: I actually don't know anything. So you guys fly form then, like, are you on the wing or what?
Lauren: You'Re right on the wing. You're tight on the wing. Yeah.
Bryan: So that you can keep them in sight?
Lauren: so you can stay on the wing.
Bryan: What do you do if you lose them in the clouds?
Lauren: You develop separation, positive separation, and communicate.
Bryan: Can you think of a day that you would say was like your hardest day on the aircraft? And that could be the Harvard or the C17.
Lauren: The last day of my upgrade ride to aircraft commander on the C17. • So we're day four or five or something like that. And I am exhausted because I've been micromanaging and overthinking and being sprung for days on end now and not getting as much sleep as I should have because I'm very nervous and I want to pass and be blessed with the aircraft commander upgrade. And I'm with a major who's pretty, uh, by the book. He's very by the book. And then we got retasked, and actually it was that retask into Lossiemouth. • So we were supposed to fly from, uh, basically home.
Bryan: So you were on the home stretch to Trenton.
Lauren: We were on the homestretch last leg. And we get retasked to fly to Lossiemouth, Scotland, pick up an engine, and then fly it to Greenwood, Nova Scotia. Now we got to spend the night there and then so it adds another day. And I'm already my eyes are like bags under my eyes and I think, oh my gosh, now I have to sort all of this out. You got to run flight plans, you got to look at their PCN. Is the PCN good for Lossiemouth? • What do they got there? Should we tanker • gas? Should we not tanker • gas?
Bryan: PCN is
Lauren: Pavement classification number. Yeah. So when you fly a really big plane, you gotta make sure that the runways you landed on are capable of holding a really big plane.
Bryan: Yeah. Basically, you have an ACN aircraft classification number and a PCN, and a pavement classification number. And your ACN cannot be bigger than your PCN.
Lauren: It was just a lot to take on when you thought we were just one flight away from being home, and it over. It's like, add another day and two more flights somewhere. I've never flown either.
Bryan: A new cargo and a whole bunch of different things.
Lauren: Yeah, new cargo. I've never flown into Scotland I don't know any of the, uh they got some weird, uh, ATC regulations in that UK.
Bryan: Airspace is definitely confusing. When you're used to North America.
Lauren: And then crossing the Atlantic my FO there. He was an older guy, so he had flown a lot. And you're supposed to do on the job training, every leg at least a little bit. So you talk about the hydraulic system, you talk about the electrical something, right? You pick something, and you maybe read about it for five minutes, ten minutes each. And then you discuss it, and you try and teach it, because as aircraft commander, you're expected to teach your FOs And he looked at me and said, don't even think about it. And I didn't do it. I said yeah, okay. Yeah, fine. Um, put it away. We weren't doing any on the job training on that last Atlantic lake because we'd already been added a week sleepdeprived and all the rest of it. I thought that's it.
Bryan: What's the coolest, uh, thing you ever got to do in the C17? •
Lauren: I think one of the other really cool things I got to do with a very senior instructor checkpilot was deploy the thrust reversers in flight, which you will probably never there are very few aircraft that have that capability.
Bryan: I just want to provide some context. Typically, reverse thrust is for landings. It's to shorten your landing roll so that, you know, you take a couple thousand feet less of rollout to get off the runway. They're not usually for inflight, but where the C 17 is designed for tactical stuff here we are. So what's the purpose of that maneuver?
Lauren: I don't know if it's ever been done in tactical situations. We did it coming, uh, into the coast off the Atlantic, just because we could, because we had a senior guy on who had done it and was comfortable doing it. But it would be a tactical maneuver if you had to stay very, very high until you were almost overhead the landing strip and then get down very, very fast.
Bryan: So basically, if there was, like, a threat environment
Lauren: If it's a threat environment. So you want to stay as high as you can, as long as you can, then this is where you might use it anyway. That's just one thing. When I tell other pilots, I deployed • thrust reversers in flight. Usually their heads pop.
Bryan: Yeah. Uh, no doubt. What is the most important thing you do to keep yourself ready for your job?
Lauren: For me, I prioritize sleep before I go on a, uh, task, I'll call it. So I want to make sure I at least try to get well rested, whether it works out all the time or not, but at least give myself the time and the opportunity to do that. And also, I do like to study a little bit ahead of time the day before or something, get in the books a bit see what, uh, maybe rehash my emergencies or go over a flight plan of a similar flight.
Bryan: And you're still doing that at Air Canada as well? Yeah, it's good for people to know we're super in the books in military aviation. And I think sometimes people have a perception that you can let that slide a bit once you make it big and get into the airlines.
Lauren: But I'm sure I could just show up and, uh, just wing it, for lack of better terms. But I just don't show up confident if I do that.
Bryan: Well, you've made that part of your flying routine, right? To be prepared.
Lauren: Yeah, that's part of my routine. Exactly.
Bryan: As, uh, we've been talking about, you eventually did decide to move on from the Air Force, and you now work at Air Canada as well as the reserves, right?
Lauren: Yeah, I just recently joined the reserves.
Bryan: Do you think that your experience as an RCAF pilot gave you a leg up against other applicants? Did it seem like they were looking out to hire RCAF pilots, especially?
Lauren: Yes. I would say for sure they are looking to hire military pilots. Uh, it does give you a leg up because of the type of flying we do, because what we do is very dynamic, is changing, uh, and because we shoulder a lot of responsibility as Air Force pilots. Where I'm an anomaly is I basically went to wide body international flying straight out of the gate with the military.
Bryan: Yes. So you have experience that they often wouldn't see unless it was somebody coming from another major airline.
Lauren: Exactly. However, I don't have the hours of someone who's come from another major airline.
Bryan: Right. Because they would have, like, 10,000 hours or something.
Lauren: Yeah. And I have far fewer. So we don't have experience in the hours, maybe, but we have experience going into, uh, all different types of airplanes literally all over the world.
Bryan: Do you think they recognize that when they see your log book and that you don't have the hours? That somebody who's pulled themselves up by their bootstraps in the city world, those hours are a little different in the Air Force.
Lauren: I think they know that it depends who's looking at it. If somebody in HR, I don't think they really recognize, uh, what your logbook is saying. They just probably look at your hours. But once you go into the interview and start talking about your experiences, it's Air Canada's policy that there's always a pilot in the interview, like a senior pilot. And when you start talking to them, they get it pretty quickly that your experience is more than what your logbook maybe reflects in the number of hours.
Bryan: Now that you're with Air Canada, how do you feel looking back on your time in the RCAF?
Lauren: It was great. I regret not a day of it. It was the best thing. I think the best decision was to join the RCAF and go become a pilot, I have no regrets. I did release only because I'm growing and going on to greener pastures or browner pastures, depending on how you want to look at it.
Bryan: Yeah, there's nothing wrong with career change within flight, right? This podcast is about being a pilot in the RCAF, but being a pilot in general, there's a lot of different opportunities out there and there's lots of different experiences to have, and there's nothing wrong with doing some time. This is where you earn your chops, right? In the Air Force, you learn a lot about yourself and about flight. And there's nothing wrong with them going on to pursue that somewhere else as well.
Lauren: I would argue it actually gives you a larger appreciation. I can tell you the, uh, flying I did on the C17, • quite literally all over the world, is not typically seen in the civilian world. When I actually went to the airlines and we're talking to the guys from civvie Street comparing our experiences, they have great experiences, civvie guys. They've been up north. They've done a lot of really, really cool and amazing things.
Bryan: Yeah. Bush flying and crop dusting.
Lauren: One thing I did realize is that now that I'm out of Canada, and I do love it, but I'm never going to bank past 15 degrees. No one wants to spill their coffee. I'm never going to fly in at 320 knots and do a 60 degree bank turn pulling two GS. Like, we did that all day, every day, around the pattern at Moose Jaw We did it in the C17. • These things are things that I just won't ever get to do again, but at least I got to do for a time. And it's just in retrospect that I really grow in a, uh, fond appreciation for the type of flying I did in the military.
Bryan: And did you find that was a pretty easy transition for you?
Lauren: If you had asked me at the time, I would have said, yeah, it's not that hard going from the Air Force to the civilian world. I think it took about a year and a half to kind of hit home. So, in retrospect, no, it wasn't easy. I had been indoctrinated, and in a good sense, like I said, I don't regret a day of it. But if all you ever do is socialize, and I hate to say this, but we're all guilty of it in the military. Like, all my friends were other pilots or loadmasters, and suddenly here I am, uh, an airline pilot and I don't really know anybody. And for a time, it was fine. I did what I normally do. I threw myself into my new job, worked hard trying to be good. But after a while, you start to notice that your social life is floundering because you haven't made an attempt to make friends outside of the military. Uh, and it's just the way you perceive things. Is not necessarily normal.
Bryan: Yeah. Uh, for sure. And actually, I was going to ask you if there was anything you missed about being in the Air Force, but it sounds like you've already kind of said the camaraderie.
Lauren: And the camaraderie is so fun. It's a fun, fun place to work. When you actually look at it.
Bryan: What do you think makes a good pilot?
Lauren: I would say what makes a good pilot is ability. I mean, that's a baseline. Right. You have to be able to fly the plane. Confidence. You need to be confident. And even if you're not 100%, try to project 100%, because other people are looking at you, and if they see that you're not, it doesn't inspire confidence in them. Be confident when you speak, and in order to be confident when you speak, you have to defer to the experts. So if you're flying in a crew, get their input, say, hey, I'm not sure if we should do this or do this. What's your take on it when you do your pre flight briefing for the crew? I don't know how you guys did it.
Bryan: Yes, we had a crew briefing. We take turns briefing our areas of expertise.
Lauren: Yeah, exactly. I guess that's what I mean by speak up and be confident in those because it'll set the tone for, uh, a good mission. Right.
Bryan: That's a really good point. We would say the guys like, okay, if you're wearing your jacket, you go up there with your jacket, done up or take your jacket off. Don't have your hands in your pockets. Stand up straight. Speak with confidence. To your point about confidence, there's a difference between confidence and overconfidence. No one's saying pretend to have all the answers and be aloof and whatever, but if you're saying it, say it like you mean it.
Lauren: Yes, exactly. Be humble, but also be good at your job. Take your time and learn what you should be learning. And don't feel the need to point out, uh, when others are incorrect or wrong or whatever. You got to be a team player. You have to be able to get along socially with other people, or you're going to have a tough time of it.
Bryan: I think hopefully out there, somebody is listening to this and thinking, hey, this sounds like a really great career. Maybe I want to look more into being an Air Force pilot or pursuing aviation. So what would your advice be to that new pilot?
Lauren: Take more photos.
Bryan: Yes. I totally agree. I'm coming up to a time in my life where I might be getting out of the Air Force and I'm trying to find old photos and I'm like, Man, I have, like, a dozen.
Lauren: I would say go for it and know that it's a tough road and make sure you really want it. You got to really want it. In the military, at least there's no half in and half out. You got. To be all in because it helps just motivate you right towards the, uh, next goal post if you are motivated by, as I call it, jumping through hoops. So the first one is like, get through selection, and the next one get your wings, your eye on the prize the whole time. Then get through training on your operational unit and become the FO level one, FO level two, the aircraft commander. What's the next one? What's the next one? It helps to have those goals in mind. That being said, those can't be your only goals.
Bryan: Yes. Eventually, your motivation does have to come from within. What you're making me think of is that, uh, this job would be very hard to do if you didn't love flying.
Lauren: It really would be.
Bryan: Yeah. So I think that pretty much wraps it up. Lauren, thank you so much for taking the time to be here today. It's been really great to catch up after, uh, ten years, basically on course together. So it's been really nice. And, uh, yeah, just thanks so much for taking the time today to be on the show.
Lauren: Yeah, thank you for having me. I appreciate it.
Bryan: Yeah, for sure. Okay, everybody, that's it for our episode on Phase Two. Thank you so much for listening. Our next episode is going to be a special Christmas episode where members will tell us about their stories of times where they were deployed at Christmas. Remember, if you have a question for us, or for a pilot from any aircraft, you can send those to us at our socials at @podpilotproject or to our email at thepilotprojectpodcast@gmail.com • Pilots and Aircrew. If you have sweet photos or videos that you'd like to share, please send them to our email, along with a quick explanation and any accounts you would like tagged • and we will share those. That's all for now. Thank you for listening. Keep the blue side up. See ya!