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What does it take to excel in Phase III multi-engine flight training in Portage la Prairie? How can you stay positive even when you don’t get the job you hoped for? Dan shares some tips for excelling while in Phase III Multi-Engine training and loving life in the RCAF no matter where it takes you.
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.
NOTE THESE TRANSCRIPTS ARE PRODUCED BY AI AND CONTAIN SOME ERRORS.
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 am your host, Bryan Morrison. With me today is the newly promoted Dan Conway. Congrats on the promotion and welcome to the show, Dan.
Thanks, Bryan.
So, let's get into Dan's credentials. Dan graduated from flight training in 2012 and was posted to 442 • • transport and rescue squadron in Comox, BC, flying the CC-115 • Buffalo. In 2016, he was posted to 3CFFTS in Portage La Prairie, where he instructed on the King Air for five years. In 2021, he was posted to a staff position in one Canadian Air Division in Winnipeg and is posted to 413 Transport and Rescue Squadron in Greenwood, Nova Scotia. The first question I ask everybody is where did flying begin for you?
So, we had moved when I was twelve years old and I didn't have any friends, so I joined Air Cadets. We were surrounded by aviation and went gliding that year. Really enjoyed it and fell in love with flying. I wanted to be an F 16 pilot, so lined that all up in my life view until I realized when I was 16 or 17 that Canada did not have F 16s.
That's true.
So I still joined the military, but, uh, decided to be a multi pilot instead.
What led to you kind of wanting multi more than fighters? Was it basically like, no, F16s don't care about F 18s?
Yeah. I was just obsessed with the F 16 and I was really disappointed that we didn't have them. I felt misled through my own ignorance.
So when did you join?
17.
Oh, yeah. So I think same as Vic. So, again, pensionable at 42, which is awesome. And you were an RMC guy as well, right?
Yeah.
How'd you like that?
It was an experience. It was hard and there are a lot of things that in the moment really sucked, but afterwards were worthwhile. I wouldn't change anything, but it wasn't all fun.
I think RMC is a heck of a place to go and it's a huge accomplishment. I didn't think it was for me at the time. I had a bit of a choice between that and civil for ROTP, and I was like, I think I would rather only deal with university than the pressures of the military at the same time. But RMC still had a lot of things that were very attractive to me at that time as well. The camaraderie, and I think like anything we do in the military, a lot of the hard stuff you're super like in the suck at the time. But it's fun to look back on, and it creates strong bonds and strong memories and those kinds of things.
Yeah. I think when I was in cadets, I had the impression that RMC was like, the pinnacle and it was the best way and the best training. And it wasn't until afterwards that I realized that it was just one of many avenues to join the military.
So you finished RMC. Did you do, like, a bunch of OJT or were you right into flight training pretty quickly, or how did that go? You were same vintage as me, so I imagine you waited for a while.
Yeah, I waited for, uh, two and a half years because they were having.
I think, like, turbine issues on the Harvard back then, weren't they?
I think it was rudder lock stuff. I can't really remember.
Opposite ends of the plane? Yeah, one of us must be close.
I did a year and a half of OJT and Trenton at the rescue center, and then a year at 435 • • in Winnipeg.
So you did JRCC and then 435 • • which is the transport and.
Rescue the Herc squadron in Winnipeg.
Did either of those experiences contribute to you wanting SAR later?
Yeah, huge. At, uh, 435 • • I mostly hopped on the air to air missions because they went to all the cool places, like down in Florida and up in Inuvik and stuff like that. So I never actually saw SAR firsthand as a 2LT except at the rescue center when it was more, like, theoretical. But yeah, I knew that I wanted multi. I wanted C 17, Airbus, J Model, hercs and then search and rescue. But got search and rescue.
So you go to PFT, and I imagine that was between your two stints of OJT
No, I did that during university.
Oh, really?
Yeah, so I did that in 2007.
PFT, or Primary Flight training, is phase one flight training. BFT or basic flight training is phase two. Flight training? For more information on these flight training phases, you can listen to episodes one and two. How was that?
It was good.
Yeah. Do you find it stressful at all, or difficult?
No, I actually had a commercial license before I joined.
Did you have the option to skip then?
Yes, but at RMC, your choices are fun. OJT with lots of marching and stuff with the army that summer, or go on PFT with all your all your buds, all your buddies and stuff. And I really i, uh, would have.
Made the same choice, I guess.
Yeah. I stacked the deck, I went and I flew the Grob in Ottawa before as well. So I enjoyed PFT. It was a fun time.
I've only heard good things about the Grob I never flew it myself, but I was also at a civvy U and I was doing flight training there, too. So I just did more flight training that summer instead.
So someone told me when I was at RMC, someone who had failed out of PFT the year before, and they basically said, like, would you rather find out that it's not for you? Now, when changing trades is easy and flawless, and you still have all the summers between RMC to be right with all of your people that are in your trade? Or would you rather find out four years from now when you're invested and your identity is kind of wrapped around it?
That's a great perspective.
Yeah, I thought so. And that guy is a light colonel now in the Armored, so he's having a good career.
Wow. Pilot to armored.
Yeah.
That was Afghanistan, though. So there was a huge demand for combat arms back then.
And that's what he wanted. He wanted to drive something good for.
Him to know himself. And a lot of times you talk to failed out prospective pilots, and there's a lot of bitterness and there's a lot of maybe not the best advice, but that's great advice. So good for him.
And I think more so when you talk to guys who failed, uh, phase two or even phase three. But I think if you talk to guys who failed phase one, they weren't that invested in it time wise either.
I never really interacted a lot with PFT, uh, folks. So that makes sense.
That's part of the reason we do it that way.
Right.
It's an investment, so you're not spending as much money, but also it's a time investment. Like, you only have them for five years after they finish their degree. So it's better to get them of P in some sort of trade and OFP meaning operational function point. So get them trained and qualified in a trade early so you can get five years of use out of them.
It does make sense that people would feel a lot less chafed about it if they didn't get that far. And they just said, hey, this isn't for me. So you did PFT, that was no sweat. You waited for BFT for a bit, and then off you go to Moose Jaw. And how did that go?
Moose Jaw was a lot harder.
It was a very tough course.
Yeah. I struggled a lot with the work life balance thing there.
The intensity is very high, especially for the first couple of months when literally Friday night, that's the only night you take off, essentially go to the mess, have a time with your buddies, the next morning, sleep it off. You might take Saturday off to an extent, to just sort of, like, recharge. And then Sunday you're back at it. And every night I found, like, I don't know what, half an hour before bed, maybe, to relax, maybe.
Yeah. And I found that that was the first time in my life that I ever had doubts that I was going to be successful. And I was relatively middle of the pack. It was not a disaster, but I was making backup plans for if it didn't work out. I really struggled with sleep.
Me too.
I learned a lot of life lessons there that I still apply. When you got there, your desk was in your bedroom. I don't know if you remember that, but desk in your bedroom. So you'd study, study, study. And then you try to go to sleep and your brain is still studying. So you move your study out to the living room. Just kind of those like, work life hygiene skills that they did a good job teaching when you're there, but they're not things that you learn until you're super challenged.
Yeah, I had the same thing first time in my life that I had trouble sleeping. And it lasted months. It wasn't really until phase three that I realized, like, I got to, you know, 09:00, put the books down, read a book. Like, read a book for fun or something else to clear your mind. And that was the only way I could actually get a good sleep because for the first time in my life, I couldn't just cram until it was time to go to sleep. It just wasn't working for me anymore because it's just so much your brain will never stop and the pressure is so high.
Yeah, I think it took me about two months because it was pretty start and stop at the beginning too, with aircraft service disability. But once we finally got in the flow of the course, I just kind of let go of the I was really concerned about selection. I really didn't want to fly Rotary and I really didn't want jets. I wanted multi because that's what I had decided on. So I was stressed out about that until about midway through the course. And then I was just like, you know what? Anything I can get wings on is fine. And then the rest of the course was fine and I got what I wanted anyways.
The sooner you can let go a little bit of the need for control, the better it all goes because that extra pressure, it's such a hard thing. Vic and I touched on this too. The mental performance piece that we do now is so clutch because we had a little bit of that, but not really. And it's so hard, especially in a super high pressure environment. And the irony is, the tighter you hold on, the tighter you're winding yourself up. The worse you'll do, the worse you'll sleep, the worse you'll perform, right?
Yeah.
You know that feeling when you go to an important flight, like a test or something and you're almost shaking? I don't know if you ever felt that way, but you find yourself stumbling over things you would never stumble over. Or all of a sudden you notice a gauge. Do something that it probably does every flight, but you can't remember if it's ever done that before. And all that is you putting pressure on yourself. Right?
Yeah, it's hard. It's hard to do, but, uh, you just have to have faith in the system because you realize, especially by the end of flight training, that they're almost never putting you in a position where you're not prepared for what's expected of you, especially in flight training. So we ask you to study, we ask you to do ground school, and then you practice in the SIM, and then you go in the plane and you're taught it, and then you have to demonstrate your mastery of it on a test.
The truth is, you never get sent on a test you shouldn't pass.
Exactly.
Because the levels are the same. You've already passed the test, you just got to do it again. Unless it was pure chance, which it generally isn't, you're going to be fine.
There's a lot of pressure about, like in phase two, what am I going to get out of it? And then in phase three, which exact cockpit, but not many people walk to the recruiting office looking for a specific aircraft. No, you're like, I want to be a military pilot. And somewhere along the line, with your interaction with people from different units or yourself going on OJT at different units, you develop this idea of what you must do with your career, but you have no perspective to make that decision. So that adds a lot unnecessary stress, I think.
Yeah, I agree. Once you start to kind of narrow it down, that's when the pressure seems to be on the moment. I sort of, quote unquote, found peace on phase two was when I realized that the only thing I could do was do my best and there was nothing else I could do. I knew that if I could walk away, even if it didn't work out, I could at least say to myself, like, well, there's nothing else I could have done. That was the only way to really approach it.
Yeah, I instinctively understood that on phase two, but I didn't really have the epiphany moment until I was back in Portage as an instructor, having not gotten what I wanted out of phase three, buffalo's was near the bottom of my list and having the time of my life. It was an awesome posting, and I'm sure we'll talk more about it later, but such a great place. Aircraft, job, mission profile, all that stuff was a lot of fun, really rewarding. And then out of there, I wanted to fly the hurricane. That was my first three choices to the career manager. And then I ended up in Portage. And I actually would have preferred to go fly the Harvard in Moose Jaw, and I told them that, but they needed to go in Portage. So Portage, uh, I was pretty disappointed. My wife was disappointed. We loved it. It was an awesome job. Finished. Vic once they started teaching students, it's so rewarding to see them grow, to get that feedback, to build the relationships with them. And then you see them stressing about their selection and you realize, like, hey, man, it doesn't matter what you get. I got my 7th choice out of Portage, my fifth choice out of my first posting. I never wanted to go to a staff tour and, uh, every single job I've ever done in the military has been incredible. So much to learn. It's all about your attitude. It's not actually about the job.
I suspect that's true of many postings. I think that a lot of the things that people think are not great turn out to be like some of the best kept secrets of the Air Force.
My philosophy on postings is that in this Air Force, there's basically no bad postings. So you're either going to have a really good place to live and a job maybe you don't absolutely love, or a job you absolutely love in a place you could take it or leave it, or you get a wicked place to live and a wicked job if you're lucky. There's very few postings that don't fit one of those three things. And you can have a really good time in any of those three circumstances as long as you're focusing on the positive and moving forward with a good attitude.
You finished BFT. You said about middle of the pack and selection comes. Were you pretty sure you were going to get multi or were you nervous? Do you remember?
Yeah, I was nervous. I finished a bit before my course mates. I think I was in the top third. But all four of us wanted multi engine, and I knew that there weren't that many slots, but they forced one guy to go jets.
Really?
Yeah. Because there you had to have a certain mark.
Yeah.
So they forced the second placed guy.
That's quite rare.
Yeah. I mean, I say forced. They convinced him to want jets. So the other three of us got multi engine. Yeah.
Were you psyched?
Oh, yeah, I was really excited.
So you get your selection off phase three and it's the Buff. And how did you feel?
I was devastated. Yeah. I had no idea. So they do this whole thing where you have to put together the puzzle, an anagram or puzzle. And so I put it together as four two four, which is Herks and Trenton, which is one of my top choices. I'm like, four two four. Yes. And everybody's shaking their heads. I'm like, uh, well, there's no other squadron with those numbers, like four, four two. And they all start nodding. I'm like, where is that? I had no idea. Like, all I knew about the Buffalo when I was on phase three is that it was unpressurised. So in my internal checklist, I was like, Buffalo unpressurized? No, onto the next one.
I actually the Buff was one of my top choices. I ended up changing my mind and thinking the aurora would be kind of the best fit for life and everything that I was kind of thinking about. But I thought the buff was really cool, and I thought comox would be beautiful. Like you said before, for anyone listening, this is a great example of just kind of seeing how things go and keeping a positive attitude. Because you never know when what you didn't expect ends up being like an amazing thing. So similar question though, as we just talked about with the buff. How did you end up posted to portage as an instructor? You already said that you wanted moose jaw instead, but how did this come about?
In order to be an instructor in portage, you have to have an operational tour under your belt, and you have to have been an aircraft commander operationally. So it's a bit of a harder bullet to fill, and it is a priority one posting being a school. So it didn't really matter what I wanted. When search and rescue as a whole was tagged with filling a slot, I was the low hanging fruit because I was due to be posted that year anyways. I had asked for hercs. I got told no, I got to go to a school. I said, okay, I'll go to moose jaw. Uh, because I thought, hey, those guys fly a lot, and that's I wanted hours. And I got told no, you're going to portage. I said, okay, thanks for your time, sir.
Yeah, those are fun chat. Yeah, they do what they can when they can, but if they can't, suck it up, buttercup. This is the air force.
And once again, it was based on I was under the impression that moustache instructors, uh, flew a lot more than portage instructors.
Which is not the case, right?
No, it was not true.
You flew like crazy here.
Yeah, I flew a lot.
So that explains sort of how you ended up in portage. So you do your move to portage, you end up here, and you start your instructor course. Did you find it tough at all?
No, I didn't find it hard. It was just different. And I found it very daunting. So the prospect of going back and being one of the guys that I had in my memory, like, I had some really good instructors on phase three, and uh, I couldn't really reconcile me being as good as one of those guys. So once again, I just went through the process, the three phases of flight, instructor training, and then at the end, I felt ready to be one of those guys.
It sort of reminds me of when I was at moose jaw, and they have an xboard up, which is basically it has all your flights listed out, and you put an x on them every time you do that flight. And I was watching the senior course do emergencies, and I was like, how am I ever going to know all that? How am I going to know the red pages that well, know the reactions to different scenarios that well, how am I going to remember all this stuff, do all these maneuvers? And then I sort of looked at the Xboard and I was like, I don't have to know the one that's way over here, I have to know the next X. And you just take it day by day and X by X and lo and behold, these courses have been designed for you to eventually arrive at your end state. Right?
Yeah.
And if you try to look at what you need to be like 40 flights from now, that's going to be super intimidating. But, ah, if you look at what you need to be tomorrow, you can probably manage that.
Yeah. And when we moved here, we had young kids. I had some really good chats with my wife about this posting and my fears and whatnot. And I have this distinct memory of walking to work because I lived really close to the flight buildings, walking to work at like six in the morning before my first phase three FIC trip, which is like when you're teaching. And I remember just thinking to myself, like, I'm just going to be the best instructor that I can be. And sometimes that just becomes my mantra. Maybe it's not for everybody that I'm just going to do the best that I can do, and if that's not enough, then I'll do a different job in the military.
So the course for you was like, sort of intimidating, but overall it went fine. Mhm, was there anything you found particularly tough about getting into instructing?
I mean, yeah, I had lots of challenges, sometimes consistency, especially with a nine month old at home focus and overall performance. So, uh, I'll give you an example. You do a big cross country as part of the final portion of your instructor training and first few days went super well. Like, everything went really well. We were back in my backyard in the mountains, flying approaches that I was very familiar with and my instructor was very pleased. And so we became very low stress, very chill in the cockpit. And then we're on approach going into Calgary and they clear us for the Ils, which is one of the easiest approaches that you can fly. And I decide to be fancy. And I started asking him for things and I was like, hey, you know what would be really cool is if you program this and you do this and you do that, and he just turns to me and he's was like, you know what would be really cool is if you descend so we can land. And I look out because I hadn't looked out in a while. And we are at 5000ft, like 4 miles from the airport, which is yes, it's so, so high really high and, uh, to the point where they had already switched us to the tower. And tower was like, um, are you guys going to be able to land? And my instructor is like, I don't know. We'll see. He just looks at me and we did, we landed, we made it, we made it work. But it was very humbling.
Everyone has one of those every now and then.
Yeah. You start to feel comfortable. You start to get cocky and then, uh, you realize you forgot to do the basic, fundamental things.
The comforting thing about that in a multi crew environment is that that's what your crew is for. Right. Nobody's perfect. Ideally, that kind of stuff doesn't happen. But part of how it doesn't happen is backing each other up. Right. And if that, uh, had been not a training flight, your copilot would have queued you long before that, for sure.
I don't think I gave him time, though. I was like, hey, you should program this. Am. Um, I allowed to swear?
Yeah.
Okay. So that was the best debrief I've ever had in the military. Because when we landed back in Portage, he turned to me and he said, dan, that was 98% awesome and 2%.
What the sounds about right.
Very memorable debrief.
My best debrief, somebody walked in after me and on the whiteboard in Moose Jaw, it just said less blah blah, more fly. Which to anyone who knows me is not shocking. Is the reason I'm making a podcast.
That's fair.
It was during your low level NAV. So you're trying to look at the map, just talking a mile a minute, trying to cue yourself and cue your instructor on what you're doing and stuff. And like my Prague card literally said student could benefit from the shut up and fly message. So just sort of like you say consistency. And you said you have young kids at the time, obviously, so that's never easy.
Yeah, there were a lot of days in the flight instructor training that I had to call in and be like, hey, listen, I got 4 hours sleep last night.
That's the beauty of the training world.
Yeah.
Right. Is on an operational flight, you're probably just going to tell your other pilots or pilot and say, hey, we got to watch each other today. I'm tired, we got to do this, so let's go.
Yeah, sometimes.
Well, as long as it's not unsafe, you have to gut check and it's your responsibility, obviously. You have to know yourself. But there's a difference between like there's a real world effect of us going out today versus we're training. And there is no effect if we don't go. Did you have any early on big learning experiences when you were a new instructor? Like any funny stories or?
Yeah, the first two students I had, I took on a cross country out west. And this was back when I trusted the students to check NOTAMs and weather and that stuff, and then they would brief me.
A Notice to Airmen or NOTAM is a memo that informs pilots of important updates and potential hazards and needs to be checked before every flight.
And we went on a flight where they had presented all the NOTAMs for the flight. And, uh, we got to Kalona and everything was shut down in Cologne. And the guy on the radio was like, yeah, it's all no tam closed. Like, oh, yes, of course, guys, do we have gas to go to the next place? Like, what are we doing here? And I was very angry. And then we landed. And turns out they did check all the NOTAMs, but they did not check their NOTAMs for destination. Yeah. So it turns out, uh, they didn't check their NOTAMs for the destination. Yeah. I learned a valuable lesson that day, and that was that I should, as the professional aviator and the only one qualified, actually do my job.
It's funny, because, like, on a crew, as much as the AC, you want to go through the NOTAMs depending on the nature of the mission. Sometimes that's an Fo job, and you just don't have time, and you just have to trust that these guys are not messing it up. So I can imagine that some of that could leak through initially into your instructional until somebody burns you.
Yeah. After that, I always check note AMS and weather and stuff. Yeah, like a good instructor.
What's a normal day in the life of an instructor? At, uh, phase three multi.
So you need to get in, you need to check the weather and no tabs before your students brief you. If your students are on different missions, you have to brief them separately. So that's about 40 minutes for each kind on a brief that you brief separately, one at a time. You take them out of the plane, they have to do their walk around. You do the actual flight. You come back, you debrief. Process takes a while, and then you take the next student, do the same thing. So that might be from, like, eight till two to get two 1.3 hours missions done. And then you have to write both cards, which gets a lot easier as time goes on. But as an instructor, one of the most important things you do is writing that card. It's not only for the student, but it's for the other instructors, because you might not instruct those guys tomorrow. You might get sick, you might not have a good night's sleep.
So, day to day on the line, it's a pretty busy job.
Yeah, if it's your only job, it's eight to four. A, uh, multi instructor will do about eight instructional missions a week. So most days you're going to double turn. So fly to instructional missions, and then you will try to get one proficiency flight just for your own kind of recurrent. Training to make sure you're still good.
So about nine flights a week?
Yeah.
And, uh, does that feel like a lot or is it kind of a good pace?
It feels really comfortable when you're in that flow. What makes it hard is when you.
Have extra things, which always does creep in. If I remember correctly, CCAT instructors are given no extra duties, so they can focus typically on flying 100%, which is probably the most comfortable place you can be. Like, once you get over the initial learning curve, is you're just doing your.
Job, but the job is harder. As a CCAT, you don't have enough experience. Everything you're dealing with is for the.
First time, and that is stressful in flight, when you encounter new situations, which is always when you're a new person in charge, that is stressful. Can you briefly outline the phase three course for multi engine students?
Yeah, for sure. So when you get on phase three, you'll do a short ground school just to familiarize yourself with the essentials of the King Air. Then you'll do quite a bit of simulator time to get you proficient with emergencies, IFR and basic handling. Then you'll do Clearhood, which is VFR flying. So looking out at the horizon and flying on that, that's like basically building.
Up your hands and feet skills on a multi engine platform.
Exactly. As well as how we handle emergencies and the philosophy of multi engine flying, which is a bit different than jet flying.
It's a crew concept now.
Exactly. And then we finish the course with IFR, which is, we always say, the bread and butter. Operationally, most of your flying is going to be point A to point B by IFR, and we focus very heavily on the course. Ah. And then it finishes with an instrument rating ticket at the end.
And again, VFR is visual flight rules. IFR is instrument flight rules. One is flight with reference to the ground, and the other is meant for flying in bad weather.
Or with reference to instruments.
Yeah, it's with reference to your instruments because frankly, everybody flies IFR most of the time. It's highways in the sky, basically, and you navigate those with your instruments. What is your favorite part to teach of the course?
The cross countries.
Yeah. Why?
Well, when you think about it, the entire course is 91 hours, and that includes 50 hours in the simulator. Right. The reason I mentioned course time is because the cross countries combined are almost half of the actual real flying on the entire syllabus. So you're going for three days away with two students, and the pilot that you bring back on day three is not the pilot you left with on day one. There's so much learning and growth. It's a lot of fun. Plus, it's their first experience in the Air Force going away as a crew, so you get to spend some time at the bar, at the restaurant, after the debrief passing on your war stories.
You get that taste of crew life a little bit.
Yeah. And you get to mentor outside of rank and structure, which is really important for them to learn how to do, because aviation is about connecting with people, connecting with your crew, and being able to learn from people of, uh, all generations and positions on the aircraft. It doesn't matter if you're a major and they're a corporal. They have 20 years of experience, and you're new, so you have to be able to learn from those guys. And the best way to do that is away from the aircraft.
At first, aviation and the Air Force is so weird because there is rank, there are positions, but as a crew, it's kind of an equalizer. Right. Rank really has it on the aircraft and a little bit afterwards as well. Drop off a little bit. For you to really properly function as.
A crew, it's positional rank does not correlate with experience or position on the aircraft.
Well, because your rank, it relates to your job as an officer, not your job as a pilot.
Exactly. That's a really hard skill to learn. One of the things that new pilots struggle with because they spent so much time as a cycle of tenant, and then they go straight to captain for the most part. And now they're working with a lot of professionals, NCMS, who are a lower rank but are way higher in the aviation knowledge and experience, and they need to learn how to navigate that.
You're winged. You go straight from like a know nothing second lieutenant to a captain, or maybe a lieutenant for, like, a month. And now you're a captain. Now you're a captain, and people look at you. You're a captain, but so is the guy who's had 20 years as a captain. And they look at you as the same person because of the bars on your shoulder. And it's very tricky.
Yeah. You really have to learn how to check your ego and just realize that everyone is a person with value to the team and the team. It just doesn't function if you can't get behind that concept.
I think you get to know your people a little bit, and then you start to realize there's sort of a very incorrect thought that officers go to school. NCMS don't, blah, blah, blah. It's very carry over from the old class system. Almost lots of your NCMS are going to have tons of life experience, previous jobs, university degrees. Huge, huge experience in aviation. Lots of your techs will also have a private pilot license. You can't make assumptions about people's experience and what they have to offer based on the rank that they're wearing. If you do that, you're shortchanging everybody.
And being a pilot does not make you superior, like, in any way. Absolutely.
The god pilot complex infuriates me, it's very toxic. It's toxic. It alienates your crew, it will hold you back in life. It is absurd if you're not listening to your crew, like, what are you doing here? Like it or not, on the Aurora, you're like, the least important guy. Basically, your job is to drive the bus, get the pros in the back over that submarine or over that surveillance target or wherever it may be. And now they're going to actually conduct the mission while you fly in a circle or whatever and make sure you don't run out of gas, and then you go home. And then, like, you and your big bucks on the landing, basically, the search.
Rescue is the same thing. You got to fly patterns and all that stuff. But if there weren't Star Treks in the back and the Fe loadmaster, there's no point, right? The aircraft can't reach out and help someone, uh, without those guys in the back.
Yeah, and I think I already knew that to an extent. But I remember my buddy, uh, Adam Saber, who is an Australian exchange guy. We had a fantastic, super smart guy. He was talking about how flying low is fun. But if you fly low all the time in ASW, your whole crew is going to be sick in the back. They can't see they're sitting sideways. They're sitting backwards in the Aurora, and it's bumpy down low. And, yeah, it's cool to fly low over the ocean, but honestly, if you're cranking a bank and anytime you're going over 30 degrees, basically you've missed something and now you're scrambling and everyone in the bag is getting sick. He's like, So what's the point? If they're sick, you can't do the mission. I think I knew this, but it really made it quick for me that they are the important part for conducting the mission. Your only job is to make sure everyone stays safe and that we go from take off to landing safely and professionally and a little bit more in between.
There is an opportunity because OJT is a thing. All pilots are going to spend a couple of years as OJT, and that's time where you can see how the professionals do the job. I also got to see a really bad example as an OJT. I've, uh, kept this with me, but I saw a nameless major walk up to an Fe, have a conversation. He had a suitcase in his hand, and then he put his suitcase on the ground and pointed at the plane and walked away. And there were some words exchanged, but I was too far away to see that. And the Fe looked at the bag, looked at this major's back, walked to the plane, left the bag there, and the next day we were in Tindall, Florida, and the major was freaking out because his bag did not make it on the plane.
Go figure.
And that he informed him, yeah, I think your bag is still on the ramp in Baggotville. I'm not really sure why you dropped it there, sir.
Your guys are either going to be like your best buds or they're not going to be saving you. And you want them to be saving you.
Yeah.
There's obviously better reasons to just be a good person and treat the people around you professionally. But even if you need a self centered reason, the better you work with your team, the better they will want to work with you. That's not my main motivation when it comes to that stuff, but it's another bonus.
You'll quickly realize that you can't actually accomplish anything by yourself.
Where do you think, uh, students tend to struggle on phase three? Is there like a typical trouble spot?
Yeah, generally it's in preparation for NAV and the cross countries because there's a different philosophy between phase two and phase three. So phase two is basic flight training. So expectations are going to be laid out for you. There's going to be lots of guides, that kind of thing. You can ask your instructor any question and he's going to kind of lay it all out for you. The briefs are a lot more informative, sometimes even lecture ask. Whereas on phase three, there's a lot of information out there and we're not going to say, we want you to do X-Y-Z in order to get there. We're going to say, hey, look at the weather, do good flight planning and bring us from point A to point B and do this on route. So that change of mentality, it requires critical thinking. We don't teach critical thinking in the Air Force, so you got to just get used to it. So what I tell students is, if there's not a so what, stop thinking about it. So don't tell me the weather is great. Tell me the weather will not impact our mission or the weather will impact our mission. And I've decided to do X, Y and Z instead of this. And switching to that is going to be really important because when you get to an operational unit, there's going to be so many things that you need to know and they're not going to tell you. You've got to know that you don't know them and you got to seek those things. And then when you're actually on a mission, it doesn't really matter if you've never seen that mission before. You have to go and do the mission and you're going to be expected to think critically. So it's very important to develop that skill in phase three.
That's why the studying is so endless. When you get to your Otu, when you get to your operational training unit, that's your first time on the line on an operational squadron. That's why you're just constantly in the books. Whether it's prepping for a SIM or getting into the numbers or the tactics or whatever it may be, there's so much. It's up to you. It's not a course you're just there and there's lots to learn, and you better learn it. And I do remember when you make that switch I never really thought about that. That's the moment it changes on phase three. But when you make that switch and you start to do those cross countries, it's a bit overwhelming. When you do your first one and you're like, it's outside of the box. It's outside of the canned M scenarios you've been doing. So what about this? What if this happens? Whatever. There's 100 variables and it is difficult to parse out. What should I focus on right now and how do I make this happen myself instead of just looking to my instructor to figure it out?
Can I tell you a really good story about that?
Yeah, absolutely.
So this is my last year of instructing. So I'm an ACAT with like 1800 hours, uh, instructional down south. I think this was my last student across country. A lot of fun students were actually really strong. Rince, Cincinnati. And that morning I wake up and I look at the weather and there are tornadoes within 30 airport and at our lunch destination is a full out blizzard. It was just the worst.
It's like a SIM scenario.
That's when I discovered that there's a thing down in the south called TorCon. So we were at TorCon seven.
What is that tornado condition?
Tornado condition, which has to do with distance and magnitude of the tornado from the city center.
Higher number is worse.
Yes. So I immediately called the FBO where we parked our plane and asked them to drag our plane in. And I'm like, well, this is going to be a fun day of just sitting inside trying not to die in Cincinnati. And I get down and my students are both sitting there at the computers furiously typing, filing flight plans, working on the mission. And I decided, okay, well, I'm not going to tell them, hey, we're not going. I'm just going to see where this morning goes. So I sit down with them and they briefed me the weather and they briefed me their mission. So the first guy is like, yeah, torque on seven. There's tornadoes really, really close. My route is going to be from here to here to here. I'm going to fly these approaches and we're going to do this star into Minneapolis where there's a full out blizzard. And the next person goes, yeah, there's a full out blizzard. We're going to depart from here. We're going to go here, here, and here. And at the end, they just look at me and I'm like, sir, you guys filed? And the guy in the morning is like, uh, yes sir, I'm filed. Do you want to go fly? Well, no sir, we don't want to fly at all. Why did you file a flight plan? Why did you brief this? Why didn't you just say, hey, sir, tornadoes what's good for breakfast?
That's that weird thing, though, when you're a student and you're like playing the game and you're trying to figure it all out and it's such a weird place to be, it's hard.
You get this sense of I talked to students about this a lot. You get cognitive dissonance, which is that uncomfortable feeling you get kind of like in your chest and stomach when you feel like there's a gap between what you know and what you need to know to succeed, and it's really uncomfortable. And all through phase two, you never really had that.
No, because you knew what was coming on every flight, and you could always prepare.
Exactly. And you knew the routes, you knew the emergencies, you knew everything. But we actually employ cognitive dissonance as a technique because it's like when you're at the gym and you fail, that's when you're doing the most growth. It's the same. You're going to learn a lot. And we tell the students at the beginning, hey, you're going to make decisions, and then we're going to mentor you, brief you, coach you, debrief you. We still want you to pretend that you're in charge and make those decisions just so that you can go through the process and feel that cognitive dissonance. And yet they always forget. By the time they get to the cross country, they forget that they're supposed to apply actual logic and thought, because they're just like, well, yesterday I did all this planning, and I have to do these approaches, and today I got to do these approaches, but I don't want to fly in a tornado. So as a student, it's very uncomfortable, but just embrace it because it's part of the learning process.
And that's usually the biggest challenge, is that shift. Have you ever had a call sign and what's the story behind it?
I've had two that I've thankfully left behind. One was Astroboy and one was skidmark.
Do you want to tell the stories behind those? I do.
They're both clinical.
Okay.
Yeah. Astroboy. I was very young when I was flying the Buffalo.
Is it just because you looked like Astroboy?
I like to employ this fohawk, and, uh, they printed off a picture of Astroboy and put it next to my picture, and they were very similar.
Anyone under our age probably will have no idea who Astroboy is. Is an old cartoon. Just Google it and then skid.
Mark we were in Carcross Yukon, uh, which is a gravel runway on the Buffalo, and we were landing in about 20 knots of crosswind. We had already jumped the Sartex out, so we had to land to pick them up. And I'm fighting across and fighting the crosswind, and I guess my foot slipped, so I landed with right brake on, and it was right crosswind. So we touched down, and I went into a 45 degree drift in the Buffalo. 45,000 pound aircraft. Wow. And the NAV said it was really weird because they could see straight down the runway from their window that's on the side of the airplane.
Yeah, that would be weird.
And so I just let off the right brake, applied some left brake, applied some rudder, and we got it under.
You all the correct though?
Oh yeah, absolutely.
Did you have an experienced AC?
Yeah, he didn't touch the control because.
I think an inexperienced AC would have taken control.
It happened really fast, so it felt slow, but yeah, we landed a nice big skid and then I already had it corrected. Never left the center line.
Good for you.
But we went out to inspect. It was very loose gravel with dirt underneath. And there was a big skid mark, like a 1200 foot skid mark.
I mean, you're moving, but, uh, it took a minute. That's a good AC to have the confidence to. He gave you some rope.
Yeah. I think by the time that he was engaged, because it had been a very long trip, we'd flown together for that was like day eight of nine. We'd flown together and nothing bad had happened. And he trusted me. So I think he was, um, not quite as tuned into the flight as he should have been.
It was fun.
What he said was, whoa.
That's what I would have said, at least.
So, yeah, skid mark. I was skid marked for about a month and then, uh, I took pat leave to get away from it.
What is the most important thing you do to keep yourself ready for your job?
I would say the most important thing that I did while instructing was conscientiously maintain a focus on my joy of life. Because it's very easy when it's your job and you're doing it 910 times a week to lose sight of the fact that you are getting paid a decent amount of money to do what you wanted to do when you were twelve.
Yeah, that's true. I remember you used to say that sometimes when we were flying. And it's a good thing to keep in mind.
It's something I remind students, it's something I remind instructors, coworkers. Because at the end of the day, we do a lot of work. It's a lot of work. There's expectations of a military pilot, but you get to go and you get to take an aircraft and you get to fly around and you get to do a whole bunch of really cool stuff with it. And that is like every twelve year old's fantasy. It was mine.
Especially if I manage to corner some hapless students at the mess or something. I'll try to, uh, remind younger pilots who are in training, remember that you are flying aircraft, that most people in your position in their aviation career would sell a kidney for like a week of flying in it. Especially on the Harvard, but also the King Air, like a twin engine turbine aircraft with some pretty sweet kit inside. Think about when you were flying a Cessna or a catana or whatever.
Well, I did my multi IFR commercial in high school. Yeah, it was 40 grand in 2004.
Oh, buddy.
Right. I have turned to students, especially on the night flight, when you go up and it's like beautiful weather, but they're so focused on all of the composite mission planning and all these things, you're like, hey, I patrol for a second. Look around. This is really cool. Didn't you say this was your first night flight? Like, look around. This is really neat.
I had an instructor say once we were walking back on the ramp in Moose Jaw, and we were walking back. It had been a really great flight, super fun. Everything went smooth. I was loving life. And he said, Beats working for a living. And I was like, man. And I've said that so many times since then to remind the people around me and myself, like, how great is this?
Yeah. So in this last year, that really came home to me because I was doing a staff job, which is my primary role, was not flying, but I was lucky enough that it's still designated as a flying position. So every week I would go fly, and I would do it on Wednesdays, and I would augment for the school. So there were some Wednesdays when I would come in and I would fly two tests and then kick them off and do a solo prof. So flying three missions, and I get down and I'm talking to the guys, and they're like, man, why do you do that? Why don't you just come in and prof and leave? Of I'm not in the office right now.
I like to fly.
This is my day off. I work Monday, Tuesday, and Thursday, Friday this week. And you don't realize until you're not doing it every day that you really miss it.
And I think that is a very applicable piece of advice for anyone who's in this job or wants to get into this job. Because that joy can go away very easily in the hustle and bustle in the crazy grind. The Air Force is going to squeeze you, and sometimes you're going to feel like you got almost nothing left. You got to remember, like, you know what, though? I'm doing this in an, uh, amazing aircraft, doing crazy stuff, and it is a grind, but I'd rather do this grind than whatever office grind or whatever it is that I would have done otherwise.
I'm going to wrap it back to what we were talking about, how you interact with your crew and stuff, too, especially as an instructor. But when you're an AC, and even when you're just a, uh, line fo, everyone around you sees your attitude towards what you're doing. So I'm sure you've had ACS or instructors that have just been Negative Nancy's, like, man, why is this guy doing this? And it sucks the joy out. And you kind of, everyone is taking cues from you all the time, especially when you're instructor. You have to pass on that enthusiasm for flight. If you're jaded day one, after you've gotten your wings, it's not going to be a great career. It takes work to maintain your attitude towards your job.
If you ever find yourself using the word jaded towards yourself, it's time to either quit or you need to fix that because that's just not a way to live. And it also is so poisonous to everyone around you. I had this great guy, amazing guy, Mike McSween. He's a standards pilot in 405, or he was when I was there. And when I was getting ready to be a crew commander, I was about to run some briefings and stuff on some crew events, and he was like telling me how it's up to you to set the tone in everything. But in the brief, you are about to set the tone for everybody. You have a choice. You're all showing up at three in the morning for something and you can be like, hey, guys, I know it really sucks that we're here, but come on, we got to do it, so let's just go do it. Or you can be like, all right, guys, I know we're a bit tired, but tonight is going to be great. It's a great opportunity. We have access to, let's say, a submarine tonight. So we're going to get some real time on a sub. And, uh, I know we're a bit tired, but let's go and get this. And it's going to be some awesome training and that makes a huge difference to the other people. You're not their hero or something because you're being energetic, but you're setting own.
Yeah, enthusiasm is infectious.
What is the most rewarding experience you've ever had in the RCAF?
I would say instructing.
Is there a specific moment that comes.
To mind at all when they get their wings? So going to the mess dinners, talking to them after, they're all proud, their parents are there and they deserve it. And I think in five years, if you just math it up, we put wings on over 150 multi pilots, and I taught pretty much all of them.
Dick said the same thing.
It's awesome. It's such a good experience. You saw those people stumble and struggle and deal with that cognitive dissonance and all that stuff and succeed, and now they're ready to learn at the next stage. But I always tell new instructors, those students are your resume. When you leave Portage, you're going to go back to the bottom of the totem pole, and especially the guys you taught in your first couple of years when you had the least experience, those guys are going to be the standards guys, ACS, so do a really good job. One thing that you don't realize as a student is how invested your instructors are. I have very distinct memories, especially as a new instructor of my students going up on their first test and I'm like, oh, hands class, like biting my fingernails. But your instructors are very invested and it's nerve wracking when those guys go on their tests and you're confronting the tester as soon as they come in. Did he pass? What did he wrong? And then the first thing that he did wrong, you're like, well, he didn't do that on his pretest. You're invested in the student's performance. You really care. So it's a big deal. I don't want to say it's a relief because you know, your students can do it, but it's a relief that other people see what you saw and the growth that you instilled in those students. Uh, it's a big deal.
Alright, so let's break into your time on the buffalo for a moment.
Sure.
And we'll get to some story time. What was your hardest day on the aircraft?
Probably 2015, Christmas Eve. We had an emergency in the middle of the night. Well, I guess it was Christmas morning at that point, but we were out late that night in bad weather searching for someone on Christmas Eve. And then something happened with the plane and we felt like it was a pretty close call. And we went to the nearest airport that we could, which happened to be Port uh, Hardy. And we caught a few hours of sleep, I think like 3 hours of sleep on a hangar floor.
Oh, wow.
And then a Cormorant came up and got us back home for Christmas. But that was hard.
That sounds really hard.
It was just like A, we weren't successful finding the person we were trying to find, but B you have all these thoughts go through your head, the what ifs and what am I doing on Christmas? And you don't want to disappoint your family and all that kind of stuff.
Did you guys find it when you're flying SAR, do you have a professional detachment like doctors tend to have? Or are you pretty personally invested in every search?
You have to be detached and it's something that you learn and train. Do they teach you that? Do they tell you that there's no lesson plan or anything on it? But one of the things that we have to instill in FOS before they become aircraft commanders is that you're not liable for the person who is hurt or lost or missing. You didn't put them there. It's not your fault. It's your job to look for them and provide them with the best service that you can, but you can't kill yourself to do it. So that's a very hard lesson because I uh, think that with our personalities, where we want to succeed, it's just natural instinct to maybe push boundaries. That risk has already been accepted at a pretty low level.
When you add the professionalism and the drive to succeed. With the hanging of a life in the balance, that's a pretty potent combination.
But as the aircraft commander, your job, what you are liable for are, ah, the lives and health of the seven people in the back of that plane that trust you. So you have to get them home no matter what. If you can save that person by employing all of the tactics, everything you've been trained and following the rules, then you do it. But you can't break rules to save someone's life, unlike um, Hollywood. And it's a really hard lesson to learn because it's not your natural instinct.
What was your best day on the Buff?
Right near the end of my tenure there, right as the sun was setting, a guy was in a float plane that had lost its engine but he did a safe landing in this mountain lake. So the lakes at like 5000ft in the mountains and we found them. So he did the right thing. He turned on his emergency locator beacon, he was overdue. So we went, we found him, we dropped a radio to him. Um, the sun was setting and we had to kind of carve in between the valleys and stuff. It was all safe, but it was really beautiful and cool. And then we dropped them, um, supplies and we talked to them and they were fine. And they had a friend coming and mechanic coming the next morning. So we dropped them like cold weather stuff. We dropped them food, we dropped them a tent. And then the next, next day we met them at another airport and got all our stuff back and chatted with them and they were so grateful and thankful.
Yeah, no doubt.
It was just a really cool mission where we got to put all of those things that we train a lot, especially dropping those bundles and you don't actually get the feedback.
I was going to say you actually got to close the loop. We often don't get to do.
Yeah, it was all the same crews. That was on a weekend that went there the next day and got the stuff back. So it was pretty cool.
That's awesome. Where was that?
Uh, just north of Chilliwack.
So we're down to our last couple of questions. Uh, the last two, I think, are some of the most important questions that we talk about on this show. Because part of the big goal of the show is to reach prospective pilots, new pilots, people who want to join the Air Force. This is for the air cadets out there. This is for the people who are thinking about maybe this could be a career for me. What do you think makes a good pilot?
In my opinion, it's work ethic and attitude that make a good pilot. So you have to be willing to work and you have to have a positive attitude. You have to approach things from the right angle. All of the other stuff, the physical, like actually flying the plane, the knowledge, the experience, those things can be trained and coached, but it's really hard to change people's personalities and attitudes, so they have to be motivated by the right things.
And it is not as easy as it sounds because I can say that personally, I'm a complainer. It's not something I love about myself, but it's a very difficult habit to break. And to anyone out there listening, that is not something you want to do. You don't want to be negative. You don't want to complain. One thing that I learned, that I wish I'd learned earlier, was basically complaining makes everyone aware of the negative without providing any of the solution or positive having a good attitude. It sounds so simple, but I couldn't agree more.
It's so critical, I think.
So if you had to give a piece of advice to a new pilot, to that air cadet who's listening, to that person who's thinking about going into the recruiting center, what would you say?
Take advantage of the opportunities in front of you. So whether that means you're on the street and the recruiting center is there, go do it. Uh, because what do you have to lose? But in the training world, even if you didn't get your first posting, make the most out of that posting, because then you're going to have so many open doors at the end. Make the most out, um, of all your opportunities, because if you don't, doors are just going to close and you're going to end up getting out of the military dissatisfied. Whereas if you still might get out of the military early on because other opportunities are open. I'm not saying that you have to stay in the military, but take advantage of all the opportunities that are open to you and don't let life pass you by.
If you stay in or you decide, this was a five year thing for me, you'll have more to offer. If you spend the time you had seizing those opportunities, you will have a full resume, a full life experience, and you can come out of it feeling like, I have something to offer. I have learned things and I've gained life experience from this. The worst thing you can get is feeling like it's time to leave. Fine. What do I actually have to offer? What have I learned? What have I done with my time?
Yeah. What did I do with the last ten years of my life? Yeah.
Are the last ten years chock full of experiences? Or are they few and far between and, oh, my gosh, I have a ten year career on my resume with not much to offer from it in terms of experience, and I think that would be awful. Right on. So seize the opportunities. Carpe DM okay, that's going to wrap it up for today's episode on phase three, multi engine flight training. I'd like to extend a huge thank you to Dan for joining us and taking the time to tell us those great stories. Our next episode will feature Jules Daintree, the Deputy Commanding officer of Moose Jaw, and we'll be talking about fast jet flight training. So if you've ever been curious what it takes to fly jets in the RCAF, tune into our next episode. As always, we can be reached by email at the pilotproject podcast@gmail.com and at pod pilotproject on all social media outlets. This week, I'd really like to thank anyone who sent in video footage to help make our promo reels. Without you, we'd have a lot less cool content to share. Finally, I'd like to ask your help in continuing to help the show grow. There are three things you can do to help. Do you know that only one in five listeners are subscribed to the show? Let's bump that up so you don't miss any great content. Go ahead and subscribe wherever you get your podcasts. Second, you can share with friends as we mostly rely on word of mouth. And finally, you can give us a five star rating to help us get get to the top of the charts. That's all for now. Thank you for listening. Keep the blue side up. See you. Engineer shut down all four shutting down all four engines.