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Bryan:Alright. We're ready for departure here at The Pilot Project Podcast, the best source for stories and advice from RCAF and Mission Aviation Pilots brought to you by Sky's Magazine. I'm your host, Brian Morrison, and here with me again today for part two of our discussion on test flying the snowbirds and the legacy of the tutor is major Maciej Match Hatta, the current snowbird one and team lead of the Canadian Forces snowbirds. Match, thanks once again for joining us here today from Columbus, Ohio, and welcome back to the show.
Match:This is awesome. Thanks for having me again.
Bryan:Listeners can check out part one to hear about Match's early aviation years in air cadets, his Hornet career, and his combat operations. Today, we'll be focusing on experimental test pilot school and aerospace engineering test establishment or AT. So just for listeners, our plan here is to jump around in the timeline a little bit. We're going to jump over Match's first tour on the Snowbirds and save that for part three when we talk about the Snowbirds in detail. But Match did do a tour on the Snowbirds in 2013.
Bryan:After that, it was time to start thinking about Test Pilot School. So after Fighters Combat, the Snowbirds, what made test pilot school feel like the next challenge?
Match:So, actually, it was backwards in order a bit. And what I mean by that is, the Snowbirds and test pilot school were always on my radar, and, I was even told by my four zero nine CO at the time that, hey. That was ambitious. You know? Pick one of these.
Match:And I'm like, I know. I'm gonna do both. Stubborn Polish response. But then what I did was I went down the road in Cold Lake to, AT to the Aerospace Engineering Test Establishment, which was based out of Cold Lake at the time. Now they're in Ottawa.
Match:And, and I ran through their tryouts. And that's basically a two week period where you, take a bunch of ground school and a bunch of stuff you thought you knew about airplanes that you really didn't know and, had your eyes opened, and then you also flew different airplanes that you typically, for most people, have not flown yet in the Air Force, and that would have been the Tudor and, the Griffin for fixed wing folks. I didn't get a chance to fly the Griffin, but I flew, yeah, five flights in the Tudor as part of that, AT evaluation. And, basically, you're doing flight test techniques. They're called, you know, different ways of manipulating the aircraft to get data out of it, whether it's response in flight controls, whether it's some systems that you're poking around in in the aircraft to try to build some observations and conclusions about a certain aspect of the airplane.
Match:And so you end up doing a mini project and a presentation out of that two week period and, again, are humbled by the work pace required. And, and it's meant to simulate the kind of busy weeks at Test Pilot School. There's definitely weeks that we're busier than that at Test Pilot School, so it's a pseudosimulation, But it does a good job of that. And it's also meant to expose you to the flight test world because it's not for everybody. And it really takes a mindset shift because it is so much different than operational flying or even flight training.
Match:And what I mean by that is that all our lives as pilots or or as student pilots, you're taught to, okay, fly this pattern. Okay. Do this clear hood sequence like this. And a lot of that, unbeknownst to many people, includes pilot compensation for deficiencies in the airplane. And so, like, a case in point would be like, okay.
Match:You need to do a four g and two second recovery out of this dive. Let's say we're doing some kind of academic range delivery in a hawk or something like that. And now you try to do that dive, and every time you consistently get to five g. Okay. Well, now you're gonna taper your input curve to try to get as close to four g as possible.
Match:But on the test flying side, is it really the fact that the operator is reaching five g every time, or is it the fact that the flight controls are sensitive or there's something in the flight dynamics that make it hard to achieve that four g? And instead, there's always an overshoot to five g. And so now as part of that AT tryout, you are now it's kind of fun because the pilot's generally always at fault for something. And now all of a sudden, it's not the pilot to blame. It's a deficiency in the airplane.
Match:So that's kind of the fun part of test flying is that it's no longer all on me, as the as the operator, as the stick actuator, if you will. There's inherent designs and not not so much design flaws, but trade space that designers need to work with. Mhmm. You know, if you make the tail too big to handle this portion of stability concern, now you have a lot of drag out the tail or or some kind of consequential issue that you weren't tracking that now deters performance elsewhere.
Bryan:Yeah. Everything's a compromise.
Match:Exactly. And so, that was eye opening to kinda see that shift even during the tryouts for AT. And it's not for everybody. I had friends that didn't like that aspect to it and didn't wanna pursue it, and that's totally fair enough. And for me, it was like, yeah, this is still interesting.
Match:I wanna learn about airplanes and fly a bunch of airplanes and, you know, see where they're flawed and see where they're good. And so, that was kind of my in. I remember at the time after passing that selection, that tryout phase, which, again, was about two week period, sitting down with the commanding officer at AT at the time, which, has always been, like, a full colonel in the air force, or in the assistant deputy minister of material, because it's not it doesn't actually fall under the RCF. But sitting down with the CO and telling them, hey. I really wanna do this, but and the big but was, hey.
Match:That morning, I'd found out that actually the snowbirds are taking fighter folks that year for tryouts. And then in my head, I was like, oh, which way do I do this? I really wanna do both. I should really do the snowbirds first because at the time, they weren't taking majors for winger positions. It was only captains.
Match:So if in the years I go to 80 or I'm successful after test bot school, if I get pinned up and promoted, now I've kinda closed that other door. So I'm sitting there trying to give a yay or nay to this colonel at the time and be like, can we defer this by, like, a few years and I'll just go do this cool thing first? And I thought it was gonna be like, no, man. You gotta pick here. Come on.
Match:And in the end, they were receptive to that and be like, yeah. Call us when you're ready, but, you're successful. Congratulations. And, yeah, we'll have a slot for you at some test pod school down the road. Wow.
Match:I was like, oh, that worked. Okay. That's awesome. And then it was like but you're putting yourself out there in these tryouts, and then I ended up doing, the snowbirds tryout a few months after that, which again, you're putting your name and yourself out there at the risk of failure Mhmm. For all to see to maybe get the chance to do that.
Match:And so I know we'll talk about the snowboards a bit later, but, yeah. So going back to the test bot thing, that eventually came back around after a detour to to Moose Jaw again. And then I got word when I was back in cold day constructing on the hawk that, yeah, I had to have a slot at Edwards Air Force Base, in 2020 to go down there and do the experimental test pilot course.
Bryan:Wow. So we've talked about your tryouts for AT before you went to test pilot school. As we said, we're going to jump around a bit and, you did your time with the snowbirds. And then how did it come about that it was time to go to test pilot school?
Match:So I did a lengthy tour on the snowbirds at the time that is. I did four years. Normally, the tour was two years there, to fill in various gaps in personnel and, postings and whatnot. And then after that, I heard an inkling that maybe I would be going to test spots go from there, but that didn't pan out. And instead, I ended up going back to Cold Lake, to instruct on the hawk for fighter lead in training.
Bryan:Okay.
Match:So I did that for almost two years. Actually, it was a pretty short instructor tour. And then towards the end of that, spots were opening up for test spot school, and that came back on the radar, and, I jumped at the chance for that. So I eventually heard word that, hey. There's a spot for me at Edwards.
Match:This was around summertime twenty nineteen after about a year and a bit instructing on the hawk, and then was off for the desert in December 2019.
Bryan:So when it comes to different test pilot schools, like, did you have one that you were hoping to go to, or is it just like, hey. I'll go where I can go. Like, I'm happy to go kind of thing.
Match:I'll be frank. I'm not the world's best swimmer. I mean, I can stay afloat, but, maybe not with a ton of gear on and everything as RMC second year taught me trying to swim with a rubber rifle across several lengths of the Olympic sized pool. You know, that was unpleasant, and we mostly ended up underwater with the rifle. But, yeah.
Match:So as long as it wasn't, Baks River where you had to do multiple roulette courses for, underwater, rotary wing escape draining and everything, that kinda scared me. So I was glad to hear that I was going somewhere where I can just avoid snakes and be very hot and dry in the desert, and and it's very historic there too. Lots of aviation history played out there as there was in all the schools. But, yeah, I was looking forward to a little California life and growing my hair out, in the days of COVID.
Bryan:Did your wife come with you down there?
Match:Yeah. It was actually a full posting for us.
Bryan:Oh, nice.
Match:And, by then, yeah, we had our daughter. She was eight years old. So, yeah, it was a full move for the family and the dog, and, yeah, we loved it.
Bryan:So that must have been kinda cool because you guys had spent a fair bit of your career apart between courses and tours, and I imagine, you know, holding the cube with NORAD and all these different things. It must have been nice to be somewhere where you'd all be together.
Match:Yeah. Exactly. And we tried to make the most of it. So even on the move down, I think we were given, five or six days to move down there, to drive down, and it's basically a straight shot down the I 15 for the most part, a hug in the Rockies. So we tried to Yellowstone was closed at the time, but we tried to hit up as many, parks and unique places as we could.
Match:So we dropped into Zion for a night or two and, and then Las Vegas and just eventually made our way down to Edwards. And this was the timing was a little weird in that the course we had to show up before Christmas, but the course officially started the first week of January. So you basically did all your in clearances, showed up, sorted out your base housing because we had to live on base as one of the student restrictions, and all the kind of medical bits of moving to The states Mhmm. And licenses and everything, insurance. We had to sort all that out before Christmas, and then we could have a few weeks off and then start with the course.
Match:So it was a nice kinda casual, slip into what would then become a year long marathon, basically. Yeah. Yeah. So it was nice to see.
Bryan:And just remind me again, what year was this?
Match:I did the course in 2020. We moved down December 2019.
Bryan:Oh, so just in time for the world to shut down.
Match:Yeah. Exactly.
Bryan:So before we even get into the test pilot school stuff, how did COVID affect you guys down there in California?
Match:So it wasn't a thing when we first got there. We had full basically, full up class events and everything, socialization, all that in the first three months, of course, leading up to kind of March 2020 time frame. And then there was word started to spread about this coronavirus situation, and before you know it, things were locked down. Now luckily at Edwards Air Force Base, you're already kind of remote and in the desert on your own. Mhmm.
Match:So basically, the base just kept to itself and locked out some of the outsiders that way and then started to feed in other restrictions, masks, protocols, and everything as it went there. In terms of impacts to course, we did shift to online work for some of the class at ground school, which was challenging in its own right given some of the complexity of topics.
Bryan:Mhmm.
Match:We didn't lose too much on the flying bit. The course before us and I'll I'll explain in a moment how the courses are structured, but the course before us lost out on a bit more flying than we did. And, typically, there's also an exchange with the between the two American schools. So US Navy school comes out to Edwards and flies stuff at Edwards for two weeks and vice versa. So we missed out on that ability to go see Pax River and and fly some of their aircraft, unfortunately.
Match:So we're shy of few types in the in the grand list of aircraft types alone, but, but it was still, a worthwhile experience, obviously, and still probably 90% of what a full test pilot school course would be on a normal year.
Bryan:Was your wife and daughter fairly restricted by COVID rules, or were they able to still socialize and, you know, was it tough on your family at that time? Did they end up feeling kinda isolated, or was it not too bad for them?
Match:Maybe a little bit. Still on base, the isolation wasn't too bad, with the kinda group networks within the course and the families within the course. For a period of time, yeah, when things got severe, it was there was some isolation, but we were I was also home every night. So even if I was, you know, studying for hours on end, you know, sitting down for dinner and being home every night was definitely different than years previous, either with the Snowbirds or the Hornet or in the years to follow at 18. So that was nice that rarely I think I went on one field trip for a week or two, later in the year, but every other night, we were home every night.
Match:Mhmm. So that was nice to to have. And and, I mean, we never lived in the desert before, so we're I was home every night, and we can go ride bikes every night of the year. Like, it was yeah. Or roller skate around the the park or a scooter around the park or go for runs outside.
Match:Like, it was it was a unique climate to be in.
Bryan:Awesome. So test pilot school has a reputation as one of the hardest flying courses in the world. How accurate would you say that reputation is?
Match:I would agree, but it also depends on your background. Like, really, it's an exercise in your ability to manage, manage time, manage your own organizational skills and discipline, and, and be part of a larger team, and also how you prioritize all those tasks. So if you go in there with the mindset of, hey. I'm just gonna coast and let it happen. Yeah.
Match:That's it's gonna be infinitely hard and probably not passable. If you go in there with the mindset that I'm gonna try my best, I know that I'm gonna have to give up on some projects or delay things because other stuff is due earlier or more important or higher grade, then if I can apply that kind of prioritization skill that, hey. You've probably already learned in flying to a large degree if you're compartmentalizing things or dealing with emergencies or problems or failures like we've discussed earlier, then you're gonna do okay because you already have that foundational skill set in mind. Mhmm. And, yeah, it was hard, and it was hard for me because it was not typical at this point in my life.
Match:So I was the grandpa on the course, being I think when I was on course, I was 37, gusting 38 years old. And there were colleagues, classmates on course that were almost fresh out of the United States Air Force Academy. So they graduated from the Air Force Academy. They stayed there to teach a few years, and then they went to test pilot school. And these are smart.
Match:Mean, I I don't wanna call them kids because they're good classmates and friends of mine, but, like, there is a good, like, probably fourteen to sixteen year gap in age with some of us there. And then there was a fill in between, like, a widespread of ages across that. But so that was unique to see. And, obviously, people from all over The United States and as well, there were two foreigners as they label us, myself and a good friend, call sign, from, from France, actually.
Bryan:Oh, cool.
Match:Came over from from the French department of defense to do test pilot school as a as a flight test engineer. And different trades as well. So whereas normally pilots are always with pilots and engineers are always with engineers, we had a good mix of the class that were pilots, that were WSOs, so, like, weapon systems operators. We had a few drone pilots in the US Air Force that were on course, and then there were there were engineers of various disciplines throughout the air force. And, really, like like a good colleague later at AT told me, test pod school is as much a course about test flying as it is a course about pilots learning how to talk to engineers and engineers learning how to talk to pilots.
Match:Mhmm. And and just bridging that gap that is often a communications nightmare and making it something that, you know, is cohesive and makes sense and allows people to work together for a common goal.
Bryan:Yeah. Well, those are two totally different ways of thinking about the same problem. Right? The way a pilot looks at how an airplane flies or procedures or, you know, the way even like a manual would be easily understood versus the way an engineer thinks about those same problems are totally different.
Match:Exactly. And I'll jump ahead real quick into probably what, we'll link into with AT. But when we were first doing the tutor avionics upgrade testing, they had an extra screen that would take the landing gear inputs up or down. And the very first evolution of the screen had a little black area of negative space at the bottom of the screen, and it had six radio buttons. So radio buttons for listeners are just like little circles that either fill in or or are empty.
Match:And it literally, from the top down listed nose landing gear up, nose landing gear down, left main landing gear up, left main landing gear down, right main landing gear up, right main landing gear down. And all the buttons were either filled in whether whichever position it was. So if you had three green, as we collectively know, as pilots, as wheels down and locked, you would see three green radio buttons beside the down ones. But if you had all the gear up, the original design had three green right beside all the gear up labels.
Bryan:So they were green no matter what?
Match:They were green no matter what. They did not display in the order of the configuration. Like, there's a reason that the flap lever in 99% of airplanes is shaped like a flap or airfoil. There's a reason the landing gear handle is shaped like a wheel. There's a reason that, you know, these things are designed in this way for feel and for coding of shapes and symbology.
Match:And, so this was literally just a list of gear positions that presumably an engineer thought was, yeah, this is a nice layout here, and we have the labels beside them without the, you know, foresight of, okay. What is commonplace on the aviation design sphere in terms of, hey. What colors do we usually give these things? And, you know, typically, gear down is good. It's green.
Match:Gear up is either red or nonexistent color, but making it green again is gonna be confusing. That just goes to show that discrepancy you get sometimes between engineer talk and pilot talk and kinda trying to blend the two into a suitable solution for the operator.
Bryan:Yeah. You've mentioned a wide variance in ages and trades. Was there any pattern to who tended to have a tougher time in the school as far as, like, those variables, or did it more come down to the individual person?
Match:I think a lot of it was the individual person. We had a joke that a lot of the pilots for probably unintentionally, but a lot of the pilots sat on the left side of the classroom, which was about two fifths of the class. And then the engineers, for the most part, were on the right side of the classroom and about three fifths of the class, with the exception of a few give or take. And so we joked that the left side was the dumb side. That was the side I was on.
Match:The dumb side, the older side with high SA, situational awareness, because from, you know, years of flying and everything, and then the right side was, you know, some of them fairly fresh out of school, or other disciplines, but, super smart. And that was kind of the running joke. It's like left side was just like, yeah. Okay. We'll make it happen.
Match:And right side was like, oh, no. That answer is wrong. So but collectively, what was cool is as a as a cohesive class, we found a way to intermingle. And a lot of the projects, especially at Edwards, are group work that you you would not be able to tackle alone. And that's realistic because large scale projects, you are never alone.
Match:You always have a team of engineers, of other pilots, of corporate people that are designing or doing this update to this aircraft or building a new aircraft. So you always have other people you're working with. And it taught us how to work and kinda bridge those gaps to make the overall sum bigger than just, you know, a one plus one person working on it. But, yeah, it really varied. And the big thing with, how Edwards does it anyways is the course is about eleven months long, and what happens is you have two classrooms side by side at Edwards.
Match:So you have a senior course and a junior course. So when we got there and we started, there was already a senior course that was about halfway through their course. And so we kinda piggyback on them for advice and, hey, how to approach these kind of problems and stuff like that. And then when they graduate, we end up being the senior course and a new course comes in that, that we respond to as well. And then how it works at Edwards, at least, is you would typically do half days of academics and half days of flying.
Match:So when we first started, it was like, okay, performance ground school, And then half days of starting to fly, and you would fly three mainstay aircraft. So we would fly the c 12. I think they called it the Heron, which is a militarized King Air. I think like a beach 200, the proper t tail version and, with upgraded four bladed props. And then, we had the t 38, that we flew, the t 38 c, and then the f 16 as well.
Match:Oh, cool. So those were three aircraft that we were kind of responsible to know. We had to know the red pagers or boldface for all three airplanes and operating and and basically how to get them started, how to fly them, and everything all at the same time, and we would just piggyback. You basically do, like, the equivalent of what we do in Canada to take somebody up to a solo standard, you would do that for all the airplanes. And then there were some additional foreigner restrictions.
Match:I wasn't allowed to take the f 16 solo. I wasn't allowed to fly actually, I couldn't fly anything solo without an American on board. That was just their rule. Maybe they thought I was gonna escape with the jet,
Bryan:take it back home to to Canada. You're gonna defect.
Match:Right. But, no. That was their rule. The only thing I could fly solo were the gliders, which was a separate program to some degree up in Tehachapi in the mountains there
Bryan:Okay.
Match:Northwest of, Mohave Airport. But, yeah. So you would do you would fly on those three aircraft to kinda take you up to, like, a clear hood four, clear hood five type thing. Gotta remember, Edwards is dry lake bed in California. Like, if it's IFR, nobody's flying.
Match:It's a bad day there. Yeah. Like, there are no gutters on base housing.
Bryan:Oh, wow.
Match:Like, the one the one time in the whole year it rained, I was wondering what that sound was, and it was literally all the rain hitting the roof and pouring pouring off off the the edge edge and and going nowhere. So it was it was sky clear every day, and I've never lived somewhere that, was so binary in wind. So every morning was generally calm, which was good for flight testing and, like, getting told data, takeoff landing data for for new aircraft and or just getting those flight test techniques flown. And then every afternoon, it would either stay relatively calm or be gusting 35 knots.
Bryan:Wind is on or wind is off.
Match:Yeah. Maybe off the Sierra Nevadas or some desert effects. But yeah. So it was a very unique climate to fly in. So it was generally always just VFR in the airspace, kinda like you're working in the military terminal control area back in Canada, and, and you would go out and do these flight test techniques during your flights.
Match:But then the other portion was the academics, so you'd also do a half day of academics. And early on, it was okay because we generally start with performance aviation academics, which every pilot has generally seen to some degree in becoming a pilot. So we're talking about, like, okay, the four forces and lift and types of drag and, you know, weight and balance and certain basic elements like that, like how is airspeed measured and the different types of airspeed and altitude, all that. So the first performance bits were were fairly benign, and then it got more into advanced performance and compressible flow and and what happens when shock waves occur on the airplane and critical Mach numbers and all the kind of fancier stuff with faster moving air and faster moving aircraft. And then after that, later towards the next third of the course, I'd say the middle third and onwards, it became more academics of flying qualities and things that, okay, typically pilots don't really talk about this much.
Match:They talk about, okay, some foray into static and dynamic stability and, like, okay, neutral and positive and negative stability, and they kinda leave it at that. Yeah. But, hey, there's actually a whole back end with the equations of motion and inertia and moment arms and things that go into all this and partial differential equations and lots of complicated stuff that the right side of the class would handle for the most part, but things that were new to us. And and that was right when COVID hit as well. So learning about a lot of the new stuff while also transitioning to an online format for a few months was was definitely a challenge.
Bryan:Yeah. Yeah. I mean, so that's kind of a good rundown of we've established, like, yes, it is a hard course, and we've established kind of a rundown of the curriculum. What do you think was the hardest part of the course?
Match:So, yeah, that the second part I talked about with, like, some of the new thoughts to flight, like, equations of motion and how some equations are still unsolved to this day in terms of, like, flying dynamics, was definitely challenging and thinking in these kind of concepts. But, honestly, from a skill set point of view, I think the hardest part was going back to that first thing I mentioned about time management and, and how you're gonna do all this. And, like, literally, I still kept the list. We basically got a printout of the syllabus in every class and how many hours were devoted to it and everything like that. And I still remember, like, every Friday, I would open up this book and just tick off.
Match:Okay. What do we get done? And, like, this little I think I ticked it off with a black Sharpie or something, but, like, that line was growing ever so slowly down the list of, like, 10 pages of classes and things. And it was, like, how how is this all gonna happen still? Right?
Match:And then you get to the end, and it's like, oh, all these tick boxes are filled in, and it's like, how did I get here? Right? And so just trying to figure out how to manage that time, manage that pace, just like running a marathon. Right? If you if you go full tilt at the beginning, few miles or kilometers of that race, then you're not gonna get far.
Match:Whereas if you pace yourself and go with the pacing you've trained for in previous runs or or workups or in our case, the analogy being like that previous, you know, prioritization skills you've learned in flying and other flight training, instances, then you can now set yourself up for a nice measured, response to how challenging the whole year is gonna be.
Bryan:So something that we've talked about fairly often on the show is that there's a big divide between being an operational pilot and then instructing, and that's like a big mindset shift. How does it change when you go from being an operational pilot to a test pilot? What's the mindset shift that has to happen?
Match:Yeah. So like we alluded to a bit in the first episode, it really is a rewiring of your brain. So up to now, I'd say, like, I'm just throwing this out there, but, you know, 95% of pilots have been taught one way to fly, and that's using pilot compensation techniques and just making it happen in the airplane at the flight controls to basically get what you want out of the airplane. I have to fly a forced landing pattern. I have to do this and that and everything that goes along with it.
Match:When you get into test flying, you may have to do that occasionally to put the airplane where you want it. But often, you're gonna get test cards that have certain parameters and points, and they might not necessarily make sense or jive with normal flying. Like, why do you want me at 10 AOA but descending specifically at a certain rate of descent or some weird test point, and it's all to affect what you want out of that test point. Say, for example, on the Tudor, like, we go and select the speed brakes out, and the speed brakes are side mounted on the Tudor at the back of the fuselage as most people probably have seen in photos. And now the hydraulics are imbalanced, and one speed brake comes out a little quicker than the other.
Match:While in a flight test campaign, that would be an observation that, hey. There's probably some likely yaw results from the speed bricks deploying asymmetrically. Whereas in operational flying, in the case we know it as the snowbirds, it wouldn't be a test pilot thing. I would just have to compensate for it with rudder so I keep straight, so I don't throw off my rudder who are now dancing and skating around with me to try to make the formation happen. So it's a real rewiring of your brain to be able to think in a different way about all the flying you're doing.
Match:And it may not always make sense why you're there doing it until you see the end product or the end bit of data that you want out of it and be like, okay. It makes sense why we're there doing that specifically because it's supposed to do this at that point, and we observe whether it does or not. And so it's more raw data collection than operational flying, which is just making it happen to get there or to basically get the weapons on target or, you know, to get the approach in or any other kind of operational, flying goal.
Bryan:It sounds like you're using your practical pilot skills, but learning more of an engineering mindset to flying.
Match:Yeah. Exactly. And you're trying to the biggest thing is variable isolation as well. Like, if you just make it happen in, like, a closed pattern in Moose Jaw and, you know, two to three g's and roll out downwind somewhere, okay. You've done that.
Match:But if you're evaluating the airplane and its ability to bank from side to side, you need to be very specific and meticulous about how you're doing that so that you can so that it's repeatable. Mhmm. So the age old thing was, well, if you're sick that test day, can we bring another test pilot in and pick up where you left off based off your cards and your notes? And if you can't do that, then it's a challenge for the test program getting ahead. It's a limitation for, you know, the the program overall.
Bryan:So we've kind of been in some of the nitty gritty detail level thinking and processes and syllabus. Some of the fun stuff you got to do there, you know, you talked about Lake Mead touch and goes as one of your favorite flights. What makes that so memorable?
Match:So that was really cool. So just to set this up a bit, we're out of Edwards Air Force Base, California. It's a short flight to Lake Mead, and we're flying this HU 16 albatross, which is basically the first time I've driven a boat, an airplane, and a camper all in one vehicle, which is really cool. It's it's it's big. It's got some beds in the back.
Match:It's got high mounted wing with high mounted radial engines dripping oil the whole time, and it's got pontoons out two thirds of the way down the weighing. And we did fly it in the RCF way back, for a short stint, and there's similar aircraft, whether it's the Mallard, the Grumman Goose, around the world as well. And they're pretty old and historic, but our first instance of seeing this airplane is all those phases. So we have a test pilot school broken down into the performance phase, the flying handling qualities phase, and then systems phases of of study. So at the end of each of these phases, there's a checkride to do as well as the kinda ground academics and ground exams.
Match:So at the end of our performance phase, we have this performance checkride, and guess what? It's they bring in this albatross aircraft, with the contractor, and you, having never flown and they pick these unique aircraft because they want aircraft that you've never flown before. Most of the population has never even been inside. Right? Yeah.
Match:So they fly this into Edwards, and you get one hour in it the day before your checkride to kinda look around and landmark things and figure it out. And then what they do is for your checkride, you have the contracted first officer with you to help start the motors and, you know, answer questions airframe specific, but you're still in charge of knowing where things are so you're not scrambling to look around and everything. I would compare it to in Moose Jaw when you're, you know, learning the white pages and the first few times you're reading off, but you're expected to basically have them memorized. So you're kinda making that transition between reading off the checklists and having them memorized where, of course, nobody's gonna have an albatross start to finish checklist memorized. And often in these crude environments, you're not supposed to anyways.
Match:You're supposed to go off a checklist, with a challenge response or read and do with your, your crew. And so you would get in there not cold. You've seen the airplane once. You've, you know, studied its systems a little bit, maybe the few nights before, that kind of thing. But then you also have a certain test campaign you need to do, and you're with your engineer colleague in your class.
Match:So pilots and engineers get paired up to do this performance ride, and the engineer is the one the the test conductor flowing through all the test cards and telling the pilot, okay. Up next is, you know, stall testing or something like that. And then you're out there flying it and manipulating it, and it's your first time ever flying this beast. And, up until then, it's the largest airplane I've ever flown. That's crazy.
Match:And you're given time limits and airspace limits and everything. So that first flight, you have to be crossing the eastern edge of the lake bed, Rogers Dry Lake, on your way back to Edwards an hour and a half after takeoff to an hour thirty five. If you're early, you're missing out on test points and probably didn't complete stuff all the way. If you're late, you had, like you could be early. You could be up to five minutes late or two minutes late or something like that.
Match:And if you were any more late, you failed.
Bryan:Oh, wow.
Match:It was like, okay. So now I also have to manage airspace and getting back to where I need to be crossing a finish line at a certain time, and you have to, again, prioritize, okay. If we're running behind schedule and this test point took, you know, five minutes longer than we anticipated, now I gotta make up that time or cut something that's less of a priority and just deal with it some other way. So all that to say is the first instance of flying this Albatross was, like, stress level 10 for both pilots and engineers. Yeah.
Match:So when this thing comes back halfway through the year or a little more than halfway through the year, everybody's so happy to see it because they know the next flight is gonna be max relax. We're literally going to the beach. Everybody's flying this thing. The engineers get to fly it occasionally for certain portions of the leg out to Lake Mead, And, we literally get to go fly over Hoover Dam. We get to go do touch and goes on Lake Mead.
Match:In this amphibious airplane, there's a nice glass window in the front so people can go up to the front and watch the touch and goes from the front. You're, like, literally watching, and your face is getting splashed over with the spray once you slow down and and get get below the step, for for the water work there. But, yeah. So we do touch and goes, and then we basically back the airplane out onto a beach, a little bit of a sandbar coming to Lake Mead, and, like, have a little barbecue, climb up to the top of the wing, jump off the wing into the water, and stuff like that. So it's like night and day difference from the first instance of seeing this plane.
Match:And the the senior class kinda warns you or or gives you a heads up that, hey. Yeah. The first one's gonna be hard, and second one is all chill and everything. And so it was kinda that dichotomy of, like, super stressful moments throughout TPS and then pretty chill moments and just hanging on and enjoying the experience.
Bryan:Sounds awesome. Another story that you had mentioned is doing deep stalls in the the Viper, the f 16, which sounds pretty crazy. What's actually happening there?
Match:So unlike our Canadian or any Hornets for that matter that are high angle of attack airplanes, like, regularly reach 35, 45 degrees angle of attack, which is basically a difference between the airflow hitting the airplane and where the nose of the aircraft is pointing roughly. The Viper, the f 16, is not an angle of attack beast, so it's got a pitch limiter in the flight control system that limits you to, generally speaking, 26 degrees AOA. And after that, it's gonna prevent you from going any higher because of, you know, less wing surface area than comparable high AOA fighters and and other destabilizing features. And so what happens is you basically do these high AOA maneuvers, and they're common in VIPER training. And I think it's even part of their recurrent training that they would do these, they call them HEART's maneuvers.
Match:I think it stands for high AOA recovery training. And it basically takes you through a series like a predetermined card of high AOA training so that you're aware of it when it happens if you get yourself in a deep stall, for example, or the nose stops tracking over top of a BFM engagement or a loop or something like that. And then, of course, because it's test pod school, we would do this on purpose for fun. So there were certain spin areas around Edwards, basically, like five mile rings or something that they would have dedicated to spin testing, and you would go fly up to some of these. And luckily, it's the f 16, so it's super thrust enabled, and and you can rock it up there in a heartbeat.
Match:You get up to the I think we started them in the 30,000 plus, feet AGL range, and you would basically force, stall. And then once you got into this deep, you would override the pitch limiter, I think, is how it went. And then once you got into this kind of deep stall regime, you'd basically be falling in still a very deep AOA, and the airplane would just be rocking back and forth. Wow. And you'd experience that for a bit, and then you had to get out of it.
Match:And this is where the my Canadian background really paid off is because there was a manual override switch for the stabilators in the back that was up by the throttle on the left console, and you basically flip this switch, and it would give you some more authority or direct authority over the tail. And you would basically be doing the equivalent of a Canadian rocking their car out of the snowbank in the winter, and you would just pitch rock yourself forward and aft using the side stick controller that the f 16 has to get enough momentum to break the kinda locked in deep stall you're in and have the nose travel again. And, usually, it would travel nose down. Sometimes it would go past the the vertical nose down, the nadir there, and you'd end up upside down in a deep stall.
Bryan:Oh, wow.
Match:But often, if you timed it well enough, you'd get yourself out, and then you'd accelerate and fly away from that. But it was very yeah. The the whole time I was thinking just rocking your car out of a snowbank to to get yourself out of there and make it fly out of out of there. Whereas with the Hornet, you know, that is typically that might be an AOA regime that you've seen if you pull the nose really hard to try to get a shot off across the circle or something like that. So, again, differences in airplanes and how they perform and, you know, one is a the Hornet's a slow speed radius type fighter, and the and the Viper is a higher speed rate fighter and can, you know, easily outrate the Hornet around the circle if given the chance.
Bryan:I've heard that flying the f 16 is a really neat experience because the stick is on the side and it barely moves. Right? And so you basically it feels like almost an extension of your body that as you almost think about it, the plane starts doing it. Like, what's that like when you're used to a traditional, like, center stick fighter?
Match:There was a lot of funny stories. So when I first got in, a, there's no campy ball. So, like, you literally are seeing all around you. You forget there's a bit of glass between you and the outside world.
Bryan:When you say canopy bow, that's like the bar that goes across. Right?
Match:Exactly. Yeah. So typically, there'd be a windscreen on, like, an f f 18 or other fighters, and they dangle, like, clips off there or mirrors or other kind of warning lights, for shooting and and locks and stuff. And here, there's nothing. It's just glass all around you, especially in a single seat.
Match:In the dual, which I had to fly with an instructor in the back, there is a canopy there's a bow between the two canopies behind your seat, so you can't see it looking over your shoulder. But, yeah, up front from basically, you know, your, 08:00 position all the way to your 04:00 position, there's nothing. And especially or more so because you sit fairly high up in the seat and there's a very low canopy rail as well, and you're sitting reclined. It really feels like you're just riding on top of, like, this rocket ship here. There's a small heads up display and a bit of an instrument shroud and everything, but, there's less there's even less strap in.
Match:It's like I was shocked at how little things there were to strap in. You wear a harness, you clip in two spots, and then put on, like, your oxygen line, and that is pretty much it. There's no leg lines like there are in the Hornet that, you know, wrap your calves and your and your upper thighs in this kind of long, long cord that it's attached to the floor and the seat because there's no canopy bow to clear. Like, if you were to eject, the whole canopy's gone, and then there's nothing to hit on the way out. So it it's like it it felt daunting there.
Match:Like, am I sure I'm strapped in? Like, this is all that's holding me to to the airplane? It's crazy. But, yeah, it really does feel like once you get over that fact, it really feels like an extension of yourself. And the funny things coming from, again, a center stick point of view like you described is the number of times I reached in the middle and had nothing to to grab was yeah.
Match:I don't dare to count how many times that happened and be like, oh, we're oh, right. It's over here. And even even with that camping ball being missing, like, I would often set my mirrors to see my tails in the Hornet and see if I'm venting fuel or something like that. So I'd reach up there in the f 16, and I'd be like, what am I doing? Like, catching bugs here?
Match:There's nothing to grab. It's just open air. Right? And, and the other unique thing that probably in a lot of non Viper people don't realize is the stick. It does move a tiny bit.
Match:I think it moves a quarter inch or less. That was an observation. I think they implemented that after flight zero. So in in flight testing the the f 16, the first flight was actually a high speed taxi test, and they realized that the the test pilot at the time, very skilled, test pilot, ended up in a bit of a role pilot induced oscillation from just how sensitive the rigid stick was to pressures. Oh, wow.
Match:And so he ended up flying away on the high speed test flight as the safest course of action coming back. So in the books, they call it they didn't wanna reset all the numbering. Numbering is hard whether it's keeping track of time or or whatnot, and so they didn't wanna reset all the cam test campaign numbering, I guess. And so that became colloquially known as, like, the flight zero of the f 16. But that side mounted stick is not also directly fore and aft.
Match:So a pure stick input, like what's required in that previous discussion with the deep stall, when you wanna just fore and aft, you don't wanna impart any side loads because you're gonna worsen your stability and lengthen your time for recovery. So you want direct fore and aft stick inputs, but the stick of the f 16 is slightly canted outwards from basically direct forward. So if you want a pure nose down input, you're actually pushing I think it's, like, on the order of only a few degrees, but you're actually pushing slightly to the right as you push nose down. And then as you pull straight up, it's slightly towards you as in not directly aft. Very so slight, but just those minute differences are enough to kinda affect the tails and how they differentially control yaw as well and, and affect your outcome in a fly by wire aircraft.
Match:So minor little nuances, but they can really get you if you're if you're in a deep stall or something. I remember one flight in particular, the instructor, evil was his call sign, great guy, super skilled chief test pilot there at Edwards at the time, and he was telling us how, yeah, he can tell everybody that's come off of a Hornet flying this thing because they all have this subtle, very low, amplitude, higher frequency kind of stirring of the stick that they do. And you can't tell on a Hornet because of the deadband or how little effect it has on the flight controls, but in the f 16, that's more highly tuned to any kind of pressure inputs. Like, the whole airplane can be, like, slightly wobbling around when you're doing that, and they're like, stop doing that. I mean, like, I can't.
Match:Like, I've got seven hundred and fifty hours of doing this. Like, this is all I know. But, yeah. So really unique things, and we had some other dissimilar flight chase flight, I think it was. So pairing up f sixteens and t 30 eights, and one of the test cards was like, okay.
Match:Let's simulate Thunderbird flying. And, so you're gonna trim nose down and fly fly a bunch with nose down trim. And everybody in the class is like, this is horrible. And for me, it was like in the back of my mind, I was like, this was my day job on the snowbirds.
Bryan:Yeah. Like,
Match:we did this all the time. We're like, for the similar reasons to kinda get into a linear part of the stick force gradient. It's like so I feel like, yeah. I can do this all day if you want. Yeah.
Match:Yeah. So very unique airplane to fly and super powerful. Like, every every takeoff, I thought I was gonna overspeed the gear. It was crazy.
Bryan:Another really interesting experience you had was flying the c 17 in the Sidewinder low level route. Can you tell us about that?
Match:Yeah. It was an amazing flight. So, basically, we hooked up with the test squadron elsewhere at Edwards that was in charge of c 17 testing, and, you basically do a demo flight with them. And it's your first time in the c 17. It's typically a pilot or two on on the class and, two or three engineers because the cockpit has room for all these people to mill about in jump seats and whatnot.
Match:And so, yeah, we briefed it up, and then, there was a pallet in the back loaded up, a heavy pallet to drop out the back. And, so we did in one flight, we dropped a heavy pallet out the back, and I got to press the buttons and see the green light and let it slide out the back end into the drop, zone. And we did, the Sidewinder low level route, the famous one kinda that goes around Edwards and Mojave and up in the Eastern Sierra Nevadas. And, and also on the flight, we got to do shuttle approaches, which were basically the originally concocted approaches for, I guess, the Enterprise space shuttle when it was being designed, and, they were figuring out how to glide it back safely to Edwards. And they'd have these they'd have a pattern around the field.
Match:And it was it was surreal because you'd end up on a base leg to turning final. You're out there, and you are my best guess is about 20,000 feet higher than you normally would be in any other airplane. And you literally go idle on all four engines. I don't know if we got into reverse thrust or not in, like, a tactical type descent in a c 17, but we also did this on the t 30 eights on course, except there, needed a waiver to override the gear door speeds because you would have to you would be so fast diving. And then you're basically just gliding back to the field, simulating what they would have gone through in testing and figuring out all the profiles for the space shuttle glide parameters.
Match:So that was super cool. I mean, dropping anything out an airplane was super cool with parachutes, especially because I got to throw a three sixty camera strapped to the pallet as well. And I'm like, I wanna throw a GoPro on this, but I have no idea what the coolest angle will be. So I'll just put a three sixty camera on it, and we'll capture everything. And it goes sliding out the back, and the parachutes come out, and it's a great video.
Match:And then it hits the ground, and the battery falls out. No. Everything gets corrupted. So then I have to go back and, like, manually piece together all the frames and eventually recover the video. But once I saw the video, it was incredible.
Match:It's just like, yeah, just flying out and you see just like jumpers would see the airplane as they departed, it's like this pallet just sees a big c 17 leaving off in the distance, and off it goes. And then low level in this beast, I mean, the wingspan is probably close to 200 feet. We're flying around sidewinder low level over the desert at 250 feet above ground level, banking it, you know, upwards of 60 degrees bank. So, like, your wingtip and winglet on one side are pretty darn close to the ground.
Bryan:Yeah.
Match:And what they what they maybe purposefully don't tell you is in the flight control logic, up to 45 degrees bank, I think it was, the c 17 auto pulls back for you. So typically, any airplane, you bank, now all of a sudden you need more lift to make that, triangle work and and keep you level in flight, so now you gotta pull back more. This one does it automatically with the flight control logic until you hit a certain bank angle. And they didn't tell us this flying it around, so I roll to 60 degrees bank and the nose starts dropping, and I was expecting the airplane to still pull. So now we're 250 feet and the nose is starting to fall, you're pulling back some more, you're like, woah.
Match:This is this is impressive. But what was super unexpected in this airplane is how quickly it rolled. So with the modern flight controls and how they designed it, it rolls almost as fast as a fighter would. And that's just by design, you know, a combination of spoilers and, and ailerons they have drop in there to, to make it work, but it it felt like a fighter in terms of its roll response. And even more so because you had a stick, like it's flown with a center stick.
Bryan:Oh, I didn't know that.
Match:Yeah. And they let us fly left seat. So going back from my previous embarrassing moments of looking around for a center stick that wasn't there in the f 16, now I have a center stick, but I'm grabbing it with the wrong hand. I'm grabbing it with my right hand in the left seat. And then I'm like, but how do I get to the throttles?
Match:And who knows? So I switch hands and because it's a it's the left seat stick is molded for your left hand. Yep. And so now you just gotta get used to flying with your left hand kinda like you would in the left seat of a Cessna and the yoke probably. And, yeah, again, you're shifting your mindset from what you what you know to kinda adapt and make it work.
Bryan:Yeah. I mean, the c 17 is such an impressive aircraft just for its like, if you ever get a chance to see one at an air show when they do their short field stuff when they're empty, it's amazing. And then, yeah, the maneuverability, I think I even read when I was kinda researching for this interview, I think that you have said in the past that it's one of your favorite aircraft you've flown. And you've flown, you said, almost 30 aircraft.
Match:Yeah. It's definitely up there on the list, mainly because of the missions that involved and, you know, that flight in particular. I got to see all aspects of an airdrop, low level ingress, you know, tactical descents, and, I didn't get to see tanking, unfortunately. And that was by far the biggest airplane I've ever flown. Mhmm.
Match:So to be able to throw it around like that low level and it being basically the, like, the size of, small to medium sized airliner was quite impressive.
Bryan:So eventually, you got through this course, and you now come back to actually do the job with, AT. What was it like to transition from your course to AT?
Match:Yeah. The biggest challenge I'd say is one of people and impostor syndrome because now you show up somewhere. In my case, a few months after I showed up, I was in charge of a section of four to five existing qualified test pods, including some public service, test pods that were there and were test pilots for years before I ever even got there or got to TBS and are very skilled in their professions, qualified on multiple aircraft. And so now there's this new guy coming in, And during all times, it was the beginning of twenty twenty one. The unit had just moved in the previous six months from Cold Lake and being in Cold Lake for several decades to, to Ottawa again.
Match:And so they were just settling in there in a temporary kinda building in a cubicle building there by the Baseball Diamond in Ottawa until the hangar got rebuilt at the airport. And, of course, there were COVID restrictions, and coming back to Canada was challenging, so I remember having to buy my own blood pressure machine and basically do my own medical over the phone with the flight surgeon. Yeah. And then and the the biggest part was, yeah, being a baby test pilot, you know, not knowing what I didn't know, and then all of a sudden being thrown to the wolves to kinda start planning test events and test projects and everything like that. That being said, test pilot school does prepare you for that in terms of, hey.
Match:One of the biggest lessons learned is you have to become comfortable being uncomfortable. And what I mean by that is you're not gonna know everything. You're gonna see brand new airplanes that have never flown, maybe not so much in Canadian test pilot circles, but elsewhere, and you're the first one to touch it. And you have to know the building block approach and the study, the material ahead of time so that you know how it's gonna behave, or you can predict how it's gonna behave. And when it doesn't do that, you know that, okay, it should be doing that.
Match:It's not. What's the problem here? And basically doing your homework ahead of time to build that level of comfort even though it's a very new atmosphere for you. A good example of that being the, tutor upgrades with all the avionics. So I went back to Moose Jaw and got retrained on the tutor with the, standards and evaluation team there, one of the pilots there.
Match:And I was doing an IRT in the legacy aircraft and all the dials, and halfway through the IRT, I realized that, hey. This is just a check to see if I can follow clearances. Because, really, everything I'm looking at in this crosscheck, the next time I fly a tutor, it's gonna be entirely different. It's gonna be class, touchscreen, different presentations, and nobody's gonna teach me how to do it. Mhmm.
Match:I gotta figure it out. And so that kinda mindset shift was like, oh, wow. Okay. This is kinda funny. And I had a little chuckle, and then we on went on with it before I blew through the altitude or center line or whatever.
Match:But but, yeah, that was just it. Right? It's like you're doing unique things, and you just need to trust that the training and the test pod school preparation will be the foundation to get you there. And then, of course, they can't teach you everything in a year long course. There's so many systems between GPS navigation and modern day alternative nav, sources and other systems and everything that you have to get in the books and figure out how this stuff works on your own to a large degree and get smart on it so that when the engineers start talking smart, you can back them up or you can counter them and be like, actually, this is gonna fail for this reason or this is not good from the pilot side because of this or they're not looking in this direction or, you know, this warning display you gave them is not even in their primary field of view.
Match:Like, this needs to move. All these kinds of things you can you can be smart back Mhmm. And hopefully have a have a an ear listen out for your inputs.
Bryan:You took part in a couple of pretty important projects during your time at AT. One of them was a pretty big bound forward in technology for the Hornet, which was the first active electronically scanned array radar or I think you say AISA?
Match:I mean, English is my second language technically, so I'd probably get it wrong too. But, yeah, AISA, AISA, either of those. Let's go with AISA. I think that's the one I've heard more.
Bryan:AISA. So, what was that what was that like, testing that out on the Hornet?
Match:It was very interesting. I mean, honestly, I was expecting the nose to blow off when we first powered it on. And and and part of that is just, you know, not knowing what you don't know about it and or how it's gonna behave the first time and being prepared for the uncertainties. But all jokes aside, like, we would do all the all the buildup to it, and, you know, the first time you power it on is in a controlled environment, and then you power it power it on on the jet. You let it cool.
Match:You go through all your safety of flight checks on the ground to make sure that, hey. A large part of adding something new is making sure that, hey. In all these modern aircraft that have hundreds of thousands of lines of code, that them adding a bunch more lines of code hasn't broken something previously that was meant to keep you safe. And now all of a sudden, you turn the radar on and your your ground proximity warning system doesn't work anymore. So a lot of this testing involved just making sure that basic safety of flight elements of the Hornet meant to keep Hornet operator safe was not touched or or broken in the addition of all these new features.
Match:And then the big thing was, yeah, we would take off initially with it off and power it on after several other checks, making sure the pitot statics were correct and that we all our other sensing and flight controls were unaffected. Navigation was unaffected. And then we stayed pretty close to our base, out there. We were working out of China Lake and further north than Edwards in the Mojave Desert. And, I remember powering it on.
Match:We were all telemeter, so I had live comms to a control room. This is getting very kinda Top Gun two esque. But, yeah. And I remember saying something cheesy over the over the audio feeds back to the control room to the to our Canadian engineers, something along the lines of, you know, that's one small step for Raytheon, one giant leap for Canada.
Bryan:And then,
Match:like, thinking it was smart and, like, funny and everything, but then in the end, it's a giant leap for everybody because even for, you know, the manufacturer who was working on Super Hornet radars and everything like that, now adding something to an existing platform that's been around and never designed to carry this. You know, there's all sorts of engineering problems to solve to get in there. You know, there's always complications and unintended consequences. So, you know, thoroughly evaluating that addition is often required and sometimes will draw you away from that addition or maybe make it a bad idea in the end. And what was really cool was Top Gun two came out about a year after we had started flight testing or half a year after we started doing a lot of this Hornet testing.
Match:And it was cool because I was able to point to my daughter. We're like, hey. We can pause the takeoff scene when, when they blow by the runway there at low altitude, and you could actually see the hangar we were operating out of for a bunch of the hep two testing. So
Bryan:I would
Match:call to my daughter and my wife and be like, hey. That's where I work. That's where I go away all the time too, and, and hopefully get stuff, for the end user, the operators of our Canadian Hornets.
Bryan:That's awesome.
Match:It's cool it's cool to be able to display that because often in these test environments, you can't really talk much about what you're doing. Mhmm. Right? And between classification levels and just, like, where you are and no photographs and everything. So it makes it makes it cool to be able to point out.
Bryan:So the AESA radar was a big bound forward in technology for the Hornet, as I said. Another one that you were involved in that was a big deal was the first live AIM nine x shot. Can you explain what an AIM nine x is and why that was important?
Match:Yeah. So the AIM nine x Sidewinder is basically a derivative of the original Sidewinder that's just, more capable, both in maneuvering and all other kinda aspects than the original series of of missiles were. It was always part of this larger kinda hep two project. And eventually, with any kind of missile testing at some point, you need to do a live end to end test, we call it. So you can only do so much buildup approach and, you know, carrying a captive captive carry type flights to make sure, okay, it communicates with the aircraft correctly and shows you the correct symbology.
Match:At some point, for reels, you gotta shoot the thing to make sure it leaves the airplane and and does what you want it to. And so, eventually, we had gotten to that point in in the testing, and we got down to we went down to Tyndall Air Force Base in, Florida in the Panhandle there where they do a lot of the live shooting and as part of combat archer. Now, typically, that live shooting is a big exercise across the American pilots, American military pilots, and we often send Canadian pilots there too to be able to experience their first live missile shoot. They send people through there quite regularly and frequently, and when we drop in under a test campaign mindset, it's a bit different because it's like, okay. Well, we need strict parameters going back to those test cards and and, those test points that we try to adhere to.
Match:We're looking for specific sets of data and results here, so we wanna be on these parameters. And if something's not performing the way we want it or we have unintended behaviors or consequences, we need to spin cold and reset the run and everything like that. And sometimes those places or these exercises are not built for that. They're, like, just built for wingers going through and getting their missile shot off and then, RTB. And so it took it takes a bit of kinda coordination with the agencies to be able to allow that to happen.
Match:All in all, it's really cool to have, like, an f 35 off my wing chasing me Oh, wow. And then yelling fox fox after I yell my fox over the radio, and all you hear is the whoosh of a solid rocket motor going past your head, like, six meters, 20 feet away off the wingtip. Wow. And, and off it goes. And that was that's, yeah, the first missile shot of a nine x off a Canadian Hornet.
Bryan:So you had a couple pretty cool first dubs, as you said. Did you have any moment working with AT where you realized, like, this is a rare job? This is these are rare opportunities.
Match:Yeah. We have a proficiency training plan on the Hornet side of AT where we regularly go out and do out of control. It's testing, but not really. It's more proficiency in skills, proficiency in upkeep, where we can literally break, like, half the prohibited maneuvers from the aircraft operating instructions. So, like, tail slides?
Match:Yep. Spins? Yep. And, stuff you would only do in the same as any other Hornet pilot, we can go out there. And often, we we tried as much as we could and time allowed and aircraft availability allowed because AT gave up its, two or three Hornets that it had and sent them back to the squadrons.
Match:So we would now have to borrow jets off typically, Baggeville to do any kind of proficiency flying. But we would try to take a duel and throw, a line pilot up in the front seat and do these out of control flights. And, basically, we would do basic handling at high AOAs, kinda like we talked about with the f 16, except much more accepted in the Hornet than, the f 16 struggling to to be up there. And then we would if if the symmetry of the radome, the nose cone was good and didn't have any kinda objectionable characteristics, then we would take it all up all the way up into the high 30 thousands of feet, and we would do, more deeper stalls. We would do tail slides.
Match:We would do spins in the Hornet and all under, like, a solid test plan that had recovery gates and procedures in case things went went bad. Because you gotta imagine you're doing a perfect tail slide down the back end of the motor and, like, air is reverse flowing up the motor. And, you know, if you if you leave the power at anything other other other than idle, you're basically in compressor stall territory because airflow only likes to go one way down a jet engine typically. So it's a totally unique experience. And to tie that in with something else, so, like, you're you're up in the 35, 37,000 feet.
Match:Your typically, contrails are coming out because you're so high and it's so cold, so you have, like, your own little smoke generator. So you can see exactly where your flight path is going. So you go up in this perfect tail slide, and then you start sliding back down. And all of a sudden, there's, like, your exhaust contrails are going past you forwards. And then I remember this distinct moment of fuel drops.
Match:Like, typically, if you're tanking or something like that, there's some spillover from your probe, and you get fuel drops usually going behind you, right, with the way of the airflow. So now we have unburnt fuel leaving the exhaust, going all the way up the airplane, going to the canopy in the front of the windscreen, and then that's the last point of contact and then departing the airplane forwards, which is up in my direction. Yeah. And you see these little drops, and just like I froze that moment in time, like, that is kinda cool. And then you look around and you're, like, falling directly backwards and, like, your smoke trail's leaving you up, and then eventually, one stabilator hits the airflow a little different than another as is expected, and then all of a sudden, the airplane whips around or goes inverted or swings to the side, rocks back and forth, and then the typical boldface or out of control red page recovery is to do nothing, get your hands off everything, and let it recover itself because it knows better than you will on how to get it out of there.
Match:Wow. And, you're basically in the, in the hands of flight control Jesus at that point, right, as we as we as we joke and and let the systems work their magic and get you back to a stable nose down position where the airspeed's increasing and you basically dive, recovery, fly away with good altitude, and go from there. But we did spins like that, and spins are tricky. The Hornet doesn't wanna go out of control. So as much as it likes the highway regime, you kinda have to force it.
Match:So we had to split the throttles and go full afterburner on one motor all the way back to idle on the other, full Buddha rudder, get it to get it to kick over, and eventually enough turns, it'll go into its spin logic and give you some spin arrows that you then have to, adhere to as you bring the throttle back to idle, and and you get to experience a spin in the Hornet, is pretty rare. It's like, you know, your worst carnival ride, but still reasonable, I guess. Maybe not to everybody, but, to, you know, the young fighter lead and training kid who had to overcome a bit of air sickness. The it was yeah. It's it's a fun experience.
Match:It's a fun ride for sure.
Bryan:So we're getting ready to wrap this one up. And our next episode, we're gonna be talking about your time with the Snowbirds. As you mentioned, you were heavily involved in tutor testing. Where you had already been on the team, what did that mean to you personally?
Match:Honestly, at first, I didn't wanna do it. There it was a large test, program with, large opportunities, and I know there were some other junior folks in my section, subordinates that, wanted to kinda get their hands on on some real engineering test where, like, a whole cockpit had been redesigned and everything like that. But then secretly, I did wanna do it because the whole time, you know, there was my snowbirds background and, and my love of the airplane. And I will say so eventually, I did get on there as the main project pilot, but in large part, it's due to AT teammates. So, you know, we're up front manipulating the controls, but the whole time beside me in the test campaign, I had my trusty, aerospace engineering officer, and project officer Mac sitting there, as a captain and running through the test cards and everything, thing like that, and being the smarter of the two of us kinda watching everything happen.
Match:But, yeah, lots of planning. So between Mac and another public servant, we had KJ. They made it all possible. It took about eight months of planning before we ever even left the ground with the first flight. Wow.
Match:And, obviously, that's not even counting the years of design and input from DND places, from four three one squadron and the and the standards and evaluation team community from the contractors that made the design and, and implemented it, so l three and IMP, before we even ever got airborne. And then the first flight was, you know, as the old Moose Jaw phrase went after the friendly city, I think they've renamed it surprisingly unexpected for a few years before realizing, oh, that's, you know, that's a weird slogan for a town. But, that is a good slogan for flight test, though, surprisingly unexpected, except it really should be unsurprisingly unexpected because you kinda plan for the unexpected. So we knew that, hey. You're messing with pitot statics.
Match:You're changing how you display airspeed, altitude, and the whole gamut of your instrument panel. So now it's like, okay. We assumed there were gonna be errors in airspeed. We assumed there were gonna be, you know, static source error, correction values that were incorrectly programmed or something like that. So and we needed something to compare to.
Match:So we took along somebody from the set community on the tutor. We took them in a chase aircraft in an unmodified tutor and basically compared airspeeds that way. And and the first flight, we take off, and they're rejoining to, like, a fighting wing position a few 100 feet away, and, you know, a typical rejoin off takeoff 220 knots or something to that effect. And it's like, confirm your airspeed over the interflight, and I report back, yeah, we're two twenty in the climb. And and, Chase was like, I'm seeing, like, one eighty and overtaking here.
Match:And Mac, the engineer riding shotgun, was like, oh, boy, on the radio, and it's like, yep. That's the start of it. And so what ended up happening is we'd compare airspeeds side by side in straight level flight, at various altitudes, and it was we couldn't figure it out live. It was like, okay. It's under reading, or it's showing me two twenty knots, but I feel like the airplane's slow and and hanging off the blades, and the chase is reporting a super slow speed.
Match:And then we get to a different altitude, and it's actually under reading, and we're going faster than we expect. And it's like, okay. This is weird. We can't put our finger on it, but, we need to do some other test points as well. Because when the modifications happened, they installed an ADS B antenna, an upward facing antenna on the spine of the airplane.
Match:And, you have to break the airplane in two to do that, so you break it at the fuselage break just behind where the motor sits at the back end of the motor, just behind the flaps. And, so anytime you do that, you have to do a full maintenance test flight usually for flight controls. And I think the motor got changed as well, so we have to go up to 15,000 feet just like any tutor test flight, to deal with engines, and we have to basically shut off our only engine and then turn it back on and make sure it can relight. We're one of few single engine aircraft in the air force, so arguably, we're one of the few people that do a full, like, all our engines. Our one engine is off, and then we relight it overhead.
Match:And you're you're on a glide profile, so worst case, it doesn't come back, and you end up doing a precautionary forced landing, or in this case, real forced landing. You sort of circle back and land at the Airfield. You're you're hovering overhead. So we ended up doing this with the chase call in the airspeeds because our glide in that case on the card is a 180 knots. So I want to get this out of the way anyway so that we wouldn't have engine concerns or reliability concerns taking off, and not be not knowing if we're able to successfully relight.
Match:And that's just part of any maintenance test flight on the Tudor. So we end up doing this, and as soon as we go to cutoff after establishing that glide at 15,000 feet pressure altitude, We go to cutoff, and instantly, Mac points at the primary flight display, the Garmin display, we just lost 40 knots instantly of airspeed. Just gone. So it was already overreading or I can't remember. I think it was overreading.
Match:And then as from the one eighty knots that was being called, and then as soon as cutoff happens, boom, 40 knots disappeared, just like it got deleted and a new number got typed in on the airspeed tape. It was crazy. And we're like, okay. This is weird. So we land off of, we land after that test point and, after the successful relight and and come back and land.
Match:After that, we're watching the GoPro because we had a GoPro installed between the center post of the canopy between the two heads of a pilot engineer, and we're watching this GoPro for flight test instrumentation purposes, and we look at this. And I just note that, hey. When you go throttle cut off on your only motor, you dump your cabin pressure in the tutor. And, basically, all happened at the same time. And so I was thinking, like, how is cabin pressure related to pitot statics?
Match:And it turns out that when they were fixing one other o two line or something like that, they had disconnected the pitot static line inside the cockpit. And they when they reinstalled it, I guess it had backed off in flight or maybe wasn't fully torqued or seated or something to that effect. I'm not quite sure what the end result was, but it had backed off in flight anyways and was now feeding cabin pressure air into the Pilot line for dynamic pressures, which then explained why it went from overreading to underreading in various, like, nonlinear, relationships as we were flying at different heights and everything. And so then we quickly realized, okay. What we thought was gonna be a Garmin issue or some programming issue with all the new gear ended up being, like, what we call bare airframe issue where, okay, this problem was just a problem with the airplane and not, you know, not backing off the pedal pressure line plumbing or something like that.
Match:Right? So it's always the unexpected that, you know, you can kinda expect out of any kind of flight test campaign or or something new being added.
Bryan:Wow. So we've talked about a few different stories from your time as a test pilot. If you had to just list off some of your favorite top flight moments, what would they be?
Match:So from test flying in particular, I would say definitely the first flight of the Tutor with its upgraded avionics, that nine x live shot that we talked about. Just overall flying in that kinda China Lake airspace in Mojave was really interesting because the varied terrain you go from, like, almost sea level. You can't quite fly over Death Valley, which is below sea level. So the next valley over basically sits at, like, a thousand feet, let's say, elevation. And then you have peaks that over the short span of a few knock a miles rise up to, you know, the 14,000 foot mark and everything.
Match:So that unique terrain and flying low level in some of those test points around there is really incredible. We also did a lot of air to air to maintain the proficiency of ourselves, from the pilot perspective, but also there's a whole contingent of imagery technicians, aerial imagery specialists at AT that have their own qualifications to maintain. And as a result, we would, we would plan dissimilar trips, and I would fly the King Air single pilot in formation with the Griffin, for example. As they shot air to air from both platforms, I would fly the Hornet or the Tudor in formation with, with the King Air for against low speed handling and just making that work. And in the end, that ended up benefiting us even on the Tudor because when I needed an ADS B target because the tutor now has ADS B in and can show traffic from ADS B sources, that's automatic detection surveillance broadcast for, for listeners.
Match:We needed kind of a truth source to tell us, okay. Give us a cooperative target that we could use to verify if this information that we're seeing on the display is correct. So we would we would, join up with the king air and approach it from various aspects and angles just to make sure that, hey. All the readouts in Garmin were actually correct and representative of what we were seeing out of the king air. And then we come back on the wing, just for fun and, basically get dropped to land on one of those test flights.
Match:But yeah. So lots of memorable, moments there. And, one of them actually being that, on the first delivery of the avionics upgrade jets to Moose Jaw, we ended up, hopping through the usual spots. So Sault Ste. Marie, Thunder Bay, We are two ship with the with the legacy airplane, as well.
Match:And I was flying in the avionics airplane, and then we get to, we're approaching Winnipeg, just approaching the start of the standard terminal arrival there. And all of a sudden, you start hearing dash eights, q four hundreds diverting from Winnipeg and and flying or doing the mist and everything. And you listen to the metar on, on ATIS, and it's going through SPESI after SPESI changing every five minutes. It's like And it was a total pop up, like thunderstorm right over the field that parked itself there in Winnipeg and, was not called for in the forecast or anything. And it's like, well, the tutor doesn't have much gas for anything, and we did not need a diver when we were or an alternate when we took off from Thunder Bay.
Match:And now now we're in a world of possible hurt. And luckily, with all the avionics upgrades, we're seeing all this on large format screens on the XM weather and everything that we have available to us. And we have approach plates up as well for areas that we might not have downloaded on the iPads, and we have it all in the kit now. And we just look out in the distance, and it looks like Portage is clear. And, of course, it's a Saturday, and Portage isn't open normally.
Match:And so we're just like, okay. We're gonna go around this cell and divert into Portage as, like, no kidding weather divert.
Bryan:Amazing.
Match:Yeah. So it was really, really cool to see. And, like, some of the some of the other staff from the set there were watching us snooping us on ADS B because now you can see it all. And once they realized that, they, you know, went ahead and called fuel for us in Portage on a Saturday. It is like, okay.
Match:So now you kinda see the benefits of some of the open architecture that, you know, some of the surveillance provides.
Bryan:Oh, yeah. And the new stuff is is really cool.
Match:Yeah. It's not always great for things like OPSEC or something like obviously, there's, there's ways to to prevent that. But, in terms of, hey, showing people the airshow tracks, for example, or what we fly, for airshow training, you know, that's kinda cool to see on the on the flight tracking websites, and people can see you coming or see where you've overfly and stuff like
Bryan:that.
Match:Yeah. Those are some memorable flights for sure. And I will add one. The King Air, so the c 90 a, we flew under Transport Canada at AT as our proficiency airplane, and it also helped get us to places. So when a lot of us got single pilot quals on it, and I could fly myself to Beggaville, basically jump out, brief, Hornet trip, get my, gear on, my g pants on, and everything for the Hornet, go fly the Hornet, come back, debrief, and then jump in the King Air and fly myself home all in, like, an eight hour day or something like that.
Match:Wow. That was incredible. And then one time we even took it out to chase the eclipse and basically, take our, again, image tech support and try to get some eclipse shots out of it. So, yeah, really unique opportunities from from the test world for sure.
Bryan:Okay, Match. We're gonna wrap up part two there as we get ready to talk about, all your various experiences with the snowbirds in the next episode. It was really, really cool to get a window into the test pilot world. That's always been something I found very, very fascinating. And it definitely lives up to my expectations in terms of complexity, but also in terms of, like, some of the really cool stuff that you get to do.
Bryan:I'm really looking forward to connecting with you on the next one. Thank you so much for being here today.
Match:Thanks again for having me, Brian.
Bryan:Alright. That wraps up part two of our chat with snowbird one, Maciej, Match Hatta. Tune in next week as we get to part three of our chat where we finally sit down to learn all about what it takes to fly with the snowbirds. Match gets really in-depth and talks about a lot of their methods. It's a super cool inside look at how they do what they do.
Bryan:Do you have any questions or comments about anything you've heard in this show? Would you or someone you know make a great guest, or do you have a great idea for a show? You can reach out to us at ThePilotProjectPodcast@Gmail.com or on all social media at at podpilotproject. And be sure to check out that social media for lots of great videos of our RCAF and Mission Aviation aircraft. As always, we'd like to thank you for tuning in and ask for your help with the big three.
Bryan:That's like and follow us on social media, share with your friends, and follow and rate five stars wherever you get your podcasts. That's all for now. Thanks for listening. Keep the blue side up. See you.
Bryan:Engineer, shut down all four. Shutting down all four engines.