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The Pilot Project Podcast is an aviation podcast that aims to help new pilots learn what it takes to succeed in the world of flight, to help people in the flight training system learn what they may want to fly, and to give Canadians and the world a peek into life on the flight deck in the RCAF. We want to help pilots succeed and thrive! We interview real RCAF pilots for their exciting stories as well as the lessons they've learned along the way. We'll learn their tips to develop resilience and the tools it takes to make it in flight training.
This episode is proudly brought to you by the F-thirty five partner team of Lockheed Martin, BAE Systems, Northrop Grumman, and RTX. With over 1,000 Canadian employees at five major facilities across Canada, the F-thirty five program is providing unmatched capabilities and interoperability for Canada and allied militaries around the world. Learn more at www.f35.com/canada.
Bryan:Fuel ignition switches. On. RPM switches. Set. PD switches.
Bryan:Normal. Doors and hatches. Closed. Lie down. Strobe light.
Bryan:On. Research check-in. Complete. Clear left. Engineer.
Bryan:Start number two. Starting two. Wing31010, pilot project podcast, clear takeoff runway three one left. 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 Skies Magazine.
Bryan:I'm your host, Brian Morrison, and here with me today, stopping in while they drive across Canada for a posting is captain John Livingston. John is a SAR pilot on the Cormoran, previously a four four two transport and rescue squadron in Comox, BC, and now heading to four thirteen transport and rescue squadron in Greenwood, Nova Scotia. John, again, welcome to my home. Welcome to the show, and thank you again for dropping in to make this happen.
John:Thanks, Brian. Really excited to be here today.
Bryan:Listeners, continue into part one of our chat to hear about John's early career and time in flight training. Today, for part two of our chat with John, we're going to talk about his time in the operational SAR world on the CH one forty nine Cormorant. So, John, as we said in part one, after phase three, you were posted to four four two Transport and Rescue Squadron in Comox, BC to fly the CH one forty nine Cormorant, affectionately known as the Korm. What was it like to return to four four two Squadron this time as a newly winged captain? Are we an LT?
John:I was initially an LT for, yeah, for a few months on arrival. And when I did get there, I was working in duty ops for a while. So duty operations officer. So I'd be sort of the watch officer holding the phone, whenever anyone was tasked. I would be making sure all that information was passed through the commanding officer, kind of a link between many key players after hours especially to keep everybody apprised of where the aircraft were and how things are progressing.
Bryan:Yeah. How did it feel to like return back to the squadron you'd been in OJT at for a couple times and now you're newly winged?
John:Getting to to step back into that operations role, it works very parallel to the the operations desk where I worked as an OJT, was a nice way to step back into the squadron, kind of get back back into the rhythm of an operational squadron, how everything works there. And then from there, you know, starting the operational training flight a few few years later. Yeah. But but initially getting into the the duty operations officer role really helped me kind of step back into it. Was there like still a
Bryan:bunch of familiar faces from when you were on OJT?
John:Yeah, absolutely.
Bryan:I would think it was must have been pretty cool to come back and be like, I made it guys.
John:Yeah. There was that and then I was also scared people still thought of me as the officer cadet. Oh, yeah. So there was a duality of that, but but no, I I was definitely shown shown respect and and people were excited to see me back.
Bryan:That's awesome. How long did you have to wait before you went on your operational training unit or OTU course? I suppose it's an OTF there. Right?
John:Yeah. Operational train flight, it's part part of four forty two squadron right now. Soon to move over to four eighteen. But I was initially told with COVID and the delays from the pandemic that I'd be waiting until about 2023 to start flying.
Bryan:And this was in 2020?
John:That's right. Yeah. Summer twenty twenty. So I thought I would be waiting a while. But things got up and running again.
John:And then I believe it was in winter twenty twenty one, I was told actually I'd be there would be a spot for me on the course that summer. Okay. So I started prepping for that. I had a a young daughter at home, but, got really excited.
Bryan:Did you do, like, prep work ahead of time? Or
John:I was asking other pilots at the squadron, you know, what do I need to study? What can I do to be ready ahead of time? But everybody kind of persuaded me that that it's a very well produced course. Yeah. You know, you attend it and you learn everything you need to learn during the course that you don't really need to study anything ahead of time.
John:I'm sure I started looking through, you know, few of the the maneuver manual, some some of the pubs Yeah. Prior to starting course, but I really didn't get too deep in the weeds before getting on course.
Bryan:Yeah. And honestly, think that's the best approach. Like everybody, you hear that from lots of young pilots because they're like A lot of people get a little bit of study packages like before they go to Moose Jaw or something. And then now they're getting ready for their operational aircraft, so they want to get ahead on that. But honestly, it's almost like you should take the time to enjoy the break even even if it's like gonna be for a while and just take advantage of that however you want to, whether it's go go get a master's degree or go focus on hiking or whatever it is that you want to do with your time because soon enough, the fire hose is gonna get turned back on and then it doesn't stop because you do your OTU, now you're an operational pilot, now you're upgrading, then you're gonna become standards or an instructor or whatever.
Bryan:Like, it just doesn't stop.
John:Yeah. Absolutely. The progression is constant once you once you're back in the cockpit. So kind of At times, was nice definitely to have some time off. I was eager to get flying again.
John:Yeah. Absolutely. But yeah, it was nice nice to have a few months down and sort of embrace the new married life.
Bryan:Yeah. Yeah, I guess. Because you guys were finally living together.
John:Yeah, exactly.
Bryan:How long was the OTU and can you briefly describe what it consisted of? Listeners might notice that we're kind of using the terms OTU and OTF interchangeably. One is operational training unit, the other is operational training flight. An OTU is a unit that is the school, that is its reason to exist is that it performs the training on that aircraft. Whereas an OTF, a flight, is an organization within the operational squadron that carries out the training.
Bryan:For all intents and purposes, people tend to use the term OTU for your course for your operational aircraft.
John:OTU is about four months. Started off with a pretty extensive ground school, just learning all the systems. The Kormorant's a fairly complicated aircraft, being such an all weather platform and has three engines and a ton of redundancy involved. So really thorough robust ground school initially to get up to speed on the aircraft itself. Then starting in the flying phase just initially with some clear head flights quickly into IFR.
John:I think it's four flights from commencing IFR flying to the IRT. That's not much. Yeah. It's pretty quick, but it's manageable actually. It's a it's a really nice stable platform with lots of automation.
John:So Yeah. It's super manageable. Then following that, we get into the SAR flying. So we'll do all of our different SAR sequences, confined area landings, land hoists, mountains, a little bit of mountain work during the day. Then we'll complete that all at night.
John:Lots of repetition, lots of training, boat hoisting, maritime SAR as well. And then it finishes off with our night proficiency check, as a To send us back to the unit.
Bryan:Yeah. I've heard that the night boat work is pretty crazy.
John:It's something to really get used to initially, especially in the training where we're using fairly small vessels. So we're hovering 20 to 30 feet off the water. And if we're hoisting to the bow, we're flying backwards at night, engulfed in the spray from the helicopter. So it's a dynamic environment. It definitely takes getting used to efforts.
Bryan:Yeah. I believe that. So as you mentioned, you and your wife had your daughter just before you started your OTU. How did you navigate being a new father and going through a challenging flight training course?
John:We were super fortunate that my daughter right out of the right out of the gates was really good sleeper.
Bryan:Okay.
John:So that helped so much. She would always be happy to get to bed at night and it helped me get rest and be prepped for flights. Also, like I said before, my wife's been so supportive. She actually decided it was a great time. That summer I started the OTU in 2021 to go back and visit some family with her.
John:So she traveled across the country with her daughter by herself to go see family during And that was while I started the OTU. She spent a few weeks out there basically while I was in the ground school phase and then came back as I got into the flying phase. It allowed me to really focus on the studies for that period.
Bryan:Yeah. That's huge. Kind of a win win for both of you.
John:Yeah. Exactly.
Bryan:Because you were going to be busy anyways, so may as well take that time to go and spend time with family and let them meet the baby. Yeah. Must have been a little odd though to have this new baby and then have have her be gone for a couple weeks.
John:It was. I really tried to focus on the course and then just just stay in the books, but it was weird. The house felt super empty.
Bryan:Yeah. Yeah. I hear you. Do you remember your first flight as a wing pilot?
John:My first flight actually was prior to starting the operational training unit. I got the opportunity to go flying because it was such an extensive wait initially. I had been told, you know, it was 2023 I wouldn't be flying until. So one of the other pilots said, hey, you wanna come up with us for the day? And I had a chance to to fly around a little bit.
John:And I actually felt a ton of pressure because here I am, you know, now I'm a winged pilot. I have this expectation of being, you know, a decent helicopter pilot and I just jump into this aircraft that I'd really know not much about at that point. So I wouldn't say it was a great performance. I kept the blue side up, but yeah, it was tricky and I think I would have liked to have done even better, but it was fine. It was fun to be back in the back at the controls.
Bryan:I have a funny story. I was a newly winged pilot at four zero five Squadron on the Aurora and I went up for a flight with them, which was like few and far between because I was just really busy working in ops. And they're like, hey, you wanna you wanna come up and sit in the seat? And I was like, yeah, I do. Yeah.
Bryan:And we're just up we were up like I don't think we were on an IFR clearance, but we were like, I wanna say we were over the ocean due regard, which for audience is, it's basically like you can fly, you just keep yourself safe. It's your own due regard that keeps you separated from other aircraft and all that other stuff. And I get up there, I get in the seat, and the guy gives me control but leaves it on autopilot and and just has me, like, hold a heading. And I was like, what am I, seven? Like like, I I have my wings.
Bryan:You're not gonna let me even fly this thing around.
John:No. Don't touch any buttons.
Bryan:Yeah. Pretty much. It was really funny. Like, I was so excited and then we just sat there.
John:Well, I kept trying to overspeed the aircraft.
Bryan:Oh, yeah. Well, at least I didn't have a chance to do that. Yeah. As a new Cormoran pilot, what skills that were unique to flying West Coast SAAR did you learn at that time?
John:So what we really, get for a unique perspective on the West Coast is operating in the mountains and then the the weather in there is kind of unique. We often get like lots of moisture fogging up the inlets and creating not awesome weather to be flying in, at night. So so operating in in those environments and then just dealing, especially on Vancouver Island and the southern coastal regions with giant trees. Often when we're practicing our confined area landings, you know, it's a 200 150, 200 foot vertical descent in close proximity to obstacles to get down to the ground. So that's definitely something that took a while to get used to.
John:As far as the mountain flying, we do a specific mountain flying course, about a year after becoming qualified on the Cormorant. And until that time, it's very introductory. It's kind of demonstrative from the extractor pilots about how to perform mountain operations. And then we get a full course package on that at that course in Pindicton.
Bryan:Are you guys like higher priority to get on the mountain flying course?
John:Yeah. Absolutely.
Bryan:We have Everybody does that. Right? If
John:they That's right. All helicopter pilots are eligible to perform that course, but we kind of have a higher priority for getting loaded.
Bryan:Makes sense.
John:Yeah. Yeah. It's pretty pretty important.
Bryan:You see those mountains, like, we're I'm I'm I'm swear I'm gonna keep talking about this trip for weeks, but when they took me up in the February and we flew around in the mountains and I was just like, you know, you're flying between mountains and stuff, which I've never done before. And I was just blown away by You see that terrain up close and it's like, man, this is unforgiving harsh harsh terrain.
John:Yeah. It's absolutely very demanding terrain to be working in. And it's funny, because during the nice daytime training flights, it's the most beautiful playground in the world. And you get to get into these remote valleys that most people can't access at all and it's it's amazing. But then it's very different experience because people tend not to get lost or injured during the day during ideal conditions.
John:It's always at night in a storm or whatever. It becomes a very different environment when that when those weather systems start to move in.
Bryan:Yeah. It was really beautiful the other evening, but I would not wanna be in there in like a storm or at night. That takes some guts.
John:It's it's definitely stressful at times.
Bryan:Yeah. What's it like the first time you have a night like that and you go into the mountains?
John:It should be everybody's first time while their first officer obviously to experience that in full 42. So you're with somebody that's that's competent and qualified and has been in that situation before. And and the biggest thing is always, our risk management and having appropriate, we call them outs, ways out of the situation. So whether that's climbing above the terrain and picking up an IFR clearance, or if we're able to turn around and fly back out the way we came into an inlet, or having somewhere that you know you can land in a pinch. So we always make sure that we have ways of getting ourselves out of that situation safely before we get into it.
John:That's the biggest thing to give yourself the confidence. And then once you've operated in that environment a few times, you start to become a little bit more comfortable with it, but it's always tense when you can tell the visibility of the ceiling's coming down. We're flying up an inlet with six to 8,000 foot mountains all around us. It's a Yeah, it's a stressful time.
Bryan:You get that pucker factor a little bit.
John:Yeah, absolutely. And it really drives you to make sure that you've dotted all your i's across t's. You know where you are. You know how to get out of there and and make sure that you're keeping your crew safe.
Bryan:Yeah. Yeah. Can you tell us about some of your first memorable operational missions?
John:So after becoming qualified, I remember, I think it was in December, so not long after a few weeks, one of my first missions was for a person who had fallen off their sailboat. Sailboat had just been found adrift and and there was evidence that the person had previously been on the boat, but now they were nowhere to be found. So we spent a lot of time searching over water in relatively good conditions, and unfortunately didn't have any success in in finding, the victim, the casualty that day. But but there's often much more positive rescues as well. One of my first missions, we got tasked to Kamloops for a paraglider who had just on the north side of the town went paragliding off of, one of the mountains there and and had I think an equipment malfunction just after departure and ended up coming and impacting the mountain quite severely on a on a very high angle area.
John:So we got tasked there at night, transited. It was pretty nice weather that night, fortunately. As we got into the Kamloops Valley area, we could see very quickly g ground search and rescue. GSAR was already on scene. We could see their headlamps working around on the mountain.
John:So we kind of very quickly knew where the the area we needed to get to was. The AC, Kyle Landry, one of the best pilots we got on the one forty nine, performed a mountain landing just offset from the the patient's location higher up on the mountain. The Saratex departed the cormorant and went down to to stabilize the patient and make sure they were secure. One of the, I hesitate to say, issues with the cormorant is because it's such a big capable platform, we create immense downwash So with if somebody is on high angle terrain and they're not secure, we're at risk of blowing them off the mountain. So they made the Sartex went down there and anchored the patient into place, made sure that they were stable and ready to be extracted.
John:You know, it takes them thirty minutes to an hour to complete all that, and they're they're climbing up and down the mountain the whole time with their gear. Following that, we took off and, came overhead for for quite a high hoist, night with with minimal references and, and then brought the patient down to Kamloops Airfield to be handed over to emergency medical services.
Bryan:So was that kind of your first successful, like, complex mission?
John:I can't recall if it's the first successful one. I just remember that was It one of super my memorable. Yeah. Super memorable early mission that I had.
Bryan:You've talked about now a mission that was successful and one that wasn't successful. How did you find early on kind of maintaining emotional I don't know if it's distance or composure, but kind of separating yourself from the emotions of of these missions?
John:I think part of the front enders, we call them, so the the pilots, we have a bit of a disconnected experience from from the actual patients. So we're very rarely hands on with anybody that's experienced any trauma or anything like that. And so we're very focused on doing our best to get the SAR techs, the search and rescue technicians where they need to be to do their job. And we try to stay focused on that and do the best we can. And I just do my best to maintain sort of that mission mindset throughout and and sort of block out the emotional aspect of it, if I if I can say that.
John:So that's my main method of kind of staying focused and and dealing, I guess, with the emotional side of things.
Bryan:Have you had times where you were unable to do that?
John:There's been times where I've kind of had that stress come to me afterwards. Like some of those emotions will kind of hit me, you know, unexpectedly afterwards Mhmm. Or or at another time. But thankfully, so far, I've felt like I've been able to stay relatively composed throughout my time in the aircraft.
Bryan:How do you deal with it if it if it, you know, does hit you after, you know, when you're on the ground? How do you deal with that?
John:We have a really good support system between, all of our crews in in the SAR community. Very open door. Everybody is really able to to discuss what's you know, what they're feeling, how what's going on in their mental health. And then I have a awesome support system at home. Yeah.
John:So both of those things together are are what it make me able to to pursue. That's awesome.
Bryan:What surprised you most about real world SAAR operations?
John:I think one of the It's funny enough. One of the most surprising things was finding myself there. You know, I was like training, training, training, so focused on on getting there. And then all of a sudden, I'm in the middle of a SAR operation and, you know, you I've got a job to do. So that that was almost surprising in a way.
John:We spend so much time training for our for our SAR missions that it works, you know, the training works. And when we get there, you know what to do and and you wouldn't be put in that situation if you weren't ready for it. Mhmm. So I wouldn't say that anything necessarily surprised me, but getting the opportunity to be there to witness the level of professionalism that everybody operates with and being part of that. And just, you know, feeling like I'm actually a valuable part of that team and could be a valuable part of that team was almost surprising to me.
Bryan:Yeah. Like just sort of the shock of being in that situation finally after all the training and preparation.
John:Yeah. I'm actually here. I'm actually doing this now. Like this is crazy.
Bryan:Yeah. Was there anything Do you find you had, like, any misconceptions about how Tsar would work that were that you were, like, quickly disabused of once you once you started doing it?
John:I think I had spent enough time at four forty two Squadron and had a fairly good handle of how things proceeded. Yeah. I did There weren't a ton of surprises.
Bryan:Okay. So soon you were able to take part in the trip of a lifetime. Can you tell us about this?
John:Yeah. So around the time I finished, the operational training flight, four forty two squadron had been sending a cormorant to the North once or twice a year in support of some exercises. Typically, they would send the newest first officer. So in 2022, I was the newest first officer at the unit. And so they sent me on this ridiculous trip up to the High Arctic.
John:We took a cormorant for three, three and a half weeks and ended up getting within I think 500 nautical miles of the North Pole.
Bryan:Wow.
John:So we flew all over Canada's Arctic, all over the North. And I felt so fortunate to be able to experience that. I don't think many people in the world or Canadians really actually get to experience the Northern Canada landscape. Totally. And it's it's breathtaking and it's intense and it's hostile.
John:It really puts in perspective what it's like to be living in that type of environment. Mhmm. It's it's amazing. It's it's intense. But being there with such a great group of people and and I was super fortunate.
John:One of the pilots, Troy Kerns retired now, was one of the high time Kormorant pilots. I think one of the only Kormorant pilots to get over five thousand hours. And then our flight engineer, Carl Shouten, has over six thousand hours flying time with the Kormorant. Was just recognized by the manufacturer.
Bryan:That's a lot of time in a helicopter.
John:Some of the most experienced people in the fleet, up there and I was able to watch them operate that. We also had really, really, amazing tech technicians come with us, Chris Beck and Dan Sturzenbach. They were there at the aircraft in 40 below temperatures, wind chills, for two hours getting the aircraft prepped for us to be able to fly it. Because up in the North like that, everything gets so cold that they have to run heaters to warm everything up just to get the helicopter started again. It's an amazing machine that it was able to handle those temperature swings when we left.
John:I'm sure it was already in the twenties in Comox probably. Yeah. And then, yeah, I think the lowest we saw with the wind chill was minus 53 in Hall Beach.
Bryan:Oh my gosh.
John:It was intense. And and you could really feel that I can't survive for very long out here. Like I have to get inside at some point. That was immediately apparent once you were outside. Yeah.
John:We spent hours just flying low level over the Arctic Tundra and the gravity of the situation was intense. It was You couldn't see anything but white in every direction as far as you could see and we flew like that for hours. And so there wasn't even a hill to hide behind if we had to to land for an emergency or something of that nature. So that that was kind of an intense feeling. And then also, at one point, we were crossing the Arctic Ocean and it was about a max range flight for us, close to 400, 450 nautical miles.
John:We have about a 500 nautical mile impact of range. And we were expecting a decent amount of headwind, thirty, forty knot headwind.
Bryan:Oh, wow.
John:And because it was so cold up there, the landing gear oldios would not extend all the way. So our gear Our landing gear wouldn't retract. So we had about like a 10% increase in fuel consumption. And so, you know, it's stressful being up in the middle of nowhere. You know, we had three pilots on board.
John:We all did our own calculations.
Bryan:Was gonna say, you guys just like constantly running fuel calcs?
John:Exactly. Like we all we all before the flight came up with a go no go point where we would check, you know, what kind of fuel state we needed to have. And then at this point, it's either we're continuing or we're returning back to our point of departure, point of origin. So, you know, we got to that point. We all looked at each other and we're like, I'm a go.
John:I'm a go. Yeah. I'm a go. And we we pressed on. So was a pretty cool experience and high stakes for sure.
Bryan:Those are the situations that really help you grow in your confidence as a pilot when you're forced to do Do you guys call it PLE as well? Prudent limit of endurance?
John:We don't use that acronym for it.
Bryan:Okay. So you just call it a bingo fuel? Yeah. Okay. So, but anytime you're doing fuel critical calculations where like you're you're literally saying, this is the last moment I can stay out here safely.
John:Yeah, exactly.
Bryan:And then you do that a few times and you start to build confidence in the in the aircraft and in yourself and your decision
John:100%.
Bryan:Yeah. So that was probably a huge trip for your development as an aviator.
John:Absolutely. And and then just taking as much as I can As I could, pardon me, from from those operators, as I mentioned before. Because the way that they could start the aircraft every day in a way that, you know, reduce the amounts of lingering snags that we'd have. Aircraft don't love operating in those kinds of environments. And, it was pretty It was kind of a master class on operating the cormorant in the North.
John:So that was amazing to be able to spectate that.
Bryan:Yeah. It sounds really cool. So you and your wife soon had your son. How were you finding balancing being a father and a SAR pilot at this point?
John:It was challenging at times, with two young ones in the house. They're busy, high energy, they wanna be helped have time with dad and mom. But it's such a fun experience. And I feel super fortunate that in the SAR community, we probably get to spend the most time at home of any RCAF community. So I really feel like I have no right to complain whatsoever.
John:I was home most nights of the week. I got to be there for you know, those special occasions, birthdays, and and that sort of thing. And and our community is really good at accommodating schedules. Everybody's eager to be flying, so nobody ever hesitates to to pick up somebody's shift for them
Bryan:Right on.
John:If they need it. So I I felt like as as much as I could in the RCAF, I had probably one of the best experiences for kind of that that work life balance.
Bryan:That's great. As your aircraft commander or AC upgrade approached, you had a certain anxiety. What was that and how was it solved?
John:I started stressing out a little bit as I approached my AC upgrade because I hadn't actually been to an operational boat or a maritime extraction. So the Kormoran has a wide range of skill sets for conducting rescue missions, one of them being hoisting people from vessels at sea. This can be a small fishing boat, a life raft, all the way up to cruise ships. And it's it's a key skill set. The people on the East Coast at one zero three Squadron or four thirteen Squadron, they're conducting maritime extractions, you know, it seems like daily almost.
John:Mhmm. It's a little bit less common on the West Coast, I think, because there's just so much commercial fishing going on on the East Coast. So Yeah. I was approaching my aircraft commander upgrade and I hadn't yet been to an operational boat extraction. And I I was worried that one, maybe they would delay my upgrade until I actually saw one, which who knows?
John:It had already been a year and I hadn't seen one, how long is it gonna take? Or two, that they might try and upgrade me without seeing an operational boat. And then the first time I have to see an operational boat extraction is when I was doing it live the first time. So that that stressed me out as well. Fortunately, that summer, 2023 just prior to my upgrade with Pat Dibs, I think together we did four to five different boat extractions from fishing vessels to cruise ships.
John:I remember the first one, the excitement I was feeling actually finally getting passed to to conduct a boat extraction. Now we hoisted from the bow of the vessel at night, a cruise ship, and we were, in the hover for the hoist right at eye level with the bridge. And the pilot flying was the aircraft commander, Pat. So he had his radios isolated to be completely focused on what he was doing. And I had my radios up to be able to speak with the ship.
John:And at one point, they came across on the radio and said, rescue helicopter, you guys are getting pretty close. And I thought about saying back to him, I'm scared too. But but, no, getting to see that from a pro was awesome. And and then I felt so much better after that summer
Bryan:Yeah.
John:Of that and so much more confident about the upgrade.
Bryan:Yeah. For sure. It is definitely uncomfortable to know you're approaching an upgrade and to know that there's like critical things you haven't seen or like done in a long time. Yeah. I've been there and it's not fun.
John:Yeah, absolutely. And for the boat hoisting specifically, it can be such a a wide range of difficulty. Mhmm. You know, you can get a cruise ship on a nice summer day and it's it's like a land hoist for us is is a pretty straightforward operation. Whereas, you know, you you get a stormy night in a smaller vessel in high seas and that is an extremely difficult task.
Bryan:100%. Can you tell us about your upgrade to AC?
John:So for an upgrade to AC on the Cormoran, it's generally especially for a New Wings grad or somebody that hasn't been a SAR or Craft Commander previously, a three day sortie. So we'll depart from the from Comox or from your main operating base, And then you'll spend a few days on the road. This gets us out of the environment we're familiar with. And then there's a bunch of different SAR sequences that the the checker needs to to watch us do. So we need to do a land sequence, a maritime evolution or a scenario.
John:We need to do some sort of like a major air or combined organization operation coordinating multiple assets. And then we have to one of those sorties has to be a night as well as a search. So, we departed from Comox for Vernon for an EL simulated ELT search initially. We got over Vernon, started homing an ELT signal with the helicopter, and then had to define the location, just decide how we were gonna insert the search and rescue technicians to assess what was going on and if there were any casualties or anybody that was in distress. So that that mission kinda got us going and then it was relatively straightforward.
John:We departed later in the afternoon. So that was the only sortie for that day. I believe we stayed in Penticton. The next morning, the weather was not great in the Okanagan. I remember there being quite a bit of icing around, forecasted severe icing in the GFA and some some levels.
Bryan:Which is a graphical area forecast for listeners. Thank
John:you. Yeah. So some of our weather products were forecasting below ideal conditions as well as a bit of a ceiling. I can't remember how high, but but high enough that we we could still operate beneath the ceiling. And I was given a tasking, a simulated tasking for a missing hunter from Picton from Penticton north of Kelowna up in the mountainous areas to to simulate a missing hunter.
John:There That was a mission that we simulated that there was multiple organizations on scene and and coordinating everybody to to rescue the missing hunter.
Bryan:So you have to do the coordination effort?
John:That's right. Yeah. Airborne coordinating multiple agencies.
Bryan:Okay. Kind of like an on scene commander.
John:Yeah. Exactly. Playing as an on scene commander. Following that sortie, we returned to Penticton for more fuel. And then I was tasked to transit back to Victoria for a simulated tasking in in the Victoria region.
John:This is funny. It plays back to the severe icing. So I had seen some significant weather around, and we we would never plan to fly into severe icing. So I was working a way to to get around that. And we're also in that area.
John:There's very few airways that are below 10,000 at or below 10,000 feet, which is as high as the Coromant operates. So I was able to find a routing that would keep us clear of the severe icing and and transit to Victoria. I had a little bit of concern going through Hope. There was some forecasted strong winds that would be kinda on the nose for us. But we departed as it's a tasking.
John:We always do our best to get on scene. We started transiting IFR and and sure enough as we approached that Hope Valley area, the winds were really funneling through and we started to make, I believe it was around 30 knots
Bryan:of headway. Like ground speed was 30 knots?
John:Ground speed was as low as 30 knots. My iPad normally would show like an helicopter icon when we're in flight and we were going so slow it just reverted to a like a blue dot because it thought we were stationary.
Bryan:Oh my gosh.
John:So we were making no headway. And of course at this time, we start moving through some cloud systems that did have embedded icing. So we started picking up icing. Fortunately, the Comrint is a super capable platform, has extensive anti icing systems. So we brought online all the anti icing systems to ensure that it wouldn't be building up on our control surfaces, but it still builds up on the airframe.
John:We have a VAM, a vernier accretion meter outside the helicopter. It's in the airflow and we can read how much ice is building up on the airframe.
Bryan:Yeah, it's like an icing indicator basically.
John:Yeah, exactly. So while we were making minimal progress through that Hope Valley area, we started to pick up significant ice, 20 millimeters and then 30 millimeters.
Bryan:Wow.
John:And and at this point, also, some of the systems on board, one of the engine anti ice intake systems started failing on us. So it's, you know, going to the checklist, you know, limit time in icing, remain in icing for less than ten minutes, consider ways of, like, evading the icing. And we're, you know, we're in a mountainous area. I'm talking to the the controller seeing how we can get out of that situation. The flight engineer on board, Jordan Pugh, is helping me to to run the checklist to get that system back online.
John:Fortunately, we are we were able to get the system back online and ended up getting out of that Valley funnel area where the headwind was the strongest and started making some reasonable ground speed again. And shortly after exited cloud, icing melted off like good days. But there was like some tense moments there where where we were considering all options for getting out of that icing situation.
Bryan:Could it be an option to land?
John:So I was considering turning around Yeah. Because then we'd have a tailwind and we'd get where we needed to go super quickly. I And was gonna go back towards Princeton, which is I can't remember off the top of my head exactly how far east of Hope, but they had an approach there. So I was thinking about, yeah, using the approach to get back underneath the weather.
Bryan:But like if you were if it the icing was insane, your your anti ice, let's say it stayed failed Yep. It was gonna take you longer than ten minutes to get out of the icing and it was like accreting quickly. Could you just land like on a road?
John:Yeah. We could, but we were we were in cloud, like on an IFR clearance at that time. So we didn't have a way to transition out of IFR flight.
Bryan:Yeah. So not unless you're about to basically fall out of the sky.
John:Yeah. Exactly. We so we were considering all options. I was having the search and rescue technicians look down for for holes in the cloud that we could maybe descend down towards terrain and get out get out of cloud. The flight engineer and I were working through the checklist.
John:My first officer Kent Stanway was just keeping us stable. And we were we were just doing our best to get out of that situation. So we were considering all options. And afterwards, it was definitely a highlight that I was proud of from the checker. He mentioned, you know, the way that I kinda just kept it cool in that situation.
John:Well, were in a bit of a tense moment there. I think in the end we ended up with 43 millimeters of icing or something was the most we saw accumulated.
Bryan:Is that the most you ever got?
John:Yeah. That's the most I've ever had on the airframe. I've had other some good other icing, but
Bryan:that's That's pretty wild. I've I've never seen icing like that. Our our
John:maximum allowable accretion on the airframe is 60 millimeters.
Bryan:So you were
John:We're getting up there. Yeah.
Bryan:Two thirds of the way there. That's crazy.
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Bryan:When was the moment when it really hit you that you were now in charge of safety of your crew and completing the mission?
John:Again, I keep coming back to how well the system prepares us for these situations. And the the training that we go through, you know what I mean? They wouldn't be putting us in that situation if we weren't ready and we are already proven and tested and built that confidence. I think that's so key to have that confidence already built in. So I think during the lead up, there were times where I felt this is crazy, I'm gonna be in charge of this soon.
John:But by the time I actually got there, I had proven to myself that I was capable through the rigorous simulations both on our We do We conduct a pre check ride for the AC upgrade, which everyone tries to make more challenging than the actual upgrade so that you know you're ready. And then the actual upgrade itself is challenging with the accretion. And after that sortie, I had to do a night boat extraction simulated tasking and then that's still another day. So we're tested thoroughly prior to becoming operational and you do have that confidence at that time that you'll be able to
Bryan:perform. Okay. Can you tell us the story of leading your first operational SAR mission?
John:Yeah. It's funny. The my first operational mission and it was probably my most stressful actually. It was January 2024. I finished my upgrade just at the November.
John:And it was actually we have a family tradition of a pizza party on Friday nights at my house. Just to to show you the camaraderie we have at the squadron, the first officer and his family was actually over at my house that night for the pizza party. So we were all having a great time and my phone goes off and everybody looks at it in silence knowing what that means for us. So Kent and I took the call and it was a an aircraft that was overdue, a helicopter in the they had been transiting. I can't remember the point of departure in origin.
John:I think they might have been going towards Salmon Arm, but they were there was a four zero six beacon. So basically an emergency transmission that somebody was in distress in just in the valley north of Revelstoke. It was registered to a helicopter and that they were overdue. Okay. So so something had happened.
John:We we considered the weather, looked reasonable for us to fly. We had planned to fly IFR to Kamloops, use an approach to get below the weather and then continue. There's a VFR route from Kamloops Salmon Arm to Revelstoke, kind of following the Rogers Pass and the highway through there. So we departed. Revelstoke has an automated weather system and I recall that every about ten minutes it would change.
John:So like a reading would be, yeah, it's okay weather. And then the next reading would be like, not great weather. And then you know what I mean? It would be flip flopping between decent and not great weather. But we decided we would do our best to get on scene and try to deliver support if we could.
John:So we like I said, we transited Kamloops, conducted an approach. We were able to break it off before the full approach was completed under the cloud. So we started transiting along the VFR route from Salmon Arm towards Revelstoke. In that valley, about 15 miles west of Revelstoke, the ceiling started to come down. The precipitation, snow falling started to intensify a bit.
John:And with the rising terrain, we started to get pinched. And we as visibility started to really fall, we had to conduct a one eighty degree turn turn around in the valley over the highway. And, we proceeded back to Salmon Arm. I knew that there was fuel available in Salmon Arm, so we just decided to stop there. We still had gas, but it wasn't going to be easy to get to Revelstoke, so I wanted to
Bryan:have as much gas as we could.
John:And then we could also just consider the weather and take a moment on the ground just to reevaluate the situation. For sure. So from Salmon Arm, we departed and there's a lake just to the east that a valley emerges back onto that VFR route slightly past where we had to turn around. So we thought maybe we were around the high point of that pass and if we tried to get, you know, sneak around from the other side, maybe we could get behind that weather and and proceed. So I think it's called Sugar Lake.
John:And as you got to the north end of that lake where the valley leads back to the VFR route, weather started to deteriorate again. So we had to turn around. And we had studied this routing prior to departure from Salmon Arm. We proceeded south, down towards a highway, followed that further east for the Arrow Lake system. And this is south on the cusp, so we would have been where this leads out to the Arrow Lakes directly South of Revelstoke is probably 80 miles south, maybe 60 to 80 miles south of Revelstoke.
John:As we were flying through that valley or through the valleys to get to the Arrow Lakes, Upper And Lower Arrow Lake, the ceiling was extensive above us, there was so little light that the like, the navigation lights on the helicopter were washing out our night vision goggles. So the night vision goggles, right, just amplify the ambient light that already exists. But if there's no ambient light, there's nothing to amplify, and it's just darkness. The red light on the left side of the helicopter with the precipitation was creating this haze. So it almost like split the windshield of the helicopter where on like the left side, there was very low visibility because of this red light creating all this washout.
John:And on the right side, there was just slightly more visibility. We figured this out. We shut off the nav lights and we were completely black on the outside of the helicopter, complete darkness flying through the mountains at night. Another thing we figured out while venturing through the valleys was that the way the snow was, there had been snow somewhat recently but it wasn't accumulated on the trees. So the trees were all very dark and we were trying to follow a road through the valley and it was very dark.
John:So it was pretty difficult actually to to maintain visual on where the road was traveling. But close to the road at times, there was power lines, and all the trees have been cut down. So we could see the snow on the ground beneath the power lines, and that created a contrast with the trees that gave us a bit more perception of the terrain. And so we decided to follow that out to the lakes. At the lakes, the weather actually significantly improved.
John:We could see up to the sky. We could see the stars. And to the south, especially, we could see, like, I think all the way to Cranbrook. To the north, we could see for a while, but we could see that the weather did develop again. So we turned northbound.
John:We decided to see how far we could get towards Revels Oak. If if anything went wrong, we could turn around, head back to Cranbrook. We had lots of gas. So we started started up the lakes, kinda picking our way. Initially, I believe the clouds were, you know, a thousand foot ceilings or somewhere around there.
John:So lots of room for us to to work and we made our way north. There's a small community in the cusp on the east side of that Arrow Lake that we passed. I remember pointing it out. It does have an airfield there. We noted that as somewhere we could return to as well if we needed to to land.
John:And pass there, you know, it was noticeable that the weather started to deteriorate as we passed that area. We continued northbound and a few you know, we were following the shoreline. So a few turns in the shoreline later, we started to see a light, off in the distance. And so the I was the flying pilot at the time just because of the conditions, and the first officer was helping navigate on the iPad. He confirmed that there was a ferry terminal on a peninsula up ahead of us and that the light with our our radar was up painting the shorelines.
John:It all matched up that that that light was emanating from the ferry terminal. It was just a single point of light initially, but we knew, you know, direct line, there's no terrain between us and that ferry terminal. So with the shoreline in view, we we continued towards that point of light. It was kinda guiding us and knew we had a safe route towards that. And we slowed down as we passed over the ferry terminal.
John:As we got closer, we could start to make out the parking lot and other lights, in the parking lot and the terrain, the shoreline. And we passed over the ferry terminal, slowed down as we went overhead, and kinda got our our bearings a little bit as we flew past it. And, you know, as we departed the shoreline on the far side of the peninsula, we quickly realized that all of the lights that had been guiding us just moments ago were now reflecting off snowflakes in front of us and washing out our goggles and we just went completely blind. We had no essay of the terrain or anything in front of us.
Bryan:That's scary.
John:Yeah. So that was by far the biggest pucker factor I've had so far in my career was just, you know, our our weather radar is painting all these mountains around us, mountains that extend up past 10,000 feet in that area. And then our weather weather radar was showing that, like, within three miles on the nose, there's, you know, steep terrain. And so we we slowed back. We even started to make a turn to make sure we're in a good heading to to proceed up the lake system, that we weren't pointing directly at any sort of terrain.
John:And we slowly worked our way in closer to the shore so that we could pick up that shoreline again. But it was, like, some of the most intense moments of my career so far.
Bryan:Wow.
John:So following that, we continued up the river. And I knew from being in Revelstoke previously with with the Cormorant that the the airfield was right on the river. So I was pretty comfortable just following that river in limited visibility conditions Yeah. To get down at that airfield safely. And we decided to call it for the night at that point.
John:Understandably, it was marginal conditions right about our limits. So our limits for for flying on operational taskings are 300 feet and a half mile visibility.
Bryan:Yeah. And and for the audience, like, that's nothing.
John:It it's intimidating, especially when you know how much terrain is around you. So we we sat down for the night and waited for the weather to improve. It took, I think, a full day for the weather to clear up in Revelstoke. And so after a full day of waiting, we were able to actually get up into that valley towards Rogers Pass, home to a very weak ELT signal. And, we actually were starting to reach our bingo fuel, to go back and get more gas.
John:We decided to insert the search and rescue technicians where the signal was the strongest, and they have a handheld ELT homer, emergency locator transmitter homer. They they can get a sense of if it's close. It was so faint, we thought it might have been bouncing off somewhere else. And we weren't necessarily in the right location, but we decided to give it a go. And while we were gassing up back in Revelstoke, they uncovered the crash location.
John:Unfortunately, there were no survivors. But, just the the challenges to to get on scene for that mission were significant. That's a
Bryan:crazy story for your first mission. Like It was intense. It's wild. That's like, that's the kind of thing they'd put you through in the sim.
John:Yeah. I was just fortunate because in the sim, they would have been giving me emergencies too. Yeah.
Bryan:True.
John:And luckily, the helicopter was a beast, but, you know, like that whole trip was so critical. The whole crew on board, Ken Stanway, the first officer, Jordan Pugh, the flight engineer, Colin Taylor, and Andrew Burrows were the the Sartecs, everybody works together on a night like that. Everybody's looking out for terrain. Everybody's watching and and playing a role even when we're just in transit. So, it couldn't have been with a better group of people to get that job done.
Bryan:Yeah. Definitely a team effort. Absolutely. Follow on question for your first operational mission. How did you keep your cool, considering how crazy everything was going and, like, you know, zero visibility in the middle of the mountains?
Bryan:Like, we talked about that earlier that that was, like, you know, not a nightmare difficult scenario. So how do you keep your cool in that?
John:Yeah. So I had been in in somewhat similar conditions previously with other aircraft commanders. And and like I said, just kind of maintaining outs. Luckily, in a helicopter, you know, when things are going haywire, we can just come into the hover. And we can use automation to do that as well and take a moment.
John:So we still had plenty of opportunities to change our situation if we needed to. And then I always do my best to just stay mission focused at the time. Know, sometimes you'll feel feel those fears creeping in a little bit or or, you know, those negative thoughts. But at that point, it's really important to just just stay mission focused and stay focused on what's gonna keep the crew safe and do your best to not let those other thoughts creep in. How people do that person to person is different.
John:Unfortunately, I feel when I'm in that environment, I'm able to to stay pretty mission oriented. Okay.
Bryan:You took part in a rescue a 180 nautical miles west of Port Hardy. How significant is that kind of a distance for a cormorant?
John:As I mentioned a little bit earlier, essentially, our effective range is about 500 nautical miles in the Cormorant when we take a maximum fuel load. So anytime you're getting in the range of 200 miles offshore, it's it's, you know, you're you're fuel critical throughout the trip.
Bryan:Because 500 nautical miles is nonstop flying. Right? And you guys are gonna let's say you go 200 miles. Well, that's round trip 400 miles. Yeah.
Bryan:Exactly. So now you have you got to hover and do all that other stuff with the rest of your fuel. Right?
John:Absolutely. Yeah. That all comes into comes into play. So so we're For a vessel being, you know, over 200 miles offshore, yeah, the the trip out and the trip back have to be taken into account. So there's 400 nautical miles right there.
John:And then in those times when we are hoisting to vessels offshore, being in the hover is a period of fairly high fuel consumption. And then while the search and rescue technicians are on the vessel, stabilizing the patient, getting them ready for extraction, We can generally loiter and fly around at our, like, least fuel consumption speed to to preserve as much as we can, but we
Bryan:still
John:we have to still stay in flight throughout. And and depending on how big the vessel is and where where the patient is located, That can take some time, especially if they're in a stretcher and have to be carried out to the deck and prepped for extraction. It can take thirty, forty, almost an hour at times for the search and rescue technicians to be able to get the patient ready for extraction. So when you're getting up to those ranges, it's definitely yeah. We're fuel critical throughout the the flight.
Bryan:Can you walk us through that mission a bit?
John:So that was my first time really going far distance offshore, and and we did have the, Hercules in Comox during that transition period between the Buffalo and the two ninety five that just became operational. So fortunately, had top cover for that tasking. The Herc was able to beat us out to the vessel and prep them for the insertion and extraction. So they can do things like confirm the exact location of the vessel for us and act as a communications relay. They can brief the vessel about what we need them to do to get ready for us to be able to clear in the deck, get them sailing, you know, in whatever direction I determine we want them to be sailing and to make it as easy as possible for us.
John:So they got a lot of things done for us before we even got on scene and gave us the the warm and fuzzies because often vessels offshore will actually travel in in groupings. Okay. Especially cruise ships. This wasn't a cruise ship. This was like a bulk carrier ship.
John:But the vessels will travel in a pack of like three ships or something. So which ship is my ship? Yeah. They're all kind of in a tight area. So so they had identified which one we were going to and had already briefed them about how to prep for us.
John:Now we went up to Port Hardy to to take as much gas as we could, and we had also left any unessential gear back in Comox at that time. From there, we headed out to sea. And this was like a pretty fortunate mission in a lot of ways. It's a good introductory, like, distant offshore mission because the weather was quite good. A bit of wind on scene, a bit of sea state, but the ship was large enough that it wasn't overly affected by it.
John:A little bit of a pitching deck as it rolled over the waves. But the way we are oriented and watching the waves, we're able to kinda see the waves approaching the ship. And that way we could time when we would move directly over top to insert the search and rescue technician. So the, the flight engineer who kind of is the, the director at the door of this whole operation. I'm flying off my references, but he's the one that that we call it conning.
John:He'll advise me, okay, move forward and write 10 to get me directly over top of the point Right. Where the Sartecs need to be lowered down to. So he he said, okay, I'm ready. Essentially, like move forward and right. And I said, stand by.
John:We're gonna hold position. A wave's going by. And the ship would pitch and then it would be stable for a few seconds. So we move over top and and that was awesome. It was a really well executed rescue.
John:We had to take, I believe, two patients off that ship from Oh, two or three actually from a rogue wave that had come across the deck and and sent some of the sailors into the, the piping and all of
Bryan:the metal. Like banging their heads off machinery or whatever?
John:Yeah, exactly. There was a few different sort of blunt force injuries experienced, I believe. So we were able to get everybody extracted in one sortie and brought them back to Port Hardy where a fixed wing asset was waiting to to deliver them to Victoria.
Bryan:Yeah. So that's kind of one where everything went right.
John:Yeah. Exactly. It was good conditions. It was during the day. Everything worked out as it was supposed to and and it was a great great sortie.
Bryan:You had a much more difficult rescue a few weeks later. Can you tell us about that?
John:Yeah. Was fortunate that that was kind of a a reasonable kind of warm up for the mission I'd have a few weeks later. This was in November 2024, my most challenging flying to date. So we got wind in the morning of an injured sailor on a vessel that was more than 300 and monoco miles offshore, so outside of our range.
Bryan:Yep.
John:But they were making way back towards Vancouver Island, and and RCC, the Rescue Coordination Center, was letting us know that once they got within range, they wanted us to to go out and conduct the rescue. So throughout the day, had been kind of planning and looking at the weather. There was an atmospheric river. It was kind of a common event of kind of, know, you hear about the bomb cyclone or Yeah. These big weather events on the West Coast, we'll get these atmospheric rivers, which is just such a high content of moisture that it just like dumps rain on Vancouver Island
Bryan:Okay.
John:For for a period of time. High levels of precipitation. It's We're kind of a mini storm event. So this was coming our way in the next twelve hours, and this vessel was also making its way back towards us to to have one of the crew members evacuated. Once we got updated that they were within range, I think it was around lunchtime, everybody got into work.
John:You know, we checked the weather again to to do as much planning and as much preparations as we could, got all of the unessential gear off aircraft. And again, we sort of headed up to Port Hardy. That's actually quite far west of Comox, around 80 to a 100 nautical miles west. And and so it extends our range up to sea by going there and
Bryan:taking as much gas as
John:we can. So we staged in Port Hardy, and I had requested top cover. But while we were on the ground fueling in Port Hardy, got a message from the Herc aircraft commander that they had been delayed in Winnipeg. I don't think it was their fault. I can't remember exactly why, but they weren't gonna be able to be there for be on scene for four hours or five hours.
John:So this presented us with a challenging decision. The time of day that it was was a two hour trip to get to the vessel. We'd be getting there, you know, just before sunset. So we still had some time of daylight if we were to depart then. We could wait for the top cover for, you know, sitting around on the ramp for two to three hours before departing for the vessel, but then we would certainly be showing up to the vessel at night.
John:Mhmm. So I definitely fall back to the experience of everybody on the crew and that sort of situation and and determine everybody's comfort level. If anybody has a reason, you know, you never know who might have a great idea why we should go in one way rather than the other. For sure. Everybody was in agreement.
John:Think that it was best to proceed and try to go for that daylight. So we departed without waiting at all and started transiting it towards the ship. Shortly after crossing Vancouver Island, we were flying at 500 feet over the ocean, cruising out. I think it was directly West of Port Hardy and just making our way in the weather, You know, the cloud ceiling above us started to to pick up and started to descend a little bit. So as we got to about a 100 miles offshore, we were starting to have to descend.
John:I think we came down to 400 feet and a 150 miles. We had to come down to about 300 feet. We still hadn't made contact with the vessel at that point and we didn't have a good radar paint on the vessel. Part of that's because of us descending and it gives us less, like visual range towards the vessel. But it definitely starts to, make the hairs on the back of your neck stand up and the anxiety ratchets up a little bit.
John:You know, we don't have a lot of time at that distance Mhmm. To to be just looking for a vessel. So I definitely, you know, had the the moment of second guessing myself and making sure I had put in the proper coordinates and and had done everything properly. At 300 feet and, you know, a 150, a 160 nautical miles offshore, the weather continued to deteriorate to the point where the the cloud base was kinda ragged and and a time we were basically flying through cloud. So at that point, decided, okay, let's climb back up to 500 feet and we we plan to employ a procedure we practice consistently called no water transition down.
John:This is what a cormorant uses to get down to a shoreline or to a vessel, and basically to transition from IFR flight conditions to visual. It's a highly automated approach where we're essentially flying an IFR approach that we make up on the fly using the wind direction to get within a quarter mile of the vessel. Oh. So we climbed up to 500 feet, continued proceeding towards the vessel. Just shortly after getting to 500 feet, we made contact with the vessel.
John:We started to pick up that radar paint. We could see that we were on the right course. Just a small deviation, I believe, to the north to to get pointed right at the ship. We planned for this overwater transition down, highly procedural, and completed the approach. So at this point, as we complete the approach, we're a 100 feet off the water.
John:At the end of it, we were really close, maybe a 190 to 200 miles offshore, terminating the approach at a 100 feet off the water in a hover just in the middle of nowhere. Then with the radar, we could see that the boat was gonna be passing from our right to our left right off the nose. But you couldn't see it? We couldn't see it yet. We didn't know where it was.
John:So we were just sitting there in the hover momentarily. I kinda regained my composure, you know. We completed this very technical procedure to get down to the water. We're sitting there, take a deep breath. I'm like looking at the radar paint.
John:Okay. The the vessel should be at about 02:00. It's, you know, within a half mile of us. We should be able to see it soon. And then it sounded like one of the star techs was standing right behind me.
John:He said, oh, visual 02:00. I snapped my head over and I can just see, you know, the bow light of the ship gliding through the fog. Yeah. The silhouette of the hull, like, couldn't even really make out the ship itself. Just can see this eerie ghost ship gliding through the fog and just the limited visibility we had with the vessel just really made me feel the situation that we were in and that this was gonna be a challenging boat insertion and extraction.
John:So at this point though, we just continue on with procedure. So we we started moving forward to get up alongside the vessel and get within range. There was times when we were hovering next to the vessel where, you know, it was difficult to see the water below us, but we did have good visual with the boat. We got into position and right about midship, there was a nice deck area. I think they actually had like a basketball net and somewhere where they would play and hang out in calmer seas, but not that night or evening, I should say.
John:It was still daylight as we got to the vessel. And then whenever we get to a vessel like that, we start off with what's called dry runs. So we'll just practice moving directly over top of the location where we intend to insert the Sartex, and then we'll move back to what we call a rest. So that's just offset from the vessel. If anything goes wrong, we're clear of the vessel.
John:We're not gonna, you know, contact the vessel if we have to depart quickly or or start to lose altitude. So we repeated a few dry runs moving over top of the vessel and back to the rest. With all of the moisture in the atmosphere around us, very minimal references. I could see very little aside from the water immediately surrounding the boat and the boat itself. Otherwise, it was just like in fog.
John:Wow. So it was super challenging to to know if the helicopter was, you know, level flight with the nose on the horizon or how what my attitude how it was varying. I didn't feel amazingly confident after the dry runs, but again, the the level of expertise of our crew, the flight engineer said, hey, if you can repeat that dry run, Simon Jean, you can repeat those dry runs again, I'll be able to get the the text on the deck. I said, alright, let's go live. So so we briefed our sequence for inserting the search and rescue technicians.
John:And fortunately, we were able to to get them in without too much difficulty. It was still, you know, marginal daylight at this time. And I remember that we had a bit of a challenge because the the primary swell and the wind direction were offset such that for the vessel to be traveling with the waves where it's the most stable meant that I had almost a direct crosswind. And and the the vessel itself was creating a lot of turbulence and and making it difficult to to keep a stable platform for the flight engineers and the Sartex. We did end end up, like I said, inserting the the Sartex successfully.
John:And the weather was, you know, so marginal that normally we would do circuits and orbit around the vessel, but we just moved off slightly further than normal, but just stayed in the hover beside the vessel.
Bryan:Just so you don't lose it?
John:Yeah. Because it was reasonable that, you know, if we departed at all, we would lose contact with it and have to do another approach down to the vessel. And those Sartecs on that mission were phenomenal. Ben Rasmussen was the team lead that day, and they got the the patient package stabilized, ready for extraction extremely quickly knowing that we wouldn't have long on scene, especially having to stay in the hover. Unfortunately, while this was ongoing in the fifteen to twenty minutes it took them to prep the patient for extraction, darkness fell.
John:Oh, wow. It seemed like it went from like daytime to nighttime, like in the snap of a finger and blink of an eye. And that significantly increased the difficulty. I also wanted to try and reposition or or change the heading of the vessel to improve the aircraft performance. So as we made that right turn, to get more pointed into wind, it induced a bit of a roll component in the ship.
John:So now instead of the ship just pitching the bow up and down with the waves, it would also roll as it went across the waves. So that increases the complexity. So the Sartex let us know they're ready for extraction and we moved over top. And my first attempt at extracting the Sartex, the the vessel was moving and I had such limited references that it wasn't safe to to try and pick them up off the ship. And we had to I initially just started climbing straight up above the ship to make sure I was clear of any obstacles.
John:And then we moved off back to that rest position and reset. Know, the guy's kinda, hey, are you good up there? Everything's everything's good? I'm like, yeah. I got better references now.
John:Let's go again. Everybody fully trusted me even though, you know, it wasn't an ideal, run to the vessel. Mhmm. But, everybody was still on board and fully supported it. The copilot that night, Neil Gaborie, was rock solid, let me know if anything was, getting out of parameters.
John:So we moved back in and we were able to complete the extraction, the next two hoists without really any issues. And fortunately, on departure from the vessel, as we climbed up, we had like a 40 or 50 knot tailwind Oh, wow. Transiting back. So we initially thought with the range, we'd have to go directly back to Port Hardy to get gas before continuing to Comox. But because we had such a significant wind, we were able to just go directly to Comox.
John:Yeah. But flying that night low over the vessel with minimal references around was was definitely the most challenging flying I've had to complete to date.
Bryan:Wow. You mentioned this a little, but what role does trust between the crew play in these moments?
John:Because we're such a tight knit crew and we train with each other constantly, everybody has full trust. We're even in training, we're flying within feet of obstacles, and then operationally, we we do what we need to do to get the job done. So it's amazing how the flight engineers can eyeball the distance and can tell us, okay, we're 12 feet from that tree at the 02:00 right now. And then we'll land and then they'll get out and they'll go pace it off and they'll be, oh, I was wrong. It was like 11 and a half feet.
John:It's ridiculous how accurate they are.
Bryan:Yeah.
John:And same with the search and rescue technicians. And when we're move maneuvering such a large aircraft in tight spaces, it's a full team effort to make that happen safely. And so we practice this dance constantly of we call it conning, as I mentioned before, like maneuvering the aircraft around where where I'm physically at the controls flying the helicopter, but it's the flight engineer's voice who's telling me where I need to move and if I'm moving in enough in the right direction. So it's it's full trust amongst the crew, and that's one of my favorite parts, of flying. And that's our dynamic is is how much we rely on each other and how much we trust each other.
Bryan:Yeah. It sounds super, super challenging.
John:It can be It can definitely be challenging, but it's super rewarding, especially when, you know, we affect a successful rescue and and get somebody back home. It's it's awesome.
Bryan:Yeah. Yeah. For sure. As you reflect back on the 83 star missions you flew with four four two squadron, what do you think is the biggest thing you learned?
John:I think that the largest takeaway I have is trusting in the training, and the people that you're working with. It's consistently a team effort for us to get the job done. And you build that cooperation and that trust in each other over time and it takes time. Mhmm. But once you have established that, you know, there's so much that that can be done and we can be extremely effective.
John:So I really, really love what I do because I get to work with such highly trained motivated people. That's why I've been, you know, shouting everybody out throughout the podcast. So many amazing people that I get to work with. So that's probably my biggest takeaway is is if you can work in an environment with such motivated people, it's hard not to be happy every day when you're going to work.
Bryan:Alright. So we're coming to the end of the interview, and we're gonna ask the final three questions we always ask. You've got a fair bit of experience with operational flying. What would you say is one thing you've learned that you must do to stay ready to do your job?
John:I keep kinda keep going back to it, but for me to feel comfortable and confident in doing what we do, and it's extremely important to feel confident because you can't be second guessing yourself out there. I find that just repetitive training and feeling confident about what I'm doing is one of the most important parts.
Bryan:Mhmm.
John:So, know, we have our currencies that we maintain quarterly, semi annually, annually currencies. And just making sure that we saturate the training and make it as realistic as possible is probably the most important part in feeling confident. Yeah. And feeling like I'm competent to go out there and perform. Just get the reps in.
John:Yeah. A 100%. Yeah. And and just not not develop any rust really, right? Yeah.
John:We're we're continuously on call. Our schedule is a little chaotic. There's very little structure to it. But it's a awesome environment to work in and it just you really want to be up to speed when you get put in that situation. Yeah.
Bryan:After 83 missions, what do you think makes a great rotary wing SAR pilot?
John:I think it really comes to attitude. It can be a super challenging and dynamic environment flying a SAR aircraft. So having the right attitude, staying positive, being very personable, and, working together as a team are some of the most important traits, I think that a SAR pilot can have. Okay.
Bryan:If you were talking to a young pilot who wants to fly SAR, what advice would you give them?
John:I would absolutely recommend anybody with wanting to be a SAR pilot or any pilot or just with big dreams in general to pursue them, especially if it's something you're passionate about. For me, having big dreams and then achieving them, a huge part of that was, you know, having that dream to build the motivation and then breaking it up into smaller chunks and kind of setting goals to achieve those steps along the way. And and so if it's something you're passionate about, I think especially in aviation, expose yourself to it, go to the local flying club, you know, do a fam Famil flight, get a little experience and see if it's something you enjoy. And then if it's something you really want to do, go after it and put everything you got into it.
Bryan:Yeah. Okay, John. That does it for our chat today on your time with 442 in the Kormoran. I wanna thank you for the work you guys do. It's amazing.
Bryan:You know, we really look up to you guys. And, I wanna thank you for stopping in while you're driving across the country. I know that it was, you didn't have to fit this in, but you did. So I'm really thankful for that. Thank you.
John:Well, thanks so much for having me. I thought it was an awesome opportunity to really highlight the hard work that everybody does in the SARC community and shout out some, humble, quiet heroes from around the country and, just really thankful to be here today.
Bryan:For sure. And, of course, have a safe drive to Nova Scotia.
John:Thanks so much. Take care.
Bryan:Okay. That wraps up our interview with captain John Livingston, a SAR pilot on the CH one forty nine Cormorant. For our next two episodes, have you ever heard of Operation Christmas Drop? It is a multinational humanitarian mission to deliver supplies to remote islands in the Indo Pacific, and the RCAF has been taking part in it since 2023. We'll dive into that as well as the career of a pilot who has taken part in those missions.
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 the pilotprojectpodcast@Gmail.com or on all social media at at pod pilot project. 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 us 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.
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