Episode 103: The Greener Grass: Flying the Cormorant in Gander, Flying the Airbus H145 with STARS, and returning to the RCAF to instruct on the Bell 412 Outlaw Part 2 - Troy Clarke
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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 today I'm joined by CH one forty nine Cormorant pilot and helicopter instructor at three CFFTS, captain Troy Clarke. Troy, welcome back to your old basement, and thanks again for being on the show today.
Troy:Thanks, Brian. It's great to be here.
Bryan:Listeners who want to catch up can check out part one where we talked about his early aviation journey, his military training, and the in flight incident that led him to transition from jets to helicopters. In today's episode, we'll focus on Troy's operational training as a CH one forty nine Cormorant pilot, including some of the most challenging and memorable search and rescue missions of his career. So as you got into the STARS world, what was the transition to helicopters like after your time on jets?
Troy:It was very different. My time in jets, it was great. Flying a jet was exciting and fast and now mind you, I didn't get too far into the jet world. I certainly didn't identify as a well, definitely not a fighter jet pilot but the time that I did spend working toward that was fantastic, it was really enjoyable. Pivoting over to helicopters, it was something just in a whole category of its own.
Troy:Helicopters fly very differently, they do much different jobs, they sound and feel different, they vibrate, they force themselves into the air where a jet just glides itself into the air. Know there's all those little different nuances that come with flying helicopters. That was pretty cool and it was a big learning experience trying to convert from fixed wing over to rotary and, yeah, it was enjoyable. At the same time, you know, it brought its own element of stress with it but, it was, it was a fun transition.
Bryan:It's not like you got there and you were you know, full of regret or holy cow, like, I can't believe this is where I've landed or something like that?
Troy:No. No. Not at all. So, yeah, like we talked about on the last episode, it was disappointing not being able to continue with that opportunity that I had on the HAWK and to become a HAWK instructor. I was pretty sad about that.
Troy:But oh boy, was very excited about where this was going to go. I grew up in Newfoundland watching the thing I didn't mention on the first episode. Yeah, the old Labrador helicopter would fly over my house once in a while. And that thing was cool, know, and I didn't really know much about what they did other than they rescued people. And here I was going back to Newfoundland, my home province to fly the replacement for the Labrador, the Cormorant and I was going to be doing that same job and this was all pretty exciting and I've used the word surreal several times chatting with you but you know that that's the best description.
Bryan:Where you were already a winged pilot and then you went on helos, did that come with like, oh, and by the and when you finish this, you'll go to 103 or did you get selected for 103 at the end of, your helo training?
Troy:Yeah. So it was a little a little different because yeah. You're right. I was I was winged already and I was already in, I guess, what you could the equivalent of my, you know, first operational tour. It wasn't operational.
Troy:Was still in the training system, but, they considered me to be
Bryan:Well you were doing post wings flight training, you're basically in the first step of an operational training unit.
Troy:Exactly and that's exactly what it was. So because I was post wings, I had received my posting to 103 before I left Moose Jaw to go to Southport to do my helicopter conversion. So I arrived in Southport knowing that afterward I was going to continue on to Newfoundland.
Bryan:That's awesome. That must have been pretty sweet.
Troy:That took a lot of pressure off. Guys that I was embedded into a course that was a phase three course and I practically did the whole course with them because again, flying helicopters is not anything like flying airplanes other than the rules of of the the air but everything else is different, right? So so I did the entire course and I got to know these guys well but one of the pressures that they had was, okay, where am I going next? And that part was answered for me.
Bryan:What do you think your expectations were going into one hundred three STARS Squadron?
Troy:Very surface level, didn't know too much of what they did. Now in my time there as an OJT guy, I saw some of the pretty remarkable and amazing missions that they would find themselves in. So I knew that that stuff was out there but I think I was still pretty naive as to what actually went into those missions, how much work went into them, the conditions that you're flying in. When you're on the ground and somebody says, yeah, you're going to fly into the tail of a hurricane, it's much different than being in the helicopter and knowing that you're going to fly into the tail end of a hurricane, you know. So I think I was pretty naive and pretty green going there not knowing that, you know, what was gonna come.
Bryan:Yeah. And I think that's true of pretty much everyone who Most people are have a pretty surface level understanding of what they're getting into.
Troy:Oh, I think so.
Bryan:And green is the right word for Yeah. How quickly did that change for you? Like how quickly did you realize like, this is what SAR is?
Troy:Well, know, so usually when I'm telling this story, I say on day one, I did my unit check out. On day two, I got my feet wet with a pretty straightforward medevac from a fishing vessel back to Gander and on day three, the bottom fell out of her. Calendar wise, it wasn't quite that. Yes, day one and two, I got the first two and then maybe a week later, I'm on a mission that was later, what do they call it, the squadron mission of the year. Oh, wow.
Troy:So, and that was the first big eye opener for me. Okay. It was a night mission. The call came in fairly well into the evening, probably eight or 09:00, I don't know. And, it was for two gentlemen that had been thrown from their capsized fishing boat and they didn't arrive home when they were supposed to.
Troy:We were asked to go and search for them. The problem with that night is all the odds are stacked against us and against them. The weather in Gander was pretty low, the weather in St. John's and this is where the gentlemen were, they were close to St. John's.
Troy:So we put the fly in there. The weather at the airport in St. John's was pretty much down the minimums, maybe slightly higher. But such is life in St. John's.
Troy:It was a foggy night. The winds were howling. The rain was pouring. It was just not a very nice night. But again, a typical fall evening in Newfoundland.
Troy:So I was on a crew with a fellow named Jim that night. Jim was a very experienced pilot and thank God that he was. He knew what he was doing because I'll tell you I was water skiing well behind the aircraft the whole night. We launched and went into St. John's.
Troy:We shot the ILS, I believe yeah. The ILS Runway 16 in the St. John's and that did get us low enough, to get underneath the the cloud deck. From there, we just, basically we we went just above the rooftops down to the coastline. Wasn't too far, but managed to work our way down there.
Troy:We got over the water and just pretty close to unseen, kind of assess what was going on down there. We saw what the environment was throwing at us and just like I described, it was very low vis. Rain was pouring, winds were howling. And our task was to search for these, these fellas up and down the shoreline. Now the shoreline in that part of Newfoundland is not so much ashore, it's a it's a cliff.
Troy:It's a three to 500 foot cliff. Wow. The the entire way up and down. On the bottom of the cliff, you have some rugged jagged rocks that the fellows might have been able to climb on and we were were gonna, you know, search up and down the coast to see if we could find them and we did. In the meantime, there was a coast guard vessel offshore with their FRC in the water and they were searching the water.
Troy:What's an FRC? FRC is a fast rescue craft. So, basically a zodiac. Okay. Yeah.
Troy:Couple, pretty high powered engines on the back and very nice machines, but their rescue personnel will use these when necessary. So they're out in the water, we were searching the shoreline and up and down the coast several times, we were were not seeing these guys out there out there anywhere. We did that for a good portion of our available fuel. At one point, we okay. We've we've got to back off and take a breather and see see what the next course of action is gonna be.
Troy:So we did that. We pulled off, I don't know, probably a quarter mile. I don't know. Not not too far off the shoreline. Put the helicopter in a hover and just took a breath.
Troy:Okay. What are we gonna do next? We're discussing among the crew with the Sartex and the flight engineer. We're discussing with Coast Guard. K.
Troy:What can we do next? Where do we go from here? We're talking to JRCC, keeping them up on the situation.
Bryan:Which is the Joint Rescue Coordination
Troy:Center. Yeah, that's right. Joint Rescue Coordination Center in Halifax. And they're the ones that tasked us and kept their finger on the pulse of what was going on with the missions. So yeah, we didn't know what else we could do really and were just trying to figure that out.
Troy:And at the same time, both of us, myself and the AC, Jim, we saw we were in MVGs and we saw a flicker, just a faint flicker of light and he said, did you see that? I said, yeah. What was it? And then we saw another one and another one and it was coming from what looked like the bottom of the cliff right on the shoreline. Let's go take a look and see what it was.
Troy:And I jokingly call this story the night smoking saved a life. I don't condone smoking but having a lighter that night did save a life. So when we moved in, sure enough this was one of the fellows that was thrown out of the boat. He made it to the shoreline and the reason we didn't see him before is because he was in the water struggling to get to the shoreline and we just didn't see him and know, if you ever tried to find a person in the water, it's very difficult in the daytime, let alone in the middle of the night in a storm. So yeah, we moved in, here was this guy, he had pulled his lighter out of his pocket, he was trying to light it, the lighter wouldn't light but the flint and the spark from the flint was enough for the night vision goggles to pick it up about a quarter mile offshore.
Troy:Wow. And we went in and we picked them up. The story didn't end, you know, at that point. So where he was, it was on a very narrow ledge on the bottom of this, you know, 300 foot cliff with the winds blowing from from the left side, which the Cormorant doesn't like very well. And, we had to get him off this cliff or off off the off the rocks.
Troy:And, again, this is where I'm very thankful that Jim was at the controls because, yeah, he held it pretty steady, you know, very uncomfortably close. I remember looking past him at the rock beside him and thinking, again, what I just said, thank God Jim is flying this machine tonight, not me. And he was able to get the gentleman in the aircraft and he was hypothermic, not very alert but alert enough to use his lighter to get our attention and that saved his life that night. But it was that moment when we were what felt like just feet away from that cliff. This was my first major mission in search and rescue and I remember thinking to myself, holy cow, what have I got myself into?
Troy:Is this what search and rescue is going to be? So that's the moment that reality kicked in and yeah, that's where it started.
Bryan:Did you find that that was indicative of what STARS was going be like for you?
Troy:In a lot of cases. Yeah. Or in in several cases, absolutely. I mean, wasn't I don't wanna overdramatize it. There's there's a lot of days where you show up on squadron and you are it's a training day or we turn it into an IFR instrument flight rules trainer, something like that.
Troy:But there are a number of harrowing call outs like that And over my somewhat short time in Sur, I saw a few of them.
Bryan:How has Kim handled that over the years?
Troy:Yeah, that's a really good question. So, she would get nervous, she would get anxious. She would know that, okay, this is not a really nice night and my husband is flying into this stormy weather or whatever the scenario is. Of course, she wouldn't like it very much. But she did have a strong confidence in the people that I was flying with.
Troy:And I'll tell you the crews in Gander at the time in search and rescue across the board. They are the most professional and skilled pilots and star techs and flight engineers the world over and that gave her confidence that everything was gonna be okay. The machine, Cormorant, is a very capable machine, very powerful, very well equipped. So she did have trust in that. And in my training up to there, even though I was still learning, I was still I had gone through some decent training.
Troy:So that that gave her the confidence that, alright, everything's gonna be okay. Mhmm.
Bryan:Just rewinding a little, you mentioned that, this guy's down on the shore and you get him into the helicopter. How did you guys get him? Did you lower like a harness or did a Sartech go down or No.
Troy:A Sartech went down. So, the AC pulled it into a very stable hover as close as he could get within our safety limits from the cliff side. The flight engineer in the back lowered the Sartech down to the man on the ground and he would go down with what they called a horse collar and just put that over him and pull
Bryan:him into the machine. Okay. Yeah. So, let's talk about a couple of your more unusual missions. How often do you find that missions evolve into something different than what you're expecting?
Troy:You know, that was, one of the very interesting things about search and rescue. It was so dynamic, right? There were no very few cut and dry scenarios. Even if it was a little bit of a simple straightforward mission, it was always there was always something different. Be it the weather or where it was or how are you going to get the patient on board?
Troy:How many patients are there? Sometimes one of my colleagues, when I was there, or a couple of my colleagues I should say, flew a mission that rescued, I believe, 20 people off of a sinking ship. You know, you see, you never know what you're gonna be getting into when the when that red phone on the wall goes off.
Bryan:You also, this is a bit of a more lighthearted story. You had a call in of a crash one day and it turned out different from most calls reporting a crash. Can you tell us about that?
Troy:Yeah, that was a fun one. So that was one that I did with a good friend of mine, Mike. Mike had just fairly recently I guess became a SARAC and he and I were on shift that day. The call came in and I'll try to remember the exact words. A reputable government employee witnessed an aircraft in a steep dive with smoke trailing behind it.
Troy:It disappeared behind a rock or a mountain into a valley and it didn't come back. So suspected airplane crash. Of course, this sounds serious. So we flash up the helicopter, we're tasked for it. We fly.
Troy:It's in an area called Bay Of Islands which is on the West Coast Of Newfoundland and so we fly over there, we get on scene. I remember we went into the valley where we think the incident happened. Right off the bat, it seemed a bit peculiar. You think if this is an aircraft and the aircraft was said to be fairly large, if this was a big airplane that just crashed, you would see something. There'd be smoke, there'd be a crash site, there'd be something, but there was nothing.
Troy:Okay, are we in the right place? Alright, it's a fairly big wide valley, We're gonna start our search, contour search around the mountains, we're up and down the valley, flying lines and we're not seeing anything. Okay, we go over the next mountain and we don't see anything. We go out to the coast, we don't see any evidence of anything in the water. So, is it's sounding pretty suspicious and we didn't really know what to do next.
Troy:But then we thought, well, okay, Deer Lake is about 50 miles that way. They might have an idea if there was any traffic around. We called Deer Lake and, he he said, well, the only traffic that I'm familiar with in that area this morning was a water bomber. And the water bomber was conducting some training. So if you think back to the eyewitness report, an aircraft in a steep dive with smoke trailing from it and disappeared behind a mountain.
Troy:Well, this happened to be a water bomber doing training runs and the smoke trailing behind was water. Yeah.
Bryan:Did you ever hear about that result getting back to those people who had reported it or No.
Troy:No. We didn't we didn't follow-up on it after. We we did have a chuckle. We, it was humorous. Yeah.
Troy:We spent spent a good portion of the day searching for an aircraft that supposedly crashed. It didn't happen. But that's what it is. You respond to all the taskings you get and, you're there to help when your help is needed. Yeah.
Troy:Sometimes your help's not needed.
Bryan:Well, I mean, realistically, how often do you get to laugh at the end of a day when the report was a crashed aircraft?
Troy:Yeah. Exactly. It's It is it is a bit of a funny story.
Bryan:Take those moments where you can.
Troy:Yeah.
Bryan:This next story is a really good one. It's a really good learning opportunity. It has to do with pressures to continue. It has to do with fatigue and sort of scenarios that every pilot, certainly within military operations and I would imagine even in some instances within the civilian world will get pushed into at some point. Yeah.
Bryan:Can you talk to us about a story you have about a multi day mission out of Iqaluit?
Troy:That's a good one. It's it's one that I talk about quite a bit because when I think back about, my time in search and rescue, it's one that comes up. It's full of, you know, a couple of really good lessons. I brought it up a few times over the years when I did my flight safety training and and a couple other times. I bring it up now in training as well.
Troy:There's a couple of good lessons to pull from it. So that particular one, it it was an overnight mission. The call came in around supper time and, the the BlackBerry went off. We were on BlackBerry's at the time. BlackBerry went off.
Troy:I was called back into work and, it was a medical mission. We were to pick up a patient on a boat. I think he was, he was having a heart attack. He was on a boat, just off of Resolution Island, not far from Iqaluit. And, we were to pick him up and bring him into Iqaluit.
Troy:So went to the squadron, we launched. We went to Goose Bay, got gas in Goose Bay. That was about a three, three and a half hour trip. From Goose Bay up to Cujoaque in Northern Quebec, another two or three hour trip. And then from there, we're gonna make our way to the boat.
Troy:And this is all overnight. When we're in Kuujuaq, we're getting a little further north. It's getting into, you know, the early hours of the morning. So the sun is just The sun's not coming up, but the sky is getting a little brighter. We we launched.
Troy:We're we're flying up over Angava Bay. And at some point, about an hour and a half into that part of the trip, the aircraft had a malfunction. The stabilization kicked off. We couldn't recover it. And it was, you know, just severe vibration.
Troy:Kinda like, you know, sitting on a jackhammer or something. It was You you couldn't have a conversation. It was it was, pretty extreme. So we had to make a decision. We There was no way we'd be able to pick the guy up off the boat at that point.
Troy:So we either continue direct to Iqaluit, which was about two, two and a half hours away, land on the shoreline and try and sort this out. But now number one, we're in the middle of nowhere on Galva Bay and we are the only SAR asset. So I don't know who's going to come to help us at that point or how long we would be there. And more importantly, two or three miles back we saw two polar bears on the shoreline. So we we weren't really too keen on landing and playing with the polar bears.
Troy:So we decided to go back to Ongava Bay. Turned around, flew the an hour and twenty, hour and thirty minutes back to Ongava Bay. Of course, in mind severe vibration on the aircraft, really couldn't talk to each other. We landed there. Surprisingly, we were able to fix a problem.
Troy:We we fly with a flight engineer. Flight engineers are amazing human beings. They're great. I have a lot of respect and a lot of time for flight engineers. They're smart.
Troy:They know the machine. And the one I was flying with today, no exception from that. He, he he was able to pinpoint the problem. We fixed the problem. We talked to maintenance back in Gander between the crew and maintenance, we deemed that the aircraft was safe, we'll continue on.
Troy:So with the problem fixed, we fly back toward the boat and we got on the boat a couple hours after that And at this point, so keeping in mind, we had flown through the entire night. We had, you know, the malfunction on the aircraft. We had to go back. So the the crew day has just been extended. We got on the boat.
Troy:I remember pulling I I was actually at the controls when we picked the guy up off the boat, pulling into, into the rest position, ready to pick him up and looking at the sun just popping over the horizon. So we had flown through the entire night. Pretty tired at this point. But beautiful calm waters. The pickup was actually pretty straightforward.
Troy:We lowered the Saartex, they brought the basket down, brought the man up in the basket and then we flew up through Frobisher and into Iqaluit. So you know, after we fixed the problem, from there on the, the mission was fairly straightforward. We did though, we're pressed against time because our extended crew day was eighteen hours probably still the same. And I remember myself and the aircraft captain looking at the clock, looking at the GPS and just counting down the time. We need to get there.
Troy:We need to get there. And we did. We got there before eighteen hours but with only minutes to spare. Mhmm. You know, let's call it seventeen fifty, something around there.
Troy:It was it was pretty pretty tight. So we had flown the extent of our crew day. Now we're in Iqaluit at 08:39 o'clock in the morning and there's a conference in town. Every hotel in town is booked, every good hotel. Even the the less nice hotels were also fairly booked, booked up, had one or two rooms but didn't have five rooms at that point.
Troy:So we had to wait. We went, we we got breakfast, we just dragged our feet until finally we got couple more rooms and there were enough rooms for for the whole crew. So we went, tried to get some rest. Now this was in, one of the the hotels that's very well known in the SAR world. I don't need to name it, but, it was not the best sleep of our lives.
Troy:Let's just say it that way. You know, one one guy through, throughout his time trying to sleep there had a few people storm into his room. Another guy couldn't get into his bed sort of thing and, well, I didn't have a curtain on my on my window. I had to, you know, jimmy up something to try and keep the light out. This is daytime in the North, not a cloud in the sky, the northern sun just beaming in through the window.
Troy:You can imagine not not really ideal conditions for getting some sleep. But we had to sleep and we had to sleep through the day because we had to get this, aircraft back to Gander. The thing that I didn't say is that we were the only SAR asset on the entire East Coast. So Greenwood for some reason, I don't remember the details, but they didn't have a serviceable machine And Gander only had one and we had it with us in Inkallawit. So we had to get our crew rest and get the machine back to Gander as soon as we could.
Troy:A few hours later, I don't know, let's say I got three or four hours of sleep, I'm not sure. But it was time to, to get up and, fly through the night again to get the machine back again. So we did. We launched just as sun was going down, believe. Flew the the route in reverse down to, Kujouac, got some gas and then into Goose Bay.
Troy:And that portion was through darkness. And we got in Goose Bay at, you know, the wee hours of the morning just before sunrise. And you can imagine after the last, you know, couple of days, we're pretty bagged. But again, we need to get the machine back to Gander. So the aircraft captain, he, he just asked the whole crew, are are we good to keep going?
Troy:And and he was good. There was no pressure from him. There was no pressure from him. We all knew the pressure to get the machine back. Mhmm.
Troy:But, but no, he, he just asked, are we good to go? Of course, the guys in the back, yeah, they're tired but they can rest. So they were okay to keep going. Then it came down to me and the aircraft captain. He was feeling okay.
Troy:He was tired but he felt, yeah, I'm I'm good. I'm I'm good enough to keep going. How about you? Of course, then it came to me. Again, the pressure didn't come from him, but this is what I saw.
Troy:We were the only SAR asset in the entire region. There was no fresh crew in Goose Bay and no way to get a fresh crew to Goose Bay to take over this aircraft. So we had to get the machine home. So really, the decision came down to me, will we have a SAR asset for the next twenty four, forty eight hours or does Troy need to go to sleep? Right?
Bryan:Mhmm.
Troy:Now a couple decades later, I I know what decision I should have made but I decided, you know, I'm I'm pretty junior in in the star world at that point. I've got a whole crew that they're good to keep going. And I've got, you know, we we've got a region that needs a SAR asset. So if I say no, then we know what that means. Anyway, I decided, okay.
Troy:Yeah. I'm good to go. I can suffer it out. It's only three and a half hours. I can make this work.
Troy:So we did, we refueled. I decided to fly. Sorry. I decided to fly because that will at least, put me on the controls and keep my mind active and so on. Well, it turns out when the sun came up, we looked around and this is a complete IFR day, right?
Troy:So we're IMC, we're in clouds, we're above clouds, we're not able to see the ground. There's really not a lot to look at other than white clouds. The aircraft is coupled up on autopilot. So there's not a whole lot to do other than look at the instruments. And the crew, while we've been together for the last two or three days, we're out of conversation.
Troy:The aircraft is really quiet. Nobody's talking. And I'm pretty sure that, you know, the guys in the back slept the slept the whole way down anyway. And captain and I, we, we had nothing else to to say. So, you know, I struggled it out three and a half hours.
Troy:About halfway through it, we're somewhere over Newfoundland, over, the Northern Part of Newfoundland. And, on the air medical side, we talk about, microsleeps. Thinking back, that's exactly what started to happen. So my eyes started getting heavy. My, you know, my head started getting heavy.
Troy:I'd I'd do the head bob and the the head would bounce back up. And, you know, this went on for a little while and I'm struggling. What should I have done? Well, I should have told the aircraft captain and said, Hey, can you take control? I'm struggling over here.
Troy:But I didn't because maybe again, back to the being junior in the squadron, I was probably afraid just to fess up that, hey, I think I made a bad decision here. So I struggled it out and it continued. I remember reaching back into our LPSV, the vest that we wear, and there's some survival candy there. It was supposed to be two or three days worth of calories to, you know, help you survive if you're if you're stuck. So I pulled them out.
Troy:I even ate I ate all of them and opened them that would pick me up to to get me back to to it might have worked for ten or fifteen minutes but you know, very soon after I'm I'm doing the head bob again. And then finally, my eyes got really heavy at this one particular time. My my head bobbed down, my chin touched my chest and it didn't bounce up. Okay. So I was full on asleep at this point.
Troy:Now, was it three seconds, was it fifteen seconds or two minutes? I don't know. I'm thinking and I'm hoping that I was on the shorter side, probably just a matter of seconds, maybe ten seconds, I don't know. But the fact is I was asleep. The guy at the controls of that helicopter was sleeping.
Troy:So I woke up, my head bounced up, know, the adrenaline's rushing, the fear panic kicks in. You're kinda in that sleep stupid state, but you realize, oh, crap. I was just sleeping and I'm flying a helicopter. You check the instruments. Everything's going fine.
Troy:Okay. We're still flying. The autopilot's doing its job. Okay. That's good.
Troy:But as soon as that's done, of course, you have to look over, and make sure nobody saw you asleep. I guess, thankfully to me, but not really the right way to put it. But I did look over and and the aircraft captain, well, his head was turned away from me and and he was, it looked like he was looking out his window. So he didn't see me. But then the reality of of it just kicked in.
Troy:Right? Okay. I'm flying this aircraft. I've got four other crew members and then myself. So five people on this airplane and the guy at the controls just fell asleep.
Troy:And how bad could that have been? The what ifs kicked in. But what if the guy on the other side was struggling like me? What if he was having his microsleeps? I don't think he was.
Troy:He looked like he was, just looking out the window and and making his way through the flight. But, it's just what could have happened on that trip is something that I've taken with me and I've told this story many times. Just, it goes back to your decision making, right? If you reverse engineer the story, what decision at which point would have changed how that story went right? I think the right answer is once we got back to Goose Bay, I really should have admitted that no, I'm just too exhausted to go and unfortunately, it means we do not have a search and rescue asset in the region for that time.
Troy:But I just really can't go because it's my duty to to not put the rest of the crew in danger because I'm one of the guys flying this machine. Right? Mhmm. There could have been some some things they could have done. Greenwood might have been, you know, a little closer to getting their machine ready.
Troy:Gander probably could have put somebody on the commercial flights, put the crew on the commercial, flight and
Bryan:He used
Troy:a Herc from Greenwood. Exactly. Yeah. Which we've done It's not an uncommon thing. We've done that many times, right?
Troy:So there are things There's there's always things that we can do to mitigate or to respond to every scenario and and the thing that I should have done that day that really was to put up my hand and say, no, I really can't go. I'm sorry guys, I need to go to sleep.
Bryan:Yeah. Those are really hard decisions and really hard positions that you find yourself in and like every crew member at some point is gonna find themselves in that. And more often than not, it seems to happen when you're junior and you're not sure what to do and you're feeling a lot of pressure and stuff.
Troy:Well, that's exactly right. I mean, twenty five years in aviation, guess, two decades in military flying. At this point, I would have no problem. Yeah, you've you've still got those pressures but you have a better understanding of what your role is and the repercussions of of a bad decision. So Mhmm.
Troy:At this point in the game, yeah, I'd have no problem saying, guys, I really can't do this. We need to find another way here. But at that point, I'm brand new at the squadron and I'm flying with a very experienced crew. I felt that I couldn't say no that day.
Bryan:Yeah. The other thing I think to keep in mind is when you are in that position, like it's your job to say yes or no. And in this case, like no. Right? Yeah.
Bryan:But Yeah, exactly. The whole like follow on effects and what about who's going to get this aircraft home or whatever like that's There are people who are paid to figure that part out. Like your job is to make sure everything is safe and if it's not, then to say no.
Troy:Yep. I agree. Yeah. 100%.
Bryan:I remember you I used to say that to people. They would have something going on in their personal life or they would be, sick or something and they were like, well, you know, who's going to do it if I don't? There are people whose whole job it is is to figure that out.
Troy:To figure it out. Yeah. Exactly. And like I said, if I if I had said that, no, I need I need to go to the hotel. I I can't go on.
Troy:I'm pretty sure there are there are people in Gander right away that would have found a solution to that. Okay. We've got, this airline that flies direct to Goose Bay every couple of hours. Let's put a crew on there, go out and get the machine and fly it home. You know, there's always there's always a fix.
Troy:You've just got to make that right decision.
Bryan:Yeah. And that's the other thing, like, there's going to be a lot of internal self induced pressure or or maybe even like fears about like, well, what are the other people going to think of me? Like, what are the experienced people going to think? Well, if they're pressuring you to do the wrong thing, to do the unsafe thing, who cares about their opinion? Like Yeah.
Bryan:You need to do the right thing.
Troy:Well, it's, it's integrity. Right? And we spend we spend all this time building a pilot out
Bryan:of you. But part of
Troy:being a pilot is making the decisions that, create safe flight. Right? And it doesn't matter what other people think of you. When you make those decisions, it's your job, it's your duty to do that. Now thinking of the crew that day, I can still remember every person on that crew.
Troy:Me as a junior guy looking at all that experience, well, I'm I'm trying to make my mark there as well. Right? And trying not to look like like a guy who who can't do this. Mhmm. I can do this job.
Troy:Mhmm. Like I said, it's a tough job. There's a lot of these factors that are thrown at you in in search and rescue. Right? I can't I can't show weakness now.
Troy:Yeah. That's that was that was also going through my head as well. For sure. Now, not one of those guys. I I know them all very well and I got to know them very well.
Troy:Not one of them would have, you know, been, been angry for for me to to say that I have to go to sleep. I can't do
Bryan:it. Yeah.
Troy:They would have might have razzed me. They might have poked fun at me. But, you know, that's all part of the part of the game. Yeah. And that's fine.
Bryan:Yeah. It's hard to put up your hand when you need to, but you have to.
Troy:Yeah. Yeah. So
Bryan:this this next story is, is pretty crazy. Can you tell us the story about almost losing a flight engineer mid flight?
Troy:Yeah. Yeah. That is a good story. It's funny now and it became funny, pretty soon after it happened but, boy, at at the moment, it was pretty scary especially for him. So we were It was a training day, training flight.
Troy:Think we were inserting some Sartex into an LZ.
Bryan:And just quickly for the listeners, an LZ is a landing zone.
Troy:We're just, at the at that time, we were in a a recce, you know, about 500 feet above the ground. We're looking into into the area where the Sartecs are going to go, we're assessing it as a crew and coming up with the hoist plan. The helicopter, I believe I was on the controls, So I was in a gentle right hand orbit and the flight engineer, when he was looking at the area, he knelt down at the cargo door, put his hands on the cargo door, to brace himself to look into the area. And then all of a sudden he started screaming and we really couldn't understand what he was saying but, he yelling. What happened is that when he knelt down at the cargo door, in the Cormorant in the cargo door there's an embedded emergency door.
Troy:You pull the handle and emergency door falls out and you exit the aircraft. Well, somehow when he knelt down to look through the window, the emergency door fell out of the aircraft. Luckily, his hands were against the cargo door but on either side of the emergency hatch. That's probably standard procedure. I'm not sure.
Bryan:Well, if it wasn't then, it probably is now.
Troy:It probably is now. Yeah, when the door fell out, he managed to push himself back. At which point, I don't know when he started screaming but somewhere in in the mix he started screaming, managed to push himself back and he was laying on on the corner of the floor. And eventually when it became understandable, he was saying the emergency door is gone. The emergency door fell out.
Troy:What do you do with that? We obviously rolled out immediately, made sure the helicopter was okay. The door didn't go back, hit the tail rotor or something. Everything seemed to be fine. The Sartecs in the back confirmed that the flight engineer, he was doing okay and, quite shaken up, but he was doing okay.
Troy:So alright. Okay. Got our composure, came back around and, tried to locate the door. I think we saw it on the ground there, but it was winter. Snow on the trees, snow on the ground.
Troy:As we came in, I mean, the the cormorant has a lot of downwash. Right? So of course, it picked up all the snow on the trees. It it covered up the door. We weren't able to recover it.
Troy:We marked the position, got the coordinates, went back to Gander, you know, kind of sheepishly or embarrassing, you know, embarrassed that we've got the side out of her, you know. And we were met with quite a group of people from the squadron that came out just to see us come in without an emergency door. We weren't able to recover the door that day but I was part of the crew that did recover the door six months later after when summer came.
Bryan:Was the door usable again?
Troy:I don't remember. I I really don't I can imagine no, but I don't recall if we ever used that again.
Bryan:Oh my gosh. Did that FE keep flying? He did. Wow.
Troy:Yeah. And and he he was a good friend of mine. He, he and I were an OTU together, at the OTF in Comox.
Bryan:And for listeners, an OTU is an operational training unit and an OTF is an operational training flight where the squadron does its own training within the flight.
Troy:Of course, him as on the FE course and I was on the pilot course. So we were good. You know, we were buddies. And we had we had a lot of good laughs about that afterward but he flew probably five or six years more. So he wasn't too scared by it.
Bryan:Well, I don't know if I would have ever been able to lean on an aircraft door. No,
Troy:not at all.
Bryan:The next one is a little more somber. You had a mission where you were searching for a VIP who had gone overboard.
Troy:Yeah. That was a very interesting one. And yes, you're right. It was a sad outcome. So when the call came in, the night before, they were told that, a gentleman had been knocked out of his, sailboat.
Troy:This gentleman was sailing around the world, I believe he was on his last leg into Boston and they were sailing down the Gulf Of St Lawrence, pretty close to Newfoundland and got themselves into a storm, a rogue wave, I think the story goes, a rogue wave came, he was knocked out out of of the boat just as they were doing a handover. So one person came up to take the element and he was going in for a rest. Knocked out of the boat, they weren't able to get back to get him, didn't look like his life preserver inflated and that was it. He disappeared into the night. So our first crew went and flew blinds and so on and weren't able to find them.
Troy:JRCC called me early the next morning and said we want you guys to go and relieve the other crew. We happened to have another helicopter serviceable so we flew over there in hours. They got off scene, we got on scene and continued on where they left off. So we did that for pretty much a full tank of gas. We did what they did just in a different location, just flying doing search patterns wherever JRCC told us we needed to be but no success.
Troy:We couldn't find the gentleman. Then a couple of hours later, out of gas, we had to get back to closest airport, Stephenville. And from our location, we had to fly over what's called the Porta Port Peninsula on the West Coast Of Newfoundland. So as we neared the shoreline, everyone okay, we're off scene now, everybody was kind of a little more relaxed in the aircraft, we had a conversation. I'm flying the machine back to the airport and I just happened to glance out of the window and I saw something blue the floor, sorry, the shoreline and it just caught my eye.
Troy:I took a second glance and sure enough, it was a body that had washed up on the shoreline. It was the guy that we were looking for miles away from where we were searching. That's just where the currents took them. So I cranked it around, we landed on the shoreline and there was a poor farmer on the shoreline just up over a hill and he was tending to his crops and all of a sudden this big yellow helicopter comes in and lands behind him. I can still see this, you know, the look of shock in his face.
Troy:You know, we picked the gentleman up. We we got him into the helicopter and and, brought him into Stephenville, handed him over to the RCMP and the coroner that was waiting there. A very sad outcome, unfortunately he wasn't alive, he didn't make it. Just to rule out foul play, we were requested through JRCC but the RCMP requested that we just check the body for signs of injury or signs of possible foul play just to rule that. He was it happened overnight in a storm, a rogue wave came, knocked him out.
Troy:I mean, I guess if you look into it, there's potential that it could be a fabricated story and they just wanted to roll that out. So I did that and as the acting AC that was partly my job and also the Sartech lead as well. So he really did inspection with me by his side on the phone with GRCC giving the play by play description of what we were doing and what we were seeing. We did that on the scene I believe and then we flew the aircraft into Stephenville and the RCMP was there waiting as well.
Bryan:What was that like for you?
Troy:It was the first time I had ever done something like that, that's for sure, you know.
Bryan:Like had you seen a a dead body before or
Troy:I had. I spent some time in university and I did a, an anatomy course and we
Bryan:Oh, you had cadavers.
Troy:We studied on cadavers. I saw I saw saw them there in our funerals and stuff. But this was different. This was a man that a few hours later was alive and well on the last leg of his journey into Boston and probably excited to get back home and whatever emotions come around that and here it was, you know, after sunrise a few hours later and and, he's, you know, now a lifeless body that, we're picking up off the shoreline and bringing to awaiting RCMP. It was a difficult situation and I can still picture him and picture the whole scenario very vividly.
Bryan:How do you process that and and sort of deal with that? Because that is for a lot of people that would be somewhat traumatic.
Troy:Yeah. And I think it was for me for me too. I'm sure that ride, that two hour flight home from Stephenville to Gander, my mind was just constantly going over the mission that we just flew, right? Images of the gentleman in my mind and that's tough. At least in my time in search and rescue quite a while ago and I'm sure they still do it now.
Troy:After every mission, you would debrief. Most missions, especially the straightforward ones, it would be a quick debrief. Any input from anybody, okay great job, have a good evening sort of thing. After a mission like that though, when you're dealing with someone who is deceased, that kind of mission required more of a decompression sort of thing session. No doubt on the flight from Stephenville to Gander, we had a lot of time to talk about everything and everybody had a platform there you know.
Troy:I had my say, things off my chest. I was the acting AC but the actual AC would have had his time to talk about this stuff and the CERTex and the flight engineer. And for the most part everybody had a pretty strong ability to deal with those things. But once in a while they would affect me, that one did affect me. When we landed back in Gander, I think I sat with a couple of guys from the crew and just got it out there.
Troy:But even after that, I had some pretty close friends in squadron discussing it, talking it over with those guys. That stuff really helped. You lean on your support and most of the times that comes from people who are in the same job as you. Of course, at home, you can't bring too many details home, but you can talk with, you know, your wife, about, just in general. I had a difficult mission last night and of course, support from Kim and from other family and friends.
Troy:That's how you deal with it and that's how I dealt with it. Beyond that, if you need, there are support networks and there are support options out there in the way of counselors or psychologists and things like that for those who really do have trouble dealing with those things.
Bryan:Yeah and we'll put in a blurb here for CifMap. We always do that if this topic comes up.
Troy:Oh, fantastic.
Bryan:Okay. So we're going to talk quickly about CIF MAP or the Canadian Forces Member Assistance Program. This program is for regular force members, reserves who are on duty during an incident, and parents and siblings of CAF regular and reserve force members who are injured or who die while in service. The program provides direct access to telephone counseling services twenty four hours a day, seven days a week. From my own personal experience, you can call or use their online chat feature to make an appointment.
Bryan:They then set you up with a professional, and I believe you get 10 free mental health sessions. For more details, I highly encourage you to Google CifMap, that's C F M A P, and click on the canada.ca link. The beauty of this program is it's free and confidential, so no one in the CAF will know you used it, not your supervisor or chain of command, and not your doctor. I don't say that to encourage people hiding their conditions from their doctor. I personally think it's important to be open with your doctor about what you're going through, But if you're afraid to ask for help, it's a great way to dip your toes in the water confidentially.
Bryan:So how do you contact them? Listen closely everyone, take out your phone and save this number because you or someone you love may need it one day. The number is 687708. Again, that's 1802687708. And now, on with the show.
Bryan:And there's a pattern here of how you've dealt with things through your career in a pretty healthy way when you've experienced grief or loss or traumatic experiences like this where you seem to lean on your support networks, you know who the people are that you can count on, you don't keep it inside. I agree. It's very, very important. You have to have those people in your life and know who they are and and know when you need to turn to them.
Troy:Yeah. 100%.
Bryan:So one thing you're very open about is not fully qualifying as a SAR AC. Can you tell us about what happened there?
Troy:Yeah. So that's a story. I guess early on, it's not one that I really wanted to talk about too much. I mean, it's a blow to the ego. You're in your community.
Troy:You don't make a full upgrade through all the levels to that, well, our case, SAR AC. You know, it's not really something that we love to talk about. For sure. So that was early on. I'm well past that now and I actually use it to, again as a lesson for anybody that can help going into search and rescue or really for going into any community.
Troy:I'm not too familiar with all their upgrade programs but in SART, at the time anyway, I'm not sure if it changed over the years. When a new guy went to, to the search and rescue world, you show up as an FO one. So first officer level one. And then you become an FO two as you get some experience. FO three and then in in conjunction with becoming an FO three, become an acting SAR AC.
Troy:And that's when you're really on the final stages of your upgrade program and you're starting to act as the aircraft commander under the watchful eye of an actual aircraft commander just to get you ready for the upgrade that's coming. Somewhere within that there's a utility AC as well and that's just to allow you to fly the aircraft under utility scenarios and not for search and rescue. And then you're upgrade ride and you become an aircraft captain. So that's the flow. Yeah, it may have changed a little bit over the years but I think it's generally still the same.
Troy:And it typically took about two years or that was the expectation. Two years to full upgrade as you work through that process. So my story, well it really is a story of a lack of focus, maybe a lack of priority at the right time and then a lack of time management. Okay? So when I went to search and rescue, I went there and it was a time of several big events in my life.
Troy:So I had just gotten married. I actually got married when I was on my helicopter conversion course. They were gracious enough to give me four days to go get married and then, you know, four days later, I'm back on course with with a brand new bride. And then I went through the that course, Kim and I went to Mooshta, clued up a few things there and we moved to Gander. Couple of weeks after being in Gander or maybe a month, I'm going to Comox to be on course.
Troy:And, Kim went to be with her parents for the summer in Saskatchewan. So that was one thing that led up to or just prior to me going to Gander. I'm showing up with a wife that I really hadn't spent time with because I'm on course and then I'm on another course, the OTU in Comox and then I'm showing up with a brand new bride. Okay. We are of course showing up to a new squadron but it's a squadron that I had OJT that before.
Troy:I know some of the air crew, still there from my OJT days. Plus some of the FOs are good friends of mine. My buddy Mike and he and I kind of tracked each other's progress from air crew selection up to this point. He made it there a couple of years before me because he went direct there and I went to the jet world. But I'm meeting up with an old friend there and then another friend of ours from training, Priscilla.
Troy:So we've got a cool cadre. I'm really looking forward to that side of it. Gander as well as remote as Gander is, it's full of young professionals. So there's that part of life as well. There's all these big exciting things.
Troy:And then of course, we can't forget that Newfoundland is my home province. So I'm going be living about an hour and a half away from my family and my childhood friends and you know, things like that. So, all that to say, there's a whole lot of big events happening all at once. A whole lot of excitement. And I had a hard time juggling between all of them and putting priorities where they needed to be at the time.
Troy:Mhmm. So with regard to my upgrade, well, okay, that it took a lot of work. A lot of study, a lot of training, a lot of focus and I I did well with it up to a certain certain point until things really started to get intense and now I'm getting close to my my upgrade ride. And, this is where I really should have separated my focus on work from from everything else, all the distractions that were going going on, at the same time. But I didn't really do a good job of that.
Troy:Into the f o three portion of things, the acting AC, you know, I think I did okay. I convinced myself that yeah, I'm ready for this. The guys that are training me, the stuff they're throwing at me, I'm handling it fairly well. But I didn't take a good ownership of my, we call it the CUP, the category upgrade program. I didn't really take good ownership of that and make sure that I had did a solid job of, of, you know, learning everything Mhmm.
Troy:In that. I did take it for granted and, I just felt at the time that, yeah, I can I can make this work? So the day of my upgrade came, okay, we we got to that point where the squadron felt okay, yeah, he's he's ready. And I felt that okay, I'm ready enough and, we, we start my upgrade week really or it's I I think it's it's a three day process in search and rescue at least. And, they, they throw over the course of three days, they throw scenarios at you.
Troy:They take you around the province. One of those days you might be the actual SAR crew and you as the acting AC are expected to manage any SAR scenario that comes up. So we, we started that and we went into that day, you know, there was some bad weather there in the beginning, but we finally found a break in the weather and we got to, the first actual scenario and there's a coast guard auxiliary boat simulated taking on water and we had to go and pull them in off the boat sort of thing. I did the flight, I did that mission. It was from I guess the outside looking in, it went okay.
Troy:But from the inside of the cockpit, so I'm on that flight with you know, the whole crew. The guy that's testing me is actually one of our squadron guys and he's being tested by our, our SARSAT guy.
Bryan:And for listeners, SARSAT is search and rescue standards and evaluation team.
Troy:So I had two guys, watch me do my work that day. Anyway, I struggled my way through it. We got off the boat. We went into Saint John's, landed in Saint John's, and, that was that. Now throughout that trip, a few things happened.
Troy:And there I don't really remember the the specific details of everything on it, but I know a few things were thrown at me that I kinda struggle my way through it. Prior to this, you know, when you're flying with a crew, I could ask the questions. Well, today, I'm the guy under the gun, so I couldn't really ask questions. I had to come up with stuff and I limped my way through. I made some decisions that might have been right, some that might have been wrong.
Troy:Anyway, I remember landing in St John's and just feeling that holy cow, I saw some stuff today that I had never seen before and boy, I don't know if I'm truly ready for this. I convinced myself that I was ready but I don't really think I am. And, you know, while the the two testers were in deliberating in the back room, I was in my own head deliberating the whole thing too. And I actually made the decision. I got up and walked across the room there, knocked on their door and said, Guys, can I talk to you?
Troy:And I kind of, you know, analyzed the whole day of the trip and I said, This is something I hadn't seen and this is something I really wasn't ready for. I should be more ready for this and so on. And the conversation went on for an hour or so. In the end, I said, guys, I truly don't think I'm fully ready for this. And, they actually they appreciated my, I guess, the integrity that I showed at that point and they didn't disagree with me.
Troy:And they said, you know what? I think you're right. It was decided that, we're gonna call off this ride and we're gonna go back to Gander. We're gonna do a few more weeks of focused training and then we're gonna reattack the ride Mhmm. Down the road.
Troy:Now, in hindsight, had had I not come to that conclusion, they probably would have come to that conclusion anyway. But at least I, I got ahead of it and showed some maturity there. So, tail between the legs, we go back to Gander, the three day trip is cut short to just the one day and we started training and focusing on some of the stuff that I was deficient in. Well, fast forward a couple weeks and I'm doing some renovations on my house and I happened to put my hand through a table saw and I split my thumb in two pieces. So that that stopped everything in its tracks right there.
Troy:Took about eight weeks for that to heal. And then there's therapy so on. So I mean, it's a two and a half, three month process to get through all of that. And it was decided. Well, at one point I did express interest in coming back to The Prairies because Kim is from The Prairies and we figured at some point down the road we would go back there.
Troy:Well, turns out Search and Rescue needed to put somebody in the instruction role that summer at the three CFFTS. Nobody put their hand up for it. You had this guy who only had one hand to put up at that point. Anyway, they it was decided that, okay, we're gonna send you to Portage this summer to instruct. We're gonna stop your upgrade process right now.
Troy:Go and teach for a few years, come back to the SAR community, we'll finish your upgrade then and that was it. So the moral of the story is that, yeah, there's gonna be a lot of stuff happening in your life. There's a lot of excitements. There's a lot of new stuff. There's a lot of pressures coming from left, right, and center.
Troy:When you go into a new community, be it SAR or TACHEL or on the fixed wing side, you know, LRP and so on. Keep your focus. Yes, there is time to grow your new marriage. There is time to spend with new friends and having the dinner parties or being with family and so on. But you need to keep your focus on the job and what's expected of you.
Troy:You're carrying a lot on your shoulders even as the second pilot in the machine but as the aircraft captain for sure, there's a lot of responsibility and you need to make yourself ready for that. That's something that I didn't do well in my upgrade process in SAR. And, so I like to tell the story because hopefully at some point, it will, somebody will hear that and they'll they'll realize, okay. Yeah. Alright.
Troy:I I need to I need to put some work into this and make myself the best, the best pilot that I can. Mhmm. Yeah.
Bryan:Those years are really crucial. The first couple years in a new fleet where you're really mastering your trade. There's so much studying. There's all the tactics and the systems knowledge and Yeah. All the different things, the hands and feet and all that stuff.
Bryan:And it it really takes years before it starts to become comfortable enough that you're in a position where you can sort of not relax, like you're always gonna stay in the books, but you can take a half step back and and say, okay, I'm starting to know this stuff. I can review a little less often. I It doesn't take me two hours to prepare now. It takes me an hour or Exactly.
Troy:Yeah. And if you put that hard work upfront, you can get yourself to the point where that starting to relax a little in the job comes easy. And I definitely would say that I am there now in the job that I'm currently doing. Whereas I didn't focus on that hard work upfront. I let the other things, kinda take the priority there.
Troy:Right? Mhmm. And it's In the end, it didn't bode too well for me. And then of course, you throw in an injury and that just threw things to the wind, but
Bryan:Yeah. And I think that's a story and a set of advice that's really gonna be like useful and relatable for a lot of people because
Troy:I think so.
Bryan:That is a time of life where a lot is For most of us, you you get your wings, a lot of people get their wings. That's a time very common for people to then get married because a lot of people tend to wait until they're through their training
Troy:Exactly. Or
Bryan:almost done their training or to have kids or whatever. Like there's a lot of big changes usually at that time in your life. So I think it's a good little piece of wisdom to just say, hey, like, you know, all that stuff's important, of course. It is. Pay attention to all that stuff too because the other side of this coin is the person who only pays attention to work and is divorced ten years later or whatever, right?
Bryan:So there's balance to be had but
Troy:Well, balance is I think that's an excellent word. Yeah, didn't use that word but you really need to learn to balance everything, right? And balance and focus. Put the focus where it needs to be at the time that it needs to be there. Mhmm.
Troy:Right? Mhmm. Yeah. For sure.
Bryan:Okay, Troy. That is gonna wrap up part two. I really enjoyed learning about your operational time on The Cormorant. It's a crazy world and and the more I learn about it, the more I realize the guts it takes to operate in that environment.
Troy:I've got many highlights in my career as you saw from my bio, but SAR remains one of the highlights of my career. It was short lived. I didn't spend a lot of time in the search and rescue world. I wish I had a lot more time out there, but, at the same time, it's very, very rewarding.
Bryan:Well, thank you so much for your time today. Again, while you're on nights coming in here and taking the time to do this, really appreciate it and My pleasure. Looking forward to talking to you on the next one.
Troy:Alright, man. Yeah. That's great. Thanks.
Bryan:Fly safe. Okay. That wraps up part two of our chat with Troy. Tune in next week for part three as we chat about why he left the military, his time flying with STARS Air Ambulance Services, and what brought him back to the RCAF. Do you have any questions or comments about anything you've heard in this show?
Bryan: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 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. 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.
Bryan:That's all for now. Thanks for listening. Keep the blue side up. See you. Engineer, shut down all four.
Bryan:Shutting down all four engines.
