Bryan: 00:29

Alright. We're ready for departure here at the Pilot Project Podcast, the best source for stories and advice from the pilots of the RCAF. I'm your host, Brian Morrison. With me today is phase 1 student and former member of the Canadian Joint Incident Response Unit, better known as CJIRU, Ben. Ben, welcome to the show, and thanks for taking some time away from your studies.

Bryan: 00:47

Thanks for having me,

Ben: 00:48

and thanks for running this podcast. I found it quite useful to hear experiences in each fleet as I'm deciding which way I'd like my career to go.

Bryan: 00:54

Yeah. For sure, man. That's awesome. So before we start, let's go over Ben's bio. A quick note, we're probably about to use the acronym CBRN a bunch, and that stands for chemical, biological, radiological, and nuclear.

Bryan: 01:07

Ben joined the Canadian Armed Forces in 2,005 as a reserve infanteer. After completing a math degree and being promoted to master corporal, he attended CJIRU selection in 2010. Once selected and after completing the operator course, he component transferred to the regular force and was posted to CJIRU as a CBRN operator, which was a new trade at the time. Ben deployed to the Middle East in 2013 and 2015 on missions to train local forces as well as to Op IMPACT in Iraq in 2018 as the Canadian Special Operation Forces CBRN team lead. After that, he was promoted to sergeant and worked in training for a few years, developing and running several trade specific courses.

Bryan: 01:46

In 2023, he occupation transferred to pilot through the special commissioning plan and was attached posted to 426 squadron in Trenton while awaiting training. He completed phase 1 training in early 2024. Today, we will be talking a little bit about Ben's time in siege Iru, his experience with the special commissioning plan, and how this all comes together on phase 1 flight training. So before we start, can you give us a quick outline of the units that are part of Canadian Special Operations Forces Command or CAN SOFCOM? Sure.

Bryan: 02:15

So I'm speaking away from

Ben: 02:16

my personal experience today and not as military spokesperson. An OPSEC or operational security is always a factor when discussing CANSOfcom, so I'll need to keep some of my answers quite broad. If you want more specific information, then contact a CANSOfcom recruiter or a public affairs officer. CANSOfcom has several units, but they all work together quite a lot and the main tasks don't capture all of what each unit does. Joint Task Force 2 or JTF 2's main task is counterterrorism.

Ben: 02:41

The Canadian Special Operations Regiment or CSOR is focused towards working in austere environments integrating with local partner forces. The Canadian Joint Incident Response Unit or CJIRI's main task is anything involving chemical, biological, radiological, and nuclear threats, also known as CBRN, in special operations missions. 427 Special Operations Squadron, probably what your listeners are most familiar with, is an air force unit embedded into CAN SOFCOM that provides precision lift and into other aviation effects. There's also the soft school, CSOTC, and the command headquarters. In my experience, most operations and much of the training involves personnel from multiple units.

Ben: 03:16

Teams are built based on task requirements and each unit has different capabilities to contribute.

Bryan: 03:21

So obviously, from what you've said, you had a previous career in the forces. What attracted you to the military in the first place and what led you to go for CJIRU?

Ben: 03:29

So I joined the reserves initially because I needed to make money for school and it seemed like a good option. I didn't expect it to turn into a career. I worked in the infantry reserves throughout my time in school and really enjoyed it. And then shortly before graduating, I started recruiting session for CJIRU. It seemed like a great balance between physical tactical work with mental and problem solving components, which I was quite interested in.

Ben: 03:50

So I joined the regular force specifically to go to CGIRU.

Bryan: 03:53

Can you tell us a little more about what CGIRU does exactly?

Ben: 03:57

I can tell you a little bit. CGyru's main focus is providing CBRN capabilities either as part of domestic operations with the RCMP, counter terror operations with other care and soft comm units, or abroad in a variety of environments or roles. The baseline level of my training was force protection, preventing people from being impacted by CBRN threats or mitigating the effects. But quickly the focus of my training was shifted towards gathering well documented high quality material that could be used for evidence for intelligence. After developing these expertise, we found lots of work outside of CBRN specific tasks.

Ben: 04:27

In short, I describe it as battlefield forensics with the capability to work with CBRN agents. Very cool.

Bryan: 04:34

Do you have a story about a challenging mission or situation overseas with CGIRA?

Ben: 04:39

Yeah. In my experience, responsibility is delegated much lower in soft than elsewhere. And at times that's even more true at CGIARU since many of their jobs are done with very small teams. On Op Impact, I was only in charge of a few people on paper, but as a master corporal, I was a a ground force commander for a platoon minus sized team during a mission. And I regularly had meetings or calls with external task force commanders or staff officers at higher headquarters.

Ben: 05:02

There's also the fact that in that role, you're the expert. Nobody else apart from your team has any training or experience in the area. There's very little real world experience within the field. Fortunately, Suburin agents haven't been used that much on the battlefield since World War 1, but that also means you don't have generations of experience to go off of. I needed to make timely decisions that could have impacts on the safety of our team and cause much higher level issues, which made the job stressful, but also very rewarding.

Ben: 05:28

First off, I had excellent leadership that was very open to mentoring me through the areas I had relatively little experience with. And since we were a unique capability, everything we did felt quite relevant.

Bryan: 05:37

Oh, that's awesome. So it's a big change to go from that to flying. What brought you to aviation and why did you decide to try to become a pilot?

Ben: 05:48

So while I really enjoyed my time at CGIARU, I was just ready for something different. And as I was looking around at the different options and stuff, my priority was to find something that would give me easily transferable skills to civilian life when that time eventually comes. The combination of mental and hands and feet skills that originally interested me in CGIARU seem to be a large part of the pilot trade as well. I also really enjoy being part of mission planning than going out the door with a small team to accomplish a tangible task. Aviation in general is certainly very interesting, but for me, it's the job of the military pilot that really drew me in.

Bryan: 06:18

So it's more about being a military pilot for you than it is about necessarily aviation in and of itself.

Ben: 06:24

Yeah. I wouldn't say I had a, like, particular interest in aviation before I, like, picked this as a career I was interested in and wanted to pursue it.

Bryan: 06:32

It's more about, like, the skills and challenges that this involves.

Ben: 06:35

Yeah. Exactly. And the types of missions that you might be able to go and do. Yeah. All platforms do some pretty cool stuff once in a while.

Bryan: 06:42

A 100%. Yeah. So you commissioned through the special commissioning plan or SCP. Can you tell us more about the SCP process and how you went from CBRN op to pilot?

Ben: 06:53

I'll preface this by saying talk to your local personnel selection officer or PSO and read the directives. I'm by no means an expert and things might have changed since I went through. When I applied, there was 3 ways for an NCM to become a pilot. ETP NCM, where you do a university degree full time paid for by the military prior to starting pilot training, and you're also paid your salary during that time. SEP, which is for NCMs like myself that already had an applicable degree and COTP, which involves doing a university degree part time over several years during and after your trades training.

Ben: 07:22

This is generally put down as the second choice for UTP NCM candidates. And at the time I applied was only open for 3 trades. The process itself is pretty simple. Start by talking to your base PSO to get the timelines. Generally applications are due sometime in the fall.

Ben: 07:37

There's some paperwork to fill out chain of command comments and an aircrew medical. You load it on aircrew selection in Trenton at some point, and if successful complete a more in-depth medical in Toronto. After that, it's just waiting. Overall, the process is pretty simple. The only part that takes much effort is preparing for aircrew selection, but they provide plenty of information on what types of things to practice and it can fit into gaps in an otherwise busy schedule.

Ben: 07:58

I used an app called CBAT or CBAT, and some other memory and math games to prepare.

Bryan: 08:03

I've heard from a lot of people who are getting ready for aircrew selection that CBAT is a super valuable tool to use in your preparation.

Ben: 08:11

Yeah. I'm not sure on this. It's my understanding that the selection kind of program we use is very similar to the Brit one. And I think that app was built for the Brits. Okay.

Ben: 08:20

So it works like pretty well as a tool. But, yeah, I found it valuable.

Bryan: 08:24

Yeah. That checks out. Was it competitive to get the SEP and make the switch to pilot?

Ben: 08:30

Yes and no. My understanding is you're only competing against other SEP candidates. And since there's generally not many candidates or spots, it can change quite a lot year to year. If there's one spot in one candidate, it's easy. If there's 4 candidates, it's very competitive.

Ben: 08:44

The 1st year I applied, there was only one spot for SEP and I didn't get it. Ironically, if I didn't have a degree, I would have had a better chance since I'd be applying to a different program with more spots. I did some policy reading before reapplying, and the COTP program did not specifically exclude NCMs that already have degrees. So I put that down as my second choice when I reapplied. I ended up getting an SCP spot that year.

Ben: 09:04

So I'm not sure how it would have worked if I'd been in and they went to my second choice of COTP, but it's worth investigating if you're going to apply through the SCP route.

Bryan: 09:11

Yeah, It's definitely sounds like it's worth having that in your back pocket.

Ben: 09:14

Yeah. Even my PSO wasn't sure that was allowed, but I, you know, I kind of like said, here's the policy. And he said, it looks like it's allowed. So we put it down. And as I said, I'm not sure how that would have worked out in the end, but it's worth a shot.

Bryan: 09:27

Well, in the worst case scenario is that they

Ben: 09:30

say no.

Bryan: 09:30

Right? At least you have that

Ben: 09:32

backup option. Yeah. Because the first time I applied, I only put one choice. So the second

Bryan: 09:36

time I put 2 and yeah. So you got through the selection process, you made it to flight training. How has your experience been on phase 1? It's

Ben: 09:43

been really good. In general, we're treated very much like adults. You have the material and your schedule and however you wanna get your studying and prep done is up to you. I think it makes a lot of sense doing it that way. It seems like disciplined self study is a large part of the pilot profession writ large outside of formal courseware.

Ben: 09:58

I can see how that might be challenging for people newer to the military though. Most pilot candidates have done university and are going to be proficient at studying and learning theory, but that may not be the case for learning and solidifying hands and feet skills or rapid decision making. In my experience on entry level training, both in soft and infantry, there's lots of focus on repetition of the basics and how to build good muscle memory, both through deliberate practice and visualization. And that aspect is largely left up to the student to figure out for themselves on phase 1, and maybe something they don't have much experience with unless they played competitive sports or something similar.

Bryan: 10:30

Yeah. I think you're right. Most people who come to flight training at some point have already like, even just to get through the various tests of selection, they've done a bunch of self study and have gotten themselves into the book somewhat. But that learning that physical side of flying and the hands and feet skills, that's, like, probably a new skill set unless, like you, they had a previous trade that involved that or, like you said, maybe sports or something like that. That's actually a really good example as well.

Ben: 10:57

Yeah. Sometimes you think, like, I am a fast learner, but there's different types of learning. And you might have the ability, but you might not have the techniques or procedures or or experience to learn different types of skills.

Bryan: 11:08

Yeah. I think it's probably really important to show up humble with that in mind. Like, show up realizing that this is a new skill set. It's gonna have a learning curve to it. I'm not gonna get this right out of the gate kind of thing.

Ben: 11:21

Yeah. You need to be prepared that you might have been really good at everything you've done thus far, but you're gonna run into something you're not good at and and be able to work through that.

Bryan: 11:29

Yeah. For sure. And and that's actually true of flight training as time goes on because every step you make it, you're into another step of people who've made it this far. And now, like, you're getting into a group of people where, like, yeah, everybody has been amongst the best of their application pool and then of making it through the previous phase and all those things. Right?

Bryan: 11:46

So it's just something that as time goes on, you have to become more and more humble. Yeah. Speaking of the learning curve, have you found it to be steep?

Ben: 11:54

Yes, but manageable. The full flying course is less than 15 hours unless you need review flights or extra practice or something. So there really isn't much time to solidify skills before learning the next thing and you're expected to improve fairly quickly with that minimal practice. That being said, it seems like the point of the course is just to lay, the foundation for future training, not to make you an expert flying this aircraft. There's times where I felt like I was barely keeping up, but really that's just a sign of course efficiency.

Ben: 12:20

It's a lot of fun, but at the end of the day, it is a job. So if it feels like a lot of work, that's okay.

Bryan: 12:25

Yeah. I think you've said a couple important things there. First of all, that feeling of barely keeping up, like you said, it's pretty much intentionally designed that way. You use the term course efficiency, and that's exactly what it is. These courses don't have any fat.

Bryan: 12:39

That's all been trimmed. It's literally, like, what is the fastest pace that we can safely get people from start to end and have them be proficient all the way through without having a bunch of people fail because this is too fast paced.

Ben: 12:53

Yeah, exactly. If you want to do it at an enjoyable pace, you're more than welcome to pay for it on your own. Yeah. But since it's a job, you need to, like, do it at the fastest pace that's reasonable.

Bryan: 13:03

That's right. And, like, as much as the flying, there are gonna be days where it's, like, so fun. Like, I had an instructor who used to say, Pete's working for 11. When we he's walking back from a flight, and I'd be like,

Ben: 13:13

yeah.

Bryan: 13:13

That that's right. This is great. But there are days where it is it is work, either when you're studying on the ground or sometimes you'll come down from a flight and you are working your butt off the whole time just to keep up, and it is work sometimes for sure.

Ben: 13:25

And if you show up with that, kind of intention that, like, this is work and this is my job and I need to approach it that way, and then it ends up being fun, that's great. But if it ends up being a bit of a grind, that's fine too.

Bryan: 13:36

Yeah. Absolutely. Can you take us through a day in the life of a phase one student? Sure.

Ben: 13:42

The course starts with around 2 weeks of ground school, most of which is self study. They give you a laptop with all the lessons and you go through them at your own pace with some in person review lessons and other topics throughout. There's a test at the end and while it's not easy, there's plenty of time and material to be well prepared. After that, you generally stay with the same flight instructor who on this course are all civilians. Daily routine would change depending on when my flight was scheduled.

Ben: 14:04

Ideally, I review my notes in the morning, visualize any maneuvers that were giving me trouble and the procedures for the new material. I'd meet with the instructor for around an hour to do the theory lesson, then prepare for the flight itself, which would take maybe half an hour or 45 minutes. The flights are generally a bit over an hour and there's a short debrief after that. After a bit of a mental cool down, I'd do some drills to solidify the hands and feet skills I just practiced, then go over the material from the next day in detail. You have a lot of freedom to set your own schedule.

Ben: 14:30

Most days you could limit your work to only during normal business hours, but you can just as easily take a few hours off in the afternoon and practice more in the evening. On weekends, I'd skim the upcoming lessons and make some rough notes so it wasn't as much work during the week. It's also important to take time off and relax.

Bryan: 14:45

I think that that is a really good method to the point that I would say listeners who are, have not done phase 1 flight training yet or getting ready to do flight training, pay attention to how that day was structured. Because I like that you've you've got a good level of intensity, but it seems to be well paced. And a good level of like, it is really important, like, every single flight you need to be going through this. You need to set up a pattern to your day. This is how I prepare.

Bryan: 15:11

This is how I digest the flight that I just did. This is how I turn around now and get ready for the next flight. And it's you kind of drop into a rhythm. And I think establishing that early on in your flight training really pays dividends.

Ben: 15:24

Yeah. I did that at the beginning of course. I kinda wrote down some stuff on post it notes of the process I was gonna follow, and I tweaked it a little bit as we went on. But now I just have an exact process I follow starting about if I can manage it about 2 hours before a flight. Mhmm.

Bryan: 15:38

And I

Ben: 15:38

just follow that process every time when it's worked out.

Bryan: 15:40

Yeah. I always found getting almost like ritualistic about my pre and post flight stuff. It just puts you in a groove. And I think that being in that groove for flight training especially is is a really good thing.

Ben: 15:51

And you can really tell, like, mentally, you can tell when you're, like, in the groove or when you when you just, even though you know this stuff, if you just don't feel as prepared, like you can really tell the difference.

Bryan: 16:00

Yeah. A 100%. So what would you say has been your biggest challenge on phase 1? The biggest challenge for

Ben: 16:08

me was just mentally holding onto all the information. There isn't enough practice time in the airplane for things to become instinctual and there's plenty of procedures and details to remember. So without deliberate work, it's really easy to get things, even if you thought you had solidly learned them, especially if there's a few days in between flights due to weather or even the weekend. We had a period of 3 weeks where it only flew 2 lessons due to weather. So keeping skill fate at bay is a challenge.

Bryan: 16:31

When you get a boat of bad weather, which sometimes out here can last for a week or 2, it can be very, very challenging.

Ben: 16:38

And you do you do get a review flight if it's been a I I think it's 7 days since you've flown. So that is definitely useful. Yeah. But, I mean, if it's been 6 days, you're moving on to the next lesson. And even that review flight is is good, but still, you need to know all this stuff when you get there.

Bryan: 16:53

Yeah, for sure. And it's funny when you're on that 6th day, you're almost hoping for one more day of bad weather because, like, that review flight starts to look pretty tempting after a week. Right. So if that's your biggest challenge, what have you done to overcome it?

Ben: 17:06

So although there isn't much practice time in the airplane, there's a few other ways to make things stick. They have a cockpit mock up with switches and whatnot that you're allowed to use basically anytime. So I'd practice my checklist and emergencies in there pretty often, but rarely for very long. I found kind of the repetition more valuable than long study periods. I'd try to do things as fast as I could without looking, not because that's at all how I do it in the plane, but because it made it instinctual and allowed me to free up mental capacity for flying the plane or communicating during an emergency.

Ben: 17:35

That's a lesson I learned initially in the infantry, but we did the same thing in soft. In the infantry, we would race each other to take apart and assemble our rifles in total darkness. You'd never rush to take apart a rifle in the field in the dark, but that level of confidence and intuitiveness you built meant that doing the drills took less mental effort. So even if you were distracted or fatigued, you wouldn't make mistakes. There's also even if you were distracted or fatigued, you wouldn't make mistakes.

Ben: 17:54

There's also visualization or what pilots call chair flying. Basically just close your eyes and imagine doing a maneuver or procedure while moving your hands and feet as required. This allows your mind to rehearse something without doing it. It's a different type of learning than just reviewing or memorizing notes. We had a class on visualization, but after that, you're mostly on your own for how and when to apply it.

Ben: 18:13

So my prior experience helped a lot there too. And lastly, I brought my computer out with Microsoft Flight SIM on it. I found it like a more generic version of visualization. The specifics and feel of the plane are totally different, but you can go through a full flight. And that helped me realize when I thought I had a procedure memorized and therefore didn't need to terra fly it, but actually I forgot a little power setting or some other detail.

Ben: 18:35

It's important if you're going to do that though, when using a sim game, not to build bad habits. I wouldn't recommend trying to learn the material on your own ahead of time because if you learn it wrong, you're going to have to like go back and change those habits before learning it correctly.

Bryan: 18:51

Yeah. A couple of things there. I like the idea of what you were saying about doing things, like, as fast as you can. It's kind of that mantra of train hard, fight easy. Yeah.

Bryan: 19:01

Right? Like, add the stress in training, and then hopefully that will free up your ability to think and conduct yourself even in when you're in like the heat of an emergency or something like that.

Ben: 19:11

Yeah. And there's like there's a couple of different mantras for training. And one of the big ones is train as you fight or really just meaning training in a realistic manner. And that's good, but sometimes it's good to push it way past realistic just to, like, really solidify skills. Mhmm.

Bryan: 19:25

The other thing that you said that I completely agree with is the importance of chair flying. We've said it a few times on the show before, but I don't think it can be said enough. I don't think I did very much chair flying when I was a civilian doing civilian flight training. I don't know if I just didn't know about it or if I was lazier back then or whatever. But I know that during my time in the military, chair flying was absolutely key to my success, and I think it just gives you that opportunity to go through procedures over and over again until you're you are confident at least procedurally.

Bryan: 19:57

I know where I'm gonna turn my head. I know where I'm gonna put my hands. I know the next thing I'm gonna do and the next thing I'm gonna do. And then when you get to the airplane, it's way less difficult to now put yourself through it for real.

Ben: 20:08

Yeah. And you see visualization, like, we did a a huge amount in soft. You see it in high level sports. Yeah. I think it came out of high level sports.

Ben: 20:16

Mhmm. And the thing that I found we got a little bit of, but the like, how do you actually do that? Like, what does that look like? You can say, close your eyes and pretend you're flying, but like, how do you approach doing that? That could be the tricky thing.

Ben: 20:28

So kind of the lesson that I took away is to, like, only do very, very small chunks. You're not going to chair fly an entire, like even at 20 minutes of flying or something, you're gonna chair fly a minute or even less than that.

Bryan: 20:42

Yeah. Take it in like chunks of, like I remember in Moose Jaw, I used to actually have a chair in front of like the cockpit poster, and I would chair fly like the pre flight. So I'm going to pre flight this chair as if it's I'm going to visualize all the little things I'm going to check. Okay, that's done. Break.

Bryan: 21:01

Okay. Now I'm going to chair fly this check or I'm going to chair fly this procedure, but you're right. Like I never sat there and essentially went through a flight. Like that would be really difficult to do.

Ben: 21:11

And then the other thing is I like to kind of, as my prep before a flight or something is the last thing I'll visualize is just feeling of like taxiing back towards the apron, like feeling like things went well, which just put me in that good attitude. And I even did that just before our written test. I just like closed my eyes and visualized before they were handing out the test of just like looking at the questions and things making sense. No idea what the questions would be, but you try to put yourself in that feeling of success and and that can have huge like impact.

Bryan: 21:43

Yeah. That's almost bordering on positive self talk as well. It's not quite self talk, but it's like that same idea of, like, I'm gonna put positive things in my brain here, that lead me to success.

Ben: 21:55

Yeah, exactly. They're, like, very related.

Bryan: 21:57

Mhmm. The last thing, which I thought you said that was very smart was the importance of the limitations of using, like, a flight sim or something like that. I used to when I was doing low level nav trips in Moose Jaw, this was 2,011, so technology was a little more limited. But we had Google Earth, and I would basically follow my route on Google Earth and, like, look for landmarks and things like that. But realizing, of course, it's gonna look different out there, and it's gonna feel different.

Bryan: 22:25

And this is only helpful to a certain extent. Same thing with, like you said, with the flight sim. Like, there are certain things procedurally it might help you with, but, like, it would be a very bad idea to take that and be, like, well, I'm gonna learn I'm gonna go ahead. I'm gonna learn the rest of this course and do it make it so I can do it perfectly in Microsoft flight sim because that's just not gonna help you.

Ben: 22:43

Yeah. Yeah. Exactly. It's it, like, it it feels so realistic, but it is. And you get in plane, and it just everything works totally different.

Bryan: 22:49

Yeah. A 100%. That's even true going from, like, a full flight simulator with full motion and then going into an airplane. Like, those flight sims are high fidelity enough that you can get licensed in them. But even those don't fully feel like the real aircraft.

Ben: 23:03

Yeah. Yeah. What has been your most fun or exciting experience so far? I really enjoyed my pre solo lesson. It's the one time on course where you practice the same thing over and over in the plane and the feeling of confidence and skills growing exponentially throughout that flight is pretty fantastic.

Ben: 23:20

The wind kept becoming more gusty and unstable throughout my lesson, which unfortunately meant it was out of limits at the end, and I couldn't do my solo flight right away. But having progressively more challenging conditions as my skills improved was pretty great.

Bryan: 23:31

It is fun to go out on those days where it's a little more challenging because it's great to go out on a day where the air is perfectly smooth, and every little adjustment you make is, like, scientific. And you can see, like, the exact correspondence of, like, oh, if I change the power setting like this and I raise the nose like this, then this happens, and it all happens exactly like it would in a book. But it's also really, really good for you as a pilot to go out in those challenging conditions as long as they're not, like, way beyond what you can handle, and they stretch you a little bit. You experience that growth in terms of what you can handle and your confidence and all and your skills and all that kind of stuff.

Ben: 24:08

It's cool to see, like, days where you go for a flight, and you know that earlier in the course, it would have been canceled because it's the winds are too much for you. But now you can handle it without assistance. That's a pretty cool feeling.

Bryan: 24:18

Yeah. And that you have the confidence that I can handle this. Yeah. Yeah. What skills and mindset from being an operator do you believe are transferable to your training as a pilot?

Ben: 24:28

There's a lot of crossover in the men hold performance aspect right down to very similar training material. Early on in operator training, I was taught visualization, goal setting, activation control, also known as tuck breathing and self talk. Visualization and breathing in particular are heavily incorporated into the training for shooting medical skills, mission planning, prep, and sample collection. And I've used them heavily throughout my career. The pilot course has a similar classroom training package and brought in an excellent instructor with experience coaching top level athletes, but it's not incorporated into the rest of the training as much.

Ben: 24:59

The ability to realize when you've lost some situational awareness, scan and breathe and move forward without letting past mistakes mentally weigh you down is super important in both jobs. There's plenty of information on these skills online and I think it's valuable to practice them and figure out what works for you before showing up to course. You can practice visualization and deliberate rehearsals on basically anything. When cooking breakfast, you can visualize all the individual steps before you get out of bed, go to the kitchen, and this time do the same thing, but manipulating the pan and the flipper, then actually crack an egg and cook it with as much speed, perfection, and situational awareness as you can manage, critiquing yourself afterwards on what tiny improvements could be made. It might seem silly, but that's basically how skills are taught in both soft and the infantry.

Ben: 25:40

And I found that approach helpful on flight training as well. And if you practice that on things you already know how to do, then you're gonna be able to apply it on new skills you don't know how to do yet.

Bryan: 25:49

Well, and yeah. And we already talked about the importance of visualization and just how much that can lead to success. And I just think that pays huge dividends. The other thing I think you said that was really important is that ability to quickly move forward without letting your mistakes weigh you down. That skill in flight training is huge.

Bryan: 26:07

And if you can't do that, like, it could very quickly torpedo your flight and possibly your career as a pilot.

Ben: 26:14

And it's gonna happen. Like, you'll, like, I don't know why you make a radio call just the tiny and a spit wrong. That doesn't matter at all. But then that's what you're thinking about. Yeah.

Ben: 26:22

So you have to realize, like, no, I'm thinking about that where you said you'd be moving on. So you are gonna get tripped up, but you have to realize it and then move on.

Bryan: 26:32

Yeah. And even if, like, you consider yourself, you know, hopefully, you've got a healthy level of confidence. You may consider yourself pretty good. You have to remember though, you are a student, you are learning, and learning inevitably involves making mistakes. It's great if things are going smooth, but you will make mistakes and you have to learn like, okay, That wasn't ideal, but it's not the end of the world, and I'm gonna focus on what comes next.

Bryan: 26:55

I think that's one of the things they teach in mental performance coaching. Right? What's What's important now? Yeah. Exactly.

Bryan: 27:01

What's important now or when. And you can you

Ben: 27:03

can go over your mistakes once you're back on the ground, but when you're up in the air, it's it's on to the next thing.

Bryan: 27:08

Yeah, absolutely. So we just talked a little bit about what you think the overlaps will be in your previous career in this one. What do you think the biggest differences will be? And have you experienced any culture shock moving from the special forces world to the pilot community?

Ben: 27:23

So, there's a couple of little ones. After 18 years as an NCM, it's rather strange to be called SIR. And I haven't worn a uniform around a base in quite a long time, so looking for rank and saluting again took some adjusting. But on a deeper level, soft is set up to make decisions, then action them in a timely and frankly fast manner. They need to be well considered and planned, but once a decision has been made, everything progresses very quickly.

Ben: 27:46

And that applied to operations as well as administration. For example, if someone need to be removed from a course for family reasons, it was not unusual for them to be on a flight that day or the next. Decisions would be made by phone, email, or a 2 minute chat in the hallway, and paperwork would happen later if need be. From my limited experience, it feels like the air force is much more procedural driven. It does make sense.

Ben: 28:06

Air safety incidents can be deadly, and aviation general has lots of experience to draw from on how to prevent them. Checklists exist for a reason, and they should be followed unless there's good cause to deviate. It can be frustrating for me when it feels like the focus is on following a procedure rather than on timely action when it comes to non flight areas. But I do understand that an organization's culture is built for a reason. It's not simple to apply it to some tasks, but not others.

Ben: 28:29

On a personal level, I started doing my ground checks a bit too fast, a bit too early and missed pulling the chalks and some other silly mistakes on one of my flights. So I do need to take on more of that culture and shift my thought process to being a bit more slow and methodical. I think most people at some point have rushed and forgot

Bryan: 28:46

to pull the chocks. I've done that. I remember back when I was doing my commercial pilot's license in a diamond katana and, the engine was started and everything, and I put the throttle up a bit and couldn't move and realized like, oh, crap, the chocks are still in. I had to shut the plane down and pull them. So it happens.

Ben: 29:04

I think especially amongst like, you know, like highly motivated people, we want to move as fast as we can and you inevitably hit your limit and need to draw back.

Bryan: 29:14

Yeah. They always, I think the saying is slow is smooth and smooth is fast, right? Yep. So the less mistakes that you make by rushing, you'll end up actually getting there faster in the end by just being slow and methodical.

Ben: 29:26

We had a slightly different take on that when I was learning and teaching shooting, and it was know when to be smooth and when to go fast. Okay. Because there's some things that just playing fast is fast.

Bryan: 29:37

Yeah. Well, and that's and that highlights the difference of the two worlds as well. Right? It's pretty rare in an aircraft that you don't have time to be like, okay, this is what's happening. This is what we're gonna do.

Bryan: 29:47

Here are the procedures, and we're gonna follow them.

Ben: 29:49

Like Yeah. Exactly. Even if you lose your engine, you have, what, like a minute?

intro: 29:54

Like, that's a lot of

Ben: 29:55

you can do a lot of things in a minute. Yeah. You know, you don't ever need to make a decision that you have, you know, less than 2 seconds to make.

Bryan: 30:02

Yeah. Even on the Aurora, we would do Sims where, like, the worst case scenarios were happening and we had to, like, ditch in the ocean or something. And I remember we there used to be some talk of, like, well, I would just do a quick ditch procedure, which is, like, here's my memorization of, like, the all of the very, very important things that I have to do, like, put on your helmet, lock your harness, and all these different things. And in the end, we realized, like, at least this was my personal this is Brian's experience. You pretty much always have time.

Bryan: 30:29

Hey, pull that checklist. Let's go through it quickly. And then, you know, now we're going into the water kind of thing.

Ben: 30:35

That's something, yeah, that's, I learned that on medical stuff as well. The first time you see a simulated, like really bad casualty and all sorts of stuff, it's you're, you're panicked. There's so much to do. There's so much to go on. But then you realize like, even if someone's not breathing, you have 5 minutes, maybe longer.

Ben: 30:54

You have 2 seconds to take a deep breath, calm yourself down, figure out what you're going to do and then do it. Even in situations that seem like some of the worst situations in the world, I never see paramedics run to a scene. They always walk. And I'd heard some countries when they teach emergency procedures, they'll teach to take a big deep breath before doing your emergency procedures. That's not taught on this course, but I think that's a valuable thing to do.

Ben: 31:18

Because if you were at a high level of stress, you're gonna make mistakes, but you you have time.

Bryan: 31:23

Yeah. It's also a part of, like, something you'll get into once you get into aircraft that are multi crew. There's a thing called CRM or crew resource management, and a big part of that is communication. It's about taking your time and making sure everybody knows what's going on. And during an emergency, there still is that CRM component.

Bryan: 31:40

Like, you still need to make sure that the person beside you knows what's going on. If you have people in the back, they know what's going on. It's not your, like, a 100% first priority. Like, obviously, you're gonna handle the emergency and the control of the aircraft are, like, your first priorities. But there's always time to approach things in a timely manner, stay calm, follow your procedures, inform your people.

Bryan: 32:01

Like you're not just scrambling around like, holy crap. You know, like Yeah,

Ben: 32:05

exactly. There's, there's more time to solve problems most of the time. You know, there's, there's very few things that need to be actioned within a second or 2. Everything else, you have a tiny bit of time to calm down, communicate, figure out your plan and action it.

Bryan: 32:20

Exactly. So I know you're still just finishing up phase 1, but what aircraft are you hoping to fly when you get your wings and why?

Ben: 32:29

So it still is quite a while before I need to put in my preferences. So I'm trying to keep an open mind, but rotary, either SARO or tactical interest me a lot. I've always enjoyed seeing the back of the helicopter watching the world fly by at low altitude, But it has been really great listening to your other guests and getting an idea of the other aspects of life in each fleet as opposed to just how it feels to fly in the aircraft.

Bryan: 32:49

Yeah. That's a big reason that I do this show actually is for people like you. People are going through the training system to try to give them an idea of what life is like on the fleets and not just when I went through, a lot of it was like, hey, the c 17 is big and cool. Like, that could be fun. But it's nice to know what is life actually like on those aircraft.

Bryan: 33:08

So that is, like, a big reason of why we do this. And that's why we're having this conversation as well so that people can learn about phase 1, so they can learn about if so the NCMs out there can learn about the special commissioning plan, if this is something that they'd like to approach.

Ben: 33:20

I will say every time I walk past the jet ranger, which is the training helicopter used for phase 3 rotary, I just go, I wanna fly that.

intro: 33:28

That was

Ben: 33:28

so much fun.

Bryan: 33:29

The jet ranger, from what I hear, is super cool and super challenging. Like, apparently, hovering and all of those kinds of things. Like, it has no autopilot, I I believe. Not a helicopter guy. But from what I hear, it's very challenging, but very fun.

Bryan: 33:42

Yeah. So we're gonna get into our last three questions that we try to ask every guest. What is the most important thing you do to keep yourself ready to succeed in flight training?

Ben: 33:53

I try to keep my mind as much as possible in learning mode, take the right amount of breaks both throughout the day and on weekends, sleeping enough and on a consistent schedule and having routines that prepare me well for the flight and solidify the lessons afterwards. The specifics of how you go about it can be largely personal, but creating some kind of plan and sticking to it for yourself really helps.

Bryan: 34:13

Yeah. You mentioned sleeping enough. That's such a critical one and it can be a point of stress sometimes for people in flight training. And sometimes once you have like one night where you couldn't sleep, like I had this happen to me personally, had one night where I couldn't sleep, and then that led to like months of being really stressed out about sleeping. So I don't mean to if anyone out there has issues with sleeping, I don't want to pile on that stress.

Bryan: 34:33

But getting into, like, a healthy sleep regime, practicing good sleep hygiene, and getting that sufficient sleep, it's so important. And as I go on in life, I realize for everything, like for physical training, for flight training, just for your daily emotional regulation, for so many reasons, getting enough sleep is so important.

Ben: 34:51

Yeah. Even I'd allow myself to sleep in a little bit on Saturdays, like a little bit.

Bryan: 34:55

Mhmm.

Ben: 34:55

But on Sundays, I'd still be getting up at 6, and I hate mornings. I'd generally get up way later. But during flight training, if I have a 8 o'clock flight and we need to brief at 7, well, I want to be awake for an hour before I need to perform. So I've just kept that consistent schedule throughout. And then it means the days that it is early, while it's just a normal schedule, I don't need to wake up extra early.

Ben: 35:16

And then yeah, there's some days where I slept pretty poorly, but because I had kind of enough consistency in sleep, I woke up that morning, did an assessment on how I was actually feeling

Bryan: 35:26

Mhmm.

Ben: 35:26

And was, like, you know, sufficient to be able to to perform.

Bryan: 35:29

Yeah. Everyone's gonna have days where, oh, I didn't sleep well last night. Like, that's just a normal part of life. Yep. And, like, again, going back to my Aurora days, very regularly, we're all human beings.

Bryan: 35:38

Some of us have young kids, whatever. You'll meet up at before the flight, and sometimes it's 4 in the morning, 3 in the morning. And you might say, hey, guys. Like, I'm I'm a bit tired today. I didn't sleep well last night, or it's 3 in the morning.

Bryan: 35:50

And, obviously, it's difficult in one day to shift your sleep schedule to that. So we're gonna have to be conscious of that and back each other up. And that's just another part of crew resource management and another part of just sort of communicating as a good crew member. But, yeah, everyone is gonna have days on flight training whenever that they don't get the best sleep in the world. But hopefully, like you said, you're getting enough good sleep.

Bryan: 36:10

That one bad day is really not the end of the world.

Ben: 36:12

And if you on phase 1 anyway, if if you didn't get enough sleep, like, you aren't forced to fly. Like, you can it's not a big deal. But, you know, trying to keep yourself in that in that learning mode and not taking those breaks. Because anytime you have a day off, maybe there's another 2 due to weather, like, it starts to get more challenging. Mhmm.

Bryan: 36:30

Yeah. That's an important point too, that you can always just, especially during training, you can always do this during operations. During training, you can always say, I did not sleep last night. I'm not at my best. I can't fly today.

Ben: 36:41

Yeah, exactly.

Bryan: 36:42

Hopefully that's not happening all the time. That leads to bigger conversations sometimes, but you should always know when to say, hey, I can't fly today. Exactly. What has been the biggest piece of wisdom you've gained so far that you would pass on to future phase 1 students? Enjoy the challenge and trust in yourself.

Bryan: 37:01

If you pass selection, you

Ben: 37:02

can definitely pass course. Days will feel hard, but that isn't necessarily signifying a lack of ability and work on deliberate rehearsal and visualization before coming to course if those are concepts you aren't particularly experienced with.

Bryan: 37:14

I really like that point about if you pass selection, you can pass the course. Selection is literally intended to find who can pass. So every step you make it along the way, it should add your confidence that, like, I meant to be here. I can do this. Same thing goes for before you go to a flight test.

Bryan: 37:33

This is something that I used to say to people all the time. The pretest and the flight test are always the same levels. There's no like, if you needed to have level threes across the board for the pretest, you won't have to make level fours on the test. They're gonna have the exact same standards that you need to meet. So, like, when you go for a test, you've literally already passed the test.

Bryan: 37:52

You've done it the flight before, so you just have to go out there and do it again.

Ben: 37:55

Exactly. You just, yeah, you're, you're set up very well for success. You just, you need to put in the work and you need to do the stuff. But yeah, there's no one trying to fail you.

Bryan: 38:04

Yeah. A 100%. So for our last question, what advice would you give to someone who's interested in switching trades to pilot, particularly someone who could make use of the SCP?

Ben: 38:16

Yeah. If you're thinking about it, just go for it. It's really not that much effort to apply. Or crew selection is pretty fun. I mean, apart from the pressure to do well.

Ben: 38:24

And if you're looking to apply through SCP, then definitely dig into the policy and put CEO TP down as a second choice, if you can.

Bryan: 38:31

And talk to your PSO. And talk to your PSO. All right, Ben, I just want to thank you so much for taking your time out of your weekend to be here. Your test is coming up to finish the course in this coming week. So I really appreciate you being here and just taking some time to chat.

Bryan: 38:47

Thank you.

Ben: 38:48

Yeah. And thanks again, Brian, for doing this podcast. I've listened to most of the episodes. I'm gonna go back and relisten as I'm coming up on the time where I need to, select the fleet that I, you know, would like to go to. And I've found it a really valuable resource to get some insight into the air force and the training system before I'm actually here.

Ben: 39:04

For sure, man. Thanks.

Bryan: 39:05

Thanks. Okay, everybody. That wraps up our chat with Ben about switching from special operations forces to pilot. For our next episode, we're gonna sit down with my old buddy, Mike Behring, to talk all about what it's like to deploy at Christmas for a very special pilot project podcast Christmas episode. Do you have any questions or comments about anything you've heard?

Bryan: 39:26

Would you or someone you know make a great guest on the show, or do you have a great idea for an episode of the show? You can reach out to us at the pilot project podcast atgmail.com or on all social media at at pod pilot project. We'd like to thank you for tuning in and as always ask for your help with some growth by following the big three that's like and follow on social media, share with your friends, and follow and rate us 5 stars wherever you get your podcasts. That's all for now. Thanks for listening.

Bryan: 39:55

Keep the blue side up. See you.