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Intro/Outro: 00:30

Fuel and ignition switches. On. RPM switches. Set. PD switches.

Intro/Outro: 00:35

Normal. Doors and hatches. Closed. Lay down. Stroblade.

Intro/Outro: 00:39

On. Research check-in. Complete with your left. Engineer. Start number two.

Intro/Outro: 00:43

Starting two. Wing three one zero ten, pilot project podcast, clear takeoff runway three one left.

Bryan: 00:58

Alright. We're ready for departure here at the pilot project podcast, the best source for stories and advice from RCAF and mission aviation pilots brought to you by Skies Magazine. I'm your host, Brian Morrison. With me today is retired fighter pilot, Dan Alf McWilliams. Dan, welcome to the show, and thanks so much for being here.

Dan: 01:15

Thanks, Brian. I'm very happy to be here as well.

Bryan: 01:18

Yeah. I'm really glad to have you. So before we begin, let's go over Dan's bio. Dan grew up in a military family. His father played a huge role in his eventual flying career.

Bryan: 01:27

At age 14, having been forced to join air cadets, Dan flew in the backseat of a t 33 with his father flying in Cold War West Germany. That 20 flight, which included a touch and go in LAR and a turning mock combat with a Luftwaffe f four, sank the hook in Dan's cheek and made his career path crystal clear. He started an applied science degree at the Royal Military College in Kingston, Ontario in 1976, graduating in 1980. At the time, there were no delays in pilot training. His primary flight training, survival, and other preparation took place prior to RMC grad, and by summer of nineteen eighty, lieutenant McWilliams was on his tutor wings course.

Bryan: 02:03

Upon graduating, Dan really wanted to fly c f one o fours in Germany like his father, but they were being retired as were the Vudus as the new c f 18 Hornets were being phased in. Grudgingly, Dan accepted the relegation to a first tour as a qualified flying instructor at the big two in Moose Jaw. Coincidentally, his father was also assigned as a QFI for his last military posting. So over the next few years, Dan learned tremendous lessons from his father along with the other experience associated with being a QFI. In hindsight, being a QFI and arriving in Cold Lake in 1985 for fighter training with two thousand flying hours already in his back pocket was a tremendous help.

Bryan: 02:38

During his training on the c f five, Wings Barcracks delayed his training and he held over on the t 33 at base flight flying the vintage t 33 for six months then completed the c f five and c f 18 courses. His first fighter tour was reopening four three three squadron with 12 new Hornets. Many challenges ensued as everyone adapted to the new aircraft, learned how to hold NORAD alert, and also filled a new role as rapid reactor reinforcements in Central Europe. Dan ended up spending many weeks on exchange with four zero nine Squadron, a Canadian Hornet unit based in Baden, Solingen, where he had attended high school as a military dependent. Four three three deployed everywhere including Lahr, West Germany, Maple Flag in Cold Lake, Red Flag in Las Vegas, NORAD counter narcotics alert in Greenwood, Nova Scotia, and many other tasks.

Bryan: 03:23

Overall, he spent ten years in Beggaville flying with both four thirty three and four twenty five squadrons and a stint in wing operations as an ops officer and simulator instructor. He was sent to the Gulf War in October 1990, spending five months in the joint HQ in Bahrain. His stint in Bagotville was interrupted by a year long posting to the third line maintenance facility in Mirabel, Quebec, where Dan flew test flights and ferry flights on c f eighteens coming out for major maintenance and advised on c f 18 software upgrades for the aircraft and simulators. He also dealt with airframe fatigue life management and was the OPI for the c f 18 aircraft operating instructions. At twenty years of service, major McWilliams retired getting a civilian job as a supervisor for c f eighteen software engineers in Mirabel with CAE Electronics.

Bryan: 04:07

He was soon asked to work as a test pilot at CAE's main plant in Montreal working on projects including a MiG 29 with artificial intelligence adversaries and the NATO flying training in Canada simulators, all five simulators from design through to installation testing. Dan then moved on to instruct and fly on the Challenger six zero four with Bombardier in Montreal, then was lead subject matter expert on the upgraded CF 18 simulator project. He moved back to Bagotville, this time as the civilian manager of the mission training center in Bagotville. To cap off his career, he downshifted to work as a classroom instructor at Quebec's Provincial Aviation College, CQFA. There he taught young pilot trainees in French.

Bryan: 04:46

After retirement in 2019, Dan was asked to come back part time conducting distance learning at CQFA while living four fifty kilometers away near Montreal, where he and his wife Francine of thirty five years live near their children and first grandchild. Today, we're going to talk about Dan's book, Tutor Tales, starting with his time as a student and then his time instructing on the tutor. So before we really get into things, what made you wanna write a book about your flying experiences?

Dan: 05:12

I'd always wanted to write a book. For the longest time, I thought maybe I'd like to write fiction, but I can't come up with any really good plot ideas. So I've kind of shelved that idea. I'm a bit of a nerd. Full disclosure, I build model airplanes, and so I would post them online.

Dan: 05:28

And as part of the posting of model aircraft, I would tell little stories here and there on the websites about, oh, this particular aircraft and what happened here and a little anecdote there. Somebody said, you really should write a book. So the pandemic hit and I thought, why not? So I wrote a book and it turned out huge. It it was like way, way, way too long to be one book.

Dan: 05:51

So I chopped it in two. And so the first one became Tutor Tales and I've got a second one called Supersonic Stories. So so that's what the reason was. It was mainly because people seem to enjoy the stories and I thought, let's do it.

Bryan: 06:06

That's awesome. And I guess the other cool part of that is it kinda leaves a legacy for your kids and your grandkids as well.

Dan: 06:12

Oh, that was definitely part of it. I I wanted to be able to explain this stuff to them. And the big thing that I did with the books was I really tried to make it approachable. I tried to make it so that enthusiasts and people who had no clue about aviation could read it and go, oh, that's what it's really like because I wanted to put the reader in the cockpit.

Bryan: 06:34

Yeah. And I think you did a great job of that as well.

Dan: 06:37

Thank you.

Bryan: 06:38

What did you find was the most challenging part of writing these books?

Dan: 06:42

Most challenging actually, was, reducing the number of, words and chopping it down to something more concise. I But at the same time, I've always, as a teacher for basically my entire life, I've always worked at trying to make things simple, short, concise and understandable. I don't like long run on such as huge paragraphs. You just lose the reader if you do that. So I I worked hard on making it concise.

Bryan: 07:12

So that must have been quite an editing process.

Dan: 07:14

It was. I I did, pretty much 95% of the editing myself. My father was extremely strict about grammar. He would get on my case about everything. And I I really learned to write properly.

Dan: 07:27

And having grown up bilingual English and French from when I was born, I, naturally have a talent and a and a passion for language. So I I did the editing myself.

Bryan: 07:39

Something I appreciate is you're very honest in your books about your own mistakes, which as I know isn't easy when you're making your story public. Did you find it difficult to display this vulnerability?

Dan: 07:50

I think, when somebody tries to present a facade where they make no mistakes, where they are basically golden and nothing can go wrong, they're lying because everybody's human. And I consider myself to be a relatively competent pilot. I know I've done well. And yet at the same time, I've done some really stupid things. And sometimes when I talk with my students at CQFA and other places, I'll tell them, here's what I did wrong.

Dan: 08:19

Here's how it happened. Here's why it happened, and here's what I should have done instead. And it's much more interesting for students to learn from somebody else's experience that maybe it can prevent an accident one day.

Bryan: 08:32

And that's something that's kind of baked into flying culture too, hopefully. Right? In a healthy organization is learning from each other's mistakes and telling those stories.

Dan: 08:40

Definitely.

Bryan: 08:41

Yeah. Do you have any plans to write more in the future?

Dan: 08:46

I do have some stories about my time flying gliders when I was a teenager. I'm thinking of putting them together, but, haven't really decided whether I want to do that. And if somebody comes up with a great plot for a fiction book, I'm all ears because I can write. I just I just can't come up with the plot.

Bryan: 09:04

Yeah. Okay. So let's dive into some specifics about your book, Tudor Tales. It's an autobiographical book that describes your early days in Germany as well as your time as a student in the flight training system system and finishes with your time as an instructor on the tutor. So I've read your books, and I think I know the answer, but the audience doesn't.

Bryan: 09:22

Where did aviation start for you?

Dan: 09:24

It started, I've been around aircraft since I was born. My father started as a navigator, and then he was cross trained to pilot when he could. So he was on c f one hundreds on Vudus and, then the one zero four. And, when we went to Germany, that's where it really sank in because I was 13 years old, stepped off the bus, and I could hear this whine and roar as four one zero fours came overhead and turned into the overhead brake. And I just looked up with my jaw dropping and going, wow.

Dan: 09:55

That is really cool. And I would sit by the runway and watch them go by. So that's where it all started. It was never something that was mysterious to me. It was something that was in my life.

Dan: 10:06

And after that t 33 ride in air cadets, it was like, no, there's no other choice.

Bryan: 10:11

Yeah. And it's interesting you mentioned the sound of a one zero four. I just happened to see a video this week of the last flying one zero four in Europe, and it talked about that distinctive whine and and roar as it goes by.

Dan: 10:24

And that Norwegian one zero four is actually a Canadian built c f one zero four that's been re reestablished in flying condition.

Bryan: 10:31

Oh, that's really cool. For the listeners, we've hunted down some audio so you can hear the distinctive whine of a c f one zero four in a high speed pass. So what was it like living in Germany as a teenager?

Dan: 10:51

It was it really brought home the Cold War here in Canada. We had no clue what it was like. It was fun going there because there was so much history. Within 20 or 30 kilometers of the base in Baden where we lived, I could go every weekend, my dad would bring out a one and fifty thousand scale map, and he'd say, okay. Which castle we're gonna go to this weekend?

Dan: 11:13

And I'd find one on the map, and I'd help him. And I actually learned a map read from that because he'd get me to map read and navigate and take us up these winding back roads to the top of the hill where the ruins that were built in November were still there. And we'd explore the castle, and it was a lot of fun that way. But on the other hand, drive down the Audubon, and there were tank columns, green military vehicles. There was barbed wire everywhere.

Dan: 11:41

There were guard posts. It was right in your face that this was a a war potentially could start at any second.

Bryan: 11:50

Mhmm. Did you have any feelings as a kid about, like, the possibility that your dad would have to respond if war broke out?

Dan: 11:59

Definitely. Yeah. We were a little bit insulated from it, but there was when we lived on the base the last two years we were there, right outside my bedroom window was this siren that would go off at, 3AM. And then the speaker would start saying, this is a snowball. All personnel report to the base immediately.

Dan: 12:22

And I would think, okay. Is this real? Is this an exercise? I don't know. And unbeknownst to me, some of the, some of the dependents, the mothers, the the children, were planning to drive to Switzerland if war ever broke out so that they would be protected and safe during a war in in Central Europe.

Bryan: 12:43

Wow. That's crazy to think of having to have those kinds of contingencies in place. That's wild.

Dan: 12:49

Yeah.

Bryan: 12:50

So we've touched on this a bit, but can you tell us the story of your first flight in a fighter jet?

Dan: 12:55

That was so cool. I I remember it like it was yesterday. I'm in this oversized flight suit. It's a hot July day. The sun's beating down.

Dan: 13:05

But of course, in Germany at the time, a lot of pollution, so it's really hazy. And, it's strapped into the aircraft, and I'm sitting there feeling really claustrophobic in the back of this jet. Dad comes up the ladder, looks at me, says, are you okay? He gives me the thumbs up. I said, yep.

Dan: 13:19

Fine, dad. And I realized he can't hear me because I have this mask on my face. And so he says, just nod. And I nodded. And okay.

Dan: 13:29

He started up. We we taxied out the the run down the runway. I'd been in the seven zero seven to get to and from Germany. And so I was used to acceleration, but this was like, oh, this thing accelerates really well. And we got airborne and then it's just this pure feel of power and freedom.

Dan: 13:49

All of a sudden I was just looking around and all I can see is beautiful German countryside and I could spot my house in the Rhine River, the the Black Forest next to us, and it was just surreal. It was it's an experience that I never expected. It was way better than I thought it would be.

Bryan: 14:06

Yeah. That sounds transformative, and it's so cool that you got to do that with your dad as well.

Dan: 14:12

Yeah. There was another guy that same day who flew with his father. There were six of us total, two of which had, one zero four and t 33 pilot fathers.

Bryan: 14:22

Wow. So that flight inspired you to be a fighter pilot, but the odds were against you. Can you explain what the chances were at the time of getting to be a fighter pilot?

Dan: 14:31

Oh, the short story the short answer is less than 1%. And, the numbers were about every year. And my dad explained this to me because on the drive back from there, I said, I really wanna do this. And he he got his pipe out and, you know, sat down and said, you'll probably never make it. He said, you'll apply.

Dan: 14:52

You'll be one of 3,500 people who apply every year. You'll probably get rejected because half of them get rejected for medical reasons. And then you go to your selection and you'll probably not be selected because only 450 out of the 1,700 are then fit pilot. Out of that four fifty, a bunch fail out in basic training on basic officer training. And then you'll get to the primary flying school in the Musketeer, the little propeller airplane, and you'll probably fail the course because fifty percent of the people fail that course.

Dan: 15:23

So now you get to Moose Jaw, if you get to Moose Jaw. There are a 75 students who graduate each year with your wings, and out of those 75, only 25 or so go fighters each year. So I said your chances are pretty much nil, so you better go to school and get a real job.

Bryan: 15:40

So twenty five out of three thousand five hundred each year managed to become fighter pilots.

Dan: 15:45

That's that's the numbers at the time.

Bryan: 15:47

That's wild. So you were undaunted by this or at least undaunted enough to press on, and you attended Royal Military College or RMC in 1976. What was it like back then to be a recruit and then a first year cadet?

Dan: 16:04

I hated it. I absolutely hated military college. I first of all, there are no women. So that was terrible. And I'd I'd skipped a couple years through school, so I was two years younger than everybody else.

Dan: 16:18

I was already a bit of a nerd and it was not a lot of fun. And the other thing is having had my mind or my attitude poisoned by being a military dependent on a on a frontline fighter base, I'd seen what people were like. I'd seen what the real military was like. And it was nothing like a military college. Absolutely nothing.

Dan: 16:38

And I just I've rebelled against it a little bit, but my dad had also told me, zip it, listen, do what they say and you'll get through it.

Bryan: 16:49

Yeah. Play the game. Right? Exactly. Yep.

Bryan: 16:53

And that's honestly solid advice still to anyone who is interested in being an air force pilot. You're still gonna have to go through basic officer training, which is essentially run as if you're all going into the army. They're gonna throw a lot of artificial stress at you with yelling and all kinds of crazy demands of your of your time and effort. And you have to keep that in your head the whole time. Like, hey.

Bryan: 17:17

You know, the when you get out of basic training, you get to the air force world, and especially once you get to the pilot world, there's gonna be nothing like that.

Dan: 17:24

Oh, it was such a different thing. And even the training world in the air force was far more human and normal, except in places where they were basically treating it like a selection process, where you were assumed guilty. You can't make it. And, oh, this one actually made it. Okay.

Dan: 17:44

I guess we'll grudgingly let him carry on to the next phase.

Bryan: 17:48

Right. And so that would have been phase your your primary flying school training?

Dan: 17:52

Yes. On the on the Beechcraft Musketeer, which was the aircraft before the current Grobe.

Bryan: 17:58

Okay. So speaking of that, you attended primary flying school in July 1978. Something I think trainees can really learn from you is you used a great deal of visualization and what we refer to as chair flying on this course. Can you explain your process and why you used it?

Dan: 18:12

I always do that. It started there, really. I would take my checklist. I'd sit in the cockpit. We had two of them that had no engines or electrical systems or anything else.

Dan: 18:22

They were we called them the static trainers. And every single night, I'd be in the hangar and I'd be going through the checks and not just practicing checks. I'd sit there and I'd think, where do I need to put the checklist so I won't drop it and I'd have to fish for it? And when do I flip the page? And it went to that extent where I was thinking, I'm taxiing out.

Dan: 18:43

What do I do with the checklist? So when it came to actually flying, I thought it through already, and that really, really helped.

Bryan: 18:52

Yeah. I'm a huge proponent of chair flying. I used it extensively, especially at Moose Jaw. Before I left, I had this I'm sure I've told this story before, but I had this, captain who I worked with at a at four hundred tactical helicopter squadron in Borden. And he told me, before you go out on every flight, you need to sit down, use a kitchen chair, or whatever you have, if you have better tools like a cockpit procedure trainer, whatever use that, but visualize every step, visualize strapping in, visualize the checks.

Bryan: 19:21

And if you make a mistake, start again until you can do that smoothly. And it will save you so much pain in the cockpit if you can do that work at home.

Dan: 19:29

Oh, definitely. The one thing it did not help with was self confidence and nervousness because before every flight in the Musketeer, I was convinced I was going to fail.

Bryan: 19:41

Why?

Dan: 19:42

I don't know. I just didn't have a lot of confidence in the fact that I could do it. And yet at the end of the course, I went back to RMC. I passed the course, so I was really happy about that. And when I got back to RMC, my dad called me not too long ago and he said, hey.

Dan: 19:58

You'll never guess who my new student is. He was teaching on the f five at the time. I said, no clue, dad. You'd tell me. And he said, lieutenant Holman or captain Holman.

Dan: 20:09

And I said, you mean my instructor from the course I just did? He goes, yep. He said, you told me he told me that you were the best student he ever had in Portage and you'd do fine in Moose Jaw.

Bryan: 20:21

That must have made you feel good.

Dan: 20:22

And I just, Oh, I went, Are are you serious? He goes, Yeah. I'm not surprised either because you were really good when we flew together in the L 19 and the T 33. You you catch on quickly. And I said, Wish you'd told me that before Portage died.

Dan: 20:37

I didn't want you going in with an inflated ego because then you wouldn't have done as well.

Bryan: 20:42

Yeah. I mean, he has a point. So after having a chance to fly in fighters with your dad, you've mentioned that it was on the CT one thirty four for primary flying school. What was it like climbing into one of those after you'd been used to flying in fighters?

Dan: 20:55

Yeah. It was a it sort of, played some tricks on me. At at one point, we were I'd done the basic stuff, takeoff landing, practice force landings, things like that. And now we're into aerobatics, so I'm gonna be doing a roll. And I did the first one.

Dan: 21:11

We have to do this big, long, protracted stall spin aerobatic check. So you do these clearing turns, a couple of 80 degree turns, make sure nobody's around. And then you with the Musketeer, it had just about zero performance. So you had to really stuff the nose down, get going really fast and then pull it up high and then roll and then hope that you didn't run out of speed before you finish the roll. And that was a roll in a musketeer.

Dan: 21:37

Well, I'd been up with my dad in the F5. He said, do you want to try a roll? I said, sure. So I grabbed the stick and before I knew it, it was like, cow, I'm I'm like 90 degrees to the horizon. And like, he says, it's really, really sensitive and it'll roll like two times per second, seven hundred twenty degrees per second.

Bryan: 21:55

Wow.

Dan: 21:55

So I he said, roll is easy. You pull the nose up five degrees, you stop it, and then you just push the stick over a little bit, not too much. And it rolled around. I went, holy cow, like that was really cool. So my second role in the in the musketeer, the instructor says, go straight into a roll.

Dan: 22:17

In my little pea brain at the time, I'm thinking, ah, I just like click the ailerons over and just roll. Right? From Yes. Slow slow speed and level flight. What he really meant to say was don't do the pre stall spin aerobatic trick Don't do the clearing turns, but do the actual gain speed and all that stuff.

Dan: 22:37

He didn't make that clear to me. And and I think, unfortunately, when you're a relatively good student, the instructor gets a little bit complacent and doesn't make sure that you're not gonna do something really stupid, which I did.

Intro/Outro: 22:52

For sure.

Dan: 22:52

So I I just from 90 knots or so, I just start rolling and it's not rolling very fast. So I go, okay, full aileron deflection. And it starts to roll and the nose is burying itself. And he goes, I have control. Now he didn't think it was a high pitched voice, but it probably was.

Dan: 23:11

And he recovered. And that is why to this day, I remember 152 knots in four g because those were the airframe limits on the Musketeer and I saw both of them on that recovery.

Bryan: 23:23

Oh, wow. So essentially, an unusual attitude recovery.

Dan: 23:28

That yeah. With a masterfully done by an instructor. And I I profusely apologized and I said, well, I've I had a trip. I didn't tell him I had four trips with my father. I just said I had a trip in an f five, and this is why I was wasn't thinking.

Dan: 23:45

And he goes, okay. We'll make sure you do it right next time.

Bryan: 23:48

Yeah. That's good advice. And I guess any, listeners who happen to come through Southport on flight training, you can see a CT one thirty four Musketeer on a post in front of the Southport RecPlex. So if you haven't seen one before, that's where you can. So at one point during the course, you had a chance to see the CT one fourteen tutor up close, and you mentioned feeling overwhelmed by the complexity of the aircraft, and you had a thought so many students can relate to.

Bryan: 24:15

How will I ever be able to master such a complex aircraft? How did you get past this self doubt?

Dan: 24:20

Yeah. That was difficult because I was climbing up after a touch and go, and I forget what the speed was. A seventy, eighty knots. So just really fast for a musketeer. But all of a sudden, I heard this roar.

Dan: 24:34

And I look over my left shoulder and I see this silver jet just go flashing by at like four times my speed. And he pulls up hard into this hard turn away from me. I realized later it was a closed pattern. And I thought, wow, that's something. That performance is incredible and I'm barely getting away from the ground.

Dan: 24:53

So that night I'm doing my usual hangar flying, I'm doing the chair flying in the static and I look in the corner and I notice, oh, there's a musket, there's the tutor that flew by and stayed overnight. So I walked over to it, and the first thing I did was I I touched the skin because the musketeer had a skin like a Coke bottle. It was basically bubble bubble. You know, you could poke your finger in there and it would it would warp a little bit. But I I touched the side of the tutor and it was like, wow, this thing is just like solid aluminum and it doesn't move.

Dan: 25:26

Poke my head in the cockpit and I go, look at all those switches. Look at all those circuit breakers, look at all those instruments. I have no clue what half of them do. No way I can do this. So in a mild panic, I go back to the barracks.

Dan: 25:40

I grab the communal phone and I use the Audubon because we didn't have cell phones or anything. And luckily, my dad was at home and able to call me down. He said, Danny, eat the elephant one bite at a time. Climb the mountain one step at a time. He said, the way the flying system is designed, the way the courses are designed, it's building block and stepping stones.

Dan: 26:03

They will not push you beyond what you can absorb. So look at what's in front of you, accomplish that, build on that, build on that. And he said, you'll be surprised. In in a few years, you'll look back at this and say that was a piece of cake.

Bryan: 26:18

Yeah. And I think that's such solid advice for any student of any time in aviation. I think that carries right through to now. I think if you haven't been there at some point, thinking like, holy cow, how am I gonna do this? You're almost not human.

Bryan: 26:33

Like, in and certainly in military aviation where it's so fast paced and you know, like, wow, in a matter of months, like, arrive at Moose Jaw, you see a Harvard for the first time, and you look at the senior course and they're handling like emergency drills and stuff and doing all these briefings and you're like, how am I going to learn all this? How am I going to master all this? You have to remember that you're going to do it one day at a time, one flight at a time, one lesson at a time and you will get there.

Dan: 26:58

Exactly. Yeah.

Bryan: 27:01

So after graduating from RMC, you attended pilot training at two Canadian Forces Flying Training School in Moose Jaw, also known as the Big 2. Nowadays, Moose Jaw can seem like a busy place, but back then, it was something else entirely. Can you describe the operation at the time?

Dan: 27:16

The operation was massive. In the morning, there would be two long rows of, jet trainers, the tutor. They're all silver shining in the sun or sitting under the snow. Two rows of them, about 99, not nineteen, nine zero aircraft parked on the line. And it was like, how do I put this?

Dan: 27:39

It was it was like a production line, like a sausage factory, just the way the flying operation went because you'd see some aircraft would be being refueled, others would be undergoing before flight checks, others who had people doing walk arounds and strapping in. Then some further down the line, they'd be starting, and then there were some empty spots where people had taken off. And then in the back line, there were other aircraft coming in and landing from after their flight and then being refueled. At any one time, you'd between ten and thirty aircraft airborne at the time.

Bryan: 28:11

That's crazy.

Dan: 28:12

We had yeah. We we had, when I look at the numbers for NFTC, they're tiny compared to what we had. We also had between a hundred seventy five and two hundred students at any one time on course. We had 110 instructors. Wow.

Dan: 28:29

Teaching them. So it was just a massive operation.

Bryan: 28:33

That's wild. That's just like a whole order of magnitude different from how things are now. And like I said, like nowadays, it can feel quite busy there. So I mean, that's just crazy. So during your time at Moose Jaw, there was a deadly crash from a different course serial.

Bryan: 28:48

Can you tell us about that?

Dan: 28:50

This happened actually, it was just before I arrived. And I walked one day. Somebody had told me about it because it was a senior from RMC who graduated a year before I did. He was doing a navigation trip, a low level navigation trip, and he did what's called C FIT, so controlled flight into terrain. He he was distracted.

Dan: 29:12

We don't know what it was apparently, maybe a battery overheat or something like that. And he just slowly flew into the ground. The aircraft was destroyed and he died. Walking towards the flight line from the barracks, there was this fenced off area and I looked through the fence and somebody had reverently pointed out and said, that's the wreckage from the crash. Wow.

Dan: 29:37

And it was it was just twisted bits of aluminum, and I thought, wow, that that is something. It's it was physical evidence of how a little bit of distraction can be quite deadly in this business.

Bryan: 29:50

No kidding. Did you find that affected the way you approached your own flight training?

Dan: 29:54

No. Because I was, invincible. That I wasn't even 25 yet. That's where your frontal lobe develops fully. So I I basically, yeah.

Dan: 30:02

Okay. Good. That will happen to me next.

Bryan: 30:05

Yeah. And I think that's something that a lot of pilots can relate to as they get past that age and look back and think back to some of their cavalier attitudes when they first started out. Exactly. Yeah. What did you find was the biggest challenge as you began your training on the Tudor?

Dan: 30:21

What seems so simple on the ground turned into a huge effort in flight. For example, calculating what percentage of power I needed to change to, change my airspeed by a certain number of knots. And the instructor gave me a little, a little clue for how to do it, and I thought, oh, this is dirt simple. Why is he even telling me this simplification? So here I am on flight number two in the tutor trying to fly straight and level, and then, oh, yeah.

Dan: 30:50

I have to change my airspeed. So I go, okay. 30 knots. Alright. That means I need to go to full power.

Dan: 30:56

So I'm struggling the trim and everything, and the airplane's bobbling around, and I'm trying to hold the heading. And this is clear blue sky. I'm looking outside, but I'm having a heck of a time keeping the thing straight and level. So I go full power and I'm five knots before the speed. So I pull the power back and the instructor just starts laughing.

Dan: 31:15

He said, you forgot what power to pull it back to. And I said, you're right. He goes, he just laughs and laughs and laughs. He said, try 87%. So I go there.

Dan: 31:26

Magically, it worked out. So just what seems so simple on the ground when you have to control this aircraft in three dimensions and think ahead, it's a huge challenge. But eleven months later at the end of the course, that stuff was old hat. It was simple.

Bryan: 31:42

Oh yeah. Second nature by that point. And that whole experience is like a classic example of what pilots call a helmet fire, right?

Dan: 31:51

Yes. We also, the the instructors would say that we were on the the jump steep that is being dragged 300 feet behind the airplane.

Bryan: 32:01

Yeah. Yeah. We used to joke that we were hanging onto the tail by our fingernails. Can you tell us how you felt the first time you went solo in the tutor?

Dan: 32:12

I just couldn't believe it, first of all. And it it was not like a glider or a musketeer where you do a flight with instructor called the solo check and then the instructor would hop out and then off you'd go. It's like you do the solo check, you get out of the airplane, you go and do a debrief, you might have a coffee. And then the instructor gives you a little piece of paper and you can walk down to ops all by yourself and he gives you an airplane.

Bryan: 32:37

Yeah.

Dan: 32:38

And it's like, you're really trusting me with this jet to fly by myself. And it was just a lot of fun. The first thing I noticed was the pitot boom, which which is a little red and white boom that sticks out from the right wing tip because when the instructor is sitting there with his head, you can't see this thing that easily.

Bryan: 32:56

Okay.

Dan: 32:56

And as as I'm taking off, I noticed something in my peripheral vision bouncing up and down as we hit the bumps on the tarmac and I'm going, oh, okay. Pitoboom. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. Right.

Dan: 33:09

Centerline got to remain on the runway and not crash. And then I was just terrified that I was going to do something stupid. So I I just focused really hard. And unfortunately, I was so focused, I I didn't really enjoy the experience. I was just working so hard from start to finish.

Bryan: 33:26

I think a lot of us feel that way on our first solo. And even, you know, nowadays, you don't get that many solos on phase two. I think I remember talking to my colleagues at the time, and most of us felt stressed during those solos because you're just you wanna get that best performance possible out of yourself. And you're you're extra hard on yourself almost because you're up there. It's just you.

Bryan: 33:48

If anything goes wrong, you're gonna handle it. So I think a lot of people can probably relate to that whole you'd think it would be like the best flight of your life, but you're so busy trying to make it all go well that you almost don't enjoy it.

Dan: 34:01

Yes and then later solos, you know that the reason they exist is for you to practice and get better so you can't even enjoy that.

Bryan: 34:09

No, they're work. They're there so you can go up and do work. So as you've said, there could be up to 30 tutors flying and you simply use the see and avoid technique for separation. Can you explain how that works? And were there ever any close calls with midair collisions?

Dan: 34:26

The big sky principle.

Bryan: 34:27

That's right.

Dan: 34:28

Yeah. We we didn't have any assigned airspace or anything else. You just fly out beyond 20 miles south, and you'd be around 12,000, 15 thousand feet. You just do aerobatics. And before each aerobatic sequence, do a couple 90 degree turns and have a good look around.

Dan: 34:45

And luckily, it is truly a big sky. So even with a bunch of aircraft in the area, it was pretty difficult to actually hit something, but there there was potential. There was always potential.

Bryan: 34:57

Did you have any close calls with midair collisions?

Dan: 35:01

Yeah. This was actually a good example of how blindly following the rules and the guidelines can sometimes not be a smart or a safe thing to do. What happened was I had changed runways. I'd done a night solo, and what these night solos we did was just traffic patterns around and around and around, bunch of touch and goes. And I looked at my fuel quantity and I had just enough to go change runways, do one more traffic pattern, and then land.

Dan: 35:29

So cross I go, change runways, do the whole procedure, come around, and all the sky is just full of solo students. And we're all on the same course because we're at the same stage at the same time. So I get to initial, which is three miles from the runway at about a thousand feet above ground. And what I'm supposed to do is do a 180 degree turn, go straight for just a little bit, a quarter mile or so, and then another descending turn and land. Well, as I got around, the tower said, okay.

Dan: 36:01

Too much traffic. You have to do a low approach. You can't land. So I go, oh no. And I look at my fuel quantity and it's really low now.

Dan: 36:09

Well, not not super low, but if I do another full traffic pattern, I'm thinking I'm gonna be too low, I'm gonna be below minimum fuel and I'm gonna get in Yeah. I also knew that I was not allowed to do an abbreviated one called the closed pattern because it was night and I was a solo student. So oh, boy. So what I did was I cut the corners. I flew the traffic pattern but really, really tight.

Dan: 36:33

And when I came across towards initial, was in so tight that I was actually cutting across where the normal pattern would be to start the descending turn. And I'm focused on my fuel quantity, looking around for traffic, but I wasn't looking like just to my right, very close by. And all of a sudden, there's this flashing red anti collision light that goes right over top of me. And I look up and I can see the landing gear hanging from his aircraft as he goes by, maybe about two meters or 10 feet right above me. Wow.

Dan: 37:08

It was really, really close.

Bryan: 37:10

How scary was that?

Dan: 37:13

Very, but no. I did not have to change my underwear.

Bryan: 37:20

So about two thirds of the way through your course, you had to decide if you would keep trying for jets or ask for helicopters. You really wanted jets, but I've been told that with the voodoo and the starfighter standing down, chances of getting fighters were next to nil. What made you keep pushing for a chance to fly fighters?

Dan: 37:37

That was a very, very difficult decision because tactical helicopters at a 40 out of two hundred hours, that was the point where the helicopter people would be split off. I almost did it because that looked like a lot of fun. It was also a single pilot operation, and that appealed to me. I thought, I'm going to be the one controlling the aircraft. I'm not gonna be the first officer being told what to do.

Dan: 38:01

I'm gonna be in charge of the aircraft. However, I didn't want to work with the ARMY. If you talk about them that way they don't know you're talking about them. And I I didn't wanna live in the field in an attempt, and I had no interest in what the army did. So I said, nah.

Dan: 38:16

I'm gonna stick it out. And I I thought, I've made it this far. I've beaten the odds so far. Let's go for it.

Bryan: 38:23

And it was just as simple as that. You thought I'm gonna stick to my guns and and keep pushing for fast yet.

Dan: 38:28

Yes.

Bryan: 38:30

Many applicants and students now are facing delays in achieving their dreams. What advice would you give to them?

Dan: 38:36

That's tough. I I had a former student from CQFA who went all the way through RMC. She graduated around 02/2022, and, she was told it'll be twenty four to twenty eight months. She made the personal decision because she already had a commercial bylaws license. She decided to pay tens of thousands of dollars to pay her way out of the military, and she's flying now as a first officer for for a Northern Airline.

Dan: 39:05

And I I've asked her, so how do you feel about that now? She says, I'm really happy I made the right decision. It's a very personal thing. I've I've talked to people at the museum in Bagotville, for example, and I I see, okay. You're a second lieutenant.

Dan: 39:18

You don't have wings. You're working OJT at the the museum greeting the public. You must be waiting for your course in a couple months. He said, no. It's gonna be two years.

Dan: 39:28

I said, you're kidding me. It's really unfortunate that it takes that long because some really, really good and qualified people are getting discouraged.

Bryan: 39:37

Mhmm.

Dan: 39:37

And yet this particular guy I spoke with said, no. I really want this. I'm gonna stick it out and I'll learn whatever I can in the meantime. And I think that's the secret. You take the situation and you say, how can I benefit myself?

Dan: 39:52

How can I learn something from this? And that's what he decided to do.

Bryan: 39:56

I think that's great advice. I think you have well, you have three choices, I guess. One, say, no. Enough's enough. And if that works for you, then great.

Bryan: 40:06

Two, you stick it out, but you're miserable. And by the time you get your pilot's wings, you're disenchanted and you don't love it, and and you should be at that point, you should be totally in love with the job. Or three, you take the option that that young man did at the museum and you'd better yourself as much as possible. And hopefully, you get through all that and you get your wings and you know that it's the best job ever and you go forth like that.

Dan: 40:29

Exactly, Brian. And there is no right answer. It's on what you want for yourself.

Bryan: 40:36

Yeah. Yeah. That makes sense. One thing that matters as a course wraps up is how you rank within the course. Hopefully, the better you do, the better your chances of getting to fly what you asked for.

Bryan: 40:46

How did you rank?

Dan: 40:48

I was, top in the flying trophy, tied with another student actually, but I came in I'm not sure where I ranked actually. It's probably number two or three overall out of 17, graduates.

Bryan: 41:02

And so who ranked number one?

Dan: 41:04

Tom Sweeney was a he was a guy from my RMC class, and he he came in second everywhere but number one overall.

Bryan: 41:14

So he just had the best average? Yes. And what did he end up flying?

Dan: 41:18

The 104 like my dad did, like I wanted to do. So Tom, I've never forgiven you.

Bryan: 41:24

That must have been a bit of a tough pill at the time.

Dan: 41:28

I was really disappointed.

Bryan: 41:30

But you must have been at least somewhat consoled by earning that trophy.

Dan: 41:35

Certainly was. And the the fun part about that was, the graduation parade. It came as a total surprise to me and the other guy. So the the city of Wuxia trophy was presented to lieutenant Blay and lieutenant McWilliams. And I went, oh, because I I heard Pierre Blay's name, and I thought, oh, crap.

Dan: 41:52

I didn't win that either.

Bryan: 41:53

Yeah.

Dan: 41:53

But then they said, and and so the mayor presented us a trophy. And after the parade, my dad said, here, let me show you something. And he goes over to the big trophy and I saw the tape over our names on the trophy. And I said, dad, I know my name's gonna be on there. He goes, no.

Dan: 42:09

No. No. Turn it around. 1970, city of Moose Jaw trophy, flight lieutenant McWilliams. He said, that's me.

Dan: 42:18

I said, that's really cool. I won the same trophy as you. He said, yeah. Runs in the family.

Bryan: 42:22

That's awesome. So selection came and you were selected as a tutor instructor in Moose Jaw. How did you feel about that?

Dan: 42:29

Like I said, I was quite disappointed not to get fighters. However, to me, this was the best, so to speak, holding pattern on the way there. It was kind of funny because when my course director told me what the posting was, he said, I'm not sure if you want it because I'm aware your father has just been posted here. How do you feel about working with him? I said, I think that's fantastic.

Dan: 42:52

I'm really happy to be doing that.

Bryan: 42:54

Yeah. I think that'd be so cool. Now let's talk about your time as an instructor, starting about your time training to be an instructor at Flight Instruction School or FIS. What was the biggest challenge as a student instructor at FIS?

Dan: 43:07

Boy, it was quite a different thing. The first thing you had to do is become really, really proficient at flying the aircraft from the right hand seat, which was the instructor seat. So that was fun. That was fairly easy because I was already relatively good at flying the aircraft. But then the role playing and the having to teach everything from scratch.

Dan: 43:29

And it was difficult because we jump around as well because you'd be teaching one day something that was early in the course, the next day you'd be teaching something right at the end of the course. The day after that, you'd be teaching something from another segment. So you'd always have to keep in mind who is this instructor or student that is that I'm teaching. And they were real wizened gray hair. Well, not really gray hair because I have gray hair now at age 65.

Dan: 43:56

They were probably 30. So they were pretty old at the time. But you have to treat them like students and they've given me a progress book. Each page in the book is a flight And I'd leaf through this book. And I went up to Mel Warren, who's one of the senior instructors at the time.

Dan: 44:12

I said, Mel, tomorrow's flight, you're this student. Right? And he looks at it and says, yep. I said, this can't be. This can't be a real student.

Dan: 44:20

I mean, look. There's red everywhere. Red ticks, red corners. This this student never made the course, and they'd black they'd taken real student progress books and blackened out the names. Okay.

Dan: 44:33

And we used these. And I said, this can't be real, he said. He chuckled and said, that's what a normal student is like. He said, you you jerks that won the flying trophy have no clue just what real students are like. And then he just smirked at me.

Bryan: 44:49

Yeah. No idea what the the normal struggles are of an average student, I guess.

Dan: 44:53

And I I learned as an instructor on the line, it's like, oh, okay. These people really do need some coaching and some teaching.

Bryan: 45:03

During FIS, as you've said, your instructor pretends to be your student. What is the craziest stunt an instructor pulled on you as a pretend student?

Dan: 45:11

Oh, the same guy, Mel Born, we're practicing. I'm showing him engine failures in the traffic pattern. So what you do, fly downwind about three or four miles from the runway, 240 knots and engine failure. You pull the nose up, zoom a little bit to gain altitude and drop the speed back to a 30, which was the best glide speed, and then gently turn towards the airfield and fly a gliding pattern to touch down the runway. So and the pattern was actually designed so that you could do that from almost any point within the pattern.

Dan: 45:46

So the other thing you learn from FIS is that when you demonstrate something, if you make a mistake, there's a good chance the student is going to make the same mistake. Right. So what I did was I pulled the nose up and I realized I'd pulled it up a little bit too high. So I said, I'm demonstrating and talking and Mel's just watching. And I was like, okay, sir.

Dan: 46:08

Okay, sir. And he's like playing the nervous little student. Pull the nose up. I said, okay, Mel, I've pulled I've gone up a little bit too steep. So I'm just gonna overbank slightly.

Dan: 46:18

And I went to about 90 degrees of bank. So I said, Let the nose fall through the horizon. And then, Okay, now I'm on profile back to 30 degrees of bank and do this. He goes, Okay, sir. I'm not sure I can do this, sir.

Dan: 46:30

So we get downwind. I've given him control. I pull back the throttle to 65%, put the speed brakes out and say, okay, Mel, simulated engine failure. He pulls four or five gs and we're pointing almost straight up. He goes, Oh, sorry, sir.

Dan: 46:46

I made the same mistake as you. And he looks over at me with I may have sworn at him at that point, but not at the simulated student, but at Mel pointing out my error. And then he rolled the aircraft inverted. So we're upside down. We're about 2,500, three thousand feet above ground.

Dan: 47:10

Also, we're flying an aircraft that had external tanks, which was not normal for that type of lesson. So a little a lot more drag than usual and a bit heavier. We're upside down and he goes, okay. Engine failure checklist, throttle off. So he shuts the engine off for real.

Dan: 47:27

So we're upside down. The stick is shaking and the whole airframe is shuttering. We're stalled. And all I see on top of us is ground and the engine is winding down to nothing.

Bryan: 47:40

Oh my gosh.

Dan: 47:41

So I said, I have control. And I rolled this into a gentle turn, got the nose, and we're down to about 80 knots or something like that. We're supposed to be at one thirty for lighting. So I put the nose down, regain flying speed, very light on the controls so we don't stall anymore or do an incipient spin and die. I mash the top of the throttle on the air start button and I start talking to Tower and saying, okay, instead of a touch and go, this will be it.

Dan: 48:12

And then Mel sort of like grabs my taps me on the arm and says, no, Dan, let's do a touch and go. Okay. So the engine slowly winding up. By the time we got to established on final, we'd hit idle RPM and I just slowly advanced the throttle. Okay.

Dan: 48:30

It's responding. The engines are working. So we did a touch and go. And afterwards he explained, I'm a maintenance test pilot. I do this all the time.

Dan: 48:36

So the engine's fine.

Bryan: 48:37

Wow.

Dan: 48:38

Okay. So and then afterwards, he said I said, Mel, this doesn't make any sense. A student wouldn't do that. And he just grins at me and says, wait. Wait for it.

Dan: 48:51

And sure enough, one of my best friends, Lee Obst, was doing his very first student mission. He was a thousand feet low, wasn't able to make the runway gliding, and the student shut the engine off for real.

Bryan: 49:04

Oh, wow. Oh, okay. So did they make it in?

Dan: 49:09

They did because what Lee did was he, relit the engine. He's told the student, don't put the gear down yet. And they they just gently flew around and he he overshot the runway because he was being very, very gentle wanting to stretch the glide as far as possible. They did a low approach and just got engine power back before they, they made it. Wow.

Dan: 49:29

So we learned.

Bryan: 49:30

So that kind of stuff is really happening from students.

Dan: 49:34

It really did. And we learned at that point when when it's time for something like that, you take your hand and you park it in the throttle quadrant and you prevent it from moving physically beyond a certain point.

Bryan: 49:46

Yep. Aviation can be a dangerous business, and you experienced that firsthand on FIS. Can you tell us about that?

Dan: 49:54

Yeah. That that's unfortunately very true. When I was in Portage, I had, finished up early on a Friday, gone into Winnipeg with a couple friends, watched a movie, went out, had a good time, drove back to Portage, stayed overnight. The next morning, I walk to the mess. And as I'm walking to the mess, I noticed the flag, the Canadian flag in front of the mess is flying at half staff.

Dan: 50:19

Okay. That's interesting. So I get into the mess. I sit down for breakfast, and I ask the people sitting at the table. So who died?

Dan: 50:27

Some politician kicked the bucket? And they all look at me said, you don't know? No. Oh, Claude. And they told me the story.

Dan: 50:35

One of my course mates in Moose Jaw who had been assigned as an instructor in Portage, he'd done his instructor course on the musketeer a few months before I did, so he was already instructing. Well, beautiful Friday afternoon, he took up two officer cadets who were waiting for a course, and they went flying in a musketeer. And somehow, I think he was probably showing them a spin, and they didn't realize that the center of gravity was not in a good place in that little musketeer to do a spin with three people on board, one in the back seat.

Bryan: 51:06

Yeah.

Dan: 51:06

And they ended up smacking into the ground and all three of them died. And that was a a real eye opener. I'd seen it before. I'd when we got to Germany, One of my father's friends, died, about a few months after we got there, but I it wasn't up close and visceral. But now this was a guy that I'd played crud and other games with.

Dan: 51:28

We'd hung out, we joked around, his girlfriend was there, life was good for Claude. Yeah. And then all of a sudden, bam, it was over.

Bryan: 51:37

So how did that impact you?

Dan: 51:39

Once again, I was invincible. Yeah. I what we did was we did what we always did. And unfortunately, it happened more than once over the next several years. We go to the mess, have a bunch of shooters, walk back to the barracks and pass out and basically toast the person's life.

Dan: 51:59

And the next morning, get up and get back to the job.

Bryan: 52:02

Wow. That must have been really tough.

Dan: 52:04

It was because you have to, of course, at the same time, you talked earlier, Brian, about the way that the military works when in the flying community, you learn from it. What happened? Why did it happen? How can we prevent that so that we don't become the next statistic? And and you mourn them in your own way, but you just you have to move on.

Dan: 52:26

You have no choice.

Bryan: 52:28

Yeah. And unfortunately, we still run into that every now and then in this business. Right? It's it's sounds hard to say it, but it's it's the nature of the business in aviation that accidents happen from time to time and and people people pass away and you have to find a way to process it and and keep doing the job.

Dan: 52:46

Yes. And I I believe that maybe nowadays, there are more resources available for people in the military.

Bryan: 52:52

Yes. Definitely.

Dan: 52:53

Back in the day, it was it was suck it up, buttercup, move on.

Bryan: 52:56

Yeah. Yeah. Which must have been really hard.

Dan: 52:58

It was. Yeah.

Bryan: 53:00

So after you completed FIS, did you feel like you were well prepared for hitting the flight line with real students?

Dan: 53:06

I guess I thought I was, but I probably wasn't. And I but I what I did was I approached things very, very systematically. I I did it just like a phase two FIS mission. Look at the Prague book, look at the instructor's guide, do the briefing. But I I think months and months later, I realized that I was pretty lucky because what they do is they give you really good students at first.

Dan: 53:31

They give you students in Moose Jaw, it was easier because they had a track record from Portage.

Bryan: 53:38

Yeah.

Dan: 53:39

And so you then they would the junior green instructors, they would give ACE or very competent students so that even if the instructor didn't teach them a lot, the student would get them through it. And I'm sure that's what happened with me in the first few student trips that I did.

Bryan: 53:58

Until you ramped up a little experience?

Dan: 54:00

Yes.

Bryan: 54:02

You've mentioned you were fortunate enough to work for your dad at Moose Jaw and he played an important role as a mentor to you. How did he help to shape you as an instructor?

Dan: 54:11

The beautiful thing about that is no matter what happened, first of all, often he'd hear about it secondhand or even see it himself, something that happened. I would I'd have no qualms about being very, very open and honest with him and say, hey, dad, this happened with this student. This is what I did. What do you think? And he'd tell me without being judgmental or anything.

Dan: 54:37

He said, no. You really screwed up. You really should have done this. And I said, think you're right. Or he'd say, no, I think I think you handled that pretty well, but you could have done it this way as well.

Dan: 54:47

And he gave me all kinds of tools and and approaches and things like that. And he had a lot of experience and he was the kind of instructor that when it was a snowy afternoon and flying was shut down or slowing down, you'd look in the instructor's room and he would be in the middle. I'd come over to to say hi in the afternoon. I was in a different flight. And I'd see this gathering of like 10 or 15 instructors and they're all listening to his stories.

Dan: 55:17

So I was lucky where I got the stories firsthand and I could also be very, very upfront with him. And so I learned a tremendous amount from him.

Bryan: 55:25

Yeah. That sounds like such a cool opportunity to work with your dad, to have that camaraderie, and just to be able to to learn from him in a professional capacity. I think that's a pretty unique experience.

Dan: 55:36

Yes.

Bryan: 55:37

How did you guys deal with the difference in rank between the two of you?

Dan: 55:40

It was never an issue. Dad was dead. He wasn't major. It was funny though because sometimes I'd kind of forget that he was an officer or anything like that and that there was career progression and all that stuff. When I was at RMC, at one point, he called me out of the blue.

Dan: 55:59

He never called me. And I was like, oh, everything okay? Mom's okay? And oh, yeah. Yeah.

Dan: 56:04

He said, what would you say if I told you you weren't a captain's son anymore? I said, you're getting out? You're leaving the military? He goes, no. I got promoted.

Dan: 56:14

I said, you got promoted? And he didn't find that very funny. But the thing is he'd been a navigator and then he cross trained a pilot. And so career progression was just not happening for him. And so he'd been a captain forever, like ever since I was born basically.

Dan: 56:33

And I never envisioned him getting promoted. And dad was never the kind of person who wanted to be a colonel or a general. I had an uncle who was a colonel, a little more ambitious, also a super nice guy that I learned a lot from. But, dad was not your typical career officer. He was a very human parent.

Bryan: 56:52

Okay. So just not an issue? Zero. So your dad was called back from Moose Jaw to investigate a deadly crash in Cold Lake. What were some of the lessons he learned?

Dan: 57:03

Yeah. He came back quite affected from that. I remember the student clearly. My dad knew the instructor. It was a two seat f five.

Dan: 57:12

They're doing a flapless approach, and the student had forgotten something to open up the doors that give extra air to the intakes of the engines. What happened was one of the engines was starved for air. There was a tiny bit of side slip. They were flapless, meaning that the aircraft was basically on the edge of the stall on the approach anyway. And as the student advanced the throttles, one of the engines died.

Dan: 57:36

The compressor stalled and died. So the aircraft rolled over onto its back and went, bam, down into the infield in between the two runways and both people died. Dad told me a lot about what happened there. He said that one of the cause factors that he identified was the lack of adequate training for instructors on operational aircraft. He said that when he did his flying instructors course on the f five just a few years prior, it was basically, okay, you can fly the jet.

Dan: 58:07

Remember when you fly with a student, just be careful and I'm kind of glossing over it, but it was basically very, very superficial, the kind of training they got. And he said when he went to the training on the tutor, at first he was a little bit insulted because he said, come on, you know, I'm an experienced pilot here. Why are they going right back to basics? And then afterwards, when he started flying with students and seeing what was happening, he went, you know what? Way better training as a QFI in Portage and Moose Jaw than an operational instructor on an operational aircraft.

Dan: 58:42

And that was one of the big reasons because people did not treat things seriously. And he told me a couple stories from his own experience on the f five where he took control. Didn't think he had to. He just wanted to be dramatic. And if he hadn't, they would have died.

Bryan: 58:58

Oh, wow. So just a a way higher quality of flight instructor training at Moose Jaw and at Portage.

Dan: 59:06

Exactly. The the legacy of the British Commonwealth Air Training Plan has lived on and the way people are taught to be instructors is second to none. I've I've seen people teach in the civilian world, and it's nowhere near as as good as the military system with QFIs.

Bryan: 59:24

Oh, it's totally totally different worlds. Can you tell us a favorite story or two from your early days on the flight line as an instructor?

Dan: 59:32

Yeah. Early on, I I learned a little bit from FIS how to be careful with students, so I was not that surprised. There's a student who I would call Beta, a big farm boy from Southern Alberta, strong as an ox. So I'm teaching him recoveries from nose high or nose low attitudes. A civilian would call this upset recovery.

Dan: 59:58

We called it unusual attitudes or we would joke about unfair attitudes. So I gave him one nose high and what you're supposed to do is go full power, put in the speed brakes and then gently roll to the horizon, let nose fall till you regain speed and then recover. Right. What does he do? He does the opposite.

Dan: 01:00:18

He does the nose low recovery. He goes throttle idle speed breaks out and he basically just stalls and and incipient spin, I took control and recovered the aircraft and said I did the instructor thing. What were you thinking? Why did you do this? And okay.

Dan: 01:00:36

Good. You're you're clear now how to do this? Okay. Good. Close your eyes again.

Dan: 01:00:39

I'm gonna give you another one. Well, of course, the student thought I was gonna give him another nose high, but I gave him a nose low this time. So nose low. I said, open your eyes, Beta. He opens his eyes and he goes, we're looking at brownish green prairie below us.

Dan: 01:00:59

Like the windscreen is full of it and we're starting to accelerate. He just goes full power, speed breaks in.

Bryan: 01:01:04

Oh my.

Dan: 01:01:05

And then starts to roll so that we're basically upside down with the nose about 30 degrees below the horizon. And instead of pulling up towards the nearest horizon, he's pulling all the way through straight down towards the far horizon.

Bryan: 01:01:18

Oh my gosh.

Dan: 01:01:19

And the speed's increasing and increasing. And I'm looking at 410 knots, 415. We're exceeding the limit of the aircraft. So I say, pull a bit harder and I pull the throttle back and I put the speed brakes out. I say, harder.

Dan: 01:01:35

Of course, I know what was gonna happen. I put my hand behind the stick. Sure enough, he tries to snap on about 10 gs by just snapping the stick way back as far as it would go. I stopped it, stopped it about five gs. So I'm doing the maneuver to keep the blood out of my legs and into my head so I don't pass out.

Dan: 01:01:55

There's no G suits or anything at the time. So I'm I'm struggling to stay focused. I'm getting a bit of tunnel vision and I'm holding it so it's five or six g. I say, okay. Beta, I have control.

Dan: 01:02:07

So I grab the stick and I start trying to pull and nothing's happening because it's just blocked. It's like a like a brick is holding it in place. So I say, I have control. Hey. He's not saying anything.

Dan: 01:02:18

And all of a sudden, all the dirt and the bugs and everything on the floor are flying up and plastered against the canopy. And instead of pulling back up towards the horizon, we're now going straight down again and headed for the dirt. And now we've started at 15,000 feet. We are now at about 6,000 feet and going almost straight down. Wow.

Dan: 01:02:41

So I say, I have control and I start pulling on the stick and I look over and he's got both arms straight out in front of him and he's holding the stick with two hands as far forward as he can get it. And we're like at minus one g. So the only time I ever did this, I reach over and I hit him. I just smacked him across the chest with the back of my hand. And he goes, oh.

Dan: 01:03:06

And he lets go with a stick. And I pull out with seven g and we avoid the ground by a couple thousand feet and almost over speed the aircraft. And it's like, what were you thinking? What I did was I said, okay, just sit there, enjoy the flight back. I'm just gonna take you back to base and we're gonna land.

Dan: 01:03:25

The flight is

Bryan: 01:03:25

Yeah. No kidding.

Dan: 01:03:26

And he he lasted probably another two weeks and then he was gone. But just I didn't know what was going on in his head. It was very, very scary and that was within the first six months of me starting to teach.

Bryan: 01:03:40

So was he trying to pile you guys in or like what was he trying to do?

Dan: 01:03:44

He told me he was trying to stop me from overstressing the aircraft because he was afraid I would overstress it.

Bryan: 01:03:49

Oh, that's a very interesting response.

Dan: 01:03:54

Yeah. Yeah. And I kind of thought, well, judgment, not present.

Bryan: 01:03:59

Yeah. No kidding.

Dan: 01:04:00

The Tutor was an excellent aircraft to teach in. When you talk about the Harvard or the Hawk, they are tandem seats. So you have the instructor sitting in the back and the student in the front, which is great for the student when it comes to doing turns because the sight picture is pretty much the same left and right. Whereas in the Tutor with an aircraft that's side by side, the horizon cuts everything at a different angle. So it's a little more difficult for the student pilot and even for the instructor because you have to to adapt a little bit.

Dan: 01:04:29

Steep turns, 60 degrees of bank, that was our regular turn in the traffic pattern. So it was basically our bread and butter. So I I have this young woman I'm teaching. Her her name is Bernie. She's she's really, really good in the first ten seconds of the turn, roughly.

Dan: 01:04:49

But then she goes up and down like a yo yo, like gaining and losing five or 600 feet and the standard is around a hundred feet Yeah. Plus or minus. She does one and I go, boy, this is weird. Why is she doing that? So this we roll out and I say, Bernie, put your visors up.

Dan: 01:05:11

So she puts up her dark visor. I say, let's do another turn. And I watch her eyes. And that's one thing I could do because we were side by side. Watch her eyes.

Dan: 01:05:22

Okay. Now I know what she's doing. So as she's in the turn and we're starting to do the yo yo thing, I take my hand and I cover up one of her instruments. And she goes, oh, sir, I need that. I need that.

Dan: 01:05:36

And I said, no, you don't. I said, that's the last one you want to look at. So I explained to her that this was the vertical speed indicator and that it has a lag of seven seconds. Right. So if you're if you're going down and then you turn it around to go back up, it'll take seven seconds before it registers.

Dan: 01:05:53

She said, but I need to be precise. I'm using that to be precise. I said, nuh-uh. That's exactly the wrong thing to do. But then after that, her steep turns were just really, really good.

Dan: 01:06:02

So without that kind of a and that's one thing that I'd learned from just listening to other instructors talk, look to see where's where the students looking, what they're doing, try and figure out what they're thinking, and then maybe you can help them.

Bryan: 01:06:17

Yeah. That's the advantage of any of these multi career aircraft or the tutor, any of these aircraft where you sit side by side. Right? Like, know what the other person's doing.

Dan: 01:06:25

Yes.

Bryan: 01:06:26

And, yeah, you mentioned the VSI. It's it's basically only useful in a steady climb or a steady descent for seeing your rate. Right?

Dan: 01:06:32

It's the main thing is you want to use it for doing an instrument approach or something like that where you need to set a certain descent rate to make sure that you have so many miles per thousand feet to on the proper glide path.

Bryan: 01:06:45

Yeah. Exactly. So what is the wildest incident you saw happen in Moose Jaw during your time as an instructor?

Dan: 01:06:53

So one fine afternoon, very, very busy, both traffic patterns. And the, there's a student taking off, a Dutch student. So already he has a little bit of an accent when he's talking on the radio. He's, waiting and waiting. It's a hot day, so his canopy is sort of open, close, open, close.

Dan: 01:07:12

And then, okay. Now he gets cleared to take off. So off he goes down the runway. His canopy was not closed when he took off. So as soon as he gained some flying speed, the canopy rips off and departs the aircraft.

Dan: 01:07:28

So now he's flying a convertible.

Bryan: 01:07:29

Wow.

Dan: 01:07:30

And he's accelerating because he's a young student. He doesn't know that maybe you shouldn't fly so fast when this happens because he's being buffeted around, but he's accelerated up to 240 knots in normal approach or traffic pattern speed. And he's trying to tell the tower that he's lost his canopy. He's lost my canopy. And, of course, a little bit of an accent and a lot of wind noise in the background.

Dan: 01:07:58

The tower controllers are looking at each other trying to figure out why is this guy concerned about having lost his keys. He's lost his keys. His keys. And then one of them gets out the binoculars and goes, oh, look. He doesn't have a canopy.

Dan: 01:08:10

Okay. That's what so the student flies around and he's everybody's focused on him. They've deployed the fire trucks to the inner runway waiting for him to come around. And the student, at least he's smart enough to decide maybe he should land. And so he does an overhead brake instead of a straight in, which would have been smarter.

Dan: 01:08:29

So everybody's focused on this guy. Spoiler alert, he survives. He lands and he's okay. And the fire trucks follow him down the runway. However, meanwhile, on the other runway, a solo student does a touch and go and his bird comes in the intake and destroys his engine just after he gets airborne.

Dan: 01:08:52

So he's full power gear. The gear is cycled up. The flaps are coming up. He hits the bird and then poof, no more engine. So he loses speed.

Dan: 01:09:01

Nowhere else to go but straight ahead. So he gently did a masterful job of it, puts it on the belly and skids to a stop, sparks flying everywhere on the outer runway and comes to a stop sort of three quarters of the way down the runway. But everybody's focused on the inner runway. And in the base newspaper, there was a there was a cartoon that showed a student who had done this pancake job on the outer runway, and he's standing next to the runway at a phone booth. He's saying, hello, Tower.

Dan: 01:09:35

I need help. But but nobody noticed him. And an American t 33 was coming to visit, and he comes in on the inner runway to to initial. He says, hey, Tower, you know you have an aircraft down? And Tower says, yeah, yeah, we know.

Dan: 01:09:51

But the fire trucks are there. It's taken care of. We'll have them cleared off before you land. He goes, no, the other runway. Then everybody looks over and goes, oh, and they hit the crash bell again for the second time.

Dan: 01:10:03

And then they send more fire trucks over to the other aircraft, but everybody was fine. But it was just so busy and the coincidence of two major incidents happening simultaneously was just funny.

Bryan: 01:10:15

That's crazy. I mean, it just you know, we've talked about how busy the operation was at Moose Jaw, so it's bound to happen at some point to get simultaneous emergencies. Right?

Dan: 01:10:24

Yes.

Bryan: 01:10:25

Yeah. The odds just finally came together. So, Dan, I've got one last question before we wrap up today's episode. Where can listeners find your books?

Dan: 01:10:35

My books are available on Amazon. If you search for my name, Dan McWilliams, you can find both books. Tutor Tales unfortunately is difficult to find because Amazon auto corrects Tutor, T U T O R to T U D O R, The royal family. So but it it is tutor tales. If you just search for supersonic stories, you'll see the series of two books and they're easy to find.

Bryan: 01:11:02

Okay. Great. Well, Dan, that wraps up our talk today on your book, tutor tales. I wanna thank you so much for sharing your story and for your time today. I'm really looking forward to chatting with you on our next episode about your other book, Supersonic Stories.

Dan: 01:11:16

Thanks, Brian. We'll talk to you then.

Bryan: 01:11:17

For sure. Okay. That wraps up our chat with Dan McWilliams, former Royal Canadian Air Force fighter pilot, and his experiences in the training world and his book, Tutor Tales. Tune in next week as we talk about his experiences in the operational flying world and his book, Supersonic Stories. Do you have any questions or comments about anything you've heard in this show?

Bryan: 01:11:39

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 pilot project podcast at Gmail dot com or on all social media at at pod pilot project. And be sure to check out that social media for lots of great videos of our RCAF 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: 01:12:05

That's all for now. Thanks for listening. Keep the blue side up.

Intro/Outro: 01:12:09

See you. Engineer, shut down all four. Shutting down all four engines.