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Intro/outro: 00:30

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

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

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

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Starting to. 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 Sky's Magazine. I'm your host, Brian Morrison. With me once again today is my good friend, major Dan Conway, a SAR pilot and deputy commanding officer of four thirteen Transport and Rescue Squadron in Greenwood, Nova Scotia. Listeners may remember Dan from way back in episode five on the phase three multi engine course.

Bryan: 01:20

Dan, welcome back to the show.

Dan: 01:22

Thanks for having me.

Bryan: 01:23

So listeners continue into part one of our chat to hear about Dan's early career and time in flight training. Today for part two of our chat, we are going to talk about his time in the operational SAR world. We're also going to talk a little bit about the new fixed wing SAR aircraft, the c two nine five Kingfisher. So let's dive into your operational flying starting with your time at four four two Squadron on the CC one fifteen Buffalo. After phase three, you were posted to four four two Transport and Rescue Squadron in Comox BC to fly the CC one fifteen Buffalo affectionately known as the BUFF.

Bryan: 01:53

What was it like to arrive in an operational squadron as a newly winged captain?

Dan: 01:58

It was pretty overwhelming at The statement where I was I was told, you know, you're gonna have to know 80 things but we're only gonna teach you 20. That was that was very true and applicable. I spent some time in ops at and that really got me integrated with the unit and got me prepared for my OTU.

Bryan: 02:20

So a bit intimidating though as you showed up.

Dan: 02:23

Yeah. Absolutely.

Bryan: 02:25

And that's kind of I assume that's fairly normal amongst most fleets. Like there's just so much to know and they can only teach you so much and you're gonna pick up a large portion of it through experience. Right?

Dan: 02:37

Yep. Absolutely.

Bryan: 02:39

Yeah. How long did you have to wait before you went on your operational training unit or OTU course?

Dan: 02:45

At April, it was done in house as an OTF, like an operational training flight.

Bryan: 02:50

Okay.

Dan: 02:51

And it was only about six weeks. Six weeks wait?

Bryan: 02:54

Yeah. Okay. And how long was the OTU and can you briefly describe what it consisted of?

Dan: 02:59

It was about three and a half months and it was done in two phases. So we did the the ground school and then the flying for just basic handling of the aircraft and becoming, you know, proficient with the buffalo, which was very unique how we flew it, the short field aspects. It was kind of like a a big cardboard box with lots of power and big wings. Mhmm. And then the half was the actual search and rescue portion of it.

Dan: 03:26

And it was yeah. We we had really good serviceability and it was pretty seamless.

Bryan: 03:32

That's awesome. The serviceability piece especially kind of surprises me because I'd always heard that the buff was very maintenance heavy.

Dan: 03:38

Yeah. It definitely set my expect expectations really high. And then when I left the OTF and got put on the schedule, they came back to reality. So my year after the OTF, I only got about a hundred hours and it was very low and it was really hard to maintain currency, let alone proficiency.

Bryan: 04:01

Right. And then I guess for listeners who are maybe not used to hearing those terms, currency being basically like the legal minimum you can can meet to maintain your flying category whereas proficiency means like you're actually good at your job.

Dan: 04:17

Yeah. Exactly. So all of the search and rescue patterns for an FO, we had to do them minimum twice a year, and then you have to do a takeoff and landing approach every 30 days. And that's pretty consistent still to this day with with most fleets. Mhmm.

Dan: 04:33

And then as you upgrade to AC, all of the operational things become yearly for the most part. That's not enough to make you actually good at it. No. It's enough just so that you're not lost when you're being tasked to do it. Yeah.

Dan: 04:45

But you need you need to do things especially at the beginning of your career, quite often in order to be comfortable and and proficient.

Bryan: 04:53

Yeah. Yeah. I agree. So by that time, the BUF was already a classic aircraft, we'll call it. Can you describe what it was like flying the BUF and what unique capabilities it had for SAR?

Dan: 05:05

Flying the BUF was like flying something completely analog. It's the most connected I've ever felt to an aircraft. So you turned it and it turned. And it was super super reactive to everything that you did with it. And it was really easy to fly.

Dan: 05:26

It was difficult to fly accurately. But you could fly really slow, which is an advantage in search and rescue and especially in the mountains. You can buy yourself time to turn around or do assess weather or to assess, you know, am I in the right valley? And find the Herk in the in the mountains is a lot different than that. You can't you can't slow down the same way.

Dan: 05:48

But it was a very, like, pure flying experience. You you were connected with that aircraft. And some of the coolest things that we did in the plane were the short field landings and short field takeoffs. So I did a couple landings at a place called Maple Lake on basically a driving range there, which is which is pretty cool. White Saddle Ranch is technically a heliport.

Dan: 06:14

We landed in there. Wow. You know, it it had a it had a strip, but it was unregistered. But just a very cool aircraft, But because it was so old at that at that point, we struggled with maintenance. And as airplanes get older, they they fail more.

Dan: 06:33

Right? Mhmm. So we definitely the biggest struggle was just keeping the plane serviceable.

Bryan: 06:39

Yeah. The buff also had Was the throttle not up top?

Dan: 06:44

Yeah. It was above your head. My flight on the OTU, I remember my instructor was like, watch your head as I slammed my head into the power levers and started to bleed.

Bryan: 06:55

No. Really? Yep. That was awesome. Oh, no.

Dan: 06:59

It's like, okay. I guess we'll do this flight tomorrow.

Bryan: 07:01

For real? Yep. Oh, my gosh. That

Intro/outro: 07:05

was awesome. Does it take

Bryan: 07:07

a while to get used to the power levers being above your head or does it become pretty intuitive?

Dan: 07:11

It becomes really normal. And it was pretty humorous when I swapped from the Buffalo back to the King Air. I would often do this awkward, like, reach to the top of the plane to grab the power and then turn turn it into a smooth motion as my hands go down to the power levers.

Bryan: 07:28

Did anybody ever notice that? Oh, yeah. Yeah.

Dan: 07:30

People made fun of me.

Bryan: 07:32

What challenges did flying an older aircraft bring? One

Dan: 07:36

of the bigger challenges with flying an aircraft that old is that things have changed so much and it's really really hard to source parts for an old aircraft like that. But there were things that had been learned and forgotten about the aircraft that you never knew and never were taught until you took the plane away and then something broke and you reached back home and they talked to a contractor in KF Arrow and they're like, oh, yeah. That happened before. Like twenty five years ago. And it was it was really hard to scratch the surface on the corporate knowledge that you didn't have.

Dan: 08:17

But you always felt foolish because there were no new snags, there were no new emergencies on that plane, but they were all new to you. Yeah. The other thing for me, one of the biggest challenges that I had there was there was no simulator. So there was no way to go up and practice and become efficient with the more critical emergencies like an engine failure or a fire. So we would chair fly and we would simulate things in the plane as best we could, but it's it's not the same.

Dan: 08:50

So the couple times where we had real emergencies, we handled it well as a crew, but I always appreciated in my next two fleets having that simulator to just go and become super proficient with those things that are gonna save your life.

Bryan: 09:07

Yeah. Make them muscle memory.

Intro/outro: 09:09

Yeah.

Bryan: 09:10

Do you guys have a cockpit procedure trainer or anything like that or just absolutely no mock ups, no nothing?

Dan: 09:16

There was a mock up, but there's no technology or anything to it. So you you can go in there and chair fly.

Bryan: 09:21

Yeah. But that's a But nothing happens. Yeah. Okay. Yeah.

Bryan: 09:24

That's challenging. What skills that were unique to flying West Coast SAR did you learn at that time?

Dan: 09:31

All of all of the basic mountain flying skills that we learned on the Buffalo, you know, how to check for weather, how to make sure you're in the right valley, the different weather phenomenon that occur, especially in the Sunshine Mountains. But depending on how much moisture there is in the air, how strong the wind is, what direction it's from, it can all do different things. That is still applicable every time I go and fly in the mountains. On the East Coast, the mountains are smaller, but they still do the same things.

Bryan: 10:06

What is an average week like for a line fixed wing SAR pilot? And let's say let's say on the current fleets more than on the buff because the buff was pretty unique and and doesn't really apply anymore.

Dan: 10:17

The day to day job was basically the same. Okay. So for a line pilot, your number one priority is to stay proficient and stay in the books. And you're never gonna get as much flying as you want to get until all of a sudden your task saturated and you're getting so much flying that you don't have any time to do any of your basic tasks. And that's kind of how it happens.

Dan: 10:41

It's when it rains it pours. So our standard line pilot, they might be scheduled to fly twice in a week and they might get 75% success in those training events. And half of those training events might be assessed by an instructor. So there's a lot of studying and then there's day to day admin. And then usually, because everyone's a captain at that level, they're probably tasked to organize some sort of you know, maybe they have a trip in three weeks that they're responsible for organizing all of it and getting the claims and the rentals and the hotels and that kind of stuff.

Dan: 11:17

So they need to stay on all that. And that's generally what what fills their week.

Bryan: 11:23

Okay. So half

Dan: 11:25

holding the SAR posture and half preparing and studying and admin.

Bryan: 11:31

Can you tell us about like the different types of postures you maintain as a SAR pilot?

Dan: 11:36

Yeah. For sure. So the the general posture ordered by CJOC right now is called readiness posture two. And what that means is that when the aircraft commander receives the call from the rescue center, they have two hours to be airborne. So there's a lot of things that go into that because the the crew have to go in and they have to preflight the plane.

Dan: 12:00

They have to check whether they have to flight plan. They have to touch base with the Sartex, make sure the right gear is loaded on the plane for the mission that they're doing. And then they actually have to get in the plane, get it started, do the ground checks, get airborne. So there's a process. That's the basic readiness posture.

Dan: 12:19

During the week, we try to do RP 30 as well, which is readiness posture of thirty minutes. So you get in early, you do all of those basic tasks, and then when you get a call, you should be airborne within thirty minutes. So it's like an accelerated version. RP two is the bare minimum and RP 30 is what we will switch to in times of higher risk.

Bryan: 12:46

Okay. What what would that be like a time of higher risk?

Dan: 12:49

So out east we have a lot of crab fisheries and lobster fisheries that open. Some of the bigger lobster fisheries are are very high risk because there's thousands of boats and the window is only open for maybe two days. So they will start at six in the morning and they will all leave harbor, go into the fishery area and drop as many traps as they can within three or four hours. So you have thousands of boats dropping thousands and thousands of traps and things happen. Boats run aground or run into each other or ingest lines and the engine dies or or whatever.

Dan: 13:30

So for those, we generally will be at the unit on RP 30 ready to go in case something happens. And then the even higher more populous ones will actually try to be overhead when they open.

Bryan: 13:45

Oh, wow.

Dan: 13:46

So we'll be airborne around five in the morning and then get on scene at six. And then it's like watching the start of a race. It's actually really cool. And the sun's usually just kind of peeking up so you can see all the boats and they all start moving at the same time and it's pretty cool. So I've I've done four or five of them over the last couple of years and we haven't had any incidents.

Bryan: 14:06

Oh, nice.

Dan: 14:07

Which is it is nice. So you get to see them do the business and it's a huge part of the economy out there. Mhmm. But there is there is risk to what they're doing.

Bryan: 14:16

For sure. So you guys are actually pre positioned for some of these like higher risk events?

Dan: 14:22

And and they're negotiated ahead of time because what they're trying to do is get the act get the economical reward without depleting all of the population of of Lobster. Yep. So it's a it's a balance for them. So they need to make sure the weather is appropriate and and they'll kind of move that target date. And we just when they open, we we just try to be responsive.

Bryan: 14:47

Okay. What was your most rewarding or challenging rescue flight you conducted during your time at four four two Squadron?

Dan: 14:56

We had a mission near the end of my time where there was an elderly gentleman in a sailboat in strong seas, and he couldn't control the sailboat. He couldn't get his sails down, so he was broadside to the waves kinda getting getting rocked in the waves. And he couldn't get control. He was doing Maydays. And we went out and we found him.

Dan: 15:18

And it was pretty bad weather but within our limits. And Coast Guard and the Cormorant were three hours away. So we actually did a jump, got the Sartex into the water, they got onto the boat, secured the sails, secured the elderly gentleman who had actually fallen in his galley and broken his hip at that time.

Bryan: 15:37

Oh, jeez.

Dan: 15:39

And then we made contact with the coast guard and we homed them into the into the boat and got them alongside and and got the that guy out of there. So who knows what would happen, but that was know, we I did quite a few star missions out there. It was a really busy four years. And sometimes we were successful and sometimes we weren't, but that one was a really cool mission.

Bryan: 15:59

Mhmm. Do you find it hard when a mission is not successful or is that something that sort of the same as when you're at the rescue center, you just sort

Dan: 16:07

of learn to maintain some professional detachment? It it is key to not become emotionally vested in the outcome of a search, specifically with searches because and and especially out east, the the water is cold. Mhmm. So if if you're not in an immersion suit and you go into the water and we're looking for you, the survival time is actually really low.

Bryan: 16:33

Yeah. It's like what twenty minutes or something. Right?

Dan: 16:35

It can be a couple hours.

Bryan: 16:37

Okay.

Dan: 16:37

It depends on what they have. But if we're searching for days, it it is hard to maintain your your detachment there. Yeah. Because the chance of success are pretty low. For me, the hardest has always been unsuccessful medevacs.

Dan: 16:51

So there's been a couple times in my career where, you know, we've been medevac ing a patient. You know, I had an elderly lady in Comox who had fallen off of a cliff and we were trying to take her to Vancouver and it wasn't successful. And those ones I I do struggle with. But once again, you have to just give them the absolute best and most professional service that you can. At the end of the day, you're flying a military aircraft not where they are.

Dan: 17:26

You have to find them, you have to you have to go, you have to provide the best service and sometimes it's successful and sometimes it's not. So I'm it's probably very similar to like an ER doctor. Like, you know, they give the absolute best service that they can, but not everyone that comes into the ER successfully goes out of the ER.

Bryan: 17:45

Right.

Dan: 17:46

Yeah. You just do the best job as you can and trust in the science behind how we operate and what we do. And our Sartex are very highly trained. So if you can successfully get your Sartex on scene, your chance of success in survival goes way up. So that's what we're trying to do.

Bryan: 18:08

Yeah. Our Sartechs are amazing. Yeah. They're just amazing people.

Dan: 18:11

Yep. They are. They're highly trained and highly motivated.

Bryan: 18:14

Yeah. So the Buffalo is no longer flying. What was it like to watch the plane you had flown on your tour get decommissioned?

Dan: 18:23

It's a little bit surreal. And I still we spread them out over the air museums across Canada. And so I often will fly into an airport and I'll fly over a museum and see a buffalo. Like Somerside is a prime example.

Bryan: 18:39

There's one here in Winnipeg.

Dan: 18:40

There's one in Trenton, there's one in Winnipeg. And it's weird because every buffalo that you can find in Canada in a museum, I have flown.

Bryan: 18:50

Yeah.

Dan: 18:51

And so it's a pretty weird thing because I don't feel like I'm I'm old. But yeah, I don't know. It's I make the joke that every time I go to a fleet and fly, they retire the plane right afterwards and that's what's happening with the h model in a couple years. So maybe it's true, maybe it's me. I'm not sure.

Dan: 19:11

But it is cool. It feels like you were a piece of history.

Bryan: 19:15

Yeah. So let's talk about your time as a QFI or qualified flight instructor here in Portage La Prairie. You were next posted to fly as an instructor on phase three multi at three CFFTS in Porto De Sao Prairie. We're gonna just briefly touch on this because we've done a full episode on this with you. And if listeners wanna learn more about this, they can check out episode five.

Bryan: 19:35

What was the biggest challenge you faced while learning to be an instructor?

Dan: 19:39

I definitely had to balance my home life. I had young kids and we we kept on producing young kids during that posting. But there's so many personalities. Every student comes in with their own story and struggles with a different thing. And, you know, we we just talked about SARA where you don't wanna be emotionally invested.

Dan: 20:01

You do wanna be invested, but not emotionally invested with the outcome. I think with instruction, it's different. You I I was emotionally invested in every student that I had. And there's there's nothing more nerve racking than a student that you've trained going up on their final test. And you're sitting on the ground just waiting.

Bryan: 20:19

Did it

Intro/outro: 20:19

go well? Did it not go well?

Dan: 20:22

So yeah, it was was always a balance between because it's not your success, it's not your failure, but you really do want everyone to succeed. But you want them to succeed with the right skills that they're gonna be safe. All of those people are going to go on and fly in much more challenging and dangerous conditions. Bigger aircraft, maybe hostile environments, maybe bad weather, maybe mountains, whatever. So you just hope are hoping that you're giving them the skills to be successful.

Bryan: 20:57

Yeah. And to stay

Dan: 20:57

safe. Yeah.

Bryan: 21:00

What would you say your biggest goals were as an instructor at three CFFDS?

Dan: 21:04

I wanted to be a good example. I wanted to lead with positivity and give people the best opportunity to succeed. And I also viewed everyone that went out of there as my resume. So I knew that because I had flown the Buffalo and it was retiring that after that tour, I was going to a new fleet. And I wanted to make sure that if they saw my name again, that they would be happy to see my name and not like, Oh no, that guy's

Bryan: 21:36

coming here.

Dan: 21:36

I think I was pretty successful with that. And I definitely made a lot of connections with a lot of people and furnished them with a lot of knowledge and experience that they then have to take and and wrap into their own philosophies and professionalism.

Bryan: 21:54

Is it cool to go to a unit now and run into those students that you've taught to fly doing their real job?

Dan: 22:01

So when I got to four thirteen squadron, I looked at the at the board because we still do it old school and so all of the pilots names are on this board. And I looked at it and I saw eight pilots that I had trained and put wings on out of the 14 pilots that we have. And the other six I had interacted with some way or not.

Bryan: 22:23

So

Dan: 22:24

the thing I did was go and look at my logbook and see if I had failed any of them. But no, it was really cool. And then to to fly with them and they're all professionals. It was very rewarding to be you know, flying with someone where they were an AC and I was their that I had trained them in Portage, that was really cool.

Bryan: 22:50

Yeah. Yeah. I imagine that would be. You taught for over five years and helped nearly 150 students earn their wings. What were the most common issues you saw students struggle with?

Dan: 23:02

So when COVID hit, it really hurt our ability to study together as as groups. And I say we, but I mean the students. And we noticed as students stopped studying together as a group and doing those chair flying and peppering each other with questions and just interacting after every flight, that the general proficiency of courses started to kind of go down. So we really tried to encourage them as much as possible to do that in a safe way. When I left, were still kind of in the era of COVID, But that it was a really big struggle for students.

Dan: 23:41

That was a very hard time for them to go through flight training. But it all comes down to just still persevering and keeping in the books and keeping motivated to study. Because there there's time periods if you're a new student on course and the other course is like three weeks away from grad and they have four weeks of flying to do, you're not a priority. Right? So you might only fly once in those three weeks.

Dan: 24:06

So finding the motivation to stay in the books and stay on top of everything and stay ready for every single flight, it's key to success.

Bryan: 24:18

Yeah. And that's gonna be where the chair flying and those hopefully those healthy study habits that you've built along the way will help you. Yeah. Like if you've been pretty disciplined through your time in phase two, phase one and phase two, then hopefully by the time you hit phase three, like a couple delays here and there, you'll know what to do with your time.

Dan: 24:39

And you have to, like, you you have to kind of understand the system you work within. It's not commercial aviation, so there's not a plane for you to fly every day. Mhmm. So it's going you're gonna run into those delays in every single step of your career. Yep.

Dan: 24:54

And so you have to have sustainable study habits, and you have to find internal motivation to keep it going.

Bryan: 25:01

Mhmm. When you left three CFFTS, what did you feel was your biggest accomplishment during your time there?

Dan: 25:10

When I left, I was acting as the flight commander. And I thought that I had done a pretty good job of improving the quality of life for instructors while maintaining the quality of instruction for students and balancing their quality of life as well. And I think that we had created a really fantastic culture here at the school, and not just my doing, like many many people with the same focus on balancing quality of life and professionalism and the output of quality pilots. But I do think that I contributed to that by by really trying to. Mhmm.

Dan: 25:50

I definitely have a lot of respect for the institution there. And and I'm, yeah, I'm excited to go back. Don't know if that's if that's something that we can talk about or not,

Bryan: 26:00

but Yeah. For sure.

Dan: 26:01

Well Yeah.

Bryan: 26:02

Yeah. Because you are posted to come back as the deputy commanding officer this summer. Right?

Dan: 26:06

Yeah. That's So I I think it's a great institution with a really great culture. And it's hard it's hard to maintain a positive and professional culture and it's even harder to build one.

Bryan: 26:19

Yeah. Especially while you are making that dedicated effort to balance it with personal lives. Like you can build a very professional organization that's very efficient and has great output, but you can also do that by burning people's personal lives to the ground. It's a real challenge to have an effective flying unit with all the busyness and complicated schedules that that can entail and still respect people's personal lives.

Dan: 26:44

Yeah. But it's my belief that you have to make the military right for the member too because we need their service. That's that's just a fact. So you have to create a place that is good for them to have their families, that gives them the opportunities to move forward in their careers and gives their spouses opportunity to move forward in their lives as well. So if you're not If that's not one of your priorities, you are gonna lose people to attrition just because they need to move on with their lives.

Dan: 27:20

You still will lose people to attrition, but the more focus you put on it, the better outcome you're gonna have. People who are happy and motivated are always gonna be willing to come in on the weekend and work for you. And they're not gonna complain about it in general. They might jokingly complain. They're gonna come in and they're gonna do the job and you treat them with respect and they're gonna they're gonna appreciate you.

Bryan: 27:44

Mhmm. Yeah. So after your time at three CFFDS, you were posted to one Canadian Air Division as an instrument check pilot. As part of this, you were still flying the King Air, but also conducting check rides on almost every fleet in the RCAF on behalf of Air Force standards. What was your coolest experience flying with all these different fleets?

Dan: 28:05

Yeah. It was really neat seeing how the different communities attack instrument flying because it's all different aircraft, all different kits, but the philosophies are the same and the rules are actually the same governing all of them for the most part. And it was neat to see that every community was able to is at that same professional standard, but they all do it in different ways. So they all do it in ways that are applicable to the operations that they're trying to fly. And it was it was pretty interesting to see how capable everyone was.

Bryan: 28:46

Yeah. It sounds really cool. Did you have a favorite fleet to fly with?

Dan: 28:52

Probably the fit my favorite checkride that I did was going to the the Herc sim and and I did the checkride for the Herc set ICP before ever going to the Herc. And I got a look in at their sim and at the how they use a crew when they do an IRT. They have the full friend and crew there doing the mission in the sim. And it was really cool to see how they they brought it all together and how it was very similar to what I had known on the buff. And then a couple months after that, I went and actually like did the course and was assessed there and I had already kind of seen it.

Dan: 29:31

It was kind of neat.

Bryan: 29:32

Yeah. Did you find there was like a big diversity in terms of like, always say, you know, there's different ways to skin a cat. Like, did you find that there was a big diversity in the ways people approached what they were doing?

Dan: 29:44

There is, especially out of necessity. You know, some cockpits only have one pilot. So an f 18 ticket ride where that's a single pilot in the sim and I'm actually sitting in their simulator control room, it's a whole different experience. But they still follow all the rules and and check all the boxes. Whereas, all the multi crew cockpits, they interact between fo, pilot flying, pilot non flying in a very similar manner, but just through nature of what altitudes they're at or what airspeeds they're at or what their kit can accomplish because some fleets have fully capable flight management systems that can couple up with their autopilot and some fleets don't even have an autopilot nor an FMS.

Dan: 30:36

It changes how they how they operate and how they think actually.

Bryan: 30:40

Mhmm. So next year posted into four thirteen transport and rescue squadron as the Herc flight commander and eventually became the deputy commanding officer or DCO. Can you tell us about what those jobs entail?

Dan: 30:53

Yeah. So my job as Herc flight commander was basically to manage all of the air crew for all of the different positions except for the Sartex. So to manage them administratively, career wise, and basically produce serviceable crews for the star schedule. And you do that by connecting with the crews individually, by flying with them is a big part of that, but also just having conversations, learning each person's life. And then also by connecting with the CO, making sure you understand the CO's intent and how they want the squadron managed, and bringing that down to each member in a way that they can understand and and kinda get behind.

Dan: 31:40

Mhmm. At four thirteen, that was really easy because it's a very East Coast institution. There's very few people that are there that don't absolutely wanna be there. Most people that work for me love what they're doing and just wanted to find out how they could stay for longer. And that's a pretty cool place to work because everyone is happy to come into work.

Dan: 32:06

We struggle with a lot of staffing shortages, and it is hard to get people to want to go to a place like Greenwood if they don't know about it and if they're not from there. Mhmm. So we we definitely throughout my two years as the flight commander, at one point or another, we were always critically short on either load masters, flight engineers, aircraft commanders, or navigators. Like that, it it would just kind of cycled between the different sections. But it was my job just to keep everybody healthy and trained.

Dan: 32:44

Mhmm.

Bryan: 32:46

So it sounds like a lot of your previous experiences would have prepared you for that, especially your position as the acting flight commander in Portage.

Dan: 32:57

Yeah. I felt really well prepared for the job. It's the job that I wanted to do at the unit when I got there. And, of course, I was trying to enter a new fleet as an outsider, but still a SAR professional and bring that outside opinion in to try and, you know, create good change. And I was trying to upgrade at the same time, which was a lot of time and a lot of challenges.

Dan: 33:20

But yeah, I definitely felt prepared and suited for the role.

Bryan: 33:27

Yeah. And then what about your role as DCO?

Dan: 33:30

So DCO is definitely a different job. It's the time in my career that I've had to understand fiscal authorities responsibilities from a higher level, business planning at a squadron level, the entire administrative and logistical process at the unit falls under me. But the other thing that's really interesting about the job is I'm also the Sartech officer. So Sartechs fall, they don't have an officer, but they don't really need one. They're very self managing, highly capable people.

Dan: 34:05

But the person, the Sartech leader is is a master warrant officer and they have the same seat at the table as all the other majors. And your job as the Sartech officer is basically to advocate and give them the weight that their voice really should have.

Bryan: 34:18

Because they don't have officers in their trade.

Dan: 34:20

Exactly. But they're smart and they know what they need and they know what they want. So they make the job extremely easy from that perspective. But it is really it's nice to have that connection and understand what their problems are. But It it was definitely a learning curve at the beginning to understand the business planning process and how to manage a fairly large budget.

Bryan: 34:47

Yeah. I don't envy you that part of the job for sure. Like I remember doing my various financial courses as a first officer and as a crew commander and even at that level finding it at times very confusing, like to the point that I needed to call people within the wing controller to try to get certain things explained to me or and they were super helpful people. I don't know if do you ever need to reach out for help on that stuff?

Dan: 35:11

A 100%. So I have a really professional cadre of people that support me to do the job. And I'm not reinventing the wheel in any way. So it's basically my role to integrate with the wing and all of those different organizations. So the wing controller, OSS and MSS, and the wing commander to make sure that we're following the rules but still able to operate.

Dan: 35:36

And our budget is pretty constrictive. We always have to be aware of how much money we have to operate, especially to accomplish the training that we're trying to accomplish. So a lot of my role is about creatively finding money in the right ways so that we can still operate and train. And a lot of that, we we work with OneCAD and the senior staff officer for search and rescue who is incredibly supportive and has has helped us get augmentation out when we're short staffed by paying for it because we can't cover that at the unit level. But no, it's been really satisfying.

Dan: 36:17

And if you do a good job with it, then the operators can operate and train and everyone is happy. So it's easy to motivate yourself to do a good job.

Bryan: 36:25

Okay. So the Hercules was a fair bit larger than anything you had flown before. How did you find that change?

Dan: 36:32

So what I found in this might not be true for all people, but I think that the bigger the plane is, the easier it is to fly. That's what I found. Now the knowledge behind it and how proactive you need to be while you're flying it, it is more challenging because a bigger plane, you can't just decide, hey, I wanna go over there and then point the nose of the plane that way. It doesn't it doesn't work that way. There's so much momentum and on the Herc, the most jarring thing that I found is when you turn the wheel and it may have been the same on the Aurora, there's a solid like one second pause before the aircraft does anything.

Dan: 37:09

And I'd never felt that before. So it was kind of cool.

Bryan: 37:12

The Aurora is pretty responsive. Is it?

Dan: 37:15

Yeah. Okay.

Bryan: 37:15

Yeah. From from what I recall, it's been almost six years, but, I seem to recall it being a pretty responsive aircraft.

Dan: 37:22

The Herk is incredibly stable.

Bryan: 37:24

Yeah. That's what it's made for.

Dan: 37:26

It is very easy to fly. Yeah. But to get that Herc exactly where you want it, to get it down to a 150 feet to throw something out of the back to the people on the ground that need the thing you're trying to throw to them, that's where the skill is. It requires backing that process up through all of the steps so that you're exactly where you need to be every step of the way. Because ten seconds back, it's too late to fix it if you've messed

Intro/outro: 37:51

it up. You've got to go around and do it again.

Dan: 37:55

So yeah, there was a learning curve for sure. And the complexity of the systems on the plane, it's much more complex and I just studied more and learned the systems. The biggest challenge that I faced when coming to the fleet was I felt like there was a barrier of entry because the Herc was such an established platform. There's a lot of people who have flown the Herc for a lot of years.

Bryan: 38:19

Well, it's legendary. It's been around for how long? It's been since the sixties?

Dan: 38:23

Exactly. Yeah. So all of the all the simulator operators and trainers, were all like twenty year Herc pilots with four thousand hours plus on the Herc and Oh, easily. Exactly. So when I got to the to the Herc, I got pulled aside by someone and told, hey, Dan, you're never gonna upgrade on this plane.

Dan: 38:45

You don't have enough time to do your job as a major and to upgrade. There's too much to know, you can't do it. And this was like four days before my OTU. I had just gone into like, you know, put put faces to names and say hi to everybody. And I was like, you've never flown with me.

Dan: 39:03

He's like, well, I'm just telling you, you're not going to be able to upgrade. So you should try just settle on passing the OTU and be a first officer.

Bryan: 39:13

So did that put a fire in your belly?

Dan: 39:15

Oh, yeah. Yeah, absolutely. Because I did feel like I had something to offer specifically with instruction and with modern rules when it comes to RNAV and GNSS things. I'm very familiar with all that stuff having coming come from the division instrument check pilot section.

Bryan: 39:36

Which is basically like GPS navigation and approaches and things.

Dan: 39:40

Aviation as a whole is modernizing and is moving forward. But the Herc really struggles because it's an older platform with a lot of inertia Mhmm. That people are willing to accept change, but you have to have to lead the change. And it and it needs to be for a purpose. Being more effective and safer is is the purpose in this case.

Dan: 40:02

But, yeah, I I left I left the OTU. I done I did really well at the OTU and and I came back and I upgraded in pretty record time and was an IP shortly after that and then a standing IP shortly after that. And the whole time I just was highly motivated to make myself available to fly as much as possible and I just studied the whole time. Yeah. But it basically meant that I was doing, you know, one and a half jobs for a couple years.

Bryan: 40:31

Which must have been pretty crazy.

Dan: 40:32

It was busy. Yeah. Yeah. It was busy, but it's super rewarding.

Bryan: 40:36

Yeah. How did you find the transition from instructing to flying the hurricane in operational environment?

Dan: 40:43

It's been nostalgic the entire time. Being on shift again after six years away from being on shift was cool and doing actual SAR missions was fantastic. But this time I had three young kids at home to balance that SAR schedule with and it was really hard initially, especially to get sleep for night shifts and stuff like that. Going up and starting your flight at midnight and landing at 4AM is really easy when you're 25 and you have no kids. It's a lot harder when you're 37 and have three young kids.

Dan: 41:21

But we've adapted and and yeah. I I really love it. I'm gonna miss I'm gonna miss the SAR portion and I'm gonna miss the Herc as well when when I leave.

Bryan: 41:31

Yeah. What are the unique capabilities of the Herc for SAR missions, especially in the Maritimes?

Dan: 41:38

The Herc has range and persistence. So it can go pretty much anywhere in our area of operation and can stay there for a really long time. So if I have a mission at thirty west

Bryan: 41:54

Which is like the middle of the ocean.

Dan: 41:56

Middle of the ocean, I can take max fuel and I can go out there and I can sit there for four hours and then I can go to Iceland and get more gas and go back. And that's a pretty cool capability. Same with this summer, I had four or five missions up in the Arctic where I took off at ten at night and I landed back in Greenwood after successfully completing the task twelve hours later. And that was kinda cool.

Bryan: 42:22

Mhmm. Yeah. The Herc is I mean, that's one thing that's amazing about it. It's similar to the Aurora and that they just have such a like, an ability to really carry a ton of gas and to stay in one place for a really long time. And and that's what makes them so great at what they do.

Dan: 42:38

Yeah. And it's a it's a cargo plane. You can also put a ton of people on there and there's there's nothing to throwing an entire extra crew and maybe you're maybe you're putting on extra pumps and extra sea rescue kits because you have a a big water mission or something

Bryan: 42:54

like that.

Dan: 42:55

There's tons of room on the plane for that kind of stuff. And that does give you some advantages. But it is still an old school plane with very few electronic and avionics things that are gonna help you out on a search. We do have the new Casar system on board right now, which is a system that allows us to search for cell phones.

Bryan: 43:20

Oh, yeah. I've heard of this.

Dan: 43:21

Yeah. If we're searching for a person, a specific person, and RCC has through RCMP been able to get their unique code for their phone, we can actually look for that phone on the aircraft. And I have been successful looking for that phone connecting with the person and confirming whether there was distress or So it's a really cool functionality. Mhmm. But that's about as technologically advanced as we get for searching.

Dan: 43:49

99% is people looking out the window and searching.

Bryan: 43:52

Right. Which is gonna be a huge game changer with the Kingfisher, which we'll talk about in a bit.

Dan: 43:58

Yeah, absolutely.

Bryan: 43:59

How do conditions and challenges in the Maritimes differ from what you encountered on the West Coast?

Dan: 44:05

So the Maritimes are really unique because the ocean is cold. You get a lot of really bad weather, especially in the Newfoundland and offshore. But our AOR extends all the way up to the North Pole through Iqaluit basically. So we also have all the mountains in Baffin Island, all of the Arctic considerations for up north, and heavy sea states, and then all the way to 30 West to the Azores, basically. And we share those responsibilities with with the Portuguese, with the British, and then with the with The US to our South.

Dan: 44:46

But it's just such a wide range that you can you could basically get any mission on a given shift and and have to go and persecute that mission.

Bryan: 44:54

So it has like a lot more varied challenges in terms of terrain and all the different things you can encounter. Well, you could be way out in the ocean, you could be way up in the Arctic. There's just like a lot more variety to what you might encounter.

Dan: 45:05

Absolutely. And it's And it also gets hit by hurricanes. So we have to deal with hurricanes. If there's a person having a heart attack on a boat 500 miles offshore, they still need to get off that boat regardless of kind of what the weather is. So we operate with the cormorant and get those people off the boats into the hospitals.

Dan: 45:28

And that's a lot of our missions are are things like that. Mhmm. Or hikers, snowmobilers, you know, 1,200 miles up north.

Bryan: 45:37

Yep. So let's talk now about the future of SAR and the transition to the c two nine five Kingfisher. A fixed wing SAR replacement has been in the works for a long time. And I mean, like, when I was a student in Portage, we had a guy on our course who was doing conversion training who had been on the fixed wing SAR replacement program and even by that point, it was a long time coming. So this is like decades in the making.

Bryan: 46:04

Yeah. Finally, it has come to fruition and will soon be on the line in the form of the c two nine five Kingfisher. I think it's pretty accurate to say you have a fair bit of experience with fixed wing SAAR having flown numerous missions on two different platforms. What are your thoughts on the transition to the Kingfisher?

Dan: 46:21

Yeah. So of all, a lot of people have been working really hard to get the Kingfisher on the line. And it's really exciting because it just received its provisional operational airworthiness certificate last weekend. And that's a huge step. Can you tell us what that means?

Dan: 46:41

It means that the plane has exited the testing phase and we've deemed that it is operationally ready. So it's got its operational airworthiness certificate, which means that we we can start flying it for search and rescue. So in Comox, they're gonna start that in May. They're gonna start flying operationally. And for us, out east, we're looking next January.

Dan: 47:04

We're gonna start operating. We're gonna start receiving the planes at the end of next summer, so summer of twenty five. So we should receive our plane in August or September of twenty twenty five, and then by January have three aircraft in Greenwood and six and a half operational crews coming off of the conversion training to start holding limited search and rescue lines of task in January, which is really exciting. Mhmm. We talked about the range and persistence of the Hercules.

Dan: 47:39

The two nine five is a is a different aircraft. And you do lose some of the range and persistence that you have on the Hercules, but what you gain is a modern aircraft with a modern sensor suite and and some capabilities that that older aircraft can't really hope to emulate. So we're we're pretty excited. It's a big change and there's a ton of overturn and and churn in personnel that has to occur in order to stand up a completely new fleet. And the biggest challenge that we have is that we still have to provide search and rescue response on the East Coast while we're trying to stand up this this new capability.

Dan: 48:22

So right now, we already have maintainers out on course in Comox learning how to maintain the new aircraft. And that's gonna continue by next January. We will have sent all of our maintainers and gotten them qualified and all of our air crew that are gonna fly that aircraft and get them qualified while maintaining a small cadre of Herc qualified personnel to maintain our line of tasking. And that that's it's a lot of work. But in the end, we're gonna have a new aircraft with much higher levels of serviceability because it's new and because there's more of them in service.

Dan: 49:09

And the EOIR and the MX 15 camera, the camera is really exciting and the data that it can capture. We have two sensor operators on the plane. We have the ASAP sensor operator and the AXO sensor operator who are gonna be able to go through data, connect to a ground based system for analysis in between basically fuel stops and then they can maybe if we're looking for a kayak in the Saint Lawrence, which is a typical task, it's a task that I've been tasked on three times in the three years that I've been there. We'll we'll still be flying lines, a lot like what the Herc will be doing. It's gonna be flying lines, but it might be at a different altitude and a different airspeed than the Herc was, Higher probably so that the the camera can see better.

Dan: 49:58

And we might not see anything with our eyes. We'll still be searching with our eyes, but we'll also be using the camera. And then we'll land for fuel, they'll connect to the ground based system, and maybe the camera will say, hey, actually, it was over at that latin log at that point. You should go back there and look. Oh, really?

Dan: 50:14

Yeah. It has the the plane doesn't, but the data from the camera can actually be analyzed to give us some some better data. We got to see it in the National Search and Rescue exercise last September where it participated along with the Hercules and the Cormorant and it was was pretty eye opening seeing the footage that they were able to capture and how quickly they were able to find a bunch of search objects when we basically took half an hour of circling to find the same search objects.

Bryan: 50:49

Really? Yeah. So game changer.

Dan: 50:51

It is a game changer. There are limitations because we sacrifice range and persistence, it needs more fuel stops and that's just something we're going to have to learn how to operate within. So what we've been messaging is that we want to be positive but realistic about it. There are so many really modern capabilities that this plane brings that we we have to adapt how we operate in order to make the most use of it.

Bryan: 51:21

For sure.

Dan: 51:21

Because we can't operate it like we fly a Herc. Yep. You know? Sometimes we just put gas on and we go to the search area and we stay in the search area until we're gonna run out of gas and then we go home. We may need to be more laser focused or or precise with this aircraft.

Dan: 51:39

And we may need more support to bring other personnel to a northern a northern location, like maybe a j model needs to bring a backup crew if a search is gonna go on for two or three days because there's not enough room on the plane to bring multiple crews full of people.

Bryan: 51:54

Right. But that's because this is a purpose built search and rescue aircraft, not a cargo aircraft.

Dan: 51:59

Exactly. It's not for it's not for cargo operations. It is for search and rescue.

Bryan: 52:04

Similar

Dan: 52:06

if we're operating with a cormorant, if the hirk is broken and the cormorant is tasked to go up north, they need support in order to bring personnel, maintenance supplies, whatever up north. It's gonna be more similar to that.

Bryan: 52:19

Okay. We've talked a little bit about this. There's been some concern over the range of the kingfisher. How do we plan to overcome that issue?

Dan: 52:27

So of all, with education. So the the range of the kingfishers is actually pretty good. Mhmm. If you fill it up, take all the gas that you can, you can get really far. It's just that when you get there, you will probably need fuel or you won't be able to won't be able to stay overhead for the same amount of time.

Bryan: 52:46

Then because it just simply can't tanker as much gas as a Hercules.

Dan: 52:49

Exactly. Which is fine because it's it's not a Hercules. Yeah. Right? It's a it's a different aircraft.

Dan: 52:54

So we just have to change how we think about the process and reeducate and retrain our crews, and that's what they're doing in COBONX right now. So we will operate within the limits of the aircraft to bring as much fuel as efficiently as we can and then plan to take fuel near the search area. And that's probably the best that we're going to be able to do. But it still will be able to reach the different areas of the AOR that it's required to go.

Bryan: 53:25

Okay. So like it'll still be able to get out to 30 West and

Dan: 53:29

Yeah. It's gonna it's going to be able to get there, but it will have to do it in a different way. It's not gonna it's not gonna go direct to 30 West and then search for four hours, but the number of times we've had to do that operationally are pretty low. Mhmm. And it will be able to go out there by taking fuel stops along the way.

Bryan: 53:48

Okay. What do you think will be the biggest challenge the Kingfisher will face and how can we overcome that?

Dan: 53:55

The biggest challenge is definitely going to be getting a cadre, both air crew and maintenance, fully trained, and then keeping those members in the community long enough for the transition to occur and and the the OTU to become steady state, to be able to provide new blood into the system. So we have to overcome that just by accepting the problem, understanding that it's gonna be a big challenge to stand up a new capability. It requires a lot of people, and we have to protect those people. So we have to keep them able to do their job by protecting them from extra duties, extra courses, or taskings that aren't critical to search and rescue or critical to their careers. You still have to give those members opportunities to progress their careers.

Dan: 54:46

To do

Bryan: 54:46

their career

Dan: 54:46

courses. Absolutely. But you have to especially from the leadership, you have to create an atmosphere where they can apply themselves to the transition without burning themselves out or becoming too fatigued. And that's that's a leadership challenge. And I I think the step is just accepting that that is going to be one of our main challenges and and addressing it.

Bryan: 55:12

I think we've danced around this a little bit, but can you tell us exactly when the c t nine five will hit the line and begin conducting operational missions?

Dan: 55:22

So in May of this year in Comox is when it will hit the line and and take on a line of tasking. And in January of twenty twenty six on the East Coast. From there, they'll move on to Trenton and then Winnipeg.

Bryan: 55:38

Okay. So let's talk a little bit about life beyond the flight line. You're a very busy guy professionally, but you also have a wife and three kids. How do you balance the demands of your career with your family life?

Dan: 55:50

I try really hard to not bring work home. I work as hard as I can at work, and then when I go home, I just try to be dad and husband. Cook dinner, take them to hockey, do all do all of those things. Obviously, there's there's bleed through, but also just open communication and honesty. When things are coming up, I have to go spend a week in Winnipeg.

Dan: 56:17

It's not a last minute thing for them. They know that it's coming. And as long as everyone's expectations are being met, then everyone is happy. That's what that's what I found. So

Bryan: 56:29

It helps that you've got a very resilient family too. Absolutely. And you guys but you guys have encouraged that culture of resiliency to develop in your family too. It's not an accident.

Dan: 56:41

No. We we try and we try to treat life as an adventure and each challenge is an opportunity to to see new things and do new things. But a lot of what we you know, we we talked about sanitizing your bedrooms so that you can sleep properly. I treat my home the same way. So I I don't bring work home, but if work comes up and there's things that need to be done, I try to go back to work to do it.

Dan: 57:05

So maybe I'll put the kids to bed and then I'll head

Intro/outro: 57:07

back into work for two hours,

Dan: 57:09

Handle the tasks that need to be handled and then come back home and then I can relax.

Bryan: 57:13

Mhmm.

Dan: 57:13

So that's that's how I try to handle it and, you know, keep everyone happy.

Bryan: 57:20

Okay. What are your future aspirations in terms of your career in the RCAF?

Dan: 57:28

Well, I am hoping to become a CEO of a SAR unit at some point. So that's what we're working towards right now. So the next step is DCO in at three CFFTS for the next couple years, and try and complete the joint staff command program, and hopefully get a CO billet in the next three or four years.

Bryan: 57:53

Okay.

Dan: 57:54

Beyond that, I'm not really sure. We'll we'll see how everybody's doing and and just keep adapting and evolving. Yes. It's it's been an adventure.

Bryan: 58:04

Yeah. The one thing that I've observed with successful senior officers, people who have really managed to make a go of the career in terms of pursuing promotion within their career, is they constantly check-in with their families too and see how they're doing and see like, are you are you game for this next step? Like, is this gonna work for us?

Dan: 58:27

Yeah. I don't make any decisions in a vacuum and I I also don't It's not my career. I always call it our career.

Bryan: 58:33

Mhmm.

Dan: 58:33

So my wife and I, we we sit down every quarter and we discuss how our career is going and where we wanna go with it. And honestly, it changes. It changes every quarter. There's all sorts of opportunities out there and sometimes we decide to pivot and chase new opportunities. But as long as everyone is having fun and in on the adventure and the kids are invested, then it's it's awesome.

Bryan: 58:59

Yeah. That sounds great. Looking back at your career so far, what are you most proud of? Now you don't have

Intro/outro: 59:06

to answer that if you don't

Bryan: 59:07

want to. I know a lot of people have a hard time with like, what am I proud of?

Dan: 59:12

Yeah. I mean, I would say that in my career, I have left a trail of people who are motivated and that's that's not my doing, but I have encouraged it and professional. And I have really tried to foster that in everyone that I interact with. And I see a lot of people eclipsing me in their career. People that I interacted with, maybe I trained I can think of what I'm not gonna name drop, but you think of one person that I trained in in 2017 who is gonna get a CO billet before me.

Dan: 59:56

And he's an awesome pilot and a really, really great person. But I'm proud of how I've interacted with the people that I've had that I've been blessed to interact with. And the military is a great place, especially if you enjoy other people because you you get to interact with so many people. And I really think that I've tried to be a positive force on everyone's life that I interact with. And that that's what I wanna keep doing.

Bryan: 01:00:24

Yeah. So for you, it's a lot about the mentorship opportunities.

Dan: 01:00:28

Yeah. It's the soft side of the military. Every time that I have a conversation with a young first officer who is maybe not quite motivated or not quite sure what they wanna do and they leave that conversation feeling a little bit more motivated, that's a success. Or you're trapped in Tule for three and a half weeks because you blew a couple prop seals. That's a great opportunity to work on your entire crew and get them just motivated to be where they're at.

Dan: 01:00:59

And I think that if you lead with empathy and positivity and enthusiasm, people are people are gonna follow. Yeah. And people are going to I've had a lot of really good examples who have led that way and and they've shaped my career.

Bryan: 01:01:15

Yeah. That's awesome. So we're down to our last three questions. We've asked you these before, but a lot of time has passed since then. You've had a lot of different experiences.

Bryan: 01:01:24

So you've had a world of experience since we've last had you on the podcast. What would you say is something you've learned you must do to stay ready to do your job?

Dan: 01:01:33

Well, I think that you still need to capture the joy of what you're doing every day in order to this might be the answer I gave you three years ago. I'm not sure. I I always think to myself that the moment I'm not excited to be on the schedule is the moment I need to stop flying. And you have to focus on the joy and make a decision to be motivated and happy in what you're doing. Otherwise, it's gonna slip away and you're not gonna actually be good at it anymore.

Dan: 01:02:02

Mhmm. And in aviation, you don't have don't have the leeway to not be good at your job because it's risky. Yeah. Right? So that and sleep.

Dan: 01:02:14

Sleeping is is absolutely I think the biggest part of success at at any level and you have to just make time for it and make it a priority.

Bryan: 01:02:23

Yeah. You absolutely do because it's so easy. Especially I imagine when you're doing things like you've been doing where you're in a leadership position and you're also flying. I imagine it would be very, very easy to start sacrificing sleep, whether that would be to get more work done or to have leisure activities. I imagine that would be a really easy thing to do.

Dan: 01:02:44

Yeah. I definitely I definitely have created gates for myself. Like I I know exactly how much sleep I need and therefore I when I can stay up late playing video games or know what, if I have to be at work at seven tomorrow or if I have to fly tomorrow, I shall be asleep by 10:00. So I have to set myself up for success that way. And it's paid dividends, but it's hard to be disciplined in that part of your life.

Bryan: 01:03:11

Yeah. For sure. As we've said, you've flown on two fixed wing SAR aircraft and have flown numerous SAR missions. What makes a great fixed wing SAR pilot?

Dan: 01:03:21

Adaptability. You have to be able to come up with a plan that works and then change the plan when things change. And that can be weather, serviceability, the other aircraft that you're working with or even what's going on with the patient. So you have to be willing and able to adapt and and think ahead, but you also have to be resilient. So you you have to be able to you just searched for for nine hours and now you're being told, okay, the search is done.

Dan: 01:03:53

You have to be able to just go home and then the next night the next night, you might be tasked on a completely new mission and you have to be able to switch gears and go and do it. So adaptability and resilience.

Bryan: 01:04:05

Okay. If you were talking to a young pilot that wants to fly SAR, what advice would you give them?

Dan: 01:04:11

Do it. It's super, super fulfilling. Yeah. It's a really, really great career. It's applicable to other careers.

Dan: 01:04:22

If you want to go do something else afterwards, you're going to be an excellent instrument pilot if you're a search and rescue pilot because that's like our bread and butter. And just don't listen when people tell you that you're not gonna be able to do something. Just do it and prove them wrong or give it your best shot and then move on to what you can accomplish. But don't let other people tell you what your limits are.

Bryan: 01:04:46

Yeah. Don't let someone else set your limitations. Absolutely. Yeah. Dan.

Bryan: 01:04:51

That does it for our chat today on fixed wing SAR. I just wanna thank you so much for being here today. For the listeners, Dan was down in Winnipeg for a work trip and he made the trip out here to Portage to do this in person. So I know you're a very busy guy and I just really appreciate your time. So thank you.

Dan: 01:05:06

No. I appreciate the opportunity. I love the podcast and and I love the message that you're that you're sending to the next generation and the current generation. So thank you.

Bryan: 01:05:15

Thanks, Fly safe. Always. Alright. That wraps up our two part chat with major Dan Conway about his career in fixed wing search and rescue as well as the future of fixed wing search and rescue with the CC two nine five Kingfisher. For our next episode, we'll be sitting down with captain Aaron Edwards, a CH one forty six Griffin pilot who has served with four two seven special operations aviation squadron, a recipient of the LC McGill award, and a current CAPCOM in Houston working with NASA.

Bryan: 01:05:43

Do you have any questions or comments about anything you've heard in this show? Would you or someone you know make a great guest, or do you have a great idea for a show? You can reach out to us at the pilotprojectpodcast@gmail.com or on all social media at at pod pilotproject. 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.

Bryan: 01:06:05

That's like and follow us on social media, share with your friends, and follow and rate us five stars wherever you get your podcasts. That's all for now. Thanks for listening. Keep the blue side up. See you.

Intro/outro: 01:06:18

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