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The Flyboy Podcast: Guest Tim Hafner · The Flyboy Podcast

• 0:09
  SPEAKER_00: Welcome to the Fly Boy Podcast, where we bring you just one thing: cool flying stories.
• 0:14
  SPEAKER_00: I'm your host, David Moore, and today I'll be talking with Tim Hafner.
• 0:18
  SPEAKER_00: Tim has flown the F-16, both the A model and the C model, as well as flying for the airlines.
• 0:24
  SPEAKER_00: I and the 727, the F-100, the 757, and 767.
• 0:30
  SPEAKER_00: He has more than 8,000 flying hours.
• 0:32
  SPEAKER_00: Tim, welcome to the podcast.
• 0:34
  SPEAKER_01: Thanks, Never.
• 0:35
  SPEAKER_01: It's great to be here.
• 0:36
  SPEAKER_00: So, Tim, can you describe for us the difference between the F-16A model and the C model?
• 0:43
  SPEAKER_00: What's the difference and why is it significant?
• 0:45
  SPEAKER_01: Well, the snarky answer is the A model was the first gen, and the avionics, well, we thought they were absolutely G Wiz, and the F-4 guys joked they called us the digital babies.
• 0:57
  SPEAKER_01: They were still pretty rudimentary, but aerodynamically superior airplane to the first gen of the C models.
• 1:04
  SPEAKER_01: The C models had much improved avionics.
• 1:07
  SPEAKER_01: Uh the radar was so much better.
• 1:09
  SPEAKER_01: The layer of the cockpit was better and all those kinds of things.
• 1:11
  SPEAKER_01: But it also got heavier, which led to some compromises in the aerodynamics, which they later on fixed with a bigger intake and a bigger motor and those kind of things.
• 1:20
  SPEAKER_01: So better airframe in the A, better avionics in the C, especially first gen.
• 1:25
  SPEAKER_00: I've heard some F-16 pilots refer to the big lip or big mouth versions.
• 1:29
  SPEAKER_00: I assume that's when they did the later modification to the intake to let more air get into the engine.
• 1:34
  SPEAKER_00: Was that behind that?
• 1:35
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, they started initially it was a Pratt and Whitney engine, the F-100, and then when they got into the C model, they brought General Electric in and they put their motor in and it just worked better with a bigger intake.
• 1:48
  SPEAKER_01: It flowed air differently.
• 1:50
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 1:50
  SPEAKER_01: So that was the big mouth.
• 1:51
  SPEAKER_01: Uh that was that's an amazing airplane.
• 1:54
  SPEAKER_00: Tim, when did you first know you wanted to be a pilot?
• 1:56
  SPEAKER_01: I'm almost embarrassed to admit this, but I was sort of a pilot by chance.
• 2:01
  SPEAKER_01: I do remember when I was young going to an air show and the F4s were there, the Thunderbirds were there flying F four E's.
• 2:08
  SPEAKER_01: And the one moment that I can remember is when they're doing the slow flyby, the whole formation's going by, and then all of a sudden the jet comes out of nowhere.
• 2:15
  SPEAKER_01: So I had that snippet that just always stuck with me.
• 2:18
  SPEAKER_01: But I was military focused, but more army.
• 2:21
  SPEAKER_01: Again, I'm embarrassed to admit this, but when I was coming time to graduate, my advisor was saying, you need to go to grad school.
• 2:27
  SPEAKER_01: And all I could think of was, I am so over school.
• 2:30
  SPEAKER_01: And my roommate said, Let's join the Air Force.
• 2:32
  SPEAKER_01: And I thought, yes, that sounds way better.
• 2:35
  SPEAKER_01: The irony being it committed me to five more years of schooling to get through it.
• 2:39
  SPEAKER_01: But yeah, almost an accidental pilot.
• 2:41
  SPEAKER_01: And then when I went to apply, they looked at my resume, saw that I was a forestry major, and realized that I was useless for anything and gave me a pilot slot.
• 2:50
  SPEAKER_00: You know, I had kind of a similar experience.
• 2:52
  SPEAKER_00: English majors are also similarly qualified only to be pilots in the Air Force.
• 2:57
  SPEAKER_01: I am convinced because word was out they were looking for engineers, and I think they looked at my resume and went, we can't do anything useful with this guy.
• 3:05
  SPEAKER_01: Give him a pilot slot.
• 3:07
  SPEAKER_00: Forestry majors and English majors.
• 3:09
  SPEAKER_00: We're taking over the world, baby.
• 3:11
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, that's the worst for me.
• 3:12
  SPEAKER_00: So uh tell us about your first solo.
• 3:14
  SPEAKER_00: Do you remember that?
• 3:16
  SPEAKER_01: Oh boy, yes, I do.
• 3:18
  SPEAKER_01: So I went in without any flying experience.
• 3:21
  SPEAKER_01: So before I went through officer training school, they put us through a screening program, flight screening program, officer trainee, fish pots.
• 3:30
  SPEAKER_00: You were a fish pot, so was I.
• 3:32
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, excellent.
• 3:33
  SPEAKER_01: Back in the day, yeah.
• 3:35
  SPEAKER_01: Out at Hondo.
• 3:36
  SPEAKER_01: So that was it.
• 3:37
  SPEAKER_01: That was my first time flying.
• 3:39
  SPEAKER_01: And we're going through the program, and landing made no sense to me.
• 3:43
  SPEAKER_01: Absolutely no sense.
• 3:44
  SPEAKER_01: We were rolled out on final, and I just it I couldn't make any sense of what I was doing.
• 3:48
  SPEAKER_01: I was slamming the airplane in, I was flaring too high, all that kind of stuff.
• 3:52
  SPEAKER_01: So the instructor told me, Don't worry about it.
• 3:54
  SPEAKER_01: We'll come in, we'll shoot a bunch of patterns.
• 3:56
  SPEAKER_01: And if I think you're ready, I'll let you solo.
• 3:58
  SPEAKER_01: If not, we'll go tomorrow.
• 3:59
  SPEAKER_01: So I called my fiance at the time, not my wife, and I said, Honey, I have no idea how to land the airplane.
• 4:05
  SPEAKER_01: I'm supposed to solo today.
• 4:07
  SPEAKER_01: It was the craziest thing.
• 4:09
  SPEAKER_00: She really appreciated that.
• 4:10
  SPEAKER_01: Oh my gosh.
• 4:11
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 4:12
  SPEAKER_01: It was, I was in a tough place.
• 4:14
  SPEAKER_01: So we take off and we turn base and downwind and then base again, and we line up.
• 4:21
  SPEAKER_01: And as soon as I lined up with the airplane, landing it was the most obvious thing in the world to me.
• 4:26
  SPEAKER_01: It was the craziest thing.
• 4:27
  SPEAKER_01: I have no explanation for it.
• 4:28
  SPEAKER_01: I greased it on, went around, greased the second one on.
• 4:32
  SPEAKER_01: He said, Go ahead, stop the airplane, and he got out.
• 4:34
  SPEAKER_01: And as I'm watching him leave the airplane, all I can think of is, I am going to be dead in the next 10 minutes.
• 4:39
  SPEAKER_01: And off I went and somehow survived the solo.
• 4:42
  SPEAKER_01: Man oh man.
• 4:44
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, that was a crazy experience.
• 4:46
  SPEAKER_00: Well, I think we should take a moment and just let folks know about this magical little program that existed back in the early 1980s called the flight screening program officer trainee program, fishpots is the abbreviation.
• 5:00
  SPEAKER_00: And I went through, I had no flying time whatsoever.
• 5:03
  SPEAKER_00: And they said, Well, okay, we'll commission you to be an officer in the Air Force.
• 5:07
  SPEAKER_00: We'll give you a pilot slot, but first we're gonna send you to this little place, Hondo, Texas, west of San Antonio, and we're gonna put you through a miniature pilot training course.
• 5:17
  SPEAKER_00: Because I recall it was our seventh ride, was a solo, and then if we survive that, they give us a check ride on our 11th ride.
• 5:24
  SPEAKER_00: And if we passed the check ride, they'd say, okay, now you we think you have a good chance of making it through pilot training, and we're gonna send you on your way and get commissioned.
• 5:32
  SPEAKER_00: So it was a wonderful process of giving you a taste of what was to come, and I think also weeding out folks who weren't suited for it.
• 5:39
  SPEAKER_00: I remember we started with 49 people in my fish bot class and seven graduated.
• 5:45
  SPEAKER_00: So it was a very steep attrition.
• 5:47
  SPEAKER_00: But many of those were people who just simply weren't right for the lifestyle.
• 5:51
  SPEAKER_00: They had to put on the uniform and they didn't like that, or they didn't want to get their hair cut or whatever it was.
• 5:56
  SPEAKER_00: So it wasn't just compatibility with flying per se.
• 6:00
  SPEAKER_00: I would say writ large it was were they compatible for serving in the military and becoming aviators.
• 6:08
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 6:08
  SPEAKER_01: It's funny to hear you word it that way, because what I remember wearing a flight suit was the coolest thing ever.
• 6:15
  SPEAKER_01: Remember everybody's walking around in their beings and we we got to at least for that short period of time, and then we got to wear the little propeller emblem on our hat.
• 6:23
  SPEAKER_01: I thought that was the coolest thing ever.
• 6:25
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, escaping death was nice, but the the flight suit was awesome.
• 6:30
  SPEAKER_00: I have two very vivid memories from that, apart from the flying.
• 6:34
  SPEAKER_00: One was they had a poster in our little dormitory area, and it had, you know, a picture of an airman in a flight suit, and the caption was lead, follow, or get out of the way.
• 6:46
  SPEAKER_00: The second thing I remember was seeing this video because they showed us like clips of airplanes flying, you know, during the evening while we were there, and that was the first time I saw the A-10 warthog.
• 6:57
  SPEAKER_00: I said, Oh my god, that's what I want to fly.
• 7:00
  SPEAKER_00: And I did.
• 7:01
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 7:01
  SPEAKER_01: Do you remember the ceiling tiles being painted?
• 7:04
  SPEAKER_01: The classes would eventually they ran out and you couldn't do it anymore.
• 7:07
  SPEAKER_01: The one that I remember was a copy of the Aliens movie poster, and the title said, When you're solo, no one can hear you scream.
• 7:15
  SPEAKER_00: I remember that ceiling tile.
• 7:16
  SPEAKER_00: Here's the crazy thing.
• 7:17
  SPEAKER_00: I wonder if we were in the same class.
• 7:19
  SPEAKER_00: What year were you there?
• 7:20
  SPEAKER_00: I was there right before my son was born, so it was uh 1982.
• 7:23
  SPEAKER_00: So it was probably January of 1982.
• 7:26
  SPEAKER_01: It was really close.
• 7:28
  SPEAKER_01: My pilot training class was 8304, which meant it would have been I was eighty three oh five.
• 7:35
  SPEAKER_01: Where did you go to pilot training?
• 7:36
  SPEAKER_00: Willie.
• 7:37
  SPEAKER_01: I was at Reese.
• 7:40
  SPEAKER_00: What a small world.
• 7:42
  SPEAKER_00: Wow.
• 7:42
  SPEAKER_00: What a small world.
• 7:43
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, so let's uh we'll try to get back on track.
• 7:46
  SPEAKER_00: We'll see if we'll see if we manage.
• 7:49
  SPEAKER_00: I know, I know.
• 7:50
  SPEAKER_00: So, Tim, what's the coolest thing you've ever done in an airplane?
• 7:55
  SPEAKER_01: So I actually went online to make sure that it was unclassified, and I saw it in so many places that I thought, okay, this is all right to speak about.
• 8:02
  SPEAKER_01: It was the constant peg missions where we went and we must have been one of the last groups to go through, and it was it was in A models.
• 8:11
  SPEAKER_01: It was early on, it was before my instructor tour.
• 8:14
  SPEAKER_01: And a good friend of mine, I Rex Carpenter, he was the flight lead, and I was a wingman, and we went up and they sent out a MiG-21 and a MiG-23.
• 8:22
  SPEAKER_01: So for those who don't know what Costant Peg is, the US had Soviet-built fighters that they were flying, and the US pilots could fly against them to just get that first sight out of your system and then be able to see the capabilities of the airplane.
• 8:38
  SPEAKER_01: So MiG-21, small little interceptor, neat little airplane, the MiG-23 was not a very good airplane, swing wing, but it was fast.
• 8:48
  SPEAKER_01: And so we're setting up for the intercept, and it turned out that Rex had locked up the MiG-21 and was targeting him, and I was targeting the MiG-23.
• 8:57
  SPEAKER_01: And we had a readout on the radar screen that told you how fast you were closing with the other aircraft.
• 9:03
  SPEAKER_01: So if you're doing 400 knots and he's doing 400 knots, your screen will show 800.
• 9:08
  SPEAKER_01: I looked down at the screen.
• 9:09
  SPEAKER_01: If you saw a thousand knots closure, you thought, okay, things are happening fast.
• 9:15
  SPEAKER_01: I looked at the screen, it said 1400 knots.
• 9:19
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, my eyes were like that.
• 9:22
  SPEAKER_00: Oh man.
• 9:23
  SPEAKER_01: Again, we we carried heat seeking missiles and relatively short range.
• 9:28
  SPEAKER_01: If you got a five-mile shot with a heat seeker, that was a long shot.
• 9:33
  SPEAKER_01: And normally it was inside those ranges, typically inside of three miles.
• 9:37
  SPEAKER_01: At 12 miles, the heat seeker was screaming.
• 9:41
  SPEAKER_01: It saw the heat source.
• 9:45
  SPEAKER_00: Let me go.
• 9:46
  SPEAKER_01: It was because he was so fast at 12 miles.
• 9:49
  SPEAKER_01: It said, You can launch and this will hit.
• 9:51
  SPEAKER_01: It was the craziest thing.
• 9:52
  SPEAKER_01: He came through the fight, he had to have been going 850, 870, I think is what I saw.
• 9:58
  SPEAKER_01: And the other thing that was amazing to me is in the daytime on a US fighter, when you light the afterburner, you'll see a faint blue outline.
• 10:05
  SPEAKER_01: At night, it's really dramatic.
• 10:07
  SPEAKER_01: But during the day, faint blue.
• 10:08
  SPEAKER_01: We're in in the desert, clear blue sky, you're gonna see it.
• 10:11
  SPEAKER_01: He went by me, and the burner plume coming out of the back of his airplane was twice the length of the airplane, and it was dark, dark blue.
• 10:19
  SPEAKER_01: It was amazing.
• 10:20
  SPEAKER_01: And then I thought, yeah, we're never gonna see him again.
• 10:23
  SPEAKER_01: So I go to concentrate on what my flight lead's doing, and all of a sudden he's back in the fight, and that's when, oh yeah, at 850 knots, you're gonna leave fast, but you're gonna come back fast too.
• 10:36
  SPEAKER_01: Wow.
• 10:37
  SPEAKER_01: That was so, so cool.
• 10:39
  SPEAKER_01: And it did exactly what it was supposed to do initially.
• 10:42
  SPEAKER_01: I was just completely awestruck by what I was seeing, and then was able to go, wait a minute, it's just an airplane.
• 10:47
  SPEAKER_01: What can it really do?
• 10:48
  SPEAKER_01: What can't it do?
• 10:49
  SPEAKER_01: All that.
• 10:49
  SPEAKER_00: Well, that program did offer Air Force pilots and others a very unique opportunity to get a taste of what it was like to fly air-to-air against Soviet-built fighters that we had acquired somehow, somehow, somewhere.
• 11:04
  SPEAKER_01: Have you read Red Eagles?
• 11:06
  SPEAKER_01: Such a good read.
• 11:07
  SPEAKER_01: For anybody listening, if you want to know more about the program, pick up that book and read it.
• 11:10
  SPEAKER_01: It's so good.
• 11:11
  SPEAKER_00: Tim, what's the closest call you've ever had in an airplane?
• 11:15
  SPEAKER_01: So when I was stationed at Homestead Air Force Base on the southern tip of Florida, we would occasionally fly against the Jacksonville Air National Guard.
• 11:24
  SPEAKER_01: They were an air defense unit flying F-106s, 1950s era Delta Wing, really cool looking airplane.
• 11:30
  SPEAKER_01: And so to get dissimilar training in, they would fly down and would fly missions together.
• 11:35
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, we were doing this one mission, I think it was four V4.
• 11:40
  SPEAKER_01: So four of them against four of us, which that can turn into a a thing, right?
• 11:45
  SPEAKER_01: Airplanes going everywhere.
• 11:46
  SPEAKER_01: So we get into the merge where airplanes start crossing, and then everybody's trying to turn and shoot everybody else.
• 11:53
  SPEAKER_01: And this moment happened where it's almost like time stood still, and the hair on the back of my neck started coming up.
• 12:00
  SPEAKER_01: It felt in slow motion, but it was anything but, and I looked up just in time to see the 106, one of the 106s, cross over the top of my canopy, and it was so close that I could tell the difference between a flathead screw and a Phillips head screw.
• 12:16
  SPEAKER_01: And then and it was over just like that.
• 12:18
  SPEAKER_01: And then I I don't even I can't I can't remember if I called a knock it off or if we kept flying or or what, but I just remember that thing passing over my head that closely.
• 12:28
  SPEAKER_01: And you think about those things.
• 12:29
  SPEAKER_01: Like, how much stick pressure would it have taken to move my airplane up 10 feet?
• 12:34
  SPEAKER_01: And then it's a fireball.
• 12:36
  SPEAKER_01: That was my closest call.
• 12:38
  SPEAKER_00: Had some other ones, but I think that was the closest.
• 12:40
  SPEAKER_00: So we're back after a quick station break, and you'll notice I've changed my background.
• 12:45
  SPEAKER_00: That was due to a technical uh error on my part, so we're having to resume the second half of our podcast.
• 12:51
  SPEAKER_00: So continuing on, Tim, let me ask you, what's the worst weather you've had to fly through to land an airplane?
• 12:58
  SPEAKER_01: Okay, so it's a weather story, but it's also sort of a knucklehead story at the same time.
• 13:06
  SPEAKER_01: If it had just been weather, it probably wouldn't be much of a story.
• 13:10
  SPEAKER_01: But I think we had taken four airplanes from Homestead Air Force Base up to Fargo to fly with the happy hooligans.
• 13:16
  SPEAKER_01: They were an air defense unit.
• 13:17
  SPEAKER_01: They needed people to simulate Russian bombers coming across the pole.
• 13:20
  SPEAKER_01: So we went out there and just bored holes in the sky and got shot down.
• 13:24
  SPEAKER_01: It wasn't all that much fun.
• 13:25
  SPEAKER_01: But so we we're coming up on the last day of the deployment, and the weather crumps on us, and we're not flying sorties.
• 13:31
  SPEAKER_01: So we don't really have anything to do, which is not a good situation for a bunch of fighter pilots.
• 13:37
  SPEAKER_01: We ended up at one of the local bars, and I think we got there about lunchtime and probably left there about 8 p.m.
• 13:44
  SPEAKER_01: and consumed copious amounts of adult beverages because we had nothing else to do.
• 13:49
  SPEAKER_01: Anyway, we survive that.
• 13:50
  SPEAKER_01: We go back to the queue rooms, get up the next morning, and I'm I'm hurting.
• 13:54
  SPEAKER_01: I don't know what the other guys, but I think my brain was about the size of a walnut rattling around in a shoebox.
• 14:00
  SPEAKER_01: I'm so dehydrated.
• 14:01
  SPEAKER_01: We're gonna fly one hop from Fargo to Navy Memphis.
• 14:05
  SPEAKER_01: And to get there, we had to fly at 41,000 feet.
• 14:08
  SPEAKER_00: 41,000.
• 14:09
  SPEAKER_00: That's that's up there.
• 14:10
  SPEAKER_01: That's up there.
• 14:11
  SPEAKER_01: And because of the way a fighter cockpit schedules its pressurization, you're sitting at like 18, 19, 20,000 foot altitude.
• 14:19
  SPEAKER_01: So you're sucking on oxygen.
• 14:22
  SPEAKER_01: It was awful.
• 14:23
  SPEAKER_01: I just remember as we're cruising along, if I'm gonna die young, now would be a good time.
• 14:30
  SPEAKER_01: So we start letting down into Memphis, and the weather at Memphis is 10,000 feet right down to minimums.
• 14:39
  SPEAKER_01: Okay, not that big a deal.
• 14:40
  SPEAKER_01: We can do this, we can do this.
• 14:42
  SPEAKER_01: So we split up for separate approaches, and I'm up above the deck and I'm descending down.
• 14:47
  SPEAKER_01: I'm okay.
• 14:48
  SPEAKER_01: I'm okay, I'm okay, I can do this.
• 14:50
  SPEAKER_01: And as soon as the airplane goes below the deck and goes into the clouds, my head just caged like 90 degrees out on the side of the camera.
• 14:59
  SPEAKER_01: I was so spatially disoriented.
• 15:02
  SPEAKER_01: And I thought, I'm not okay anymore.
• 15:05
  SPEAKER_01: Fought through the whole thing.
• 15:06
  SPEAKER_01: So we fly the approach round, and it's a precision approach radar where he's talking you down.
• 15:11
  SPEAKER_01: You're not looking at a specific cage.
• 15:13
  SPEAKER_01: And so I'm getting close, and he's calling that I'm slightly above flypath.
• 15:18
  SPEAKER_01: Okay, but I also know I'm close, so I don't want to make a big correction.
• 15:21
  SPEAKER_01: So I'm I'm trying to make little corrections, little corrections.
• 15:24
  SPEAKER_01: And I finally break out right at Min's, and I it just felt like I went from looking out the HUD to going, this is slightly above.
• 15:35
  SPEAKER_01: So the cold sweat immediately breaks out.
• 15:38
  SPEAKER_01: And it's a short runway because it's navy, it's only 8,000 foot long and it's wet, but all I can think of is I would rather die than go back up into those clouds.
• 15:47
  SPEAKER_01: So I'm doing whatever it takes to get this thing on the ground.
• 15:50
  SPEAKER_01: So I'm idle speed brakes, stomping in the rudder, cross lifting up, just trying to kill some energy.
• 15:56
  SPEAKER_01: I land long and hot on a wet, short runway, stomping on the brakes for all they're worth.
• 16:02
  SPEAKER_01: I get the thing stopped and I start taxiing in.
• 16:05
  SPEAKER_01: And all I can think of is I will never tell anyone what I just did.
• 16:10
  SPEAKER_01: Go in, I park the airplane, Campy comes up, one of the other guys, buddy of mine, Chuck Bales, pulls in next to me, Campy comes up, he comes down the ladder, and we're both walking towards a base ops, and neither of us is saying a word.
• 16:23
  SPEAKER_01: And then finally, Chuck looks at me and he says, The runway was kind of short, wasn't it?
• 16:29
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, yeah, why?
• 16:31
  SPEAKER_01: He said, I still have my nose up in the air when I pet went past the thousand-foot cable.
• 16:36
  SPEAKER_00: The nose of the jet up in the air, aerobraking.
• 16:39
  SPEAKER_01: He was aerobraking, which is what you did in the 16 to save brakes, but you do that like the first part of the runway, not the last thousand feet.
• 16:48
  SPEAKER_01: So he had to slam the nose down to get on the brakes.
• 16:51
  SPEAKER_01: He said he got it stopped with inches to spare and then pulled off.
• 16:55
  SPEAKER_01: And I went from thinking, I am the biggest dope that has ever lived to, okay, I may not be the biggest dope that ever lived, so it's not that bad.
• 17:06
  SPEAKER_01: So, like I said, if it had just been the weather, it wouldn't be much of a story.
• 17:10
  SPEAKER_01: It's the other factors that turned it into something bigger.
• 17:15
  SPEAKER_00: Wow.
• 17:16
  SPEAKER_00: So from the F-16, you wound up going on to fly with the airlines.
• 17:21
  SPEAKER_00: Can you tell us a little bit about that transition?
• 17:23
  SPEAKER_00: What was it like going from flying fighters to flying airliners?
• 17:28
  SPEAKER_01: So I had an interesting window into the soul of different people because Rex Carpenter, whose name will probably come up because he's he's just one of those guys.
• 17:37
  SPEAKER_01: He he and I were talking and he said, Are you going to be okay flying airliners?
• 17:40
  SPEAKER_01: And my response was, I think so, because for me the joy is getting the airplane to bend to my will.
• 17:47
  SPEAKER_01: And he said, Really?
• 17:49
  SPEAKER_01: I don't care at all about the airplane.
• 17:50
  SPEAKER_01: It's just a tool to get me into the fight.
• 17:52
  SPEAKER_01: And I went, that's why you are the ace of the base, and I'm not.
• 17:58
  SPEAKER_01: Anyway, so that that was an interesting little window.
• 18:01
  SPEAKER_01: So my interview, you go in and you do all the stuff, the medical stuff.
• 18:04
  SPEAKER_01: This was this was with American.
• 18:05
  SPEAKER_01: And they want you to do a sim test.
• 18:07
  SPEAKER_01: Of course, they want to see if you have basic flying skills, right?
• 18:10
  SPEAKER_01: So I ended up in the Casey 135 SIM.
• 18:14
  SPEAKER_01: You're either going to be in a 707 SIM or the 135 SIM.
• 18:17
  SPEAKER_01: They're close enough.
• 18:18
  SPEAKER_01: So I ended up with a guy who'd been there forever.
• 18:21
  SPEAKER_01: I'm pretty sure his name was Lou Sokol.
• 18:23
  SPEAKER_01: Somebody can correct me if I'm wrong.
• 18:24
  SPEAKER_01: I think he was like 140 years old.
• 18:26
  SPEAKER_01: He had been there forever.
• 18:28
  SPEAKER_01: Everybody knew him.
• 18:29
  SPEAKER_01: Great guy.
• 18:30
  SPEAKER_01: So we go flying, and I'm in the left seat, and he's in the right seat.
• 18:33
  SPEAKER_01: And the 135, so I'm coming from the first fly-by-wire airplane that it just response was instantaneous, right?
• 18:41
  SPEAKER_01: It you thought it had happened.
• 18:42
  SPEAKER_01: Going to the 135, which had this Rube Goldberg flight control system, where you made an input and it went through about a hundred different linkages that caused a tab to move, which eventually rippled through the rest of the airplane, and eventually it would do something.
• 18:57
  SPEAKER_01: So we take off and we're gonna fly a rectangular pattern, fly around the box, and it's wired.
• 19:03
  SPEAKER_01: I've got it, this thing's wired.
• 19:04
  SPEAKER_01: I am on altitude, on airspeed, on heading, never deviating more than a knot or a degree.
• 19:10
  SPEAKER_01: I'm like, I got this.
• 19:11
  SPEAKER_01: I so got this.
• 19:13
  SPEAKER_01: So we turn final and we start coming down on the approach.
• 19:17
  SPEAKER_01: And the closer you get, the more sensitive things are.
• 19:19
  SPEAKER_01: So it's off just a little bit, so I make a steering input.
• 19:23
  SPEAKER_01: The airplane doesn't respond.
• 19:25
  SPEAKER_01: And it finally starts, so I make a left steering input.
• 19:28
  SPEAKER_01: It finally starts to bang to the left.
• 19:30
  SPEAKER_01: Well, okay, that's enough.
• 19:32
  SPEAKER_01: I need it to correct back.
• 19:33
  SPEAKER_01: So I make a correction to the right, and it just keeps going left.
• 19:36
  SPEAKER_01: What?
• 19:37
  SPEAKER_01: What the heck?
• 19:38
  SPEAKER_01: And this cycle happened enough times that I think what happened in my head was I convinced myself the airplane flew backwards because I'm making a right input and it's just starting to roll left.
• 19:48
  SPEAKER_01: And I just got completely out of sync with it.
• 19:50
  SPEAKER_01: Anyway, so we break out in the simulator, and the runway is off at like left one o'clock.
• 19:56
  SPEAKER_01: And so it no problem.
• 19:57
  SPEAKER_01: I can land this thing.
• 19:58
  SPEAKER_01: So I make an F-16 input on a 135, and it goes like this, and just starts dropping.
• 20:05
  SPEAKER_01: And so 90 degrees of bank and down it comes.
• 20:08
  SPEAKER_01: And we're like at 500 feet at this point.
• 20:10
  SPEAKER_01: And I look over at Lou and I said, I think I'll take this one around.
• 20:14
  SPEAKER_01: And I reach over, and what I thought I had, I thought I had the throttles in retrospect.
• 20:20
  SPEAKER_01: I grabbed the start levers, which were below, and we rode to our death in 90 degrees of bank, with me trying to push the start levers through the instrument panel.
• 20:28
  SPEAKER_01: And I I'm laughing.
• 20:30
  SPEAKER_01: It was so funny, you just couldn't not laugh.
• 20:33
  SPEAKER_01: And Lou is laughing, and it was it was hysterical.
• 20:36
  SPEAKER_01: And he said, You're good.
• 20:37
  SPEAKER_01: I'm not worried about it.
• 20:38
  SPEAKER_01: And that was it.
• 20:38
  SPEAKER_01: He didn't let me find another approach.
• 20:40
  SPEAKER_01: And they then they hired me.
• 20:42
  SPEAKER_00: So you crashed the simulator onto your interview, and they still hired you.
• 20:47
  SPEAKER_01: And they still hired me.
• 20:49
  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
• 20:49
  SPEAKER_00: Well, clearly you had other moments where you shined.
• 20:53
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I think I the gift of that whole thing was it was so funny that I knew it wasn't a problem because he was just howling, laughing, and up to that point it had been fun.
• 21:03
  SPEAKER_01: Everything had been fine.
• 21:04
  SPEAKER_01: So it was just he understood it was, yeah, you don't understand how big airplanes work yet.
• 21:08
  SPEAKER_01: So there's hope for all of us.
• 21:09
  SPEAKER_01: You know.
• 21:10
  SPEAKER_00: There you go.
• 21:10
  SPEAKER_00: Tim, so my last question for you today is about advice.
• 21:14
  SPEAKER_00: What advice do you give young people when they tell you they want to become a pilot?
• 21:18
  SPEAKER_01: Man, I love this question.
• 21:19
  SPEAKER_01: And I think the reason I love it so much is because this is what I do for a living now.
• 21:23
  SPEAKER_01: For medical reasons, I stopped flying after 20 years, and my life went in a completely different direction.
• 21:29
  SPEAKER_01: And now for the last 14, I've been a campus minister at the University of New Hampshire, and I work with the ROTC cadets and I work with the athletes because I was both when I was here.
• 21:39
  SPEAKER_01: So it's a bigger question for me because I've kind of seen a much wider spectrum.
• 21:44
  SPEAKER_01: Had a great conversation with one of the army guys, his name is Grant, and he infantry is the new hotness in the Army.
• 21:51
  SPEAKER_01: Right now, everybody wants to go infantry.
• 21:53
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, it's not the new hotness.
• 21:54
  SPEAKER_00: It's always been the hotness.
• 21:56
  SPEAKER_01: No, it doesn't.
• 21:57
  SPEAKER_01: It comes and goes.
• 21:58
  SPEAKER_01: Really?
• 21:59
  SPEAKER_01: Right now, it's definitely the thing.
• 22:01
  SPEAKER_01: He wants to go aviation, which is so not the thing right now.
• 22:05
  SPEAKER_01: But he wants to fly, I think it's the V-280, the new rotary wing.
• 22:08
  SPEAKER_01: So we talked a little bit about that, and I just said, you know what, Grant?
• 22:11
  SPEAKER_01: Somebody's gonna fly that thing.
• 22:13
  SPEAKER_01: It might as well be you.
• 22:14
  SPEAKER_01: Go for it.
• 22:15
  SPEAKER_01: So that was one side of it.
• 22:16
  SPEAKER_01: But I I think the other thing, and this is something that I had to wrestle with, is getting them to ask the question, what were you really made for?
• 22:24
  SPEAKER_01: And here's how it's played out in a number of ways.
• 22:26
  SPEAKER_01: I know for me, I flew airplanes for 20 years.
• 22:29
  SPEAKER_01: I was good at it, not the ace of the base, but I was okay.
• 22:32
  SPEAKER_01: But in retrospect, it's not what I was made for.
• 22:35
  SPEAKER_01: What I was made for was mentoring students, which I've been doing between teaching and ministry, I've been doing for 25 years now.
• 22:42
  SPEAKER_01: And it, yeah, I think this is it.
• 22:44
  SPEAKER_01: This is the purpose for which I was created.
• 22:46
  SPEAKER_01: But I can have those conversations with them as well.
• 22:48
  SPEAKER_01: I had another one.
• 22:49
  SPEAKER_01: Danny, if you listen to this, I am so thrilled for you.
• 22:53
  SPEAKER_01: He just finished pilot training, and he and I had talked before because he didn't he didn't know what he wanted to fly.
• 22:58
  SPEAKER_01: So we talked about flying fighters, we talked about flying heavies and in between, and here's how you'll know like if fighters are gonna be your thing.
• 23:06
  SPEAKER_01: And he realized as he went through the program, I don't think fighters is my thing.
• 23:10
  SPEAKER_01: And so he had the freedom to step into the assignment process, not feeling the pressure of the outside world telling him what he should do, but being comfortable with what he was created to be.
• 23:20
  SPEAKER_01: And he got a C21 for an assignment, and I'm just I'm so thrilled for him.
• 23:25
  SPEAKER_01: He's gonna have such a good time.
• 23:27
  SPEAKER_01: And I went that fits.
• 23:28
  SPEAKER_01: That's such a great fit for him.
• 23:30
  SPEAKER_01: So to see him free and comfortable with that process by pressing into first who he was created to be, and then what is God offering you here?
• 23:38
  SPEAKER_01: So that's kind of the nature.
• 23:40
  SPEAKER_01: That's what I do every day.
• 23:41
  SPEAKER_01: Best job in the world.
• 23:42
  SPEAKER_01: Love my flying background.
• 23:44
  SPEAKER_01: I'm so grateful for it, but I love what I do now.
• 23:47
  SPEAKER_00: Well, that's pretty darn cool.
• 23:48
  SPEAKER_00: It is pretty darn cool.
• 23:50
  SPEAKER_00: Well, Tim, thank you so much for being on the podcast.
• 23:52
  SPEAKER_01: Dave, this was what a joy.
• 23:54
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 23:55
  SPEAKER_01: Telling old stories is just fun.
• 23:57
  SPEAKER_01: And hearing all the other ones, I just love it.
• 23:59
  SPEAKER_01: So thank you.
• 24:00
  SPEAKER_00: You've been listening to the Flyboy Podcast.
• 24:02
  SPEAKER_00: This podcast is brought to you by our parent organization, the Flyboy Lab.
• 24:06
  SPEAKER_00: The mission of the Flyboy Lab is to elevate awareness and appreciation of aviators, their service, sacrifices, and contributions, and hopefully we've fulfilled that mission today.
• 24:15
  SPEAKER_00: New episodes of the podcast drop every Thursday morning, and you can find previous episodes on our website, theflyboypodcast.com.
• 24:23
  SPEAKER_00: Until our next sortie, push the mock, use the vertical, and fly safe.