Isaac Etherington takes us through his journey to becoming an EMS, or what is now called Helicopter Air Ambulance (HAA), pilot. He has flown HAA from the badlands of the Dakotas, to the mountains of Yellowstone, to the beautiful state of Oregon. His unique range of experience makes for an exciting episode where we dive into the life of a medical pilot. In this episode we cover juicy subjects such as Crew Resource Management (CRM), external and internal pressures a medical pilot might face, the importance of good crew cohesion and the formula for a solid crew brief, and an emergency situation we will just nickname- DUCK TALES! Whether you are interested in flying medical services or not, this episode offers some great information and fun content. Enjoy, and thank you for listening!
Isaac Etherington takes us through his journey to becoming an EMS, or what is now called Helicopter Air Ambulance (HAA), pilot. He has flown HAA from the badlands of the Dakotas, to the mountains of Yellowstone, to the beautiful state of Oregon. His unique range of experience makes for an exciting episode where we dive into the life of a medical pilot. In this episode we cover juicy subjects such as Crew Resource Management (CRM), external and internal pressures a medical pilot might face, the importance of good crew cohesion and the formula for a solid crew brief, and an emergency situation we will just nickname- DUCK TALES! Whether you are interested in flying medical services or not, this episode offers some great information and fun content. Enjoy, and thank you for listening!
You're listening to the forever on the fly podcast what up baby nerd bases Welcome to the forever on the fly podcast, your bi weekly dose of aviation inspiration, education and entertainment. My name is Diane. And guess who's back? Back? Back Oh my god. Oh my god. Thank you folks. Thank you. Oh senorita thank you for that wonderful introduction. Oh, you're You're welcome. Our studio audience is here and they're all giving you a nice warm lady. Some chick just threw a bra you crazy and said in the memory we missed you last week. I missed you as well. But he held down the floor I tried you know, I heard the interview and it was effin fantastic. Oh, Grace, Grace. Yes. You know, Tom made it pretty easy for me I gotta gotta admit but yeah, super interesting. I'm glad that you actually listened to it. You know with your work you're busy busy schedule A man is what happens when you flapper El Chapo err. Yeah, right. Making that sad. Oh, nice. Nice hustle there. Well, anyways, Jose is back and he is here to help me get you guys hooked on aviation. All right. Well, this week if you guys have ever been interested in flying EMS, or aka emergency medical services, okay, helicopter, mula. And this week's episode is for you. We're going to learn about what's life is like as a as a pilot, from an experienced individual who has flown medical service from the geezers of Yellowstone to the Badlands of the Dakotas to the beautiful state have already got I don't know which now we'll keep that in there. We're gonna we're gonna get into some juicy subjects this week as well guys, crew resource management, otherwise known as CRM. And as always, we're going to get into some good old fashioned aeronautical decision making sterile cockpit vers silent cockpit the importance of good crew cohesion and how to accomplish a solid crew brief and an emergency situation. We're just gonna call Doctor Oh, man, it's a crazy story, guys, so we're gonna get right to it. Let's do it. Isaac Etherington scene called Grizzly bear attack snowmobile accident hunting accidents. This is Isaac Etherington. And I am forever on the fly. Good to see you guys. What an honor. Very excited to be here. You too, brother. Thanks for coming on, man. My great happy pleasure, guys. Great, happy pleasure. God, I can't even write. Yeah, I guess I mean, the last time I saw it was that pappy on it? And it's like freaking years ago, man. Yeah, so yeah, I left in 2016. But I did a longer than normal stint there. I did a year at South Rim and then like, year and a half, two years older. And when did you come on Jose? I came on 2000, January 2017. And then was there for about a year so yeah, cool. Cool Spot to, to have some adventures. Right. Yeah, I missed like the camaraderie, I guess you know, of all the homies all there. Agree. Now I tell people all the time, I'm sure you guys experienced this. I don't know if there's another operation in the helicopter business where you can be in contact with like 30 to 60 Different rotor pilots in a day. You know what I mean? I think we had a boulder. You know, I think we do. I had 25 to 30 in the morning shift. And then 2025 In the evening shift. It's just crazy. Everyday you got all those people you're crossing paths with? And I mean, the networking that happens there is amazing. I'm still running into people, you know, that, that have worked there, gone through there, and I'm constantly looking my phone like, I have that name. I know that person. Oh, yeah. You know, and it's, the degrees of separation are crazy. And then in the real world, they say there's seven degrees of separation between every person you know, in a country and in this I think in the helicopter pilot world, I think it's one if you don't know that person, someone you know and work with knows that person. You know what I mean? Really small industry. Say the first piece of advice that my flight instructor gave me was, you know, throughout school, every day is a job interview. You know, show well dressed well professionally says that see that that tool over there that's, you know, five months behind you and acting like a total doofus that can be the guy in two years that's interviewing you for a job. And I've seen exactly that happen. It's crazy. And he looked over at the guy with the Dr. Dre chronic shirt on, you know. Do that in flight school, because that's going to someone is going to remember that, you know, when you're going in for your job. So it's, it's funny, and it's legit. It's true. It's true. I've seen that I've seen guys who were a couple years behind me in the in the career path, interview me for a job when you know, and I've had a good buddy who is one of my best friends in the business. We kind of parallel each other through the whole the whole industry so far doing the same jobs, same flight schools, all that kind of stuff. And he was just a little bit crass good guy, but rubs a lot of people the wrong way, man and I there was in two different occasions, I've had people come up to me and say, hey, you know, we're not going to hire this guy, because he was just, he just rubbed me so wrong back in flight school was like, you know, five, six years ago, you know, and he's still just your behavior follows you around first impressions, everything, everything fan, what have you been up to? Since I've seen you since 2016? It's been Yeah, five years. Yeah. So yeah, 2016 I left Pantheon for air medical. And I've been doing that ever since. And I've kind of been boy, kind of been hopping around companies. Hopefully. I've recently been with this company. I'm with now for a year and I'm hoping to stay here for a long time because it's an awesome place. But I went to a little operation called am RG or medical resource group and they were bad. They're not there. They've changed a bit but they were kind of a an Umbrella Corporation had a bunch of companies and and I went to fly for one of their companies in North Dakota. And it was a really great place to to learn EMS. Luckily, I was jumping into a B three he knew a star so I had a lot of experience in model so all I really had to learn was the business itself and not the style of flying and not the new aircraft. So that was pretty cool. I spent a year in North Dakota a little over a year and we were supporting the oil fields out there. This we were in a really kind of an interesting little town. I don't know if you've ever been in North Dakota, but there's this little little paradise on Earth called Williston, North Dakota. I've been there. Yeah, you know, and again, anyone listening get to Williston? Sounds cool there. Walmart's off the chain. That you know what people ask me what they were asking me what's in Williston and I'd be like, we got a really good Walmart here if that's on your tours list, go check it out. But they are they are fascinating. A little side note just fascinating place. Not the prettiest place but great people. They they experienced this crazy boom when the fracking happened and this little town for several years between like 2000 I think 2012 and 2014 was just it was more expensive to get apartment there than it was waterfront San Francisco. And you had just people making six figures with no background checks and just this huge boom and with all that influx of money came crime, organized crime. We had biker gangs we had crazy drug production prostitution, all the FBI set blofield off office but the local sheriff's department they they didn't they are unable to to beef it up. So hence the need for air medical. You know we did did some a lot of stabbings and a lot of crazy safety accidents out really feel like Where's where's OSHA out there? I don't know. We have my first we can talk about my first scene call out there in a while. But anyway, back to the timeline did a year year and a half in Willesden. And then I got transferred to what was my dream job I went with. I went to Cody, Wyoming and flew a year and a half right outside of Yellowstone Park. My house was a 20 minute drive from the east gate of Yellowstone. The drive to the park was way better than the park and the flying another brand new v3. So I got this sweet mountain helicopter and we were landing above 10,000 on almost a daily basis and a scene called Grizzly bear attacks, snowmobile accidents, hunting accidents, just these beautiful back country flying in vary as far as the terrain goes just really austere, non permissive hostile, you know, big mountains high altitude, and it was cool because the culture there was different you know? A lot of just a lot of cowboys and mountain years and backpackers and these people all worked you know as the our paramedics and flight nurses and it's cool because you know if you had a chip light out there you could be camping for two days before someone comes to get you so you can say that's quite vital here for Ellisdon god yeah no no I'm flying up and down i Five you know my new job came to my knee and we've got the company I worked for now lifelight network we made this dominate the Pacific Northwest here I'm in Oregon. And you know I showed up to work with my Wyoming chestrig you know this tactical looking chest rig with all my three days of survival gear in case we land in the mountains and I pretty much got laughed out of the room up and down we got across the mountains every now and then but we have so many bases in this area I mean there's a company car you know two hours away from every player out there like in like Bear Grylls I'm ready to filter my own out here on commando I've gotten like like hydraulic we have some survivalists you know, here in you know, in the Cody place, we always had this joke, like if we crash, you know, we always talk about you know, what's your, you know, what do we get, you know, Sir, what's the survival situation look like? You know, we're running through scenarios and it's funny where I was talking about, well, you know, Matt over here, he's, we're gonna, you know, we're gonna we're gonna have a nice fire and Matt's gonna be like, we're going to look over and he's gonna have his loincloth that he fashioned out of you know, Raccoon skin and he's got a skewer with his rabbits and squirrels and he's got the hydraulic fluid war paint and then the camera pans over and there's the freeway amazing That's hilarious. So why did you switch jobs if you love Cody so much? What was the driving factor behind that? Well, that's a good question. Um, I again the mountain flying the environment the people I personally politically just loved that Wyoming culture and lifestyle there and all that kind of stuff. It was awesome. This no company's perfect of course loved this was Guardian flights. And you know, Guardian flight is owned by the same company that was reach and medtrans and air evac lifeteam In all these companies, it was awesome experience. Not the greatest, you know, could have done better for benefits and my wife was getting pregnant for the second time and we're the count of Cody was awesome, but we weren't too sure about, you know, how, you know, having a baby there and hospitals and she was getting really homesick for the Pacific Northwest and I was too and so we're always kind of like hey, if something comes up back in Oregon or Washington, we're going to leave at it and and the opportunity came to get back to Oregon so we jumped on it and it's funny now every time we miss it a lot every now and then I hear my wife say shooting Miss Cody and I'm like grass is always greener right? It is it is Yep. Yeah So Cody Wyoming and then and then did a year down in Klamath Falls Southern Oregon. So right on the Northern California border pretty, you know, just to hop over to the coast on that side. And that was with reach. So same same umbrella different different brands and and that was a really cool spot to that was a good transition because it was still still pretty wild and still pretty mountainous down there. And the scene calls were interesting. Just a lot of national park stuff we had crater lake there and we have the lava beds down south pretty you know pretty not as busy as Cody but some some fascinating stuff. But I've got some fun stories we can we can tell you about as we go on from Yeah, then from Klamath Falls up to to lifelight network, which again, is an awesome company. It's one of the only nonprofits medivac companies that I'm familiar with that are not hospital based programs. And it's just been awesome. My first my first twin job as a captain, not a PAC, so I'm flying a twin and they've got me trained up in a couple of different aircraft and for the first year was doing a lot of roving and moving around the whole footprint of the company and just cuckoo company and back home in Oregon. So where they're at now for the same cause in Oregon have bear attacks as well. We haven't had any barriers in Oregon. And I'll tell you those, yeah, those bear attacks are a trip and over, you know, we there was a couple of times when the crew would have to Leave the helicopter and go for a nice little hike, you know? And in some cases, horseback rides with the, with the ground personnel. On you landed? That's a Saturday. Yeah, when you landed the bear attack or whatever, Was there somebody out there with a gun or, you know, just in case it was like a serial bear attack, you know, kind of like Shark Week, you know? They have like, Great Whites out there. You know? That's, well, that's a really good question. You know, in the Yellowstone Area. Back in the day, people hunted bear on a regular basis just like getting a deer you would apply for your tag they you know, the EPA, or the Forest Service or whatever or fishing game would determine how many bears do we need to be hunted to keep the population and control now Yellowstone, anywhere there's a bear problem in the country, the bears get shipped to Yellowstone, and there's a huge population. And we they don't hunt them anymore. And the bears are smart. They know that they're not hunted and the people that have lived there their whole lives are they see more and more bear attacks happening? And it's crazy because bear usually fish and berries right? They only really get super carnivorous when they're about to go into hibernation, and they're storing up their fat for the year and that's when hunting season happens. And back in the day. According to the locals. The gunshot would mean it's hunting season and we need to stay away from the humans now the bear here that gunshot and it's a dinner bell and bear attacks usually happen when hunters are dressing out their game when they've made the kill. And they're cutting up the game and backpacking it up to hide down that's when the bears attack because it's an easy meal. And so to answer your bros on a good fire so you said to get to so answer your question Jose Yeah, professional hunting groups and experience hunters will not you know you always go out and in a team and yeah, it's it's like people will create a perimeter and stand guard with weapons Dawn's wall the A couple people are dressing out the game so that they can defend and yeah, and there's one that I did not go on but I was at the base when it happened. That was a great story. Professional hunting group and up there in Yellowstone a lot of people that get paid to take they go and get your guided hunting trips so there was a professional group with some tourists they everyone got their their deer their elk except for this one gal and there was a guide that said hey, we'll stay back another day we'll get you your kill while the rest of the team hikes down and and that was where they made the mistake. They shot an elk. He was teaching this woman how to dress out the game when grizzly bear came up and grabbed her by the shoulder and threw her away oh my god lacerations all across the chest dislocated shoulder instantly, you know passes out and the bears down there you know on the game and this I don't know these these guys are badass in Wyoming you know, I don't know why he didn't pull out you know, they all pair carry 10 millimeter Glock is I don't know why what happened but he decided to pull out his big hunting knife jumped on the bear and started stabbing it know, narrowly and and the bet Hey, this is a story and the bear is like Oh, mosquito and rips him up. He's got lacerations all over and he's thrown away. And at that point, the bear grabs the elk and runs away. This guy was able to with you know, just bleeding, he was able to secure his own wounds, get over to his client, fix her up, put her on the back of the horse. They all carry spot trackers so he hits the emergency button. Then we have pre designated LCS out there. He's able to start hiking down to the nearest field and then call Guardian flight you know, he gets dispatched via spot and they go up and meet him. So what it was. Yeah, and a funny story about that. That happened a week before my first day in Cody, Wyoming. I show up for my first day. Excited nervous mountain flying I get this in my first day I get a little I'm shadowing another pilot would go on a little familiarity flight look at some of the LCS get an idea for the for the terrain and and we're signing off for the day. And he goes oh yeah, by the way, Isaac your first day by yourself tomorrow. There's a reporter that's coming in to interview you about that bear attack that happened this way. I wasn't on that flight. I don't know. And you know, and he said, Oh, you'll be fine. You hear you heard the story. So I had to tell that story. Just like I told you and it was kind of like it was yeah, here you go. Hey, yeah. Yeah, that's fun stuff. Fun base man. Really cool experience up there. I remember seeing the job postings for that. particular job and I was like tossing back and forth like, oh, like is EMS like, how do I want to live near yellowest? Like, oh, blah, blah, blah. Yeah, I don't I don't remember exactly what year it was. But I remember seeing that post very consistently on JS firm. I was very tempted. I was like, this close to like, time for it, you know, but yeah, that's cool to hear about, like, what it actually was like up there. I wasn't sure if I'd like small town life, you know, so I was kind of back and forth with it. Yeah. Take some getting used to. Yeah, it was interesting. Because they've got Yellowstone Park, you know, and it's Wyoming. The Cody is the home of Annie Oakley, you know, and Buffalo Bill. So I mean, it's gun culture and real life cowboys and that real hardcore country live in but then they have the National Park. So it's like 50%, cowboys, 50%, hippy granola, rock climb and national Parkers, which is makes for a really sweet culture, you know? So they, you know, you've got the just the hardcore American flags and patriotism. And then the other side, you got your nice organic restaurants and your fancy grocery stores. So it was a it's a good, it's a good mixture there. Yes. So I like anybody that choose that they have that they're in that city, or in that town? Yeah. Like the Yeah, the one with the two dudes in the canoe right in front of the airport. Yeah. It just looks so epic in front of the American flag. I'm just like, I just wanted to salute it. I was like, I love it. It's the West, it's the West, you know, it's pretty cool. Are you are you stationed at permanent base, or what is your schedule, like currently at the base that you're flying it up there and as as of last week, permanent base, but for the first year with this company, I was a float. So I basically was responsible for covering bases within my section, my region, and then of course, they would send me outside of the region as needed. So for the first year, a lot of travel, a lot of visiting New bases, trying to keep my mind wrapped around the different models of aircraft that each base has, which they're not all standardized at this company. So little challenges there. But super cool, because I'd be flying with one crew, you know, on the beach, you know, for one week, and then I'd be in the Valley for the next and Columbia Gorge after that. So it was pretty, the float thing is very cool. Anyone you know, if you're considering this job, it's a great way to get a feel for for the company and meet a lot of new new crowd, it's tough, because every base is a little different. And you have to learn that on the fly. The downside is family, the family life, you know, and I'd say if I was single, I would be all over the float thing because I like I like living out of a backpack, kind of like, you know, going from hotel to hotel, and then that crew house to crew house, that kind of thing. But man, it's hard when you've got a family home and you don't have a set schedule, and she could be gone for three days, you could be gone for 10. And you don't know how much time you're gonna have off and that kind of thing. So, and that's, you know, that's kind of the nature of the helicopter business, too. I'm not sure you know, you've done some different stuff. And for me, I even before Patreon was doing a lot of traveling for work and very volatile when it comes to, you know, keep in keeping the family secure and cozy at home. It's been a 14 year mission now to land a job or we can just be home every night. We have it pretty sweet over here for that. And neither of us have families. But if we did, it'd be pretty sweet. We're home. I mean, I work from 4am until 2pm, Sunday through Wednesday, and then I'm off Thursday through those through Saturday. And so foreign three, home by two every day, man it'd be a pretty sweet gig be a pretty sweet gig. If I had a family. You know that what we do out here, but it's pretty rare. You know, this kind of a schedule is pretty rare in the industry. I haven't really seen any sort of I mean, EMS pilots who get based somewhere where they live, you know, where you don't have to commute to your next job. And you're either working a seven day on seven day off or a 14 day on 14 day off. Yeah, I mean, EMS can work for family life just you got to find the right situation, the right city and unfortunately, when you're first starting off, it's kind of hard to get the base that you want originally, usually the jobs are in undesirable locations when you're when you're first getting hired on and then once you get a couple of years experience under your belt, you can start applying for the more desirable cities bases like places that you would actually want to live. So that's something if someone was thinking about going into emergency medical that you could probably not expect to be stationed at somewhere that you want to be for the first, what would you say? Like year? Do a year there two years? It really just depends on what what opens up for you. Hmm. It is a roll of the dice. Diane, it's so you don't know. I mean, seniority is usually key, you know what I mean? But I think a lot of companies will take into consideration, oh, is this job going to be a long term thing for this person? Or is this just this guy just trying to hop to the next spot? So but yeah, I mean, I, I put in a year with this company before I landed this one. And I feel like I got really lucky because this is, you know, right down the street from Portland, Oregon, where a lot of people are, you know, wanting to be and so it's really a roll of the dice, I think, but I think you said it, you really need to plan on working somewhere, that is not your dream spot for for a long time, you know, before before you can get locked in. And you set it also the you know, usually helicopter EMS operations are stood up where there is, it's usually small towns far away from urban centers, because that's where, you know, that's where they need, that's where they have the need to get people from the rural areas back into town. And I have found that a small percentage of these bases nationwide are in really nice, awesome, desirable places. And when they are, everybody in the company wants to get there. So yeah, you gotta you got to stick it out, for sure. And if anybody's interested in just seeing what's out there, there's a website called j s firm.com. And it's a great resource, a place that you can go just to see what jobs are out there. Most of the EMS companies, most of the helicopter companies, at least the big ones are going to be posting the job listings through this website. And you can kind of gauge what the industry is doing just currently, what kind of our requirements these jobs have. So again, that's a really good resource, J S firm.com, to go check out just to just to see what's out there. Now, when your float pilot, did you find it, you mentioned, you know, you're going from base to base, you're working in different areas of operation, but you're also working with different crews. And I would imagine that working with different crews could either be a good thing, or it could be a bad thing. Because you don't really get to know your crew members very well, and you're doing such a complex mission, that I would think it would be pretty crucial that you you know, have really good communication with the crew members that are on board with you. So what were some of the challenges that you faced in that type of way? That's an awesome question. crew cohesion is just such an important factor of any business where you are captaining, you know, a team and it's an art form. And it's a science and it's really takes a I believe it takes a lot of kind of mental gaming to really do it well. And some people like having people person skills, you know, and I think I'm one of them, I have no problem talking to strangers, and I can kind of sense this person doesn't like me too much, or this person's nervous or whatever, and you can kind of re adjust your, your approach to get people warmed up to it. And I think that's where it starts is just, you know, finding ways to become a good communicator beyond that, and it's there's so many little aspects of good crew building especially if you're working with a new team on a regular basis and for all you pilots out there I'll tell you for me it starts with the Daily Brief, the safety brief. You don't want to flood them with all this non essential information but you know, I've seen some pilots you know, just step in like yeah, you know, the weather is gonna be this their craps looking good let's you know, we're gonna have a good day blah blah blah but you know, most operations will you no respect for those FAA rules and there's there's a little bit of a checklist of things you need to burn through and like it starts usually out with the I'm safe checklist. So I always start off by saying, Hey, guys, I'm, I'm illness free. No one told me I had to be on any meds and I'm not any meds I'm not supposed to be on I'm sober. I'm well fed, I am rested, and I'm emotionally stable. And how are you guys doing? Open up the conversation and then we move into weather. Talking about the daily weather condition of the aircraft. Hey, who's riding up front who's on the night vision goggles with me? What's the you know, what's the moon looking like tonight? And we have fun and we open up the conversation usually a good five minute brief will turn into a 1520 minute because you get your crew talking about what's going on with them. You know, things that happened on last shift and it you know, you can All these checklists points that we have to cover. By the end of the brief if I've never worked with a crew, if I've done it, right, they're like, oh, okay, this guy's a professional, he knows what's going on, you know, hopefully, my brief will give them a little bit of a, the ability to breathe deep and relax a bit. He's got it, we don't have to worry about him flying this aircraft, we can focus on our job. That's where it starts. And then after that, it's just, it's this this art form, something that I think we're all working on as pilots is the the, the art of closed loop communication, right? So verifying that you've received that. Exactly. And even just on, you know, just making sure that when we are flying, they have there's no question they have, they're never wondering, why is he doing this? Why is he turning? Why is he descending? You know, why is that enunciator going off? You know, I'm always letting them know what my intentions are what I'm seeing, you know, hey, you're going to work flying a little close to the hill over here, as we make this turn, you guys going to hear bitch and Betty come on and yell terrain at us? No factor, we got this, you know, for me, I, I just don't want them second guessing anything. And I use my voice to let that happen. Some pilots that I know, it's just it's a different style to different different techniques, you know, say, Hey, we're landing sterile cockpit. For me, it's like, Hey, guys, I got the hospital helipad at 11, the winds are coming from nine. That means we're gonna make a descending left hand turn to the pad, you know, and then we go through our pre landing checklist there, they're never guessing what's going on. And, you know, same thing for weather. This is what I'm seeing. You guys might notice, visibility's going down a little bit. We're still safe, we're still legal. I feel good. This is my secondary plan. We've got a contingency, how you guys feeling? You know, just keeping the Congress keeping the communications open, I think that the silent pilot kind of becomes a scary pilot when you're just a passenger. Yeah, makes sense. True. I mean, yeah, there's definitely two different techniques, because you always hear that, you know, during critical phases of flight, when you're taking off when you're landing when you're, you know, in these situations, especially when you're in AMS and you're landing at an unknown landing zone, where they're like sterile cockpit is key, like there should be no talking in the cockpit during the critical phases of flight. But just as you said, like, I think that as long as you're, you're talking out loud, you're also talking to yourself when you're when you're talking yourself through this, because, you know, it's making sure that you're not mentally checking out during those critical phases of flight. Or even if it's a landing zone that you've been to a million times, you have to make sure that you're continuing to go through those checks yourself, instead of just mind numbingly going in and landing. at that spot, you've landed a million times. But if you're talking out loud, you're also reminding yourself about these things, and the things that you're checking, you're communicating with your crew. And I mean, as long as like, you know, there's not a lot of chatter, I would say, like a sterile cockpit could also just mean, no, just talking back there to each other, you know, laughing or joking around, like, as long as it's pertaining to the mission and the safety of the mission. I think that it's totally okay to communicate out loud with your crew. I would say that that's accurate. Yeah, you said it. I would argue that sterile cockpit doesn't not mean silent cockpit. It means that we're when we are talking, we're only talking about the landing and things that are going on. And you know, I know some pilots are like, you know, I don't want to teach my crew how to brief approach plates. I don't really need them learning a lot about whether that's my job, but I do their job. And I like I try to think of the EMS operation is kind of similar, more similar to like a military aircrew. And that's something I include my brief Hey, you guys aren't just professional passengers that are doing your job. While I'm doing mine. We're an aircrew that all three of us have equal ability to affect the safe outcome of a flight. So we're going to communicate like that when it comes to sterile cockpit. I love the back and forth, okay, guys, we're approaching, you know, 300 feet AGL. Here's our descent angle. I've got the trees up there at my 11 o'clock, I'm going to lose sight of the trees over at my nine o'clock. So hey, jack on the left, keep your eyes on those trees and let me know if they're looking like they're too close. And that just gets everybody like you said involved when we're doing our orbit around the scene call, you know, an improved landing area, whether it's a high school football field or a little hole in the woods. You know, there's that list that we go through. You know, there's a lot of acronyms for it for all the things we want to see before landing off airport. That is an outloud process for me. And it's not just for me to go through the list. It's so that they wake up and go oh, yeah, okay. He sees powerlines there. Yep, I see him too. He sees the dog the bushes. Yep, it's a dusty surface down there. We might get some brown and I'm talking about all this stuff. So that they can come alive and start looking at it and their eyes. is are there to augment my situational awareness, you know what I mean? And then if there's something that once they're alive and they're looking, they might see something that I don't and that's the whole key about the aircrew versus the professional passengers in the pilot. But and I tell them, you know, that that's, you know, whenever they're not task saturated with their, with their patient work anytime they just I want them to maintain that scan mentality. So that, you know, their situational awareness is augmenting mine. And boy, we, you know, you know, the good crews talk and, again, yeah, it's not silent cockpit is not necessarily the sterile cockpit, but you said it, when you're coming into that helipad. What we don't want to be talking about is you know, is that is that foxy ER nurse going to be in there today and what you know, Tom Cruise doesn't fly like this and Mission Impossible. You know? That kind of stuff just to the job and you're not gonna tip the hand I couldn't you know, when I saw tip the hat, I was like, off. I haven't finished that movie. I've never even heard of that movie. Oh, got it. Yeah. I've always said I'm gonna go back and watch it because it's a helicopter moving. I want to speak the same language as all the cool kids but I just I saw saw this little side view of the helicopter going down into the into the the sinkhole, you know. So apparently, Tom during the filming of The Last Mission Impossible, you know, he's a pilot, so he was flying the the a star, and he overtook the crap out of that thing. And it's sitting on fire. Yeah, it's sitting, sitting in the hangar at night on up in New York. Yeah. Well, it's not in their hangar. It's in their actual like, where they're checking people in will say, a little bit of Geekdom I love that scene. That is a great anyone that loves the A star watch Mission Impossible. Yeah, there's an amazing a star scene. I remember. I was in the theater with my wife, and we were watching it. And I remember just like elbowing her, like, that's a be three right there. Look, the panel. That's, that's what it sounds like. It would sound like that, you know, like, that's what would happen, you know, and, and she's just totally, totally geek out on. So we were gonna do like a YouTube series where we're picking apart helicopter scenes and movies and like, you know, check seeing what, what would be realistic or what they totally get wrong, you know, but yeah, I thought that'd be kind of fun. I love I love the rock. You know, he's like, you know, I like his movies. But there was a, there was a scene in one of his movies where he starts a helicopter using the crank button. He's like, I forgot, I'm gonna mess up the quote. But paraphrasing, like, the chick is like, the tail is broken on the helicopter. And he's like, we don't need to tell the fly. And then he hits the crank button. And like, they fly off the roof. And I was just like, right. After a big budget film, I mean, probably the amount that can go into a good what do they call him? A an advisor, like, saltan you know, like a helicopter consultant. Like, there needs to be someone that says you don't push that button. You know, you hit the on switch. I mean, I would just imagine they're just like, I don't know, just press a button in there and pretend like you're starting a thing. You know, there's the directors, like, no one's gonna notice, but there's us a small group of people. Like, like, I'm a big, I like firearms, you know, and I like to go shoot with you, buddy. Yeah, and I always trip out on movies where dude never fucking reloads. You know? I'm like, God damn, how long is that magazine clip. He's like a handgun and he's shooting like 100 rounds. Well, you know what other guys have unlimited ammo. These guns are you guys are you guys anywhere near a veterinarian right now? Because those pythons are sick sorry where's this going? I was really not sure where that was gonna go. That's hilarious. Yeah, back back to the advisor is Jose to your point. I can't remember what movie it was. I saw a movie recently where the guys scope on the rifle was mounted backwards. Probably just because it looks cooler that way. You know, but then someone that knows. And I think in aviation there's a lot of that one of my favorites that I can't forget. Can't get him on the TV show Lost. Everybody seemed lost. Yeah, I don't remember what season it was. There was the guy that played lawn more man back in the day. He was the helicopter pilot that crashed landed on the island. Well, he didn't crash like he either did or there's a scene where they run out of gas over the ocean. And as they run out of gas, the rotor starts spinning slower and slower and slower because we're out of gas, the engine stops, rotors just gonna slow down. And and he's like, I can't come to hands on the cyclic, I can't control it, you know? Yeah, you can hear it. You can hear it the sound effects it's like man, alright. Yeah, like if they if they lose an engine, and then the helicopter just started spinning out of control. Like they had a tail rotor failure. And you're like, that's that it the pilot on the pilot would have to be a complete moron. To make helicopter spin out of there, like entering an auto rotation, just full pedal not doing anything else just stalling. And that to me in the simulator. Let's go. Yeah, just kidding back. Just one more for the for the audience, the 18 movie that came out with back 2007 or something like that helicopter scene. They're being chased by a by a Mexican jet. They crossed the border and this jet, the Mexican Air Force fires a heat seeker at it, you know? And so what do they do? I'm going to turn off the engine, so that the heat seeker doesn't pick up our signal, we shut down and he shuts it down. And instead of entering an auto and gliding down and watching the missile go overhead, the rotor system stops, you starts falling. And okay, the missile goes overhead, and then we restart the engine. And that's a good, there was a pretty accurate one that I saw recently. I forgot the name of it. They were trying to sling load, like a big thing of like a big load of gold or something over a mountain. And they were like, pretty accurately, about like, triple frontier, the performance of the aircraft and it was starting to come down, you know, because they're getting hired. They're like, Oh, the density altitude is good. I'm like, wow, they're actually getting pretty accurate. Yes. And oh, sorry. What's up? You're right, Dan, that was a good movie. I know a lot of people hated that movie. I loved it. I thought it was a good like the all the tactical shooting stuff was awesome to gear. And I agree with you, Diane on that point. But I think that that was an affront to all professional helicopter pilots. All right. I know we're in the movie review now. But if you look back at the movie, they're like, oh my god, we got way more cash than we thought. Holy shit. And the pilot goes up to the you know, it goes up to Ben Affleck. He goes, dude, we can't make it over the Andes with all this money. We can't do it. We're overlays and benefits like, well, I thought this copter was was rated, you know, for this many pounds. It's like, yeah, that's at sea level. We got to go over the Andes. And he's like, Well, you want to just leave all this cash on the runway. And the pilot goes? Yeah, okay. It'll make it right. That just yeah, you just killed everybody. Yeah. Oh, man, bad decision making bad decision making. Now I want to be in on this on this movie review thing. I think we got a good thing. Yeah, I think it'd be really fun. I really wanted to get into. So that actually kind of is a perfect segue into what I wanted to talk about next, which is internal and external pressures, right? This is something that we always have to deal with as pilots, and especially I would imagine in EMS, dealing with knowing that there's a patient on the other end of that flight that needs your help. And that pressure that there is to either fly in bad weather or a fly when you're not comfortable. And I know that every crew member on board has veto power. So any of the med crew can always say no, go. And so in your experience, what have been some of the biggest internal pressures, external pressures of being an emergency medical pilot? And how do you deal with them? Yeah, well, I think you have to set your limits before you even clock in, you know what I mean? You got to have your weather minimums, you've got to have your visibility minimums. The FAA has theirs that's legal. Every company is going to have their sometimes it's higher, sometimes it's equal to the FAA. But each pilot has to have that hard line where they say, This is what's going on. It's a no go and every pilot needs to gotta have a secondary should never get in that helicopter, go flying to point B, unless you've got a contingency plan for where you can go where you can land, what you know what you can do if things start going wrong, but the pressure is it's a it's an emotional game, and I'll tell you, I still struggle with it. And it's funny because you said it three times. No one to say no. So any if at any time a crew member is not liking it, it doesn't you could be as safe as can be. If they get the hair on their back of their neck stands up if they're spidey sense starts tingling. They say, Isaac, I need to be on the ground, like no questions asked. I'm not even going to not even going to question that we land we just call that flying to the lowest comfort level on board. And every pilot, you know, the operation I work for now, we've got pilots from so many walks of life, military backgrounds, civilian, we got Coasties, we've got combat pilots, we've got badass firefight and sling loaders that have just some memory used to fly in, in nasty weather and pushing the edge of marginal VFR and some are not and you can kind of know, hey, this guy's gonna turn down more flights than this guy is. But this guy over here, he might be coming back with a patient on board, which is a really big no no to you know, politically. But there's an interesting thing that I struggle with, I've been in EMS for five years now. And I started with flight instruction, like a lot of civilians, and I went to agriculture, you know, crop, you know, cherry drying and hazelnut harvest and frost control, flying in horrible weather, and then firefighting, you know, get me as a co pilot in a heavy and, and those are some crazy weather days. And, you know, we all have different experiences. But in those jobs, even the canyon boy, I have flown in scary weather in the canyon, and I had the boss telling me to go you know, and you hit you, in most helicopter jobs, we build up this idea that, hey, it's a copter, we can frickin land on the field, we can land in that guy's backyard, we can land in the parking lot, let's go test the waters, you know, let's go out there, if it's not good, we'll turn around those who are passengers would rather go halfway and turn around and not go at all, you know, um, I feel like there was always this ability to go try it out, you know, go do a check doesn't work, you come back. But when, when there's a patient on board, and a scene call is a little different, if you're going to the scene of a car accident, you know, I think it's a little bit more acceptable to say, hey, the weather's not hot. But you guys, I need to get my team of elite medical professionals to the scene so they can assist the you know, just the the tier one kind of paramedics that don't have the expertise. And so that's one thing. But man, when you're taking a patient from point A to point B, they're in a warm, cozy bed, there's a reason they're needing to go to another hospital. But it is not cool if you have to land in the middle of nowhere, because you couldn't get to point B. And I've done it a handful of times, you know, and and it takes a little bit of gaming. I had an experience where the weather, we just encountered this big blanket of fog in the mountains. And I said guys, we can't get this patient to the hospital, we're gonna have to go land at this Podunk airport dispatch is going to have to call us a fixed wing, it might be our company buy me another company, that patient's going to get billed for two aircraft now. And boy, we were sitting on the pavement for like 45 minutes with the engine running, I'm looking at my gas gauge, shoot, try to keep this helicopter warm while we meet the airplane. And there's been, you know, there's been times where we've had a patient on board and it's just like, hey, we can't get over the hills here, we're going to go a little farther can't do it can't do it can't do it. Same thing, you know, we have to land somewhere and give up on helicopter ops, so that we can put them either on a ground ambulance, so it could have done in the first place. Or jumping on a fixed wing. And again, that could come from your company or another and so you got to, you know, you got to kind of game that out and say, Hey, are you know, what are the chances we're gonna make it to point A if it's not 100% A conversation needs to be had with the crew combination needs to be had with dispatch, you know, everyone is really honest about that. And sometimes you'll go anyway, and sometimes you won't, and typically, management will say hey, we want you to try you know when but your crew will say we don't want to try there's a possibility of us having to switch to an ambulance halfway through so it's a it's a it's a weird psychology and then to get back to where you think you started the question. There's always this feeling of like, you know, we're here to help you know if if we're being called someone's having a horrible day, and there's always a ground ambulance but they're deciding to go with the helicopter because a we're going to be fast when when time is critical stroke, coma, bleeding out, heart stopped whatever. And the crew typically on a helicopter these crews are the elite of Paramedicine respiratory therapy and nursing these guys are like ICU er qualified and they they trump most ground personnel that are riding around in a fire truck or an ambulance and it's great to just get them To to the patient. Are they employees of the company? Are they employee are Light Company? Yep. Yep, some companies will have will, it will train hospital employees. But yeah, they train with you there. They're getting paid by the same, the same, same same bank. But I'm really fascinating psychology that is happening in EMS that's been going on for a while. Is this idea that we really try to not give the pilot too much information about the emergency? Once, once you land, you can see what's going on. But when it comes to making the go or no go decision, when dispatch first calls us, we read the pilot should not know if it's an eight year old, or if it's a if it's a car accident, or why blah, blah, blah. And I think that that's really comes from the the insurance companies start trying and the FAA really trying to change the way pilots look at it, we just need to know, is the weather good? Can we handle the weight? go or no go? And we and then you know, usually dispatch will talk to the pilot, can you make this flight happen? I can do it I accept. And then they'll call the med crew on a separate radio separate frequency separate phone and say, This is what we got this is the emergency pilot accepted, let's go and that that was a way to combat kind of this post Vietnam era, go no matter what get the mission to save the guy, you know, this industry was started by people that were coming back from Vietnam who were trained to fly into these scary holes under fire bad weather, the mission is to save the person on the ground, and we're going to do it and that caused a lot of death and a lot of destruction. And it really gave the EMS industry a really bad name in the 70s and 80s and early 90s. We just the EMS was really dangerous. And there was a lot of stuff going on. I think the insurance companies and the FAA and all these ha all these safety groups got together and they started changing the culture. We don't say EMS anymore, we don't say emergency medical system we can we used to call it hims helicopter emergency medical services. And people still use the term but as of a couple years ago, the FAA said hey, we would like you to start calling it H A helicopter air ambulance. And a big suggestion that was made I think it came from H AI and on helicopter sociation their national right? You guys know better than me, they started to try to change the culture. We don't want to call these missions anymore. When you get a call from dispatch, it's not a mission. It's a flight request. And there's all these silly little kind of head games that we're playing right now to try to change that. Go go go and get the guy type of mentality. And it's really I think we are seeing a little change in the safety culture. Yeah. Which is really cool. Now, there's a downside of that. And, you know, we, a lot of people talk about the safety pendulum, you know, back in the 80s, it was really on the dangerous side in the business. And then we start to in, you know, when we kind of Institute all these safety protocols and these little like, psychological changes, like we were just talking about, and the pendulum starts to get to a point where maybe it's a little too safe. And now you have all these people that you have. In the last couple of companies I've worked for some of the the higher ups, the Analyze, you know, the bean counters, and the statisticians that are tracking everything are saying, Wow, we're turning down a lot of flights right now where the weather was, we think maybe a little was good. You know, we've got a lot of men crew that are pulling the I don't feel safe card when the pilot feels great. And then now you have kind of high ups in this industry saying okay, now what can we do? Maybe we need better training better equipment so that we can get these pilots and these med crews feeling safer to take some of the flights that we're seeing we're probably well safe. So it's a it's an I think it's a moving target. Jose and Diane I think we're constantly trying to pin it down. And I think that pendulum is going to go from safe to dangerous until we can figure out how to get everybody trained how to get the best equipment on board and, and just you know, have kind of a standard set path but every helicopter is different. Some of them are IFR. Some of them are VFR and every base is different. We got weather on the coast, we got weather in the mountains, you know, it's different in the valley. So it's a it's a great question. It is a it's a long drawn out answer. But that pressure to go is sometimes it's generated by your own self. You got to be able to check that sometimes it's gender by the crew sometimes. I mean, we had that horrible EMS crash in I think it was Ohio a couple years ago right? I think yeah, not to mention the name of the company. But what if you guys have read that report? Boy, there's so much pressure from the company like bad, like really legit pressure coming down from the boss make money make money take flights take flights and those pilots were rushed it was during shift change. She, you know, the off going pilot said, Well, there's good I would take it, you know, and then she was like didn't even check, you know, not a lot of training didn't grab the night vision goggles are so many things. And then and then all these ex employees talking about the way management behaved and management incentivized taking flights, you know, there was big pressure to not miss out. Yeah, she was my friend. And um, it was just like, oh, man, it's pretty. That's something else. You know, it was a Yeah, as a tragedy for sure. Yeah, the culture there was not a safe culture that that was, I remember seeing the flyer that they that the company sent out to all of the hospitals saying, Oh, you guys, get flights turned down will always go, well go no matter what, where your guy, that kind of thing. And I mean, that was probably sent out by someone who wasn't a pilot. But one of those bean counters up there being like, we got to make money. And we got to let these hospitals know that we'll go with no one else will go. But there's a reason why no one else is going. That may be people who aren't experienced in the field, just might not know why these companies are really turning them down. But yeah, that that was just a super tragedy, unfortunately, something that we have to deal with in the industry of these things happening and to the dark side of the industry. And unfortunately, it takes stuff like that to happen for changes to be made. What do they say all the regulations are all written in blood, or, you know, because something always has to, has to happen before. But I think that we're moving more into a culture of safety. Like you said, the pendulum has swung over to safety, I do hear kind of horror stories about there being clashes between medical crews, and the pilots. And the pilots being like weather's great, and the medical crews being lazy or just not wanting to go or you know, and pulling the I don't feel comfortable card when maybe it's not necessary. So that's kind of something that I've heard a lot of EMS pilots have to deal with is or is that clash, which makes it kind of a tough working environment. You know, we talked about how important it is to have good crew cohesion. And when you get situations like that, where med crews and pilots don't get along and start arguing about things. And yeah, that could be a recipe for a dangerous situation. Yeah, it really is. And it's, and I think I've seen it, you know, I've worked for different brands in five years, and you kind of identify, you know, you got your real hard chargers on the crew side that are just willing to go and try it out. And then you got your folks that, you know, it's after 1am and there's a good chance they're gonna, you know, say they don't feel safe, even if there's nothing to not feel safe about. And the problem with with even talking about this, and you know, I hate to call call anyone out, but you know, it happens on the aviation side to it. You were pumping that idea that hey, three to go one to say no. So if you're not feeling good, don't call it and, and you really have to respect that. And unfortunately, it's not a hard thing to exploit and take advantage of. And I think it happens on the aviation side, too, you know, pilots that are just maybe just not super motivated to get out and get it done. And they can pull that card and you promise you never want to second guess? Um, because, you know, you don't want to be flying with anybody that doesn't feel safe about what they're doing. Yeah, absolutely. Going into we're kind of staying on the same subject of safety here. When I was going through your resume that you sent, you mentioned that you have experience with destination zero SMS SMS means safety management system. And can you kind of elaborate on what that is? Well, yeah, um, SMS, you know, safety management system. And it's something that FAA is really it's your instituting, and all these 135 operations, and it goes along with the kind of the just culture thing that of course, you were I heard you talking about with your F 16 guy that you had on recently. But yeah, safety management system is just something that these companies put into place where they actually have, you know, these pillars of safety and it's all about just inspiring, just culture and just keeping track of all these things. And the destination zero term, it's a term that I learned at Patreon, actually, and that destination zero referring to, you know, the goal of having no accidents in the industry and different safety organizations out there, whether it becames or you know, we can talk about games do all these. There's all these certified certificates, sort of certifiers, certifiers, people that certify agencies and operators, you know, they get a stamp of approval. Okay, this company does all the things that make them extra safe. So we're going to get them a stamp, maybe they get a deal on their insurance but having a an SMS program in place and typically that means a safety coordinator, a safety officer You know, someone at the base level that's doing monthly safety checks, having meetings and just basically inspiring, you know, a culture of safety in the company and every SMS program can be a little different, but they will all usually have some kind of a structure that just ensures an ongoing culture of awareness and safety. And, and yeah, that's a for me, that was a resume point, because coming into EMS, you know, that's something that they're really, really focused on. And the just culture is a big one. Was there any kind of in flight emergency you experienced? While you were working in the profession that sub Do you want to share with us? Yeah, man, I have a good story I have. I have a pretty epic bird strike story. It was C 2017. In the North Dakota area. It was November, winter really cold. It was about 1am or flying and we're going from Williston to mine not we have a patient on board, an A star. This patient was a drunk driver. He was kind of nasty on the scene. He's intubated, so he's totally unaware of what's going on. And in this area, you guys aren't familiar. There's a lot of lakes and small pothole bodies of water. It's a major migration area, and we're all pretty keyed into it. And we've all figured out that hey, bub 1000 above 1000 feet AGL, you're typically not going to run any birds. But I don't know the science. I think their little their inner ears kind of serve as altimeters because you'll notice like birds, oftentimes in one area, they're all flying at the same altitude, even different different breeds, you know, and so it's dark, we're under night vision goggles in this in this company, all three of us had goggles. But I am in the front right seat. Of course paramedic is the back left seat, he's got his goggles done scanning, the other guy has his goggles flipped up and he's charting and getting ready to drop this guy up at the hospital in my not and the town of mine not there's a there's an Air Force Base and, and a class Delta airport, just maybe two or three miles to the north of the hospital. So we are in the controlled airspace. And you know, these are long flights, there's a lot of just kind of zoning out and following the magenta line, but at this point, we were keyed in, we had already started to brief the landing, totally awake and alert, looking at the lights of the city, you know, under goggles, trying to just plan out where the hospital is how my approach is going to be. And I remember just a few minutes earlier, we're about 1500 feet looking down and seeing the little white specks of flocks of ducks underneath us going out get their way down there, no big deal. flying along, I just made my call towers closed at this point, but I just made the call to the airport, you know, letting everybody know or land in the hospital in you know medivac so we've got you know, just kind of let everyone know where we are. All of a sudden it's like giant white basketballs just like six of them are just under the rotor disc instantaneously. And I yell you know be at the top of my lungs right as my paramedic goes birds at the same time and then it was like someone fired a shotgun in the aircraft and we're doing 120 knots speed it was like saying like like someone fires shotgun right next to my ear, my ears are ringing and instantly there's this violent rush of wind and remember I'm under goggles so now like there's feathers like it's like a big simulation. You guys fly with goggles but simulations, TV you know screen stuff and and but now there's like feathers big stuff and just the violent wind in my face accompanied by this like, go like this scary shake. Good. Good, good, good, good, good, good, the helicopters shaking. Because not because there's anything majorly wrong with it at this time. But because there's a big hole in the windscreen like the size of two basketballs in the front left windscreen, if I was sitting in the left seat, man guy would have lived so so what happened is the first duck hit the aircraft and I had 120 knots this thing bust through and it vaporized on the back wall right to the right of paramedic right between the two seats. And then another two birds came in through that hole and smack died instantly I believe. So we immediately just immediately I lower the collective right down to the gauges everything's performing with a little less airspeed I'm able to slow it down guys you know, we hit a bird note. Instantly these guys are pros instantly man if you guys listening I've my Wilston crew you two guys no no he are awesome job instantly. They're just like no shit and I can hear them like Okay, check the patient check the line stats good while they're like making sure the patient's Okay. Guys out, intubated, they're checking him. And I'm like guys, I'm switching you For a second, I immediately get on ready to just make a quick mayday call. As you know, Mayday, mayday, mayday helicopter, blah, blah, blah, we're structural, you know, integrity compromised multiple bird strike, we're going to divert to the airport and the airport. Management gets on right away and they're like, hey, we'll have emergency crews here for you. I switched the crew back on. I'm like, hey guys need to call in and let's have an ambulance. Meet us at the airport. We're going to skip the helipad. We're going to the airport. They already on it. They've got an ambulance come so we lower power. We make that turn to the left to divert to the to the airport. Luckily, Willesden is pretty flat, you know, but I'm like, okay, and it's bloody in here. You got that nasty duck smell real windy, still shaking pretty bad. The gauges look good. I'm thinking, man. These birds are big. If they hit a pitch link up there. You never know what's going on with your rotor system. Guys. We might need to auto rotate, we might need to land before we get to the airports keep your you know, I got spots everywhere. Just keep our eyes on it. We made it to the airport and landed. And once we cut out man, we had struck eight to 10 birds in line with the air. Yeah, and I'll tell you, I'll tell you if you guys get a flock. Yeah, it was crazy. And we got I think we were so lucky that the rotor system was didn't hit any impact. So what happened on the we have the wire cutting kits, you know, like the unicorn horn, horn beard, and there was a duck right in the cutter of the upper one and there was a duck right in the cutter of the lower one there was that big hole in the windscreen and we had a vaporized duck on the back wall and then there was two bodies at the feet of the med Chris I think there might have been three it might have only been two but based on that back one way it was just a splatter. I think three ducks came into the aircraft and then there was a big hole right under the search light where a duck had gotten in and there's a bunch of foam kind of insulation or there they punched the hole all the way through that there was a duck up inside the nose of the aircraft somewhere and then yeah and then there the mechanic I talked to later he found strike points and probably like six other birds. So in addition to the one on the the you know the each on each cutter, two to three inside the aircraft and then the one that made it inside the nose cone eight to 10 Air birds that would that we hit we got very lucky that you know that that the rotor system was good and it didn't hit anyone but I think if that bird I was wearing goggles the way that bird vaporized on the wall that would have just come in in front of me I think it would have driven my goggles right into my eye sockets and we would have crashed that helicopter them into Airbus's helicopter man, the star A star is bad is a sweet ride especially the B three and a little you know back you know I wrote some reports the company had me write wrote a cool article about it they got published and all these safety talks but a big thing that that this company started to go with after that is alternating pulse lights, Airbus the Audubon Society and some of these company on Metro aviation and some of these companies that make the lights have done some pretty amazing studies about how pulsed lights are the one and only thing that will deter animals now I've hit since then I've hit a duck with pole flights on so it's not a guarantee, but it's amazing that those ducks don't know you're coming as loud as you are and you know, you're not really that fast and a helicopter you think that these guys would have that awareness but man helicopters sneak up on large fowl all the time. So pulse lights are an amazing thing and by anyone that's out there using goggles I know it's a pain in the butt but if you can adjust your goggles it depends on your helmet if you can since then visor down underneath the goggles if possible will be a great way to to prevent them from hitting your face. And not a good day to be a duck either. Guys, probably not going to be eating duck anytime soon. Hmm one thing I love duck but one thing about the smell of the blood in the fat no no you're just you're ruined for life. Yeah, and I think that you had the mechanic working on that bird said it took 11 months before that thing was back in service. Wow. So it's fascinating. I have some great matches okay you work the podcast I can send you guys some photos of the aftermath if you want to put those up yeah. I'll kind of just put it on the on the posts will supplement Yeah, some photos with the story so people can see what's up, man. That's crazy. Yeah, so glad you're okay. I'm glad the cruise Okay. duck season. opened one thing. One thing that was funny about the just a look we all got out. Our hearts are being like wow, you Little walking around this aircraft just looking at the damage massacre how and the and the paramedic who was eyes up when it happened that Yellow Birds It was hilarious because he had his goggles flipped on his helmet and it was like, like the ski bum suntan. Yeah. This right here was just white and this was all just grease like he was it was just a thick layer like it looked like kind of like I thought it right away and that Stephen King movie carry you know where the queen is just like it was bad. And I remember I remember just looking at those guys and the other the nurse just pointed out and just started laughing. He's like, What's going on man? It took him forever to realize that he was just covered in blood. I've only had one. Oh, no, I've had maybe two two bird strikes in my career. The first one I was just coming out of the canyon there. Quartermaster Canyon getting out the guzzler, you know, and I'm coming over and I just see this Barrow and he's kind of like spiraling and I'm like no, no, no, no, no and just like like up the windshield and I'm like, oh, no, like, Man, I literally was like my poor passengers because I was like on the verge of tears, you know, because I felt so bad I was like, oh my god, like sorry you guys were gonna have to make sure it's not in my cooler we had to go way out at the dub and double check man the cooler up there and make sure there were no birds blocking the air coming in there. But yeah, he wasn't up there. But it was literally like, oh, it just hurt my heart and the other one was, you know, yeah, just recently not recently and maybe like a year ago, just flying out here at nighttime. Going over the mountains up there near did the Santa Susanna pass. I think going over there. Zeus and I were flying at nighttime and just like being there some blood and guts but nothing ever like really penetrated the windscreen but yeah, that's insane. Gotta be careful for what those birds especially around here at the beach. Oh, yeah, kind of like around dusk time you're getting into like the sunset time period. Those white birds are so hard to see. I've definitely snuck up on like a big flock and was like, so lucky. It was flying out of Santa Monica airport, right there at sunset. Everything kind of is the same color. The wipers are super hard to see. And all of a sudden we were just surrounded like to do to do and like literally it was one of those gut wrenching like moments. And it was like, wow, I am so shocked that we didn't hit any of those. And yeah, those those kind of insane crazy. Yeah, your harness stops really ever I hit I hit a little guy in the canyon. I remember a little sparrow like that. And I do remember the passengers like is it okay, is it okay? And I remember I remember just kind of going, yeah, he's good. He's looking back. He's like, sorry. Don't worry. Oh, when I was a flight instructor, we were flying them. So when you're transitioning the shoreline by La X, the departure path for Los Angeles goes over the beach, so that they want helicopters to be at like 150 feet and below. It's called the shoreline transition. So you have to be like super, super low down there. So you're obviously I've been be really conscious of, you know, seagulls and kites. And you know, you're basically high fiving people on the beach as you're flying by. And I just remember I we were flying in our 22 I had a GoPro kind of in the chin bubble that are 22 and I just remember seeing the seagull go by underneath the chin, but I was like, Whoa, that was close. And I when I went back and watched the GoPro footage, it was hilarious. So this bird obviously kind of caught in our downwash as we were flying by it, and he rolled onto his back and he looked straight into the GoPro it was just like the camera wings out belly up what the hell just happened? And yeah, it was really the expression on that birds face was like what the hell is going on? It was pretty funny. I like put it in slow motion it was like it'd be a great that'd be a great like freeze frame have like eyes wide open. And I don't think that was such a long time ago. I have to have the photo somewhere. But anyways, man, this has been such a pleasure to see you and to talk to you again and hearing all your fun stories. And I think we touched on a lot of really important important things on this episode. And we were from crew management to sterile cockpit versus silent cockpit, talking about external and internal pressures. Thank you so much for sharing your experience with us and with our listeners, I hope people at home really got some good takeaways from all of your experience. Well, it's my great, happy pleasure, you guys. I'm stoked to get involved and I'm super stoked for both of you to see you guys. You know, putting in the work and making this podcast happen. I think the aviation side of the podcast world is very light right now. And yes. And so it's congrats. Thank you for a lot of me go appreciate it. Yeah, some killer stories rather than putting literally next time on here, some of yours. They had an hour once we're going to talk, we'll talk about that another. I think he's going to draw it out there. That's maybe a story for another time, but that's a deal. Yeah, I'm gonna hold you to that. You got it. And we go. Alright, guys. Thanks again. Have a good one. Thanks, Isaac. See you later. Peace. Wow, just wow, Jose just almost knocked himself out with his own microphone. Yeah, okay. Close my eyes. And I really think that was a microphone strike. Yeah, talking about. Oh, man. Yeah, dude, seriously, though, I learned so much. You know, I've never been an EMS pilot. And I've always wondered what it was like to one be a float pilot. And also, I've always been really curious about that Cody, Wyoming gig that I was seriously considering applying for. So it's really interesting to hear his insight. Sure. First of all, Cody Wyoming. I think it'd be a dope place to go fly. Yeah, yeah. Oh, my God. Scenic was beautiful. The people are cool, different than the LA basin. Oh, my God way different. But I will say you're gonna have a lot of radio calls. You know, True. True. True. I think your comms are broken. I wouldn't know what to do. I'd be like, What do I need to switch radios every two sec. I know exactly. I'm gonna be on 121 Five and be like, hello. Is there anybody out there but amazing takeaways, as always, from our guests, everyone brings such good insight to their jobs and safety and things that they have learned along the way and that knowledge they can pass on. And I think that's what what's really important about what we're doing here is that we're actually bringing people with real life experience, and sharing it with the world because, you know, it's hard to find mentors out there and people who have done maybe something that you want to do and actually really know what the job is like or experiences that you might have. So, you know, thank you to all of our guests who have come on to talk about their stuff, you know, for sure. I couldn't set it any better scenario. Well, I wrote off No, I didn't. Completely improv, I promise. Yeah, no, totally sincere from the bottom of my heart. Love you guys. Love our listeners. Thank you guys so much for your support. If you have an opportunity and you'd like to support the show, go ahead, hit that subscribe button, leave a comment or a review on Apple podcasts. As always, we'd love to hear from you guys. shoot us a message on Instagram at forever on the fly or flying sombrero. So hit us up now and don't be shy. Bye.