Our guest this week is an aviation Youtube star and F35 Pilot that not only has explored how fast, but how high he can fly! In this episode, Justin "Hasard" Lee takes us through his journey of becoming an F35 fighter pilot for the Air Force, going supersonic, the centrifuge, and G-lock. Justin is an avid educator, and he gives us his pointers on better decision making, the importance of a good debrief, and Jose and I just cant help but to teach Justin a little something about helicopters! School will be in session at the end of the episode, where we will talk about how to perform a good debrief, and how doing one can benefit you as a pilot. Thanks for listening!
Our guest this week is an aviation Youtube star and F35 Pilot that not only has explored how fast, but how high he can fly! In this episode, Justin "Hasard" Lee takes us through his journey of becoming an F35 fighter pilot for the Air Force, going supersonic, the centrifuge, and G-lock. Justin is an avid educator, and he gives us his pointers on better decision making, the importance of a good debrief, and Jose and I just cant help but to teach Justin a little something about helicopters! School will be in session at the end of the episode, where we will talk about how to perform a good debrief, and how doing one can benefit you as a pilot. Thanks for listening!
You're listening to the forever on the fly podcast What's up AV nerds. Welcome to episode number nine of the forever on the fly podcast noumenon noumenal. Do you remember that Beatle song? Yeah, it's absolutely it's kind of a weird song. But welcome everyone to your bi weekly dose of aviation inspiration, education and of course, entertainment. I'm one of your hosts Diane dollar. And my name is Jose. We're here to get you guys hooked on aviation. So really exciting thing happened the other day. I got my first pop up IFR clearance to land in Palomar. Oh, yeah, I did. I did dope where I've been flying a little bit more fixed wing out of Long Beach and I was with my friend. He and I were trying to land on Palomar and it was IFR at the airport, all the sudden little marine layer move right in, which was really exciting. I mean, they made they made us hold it felt like a million years. You know, when you're going towards the final approach path, and they just haven't vectored you to intercept it yet, and you're gonna publish gold or one that they made up? No, I wasn't even a whole they just kept back during us in different headings. And we were literally just doing circles. And but yeah, every single pass, it was like we were getting closer and closer to the final approach path. Man, they still haven't vectored us to intercept that yet. We're gonna be holding your forever. And yeah, lo and behold, every single time just straight through the dude, one of those guy gonna let us in. But I mean, because everybody was getting pop up clearances because all of a sudden it was IFR. But it was really, really cool, you know, experiencing actually flying through the clouds to land where I'm like, wow, I actually have to remember, I need my visibility. I need the airport environment in sight and normal approach to landing your minimum never actually had to almost fly down to the minimums to land somewhere. So that was like, That was so cool. That's pretty cool. That was pretty cool. Yeah, and taking off and like punching through the cloud layer and getting on top. I have this video on my Instagram. Getting on top of the clouds there at the beach. Oh my gosh, it was just, it was gorgeous. Yeah, it looks like you're just playing in the heavens. I know. It's kind of like don't go towards the light. No, it was it was really, really beautiful. But anyways, guys, that was my recent experience. So that was pretty exciting, and just wanted to share now that's pretty cool. Yeah, I think that's pretty badass. Our next guest is a YouTube star, an F 35 fighter pilot that probably has had a lot more experiences punching through the clouds than I have. And not only has this guy explored how fast but how high he can fly. In this episode, Justin hazard li takes us through his journey of becoming a fighter pilot in the Air Force, what it's like to go supersonic his experience with the centrifuge, and G lock. We also go into his tips for better decision making the importance of good debriefs and we also get to teach him a thing or two about helicopters. School will be in session at the end of the episode, we're going to go over very briefly how to perform a good debrief and its benefits. If you enjoy the show, we always appreciate your love your subscriptions, your downloads your comments and reviews. Love you guys and thanks for listening in. Let's get started. Justin hazard bleep. Went through Mach 1.6. The whole thing was rattling. It was like hazard Li and I'm forever on the fly hazard welcome. So love your YouTube channel. I spent all day watching every single video on your YouTube channel. And let me tell you, I learned so much was awesome to hear. Thanks, Diane for having me. It's a real pleasure. And yeah, I've been having a great time making those YouTube videos. Hopefully they've been improving a little bit. For sure. I like the mock tech one that you had. Oh, yeah, just released that one today. So like what's it like to go supersonic in a fighter and spoiler alert? It's nothing you can tell at all when you're going supersonic. I mean the people on the ground? Definitely can but you can't. Yeah, gotta hold your eardrums. Crazy. Yeah, we've done a couple of interviews so far. Like we were talking about before we started rain waters super cool to talk to pilots like you guys as being helicopter pilots. Like we fly airplanes sometimes, but not a lot. And it's just opening our eyes to this whole other world of aviation that you know, we've never been a part of. So it's really cool to learn about that and we're excited to bring that knowledge to our listeners. Yeah, if anybody hasn't checked out his YouTube channel has Certainly, just in fighter pilot, he's got a lot of really good information there. If you're out there and you want to fly for the Air Force, and kind of want to weed through a lot of the BS that's out there online, that's kind of hard to navigate people like you who are putting a really simple, very good information videos out there is very, very useful to great resource. So check him out there on YouTube. Can you tell us a little bit about the route that you took your career? Where were you stationed? Have you been deployed a lot in your career? What is it like being a fighter pilot for the Air Force? Yeah, sure. So I went to the Air Force Academy in Colorado Springs, and graduated from their 2009 and went to pilot training in pilot training, you first fly the T six, which is a it's like 1100 horsepower, high performance prop plane aircraft. And it's, it's a blast, it's a lot of fun to fly. From there, I went to fly the P 38. supersonic jet trainer built back in the 50s. It's, it's, I have a model of it, but I guess this is just audio only. So it's built back in the 50s. Really aerodynamic small engines. So it's high speed handling capabilities, pretty good, but terrible low speed handling capabilities. So unfortunately, a lot of people have died trying to learn how to land that aircraft, flew out for six months when and flew the F 16. Learn how to fly that out here in Phoenix, went on to Korea. So flew the F 16. Block 40 out in Korea, for about a year and a half, went to Shaw Air Force Base in South Carolina, and learn to fly the F 16. Block 50 doing the Wild Weasel missions. So the suppression of enemy air defense, where you're taken out surface to air missile sites, deployed to Afghanistan and 2016. And then got slapped him to fly the F 35. came out here to Luke again to learn how to fly the F 35. And now, I'm an instructor and I'm in the reserves. So I'll be staying here for quite some time. Oh, wow. So tell me about the F 35 transition, when you went into it? Was it something that you always wanted to do? Like good, you always want to fly that 35? Or was it just something that you just kind of fell into, and I was like available for you in the Air Force. So I would say I went to a red flag in 2015. And so red flags are these big exercises that the Air Force does. And we invite everybody from all over the world there. And it's pretty cool to see like, we'll fly up initial, and you'll look down and it's almost like an aircraft carrier just packed with aircraft. So it's awesome. And I landed, and that was taxing to my parking spot. And they were like to f 35. And they just looked weird. The pilots had carbon fiber black helmets. And I was like, that's, that's pretty cool. And they got a chance to fly in a couple of those exercises. And I realized that the F 35 is the future. And so from then on, I was like, I definitely want to fly the F 35. And put that down as my number one pick to Luke Air Force Base in Phoenix and fortunately got it. Awesome. And when you did the training for it. I know you said it was a single seat aircraft. Essentially, you were just in the simulator at imagine, like for the most part and then your first flight was actually in the aircraft by yourself. Yeah, your first flight is an aircraft by yourself. You got the instructor out there on the wing. Talk to you all not too bad, especially for experienced fighter pilots. But in 2018, we started having brand new pilots from you know, up at undergraduate pilot training showing up and you can see, you know, they were a little bit nervous about transitioning from the T 38. Which is just, you know, maybe like a, I don't know, a couple million dollar aircraft with like 4000 pounds of thrust. I think those numbers are probably off to the F 35 to premier fighter $100 million aircraft, and they're learning how to fly it, you know, by themselves the first time now we do a lot of simulators. Park simulators are great. We start off with like a month or two of academics, and a month or two simulators. And, you know, simulator technologies good now where it really prepares them for that first flight, where there are a lot of performance differences between the F 16 and the F 35. Is it really superior to the F 16. And your and your experience so that 35 You know, it gets a bad rap in the media, but that's because we were doing prototypes. So normally when you have a new jet aircraft, you'll build like 10 of them and just fly the wings off of them. Figure out all the bugs start production. But without 35 we did something called concurrency where we collapse the timeline. And so we knew those Initial aircraft would have some bugs. And we're gonna have to go back and fix those. But what it gained us was a few years on the timeline. And so those initial jets, they had some issues. And when I came out here, I've learned how to fly on some of those some of those jets and they had some issues. But since 20, oh, man, this jet has skyrocketed. It's kind of like your phone, like, we got a software update to our jet. And overnight, you know, everything was better unlocked the gun, we could pull nine G's, all kinds of different things like that. So it's really software dependent, and that 35 has just grown by leaps and bounds in just the last few years. But it's a lot more capable aircraft in the F 16. In terms of learning how to fly it, you know, in large part that 35 was derived from the F 16. So a lot of the controls are the same, it really feels pretty comfortable to a f 16 pilot. Now the buttons do a lot more things. So it's like you know, the Hotez hands on throttle and stick on steroids. And I can remember, it would take me about five seconds for me to translate my brain because I was experienced, I was an experienced fighter pilot, so I knew what I wanted to do. But it would take me about five seconds to go from speaking, F 16 in my brain to actually, you know, flying F 35. And it took me about a year to, to really develop that muscle memory because at the speeds we fly, we're averaging closure rates of a mile every three seconds. And so five seconds is a long time. Wow. Man, I was fast. Yeah, that's an understatement. Yeah, 150 knots the other day, it was like point zero remark? Oh, my bad guy. No, no, no, it's okay. I was just out his plan. Go ahead. So when you were talking about, like some of the problems that it had initially, I remember reading about it, when it first came out. And some of the pilots, I don't know if it's true or not, we're blacking out. Or there was a, I think, a leak in their oxygen system. Yeah, no bogs. Yeah. That stuff. And they were talking about it being over budget, and all that. But like, in your experience, like blinding the aircraft, you said it's like night and day from like, the first prototypes to now. So clearly, they got that all fixed. Yeah, I mean, that 35 is a new technology. So like any new technology, it takes time to develop, it's called the technological S curve. And, I mean, we're probably all similar age. So thinking back to the Walkman, remember, when the CD player came out, like, it was garbage, it had zero second, and I skipped protection, I remember being on the bus having to hold that thing perfectly still, and skipping $100. But over time, they were able to, you know, work out bugs. Yeah, that was just in time for what was next the iPod, and iPod, same thing it could, it was really expensive, the battery died, all kinds of different things and streaming music came about. So that's like that 35. It's a new technology, it takes some time to work out all the bugs. And also, we're kind of shifting in how we fight it. So this happens every 2030 years. So if you go back to the jets in the 50s, and 60s, it was all how high and how fast you could go. So they all wanted to go like 60,000 feet, Mach 2.0. And then there was a guy named John Boyd, who I would encourage people to read his book about him. And he was like, No, it's not how high and how fast you can go. It's how tightly you can turn sustain that term, excuse all the F 16 be developed from that. And since 2005, it's really been another shift to fifth generation platforms, where it's about stealth, it's about having great sensors, sensor, fusion, all kinds of different things like that, which, you know, it's tough at like an airshow to showcase how well an aircraft can network. But it's it is important. What does that mean? How well an aircraft networks just for people who are listening who might not know what that is, including me, like how well they all talk together? So, I mean, I think the smartphone analogy is really good because somebody might say, Oh, my screen size is bigger than, you know, your cell phone screen size, but it's about like, you know, how it connects to the other phones. You know, if you have an iPhone, it's about like the ecosystem where you can just like AirPlay things and do all kinds of different things like that. So the Jets talking to each other and being able to talk to other types of aircraft as well. And that's awesome. Yeah, absolutely. Being able to communicate, that's one of the most important things because that's a misconception that a lot of the keyboard warriors have is that flying fighters is like A cage match or something like MMA fight where you're sending out an F 35. One F 35 versus, you know, another enemy aircraft. But it's not, it's more like a football team. So you have different players for different roles. And it's about how well you integrate together and communicating is a big part of that. The F 22 and the F 35. I know, they're both stealth fighters. But what is the biggest difference? I guess, between the two? Because they're both when I think came out, like in what 2006 2010? Because around the time you came out, yeah, when IOC in like, 2005, right? initial operating capability. Yeah. And then, like, I know that they opened up to being able to sell the F 35 to some of our allies, but they haven't done it with the F 22. As just is that just because of like, certain technology that we're kind of keeping to ourselves, or, but what's like, the main purpose for that. So back when the F 22 came out, it was like a piece of alien technology, like it just blew everybody away. It was amazing. And the F 35. Now, I think has you know, they have point to what it's designed to do is to go in and be an air air fighter and to dominate out there. So they had actually come up with a new term air dominance, instead of air superiority. You know, as an F 35 pilot were the new pitchin platform. So we like to, you know, make fun of the the Raptor pilots and legacy. The real thing is, we're more air to ground based. We are they're, they're they're highly biased towards air air. So we really need when we're going in. Yeah, okay, that makes sense. You guys are just more multifaceted, I guess, in that sense. Yeah. Sweet, man. So yeah, you mentioned the development of F 16. F 35. Is really was revolving around like how high how fast. Now we're going into how tight it can turn and how long you can sustain those G forces. Have you ever read the book? Jonathan Livingston, seagull? No. I mean, that sounds familiar, though. Yeah, by a guy named Richard Bach. And he was an F 84. Pilot, I believe. Yeah, he wrote this. Like, it's like a children's book. About a seagull who is tired of you know, the normal day to day life of a seagull is just to fly just to get food, but he wanted to see how high and how fast he could fly. And he reached different heights and different universes. And it's actually it's a really cool book. What's it called again? I'm gonna write it down. Jonathan Livingston Seagull. Yeah, it's freaking great. Definitely, I can introduce that to your kid. When they when he gets older. So cute, by the way, adorable. Congratulations. On your baby. It's it's been it's been amazing to be able to see him grow. And you know, it's it's cool to see how kids learn a new thing every day. So it's, it's been really life changing little sponges. Yeah. So how high and how fast Have you flown speaking of that, so that's 16 is service ceiling is 50,000 feet. Big can go higher. But as a as a pilot, they don't want us to go higher. Because if we have a rapid decompression, we can black out. You can also get the bends. So something scuba divers are familiar with. So generally 50,000 feet is a service ceiling unless you're wearing like a pressure suit or spacesuit. So I've been up to 50,000 feet. F 16. I can remember the fastest I've ever gone was in Korea, over the Yellow Sea going Mach 1.9, which was pretty fast, especially because those jets that were flying, were built in the late 80s. So going through Mach 1.6. The whole thing was rattling. It was like a movie. And you know if anything happens at one point, you know, six o'clock. That's because velocity squares, it's like 300 times the force of sticking your hand out at 80 miles an hour. So you stick your hand out of the car. Great Britain do quite a bit. This is 300 times that so you really can't eject buddy out 1.9 Mach, which is I don't know maybe 1500 miles an hour. Man, you got to really trust your equipment. Yeah. Wow. maintainers Big shout out to them. They have amazing job there. They're really the hardest workers out there and they're, you know, it takes like 10 hours of maintenance for every one hour we fly so they do a lot of work on them. I would have been tapping on your shoulder to slow down on the same thing, I'd be like bro, bro, slow down. Wait, what? So what was the purpose? You're just out there testing it? Or what would be the reason to fly that fast? I mean, other than Yeah, so typically, we don't fly that fast at all. This was a like, FCF jet. So a functional check flight. So they had swapped out the engines, and they need a pilot to do a bunch of stuff. And the last step is a max speed run. And I was like, You got it. Wow. So what a sick, that is super crazy. But what's the limiting factor for how fast you can go out there structural damage that can be done? If you push it to a certain point? What's the VAT on that thing? Yeah, so it's Mach 2.05. So I was trying to get there, I couldn't. So I took it up to 50,000 feet, Max afterburner, got up to about 1.4 Mach, and then bunted over 1015 degrees nose low, and the speed was taken up, I went through that often at 1.6, Mach 1.9, everything smoothed out, was pretty, pretty cool. You know, usually, you're just really busy on these missions. But this was one of those cases where like, kind of time felt like it slowed down. And notice like heat coming, you know, from the canopy. And so I took my hand off the throttle, it had like a Nomex glove on it. And I could feel heat coming from the canopy from the air resistance. So I was I was going to bout I think around 780 knots, because it changes from Mach 2.05 to an 800 not limit. And that generally happens around 35,000 feet so if I had kept on going I would have over over speeded it from a knock perspective. Dang. Man, I couldn't even imagine just like your the aircraft like shaking violently like that you feel like it's gonna fall apart. But you pushed her and you said that it's it started smoothing out once you got to a certain point, huh? Yeah, 1.9 everything smoothed out. And I think 1.6 is kind of like a known resonance node. Also these aircraft are old. So they've been overjoyed, especially like asymmetric over G's can cause you know, some variants like that. So yeah, at 1.9 Everything smoothed out. And that sounds like a magical moment. Like you're going really fast. But everything slowly notice is your fuel is rapidly decreasing. Like I looked over, and it was showing 50,000 pounds an hour was my fuel flow because I was in Max afterburner. And you know, the jet, you know, there's a clean jet, it only has 7000 pounds of gas. So and I still had to go back home and have a, you know, buffer there. So, yeah, we only have a few minutes and afterburner. And so I took it out of afterburner to middle power, which is maximum non afterburner setting. And I remember the air resistance from before it and locked my shoulder straps. And it actually took me like 50 miles to slow down below the Mach. Wow. Did you ever do the nine G's on that aircraft on the F 35? Have you pushed it that hard? All the time? Yeah, more so than F 16. But yeah, that 35 is rated to nine G's. And yeah, that's, that's a crazy experience to pull nine G's no matter what platform you're in. Because right now I weigh about 210 pounds 240 With my gear on at nine G's, nine times the force of gravity that's over 2000 pounds of force just crushing you into your seats. You can't even lift your arms, you're just stuck. And but that's, that's why we have the Hotez hands on throttle and stick, we can do everything, just, you know, you know, glued to our seat. But the real issue is you can have a G lock G induced loss of consciousness, that's where the blood has been pulled out of your brain, into your extremities, and if you lose enough of it, it can make you pass out. So if you pass out, it's gonna take about 2530 seconds for you to wake back up. And at the speeds we fly, we are going to impact the ground in about 10 to 15 seconds. So unfortunately, we've lost quite a few pilots to G locks. Have you ever almost passed out before I have. So when you are pulling G You're the first thing you lose is your peripheral vision so it kind of shrinks down to by the time you're at nine G's it's like looking through a toilet paper roll and most of the time I'm fine so we have to we were G suits so you got to make sure your G suit is fitted properly. You got to make sure you're hydrated so just being 3% dehydrated can reduce your G tolerance time by 50%. So staying hydrated so yeah, there have been a couple sorties where I just have not been feeling nine G's and so you know just eased up and the thing you don't want to do is fight through it and end up you know, killing yourself through a G lock. And that's scary. That's because I get so sorry you guys do that a whatsapp machine where you guys are in testing and you're in Yeah, yeah, that if that isn't fun, we have to do that generally twice in our careers once the fly the T 38. And that's the that I think it's like seven G's and then wants to fly the F 16, or F 35, nine G's. And you know that that sucks. Because you're in this like, little pod, you have no control over it, and they're just spinning you to death. And you get the liens in there. When it slows down, you feel like you're tumbling. And because everybody is going through this, the thing smells like vomit, because people throw it. So you're trying to do all this. And you know, while you're feel like you're tumbling. Oh, you know, you're smelling vomit? Oh, heck no. Oh, you got on that? See? And what about like now? Because if you fail, I think they give you one more chance. And if you fail that, then you're out and fly. If you throw up in there, do you fail? 35? If you throw up in there do did they fail? You? Know, you just you if you push if you throw up and you push through it and get on you be the next person? How do you how do you tell them to stop? You're probably like glued to your seat. You're just like to just be like, no safe word, this little monkey in there. And they're just spinning. So it's, I mean, they're talking to you. Yeah, they'll do it for like 30 seconds and then ease down. And then they'll they'll talk you through what you're doing good, what you're doing bad. They're different profiles, one where you're looking over your shoulder, all kinds of different things like that. But fortunately, I haven't had to do that. Since 2011. Wow. Do your classmates see as well? Is there like a big window? Everybody gets Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah, Buddy is looking at you making fun of the way you look. I can remember our class went there. And there was a colonel so in Oh, six. I think if you're out of the jet for more than five years, you have to go back for a recall. And there's this experience, badass fighter pilot. And he looked like he was about an inch away from just passing out. And so we were like, oh, geez, you know, hopefully that's that's not us. Oh, geez, no, nobody I clean that jugs of beer. Oh, yeah. Fortunately, none of us passed out. But yeah, everybody is just watching you. And if you go on YouTube, right now, you can type in like ci g locks, G loc. And you can see a bunch of people that are passing out and you do the funky chicken. So you pass out they stop the centrifuge, and then you're just like twitching as you wake up. So you don't want to wind up on a highlight reel like that? Did I get when? If somebody does fail? Do they get the opportunity to supply something else? Are they entirely out of the flight program? No, they get a chance to fly something else. So they a lot of money and time have gone into developing them and they're good pilots, they just can't handle the G's. So they'll go and buy something else. Like a like a tanker C 17. Something like that. Yeah, some something like that. And what about the rotor pilots that you guys have? Are those just washed out? jet pilots? I don't know. We never see them. So we wanted to go through pilot training. We just split off paths. And we never talk again. So I don't know what happened to the it's it's pretty prestigious. A lot of people want to fly helicopters. So they go and do their what you guys do. So I have no idea. You know how you fly helicopters, but they go and learn how to do that. And then we never hear from them again. Now I hear Yeah, it's just like, I know that compared to essentially the Air Force as a whole branch. I know you guys have few of you does not mean like your forte. Like well, we don't have too many, too many helicopters. It's not compared to you know, the army or you keep saying the word afterburner. And a lot of our listeners might not know what that is. I got to learn what that was today through one of your YouTube videos. During our interview with rain waters, he mentioned that a couple times and I just nodded along like Oh, after Britain that sounds crazy, you know, but I didn't actually, you know, ask the question. What is afterburner and what when would you use that? Yeah, so the engines on our aircraft are low bypass turbofan engines. They work similar to the way airliners do. They're just skinnier because when we're going supersonic, that's a ton of drag. So we want to make sure that they're skinny. The real difference is on the back sides of the backside. We have an afterburner, or reheat if you're British. And so what we do is, so when the exhaust comes out, it's still has 50% of the oxygen. That is a normal air so we can do something with that. So what we do is We spray you on there and we light it off and it creates like a 30 foot flame out of the back of the jet. And it produces a lot of thrust. But it also rapidly decreases your fuel. So it's an efficient, but it's, it's it's like boost got so that you want you'd want to use that when you have limited, you know space to take off or when you just need that extra, get away from your enemy. Get someone behind your nice haircut. Get whoever's behind you a nice haircut or the dust. So yeah, we'll use afterburner for those takeoffs. Sometimes, so it depends, you know, we'll load up these jets even though they're high performance aircraft, we'll load them up with all kinds of different things. And sometimes we need afterburner to be able to take it off. Or if it's a short runway, or sometimes like being, you know, in the desert, whether it's the Middle East, or here in Phoenix, we have really high density altitudes, which I'm sure you guys are really familiar with. And so we'll use afterburner to take off and then anytime we want to max perform the jet will will use afterburner. And for all of our listeners out there who are non pilots, I know we have a couple of them, I want to make sure that not everything sounds like gibberish in this podcast. So really quick definition of density altitude, so that you know what Hazzard was talking about here. density altitude, very simply put is our pressure altitude, which is our altitude adjusted for non standard pressures, adjusted for non standard temperatures and humidity. So as pilots, we need to know where our aircraft is performing. And the hotter the day is like if we're flying in the desert, like Hazzard was talking about, we're going to get high density altitude, our air, our aircraft is going to be performing as if it's at a higher altitude because the temperatures are hotter and the air is less dense. And on a colder day, we're going to get better performance, those air molecules are really close tightly together, and we're going to get better performance out of our aircraft. So on the higher density altitude days, that afterburner is going to be really useful when you need that extra kick of power in order to get airborne. Feel like you guys are the ones that need afterburner when you're at high altitude trying to land, I wish some of that boost, right, it'd be so nice. Yeah, we both flew in the Grand Canyon. So we'd get temperatures up to 120. Yeah, plus, sometimes, and I was very power limiting. I did all my flight training in Prescott, Arizona, so that 8000 feet, da all the time and a little 180 horsepower. helicopter that was really, really challenging to learn to fly up there. But it was definitely, it was a great place to learn because of that, it really helped teach power management, and how to work that yeah, low power is more scary than having too much power. So I did a little bit of flying, I wanted to teach my wife how to fly like small civilian aircraft. And so we took a Cessna to Sedona, and, you know, that was one of the scariest things up there with those high mountains, like no power, you know, that 16 F 35, you get into trouble, just like the afterburner, you're fine. But those those smaller aircraft, you know, you can put yourself in a square corner. Yep, I'm sure it's really easy to do that, especially if you're used to flying really high powered aircraft, and then you go into something that's less powerful, you have to be really careful when you're going to those high density altitude airports for sure. And like the Augusta that we fly, we have a limiter on it, that will limit the amount of torque that we're allowed to pull. But if you find yourself in, like a hairy situation where you need to demand more power, or more torque, in order to not hit the ground, there's a limit override button that you can push that will allow you to go over that go past that limit that it's set at, in order to hopefully prevent a hard landing. And hopefully it won't completely, you know, ruin your transmission or cook the engine. And anyway, but at least we have that if, you know, we need it as an added safety feature, which is nice, you know, the F 16 was similar to that. So that 16 We had a max power switch, and we got that from that 15 and the F 15. Back in the 70s was kind of, you know, we were fighting the Soviet Union. And so we wanted our technology to be better than theirs. And so we wanted a MK 2.5 fighter and so the F 15 They put a max power switching so it could just barely get to Mach 2.5. But, you know, afterwards they would have to completely take apart the engine and fix it because it would be you know, basically, you know overspeeding And so we took that in F 16. We copied that 15 panels and so we had that max power switch and I was always it was wired shut, but I was always tempted to to see what that's like turning the camera off in the aircraft feel like bubble gum up there to maintenance guy like, safety water on it back now know what happened I was pre planning it just wasn't there Oh, that's right, that's right pays to you know, have a man on the maintenance team that that's got your back. So one subject that always seems to come up on our interviews is ADM or aeronautical decision making. And one video I particularly liked particularly like that was very simple that you put out that was tips for better decision making. And something that really stood out to me, which I think on the civilian side, we really lack on is the debrief is one of the suggestions that you made. So you said that in the military, you spend anywhere from two to what six hours, we spent a lot of time debriefing, so we'll just fly for generally about an hour and a half is, is how much fuel we have unless we're refueling in the air. And we come back and yeah, we we debrief for a long, long time. And that's because we're doing tactics, so we're trying to do something against an adversary. And so we'll we'll assess, like, did we do everything correctly, and usually it comes down to the three errors, it comes down to an assessment error. So you know, that could be not listening to the radio. So prioritizing something else, and then I missed a radio call, or could be I wasn't looking at my radar when I should have because, you know, the bad guy was on there. So it can be an assessment error, it can be a decision error. So we have a lot of tactics. So they're kind of like plays in a NFL playbook. So when we see something, usually, there's a tactic that's associated with that. And so we'll choose the correct tactic. And sometimes there's some small modifications, audibles that you'll make. And then the last thing is executing, so making sure that you are doing that tactic correctly. And so we try to isolate the issues into those three buckets. And yeah, we spend a lot of time debriefing, but I think anybody can apply a little bit of debriefing, I think, the vast majority of people don't do any debrief. And for me, all I need are three good things, three bad things. That's that's kind of what I do with students, because that's, that's what I do on the F 35. I instruct students. And so at the end of the debrief, I come up with three things that they did well, and three things that they need to work on. And I think that applies to flying fighters, that applies to helicopters, probably, it applies to me with my YouTube videos. So after each video, I'll just write down three things I do, well, three things I need to work on. And for the most part, I mean, so far in my career have mostly flown small to medium helicopters, that that only require a single pilot, and I haven't really had a job where I require a crew to be on board. So the debrief falls solely on me to not be lazy at the end of the flight and to do the debrief with myself. And there's no real formal procedure of me doing that. It's basically just making mental notes in my head about the things that maybe could have been done better. If I fly with another pilot, I think, you know, Jose and I flew together the other night. And, you know, we had a situation where we were, it was nighttime, we were coming into land at a helicopter pad at nighttime, and we couldn't see where the wind was coming from. But notice that we had 30, not groundspeed coming in, I'm like, Whoa, we got to tell and bro. So you know, we boarded the landing and went around and change the direction that we were coming in. And, you know, when we landed, we're like, okay, you know, maybe next time, it wouldn't be a bad idea, especially at nighttime to do a loop around, maybe try to find the wind sock with a search light, if we can. It's one of those things were you know, we find that pad almost every single time we fly and the winds, I would say 99% of the time come from one direction, because we're by the beach. So you know, it does they usually are when they're usually pretty, pretty steady. And then once in a blue moon, they'll be coming from the north, and it's a very, very rare occasion. So we get used to coming in the same way, the same way, the same way. And that redundancy is what's gonna bite you in the butt some day if you don't stay vigilant during your flight. And helicopters come with their own set of hazards for coming in with a tailwind that you don't really have an airplane I mean, you definitely do have hazards in an airplane coming with the tailwind but for a helicopter you can get in what they call settling with power So that's interchangeable with vortex ring state unless you actually get into the nitty gritty of it. And without getting into too much detail because we're not going to spend a ton of time on this. But vortex ring state is basically when the helicopters main rotor desk gets engulfed in its own board to seize and start settling into its downwash, which has definitely been the cause of many helicopter hard landings slash accidents. So that's something definitely to be aware of, of knowing where the winds are coming from. Is that what happened with the bin Laden raid the helicopter that crashed? Yeah, very similar. Yeah. So at least from what I read, you know, the aircraft came into the compound, the border, Cesar bouncing off the wall, kind of got into its own wash, and kind of settled inside its own borders. He's in there. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. His father, Navy Seal and room one. I'm like, damn, there goes our ride. Oh, no, what happened was, so I saw a couple donkeys back there. Sorry, it was it was a US aircraft. I didn't even know about this. It was during the bin Laden raid, they had a few helicopters that you know, dropped off two seals. And in the compound they have like, could be wrong on the number, but it was like a 15 foot wall. Something like that. Like, pretty, pretty big, like, pretty big wall compound. Yeah. And the aircraft came in in the middle of the compound to drop off like the seals. But like I said, from what I read, it sounded like the vertices kind of like we're getting pushed off to the wall and coming back up. So yeah, you learned something a little bit about helicopters. You guys kind of know what we do. You guys fly. You know, planes. At least part time. I have no idea really how helicopters work. That's just PFM man. Fucking magic. They don't want to fly. You're kind of forcing. Hopefully I'm staying away from them. Because it probably means I objected. And I am being rescued. Right, exactly. Oh, my gosh. You probably don't want to see what you're right. I feel like in any pilots career, we've all had really embarrassing moments that have stood out that we've looked back on and we're like, oh, man, that was embarrassing. Do you have any of those moments? super embarrassing moments? Couple over G's, especially when the F 35 wasn't up to nine G's. Couple over jeez. But that was that was pretty common. So that wasn't, that wasn't too big. I would say one funny story that I have this. So I was, you know, deployed to Afghanistan. And we have something called a D fac. I don't know what it stands for, but it's our crappy area. And so I was fine in the middle of the night. And so I would have dinner Dinner would essentially be my breakfast. So I had dinner. And it was like footlong hotdogs, but it was like gross. But you know, you gotta eat, you're gonna be in there for six hours. So you know, eight, eight, at the D fac. Then went and flew my sortie. And that was hundreds of miles away. I was in the Helmand Province, executing mission. And I just started feeling terrible. And I was like, Man, I feel kind of sick. I think I'm gonna throw up. And, you know, once I had that thought I was like, Oh, I'm gonna throw up and you're, I'm in a single seat F 16. And my wingman who's doing stuff, but we're on a mission. And so I was like, oh, no, and I was carrying, we carry flags for people in plastic bags. And so that was in my helmet bag. And so I took out the flag put in my helmet bag, and then I just threw up into this plastic bag. And it wasn't designed. It's you know, I don't carry vomit bags because I never throw up you know, I'm fine. You know, after flying. However many times I've flown in F 16. And so I threw up into this and like filled it up with just gross. And this bag isn't designed as a vomit bag. So it doesn't have like the top I can't I can't tie it. So I just leave it in my lap. You know kind of scooped and you know finish finish out the rest of the mission. Oh, my God, that was not fun. And you know, I guess I guess the guys probably gave me a little bit of hard time. I can't tell you how many hazard I got named sorry. No, I just said I was I got the callsign hazard in 20 2011 this was this was 2016 by Definitely not a good feeling and to have to finish the mission and you're 300 miles away from from any help. Oh, that's awful. Yeah, that sucks. Now, they said, I used to tell my passengers when I was fine in the Grand Canyon, that there was$1,000 cleanup fee for people that puked in the helicopter, there, there wasn't 1000 I would I was like those in the $1,000. You know, I don't know if you guys read the fine print. But there's $1,000 cleanup fee. So if you have to puke puke in like the bags that we have like that. And if you can't you can that go down a shirt? A shirt? That, uh, yeah, I just remember. I did feel bad that they did do it in their shirt. But at the same time, I'm like, I don't want to clean that up. No, we don't have people for that. That's the pilots job, you're going in there, like go up because it's gonna sound terrible. I mean, that's what the eighth guys say aircrew flight equipment due to the incentive fliers. So, an F 16. We replied, some people in the back seat. So usually those who are like maintainers, they were doing really well. Or sometimes they be local leaders. And so we'd find them the back seat. And every single one of them felt terrible afterwards, because it just something that the body's not used to. And like I would say, almost all most of them threw up, but all of them felt awful after half an hour, hour and a half flight in the back of an F 16. Get that and my safety briefing in the canyon. I would always be like so who had fun on this trip last night. Like, like, Okay, you're gonna hold this bag? Is a bag free? Yeah, what a bag for you and a bag for you. Yeah, I didn't take any chances. I think there was only maybe two times that someone didn't make the bag. And it was literally we had a helicopter down at the Hoover Dam. And we offered three minute tours. Three minutes, literally three minutes, six minute and 10 minute tours, or we literally just kept the thing running. And people would come in, you'd find them literally to take off. You do like a little loopy, come back and you'd land it was like 40 bucks. That's for like, just families who are driving, you know, back to I don't know, wherever they're going. Where this this was in. Where's Vegas? Yeah, Hoover Dam, right. You find it. You're not getting on the carnival ride side as well. It's like we're not doing this. Dude, when we got put at the dam for the day, it was just like, No, we I'm gonna I'm gonna tell my wife. I know, too. But, uh, but you're right, man. I'm glad you didn't do it. For people who have never been in a helicopter and can't afford, you know, 200 $300 ticket to go to the Grand Canyon, and they can afford a$40 ticket for their kid to go up. Like it was. I mean, it was cool. It really was it was it was cool for that. You know, families that just couldn't afford to, you know, they had six kids or whatever, you know, and everyone gets to go, you know. So that was cool for that. But yeah, I had a woman throw up all over herself on a three minute tour. We I like landed, set it down. And she just was like, right, just right on the seatbelt all over herself. And I was like, really? I believe. I went down, set it down. And she does, right. Didn't think on agreement at territory that that would be possible. But yeah, we had a fan player who was like, I am not going to feel good on this ride. And so I kept it under three G's the whole time. So like, really, you know, docile flight. And yeah, she was just like puking in the back. So I felt bad for actually the worst. And this wasn't something that I gave. But in Korea, we used to do something called Hot pits. So we would take off we go do a mission, come back, still leave the jet running, stay in the cockpit. They would hook up, fuel to it, refuel, go fly again. And so we do something called fam flight. So there's a difference. Incentive flights are just for you. So it's like you're coming in and I'm like, hey, what do you want to do you want to go see this that, but we do a lot of fam flights where they're long for the ride. And so you know, they feel sick. They're stuck back there. And so I remember being the wingman for one of these rides. And so we go and do a mission we come back and we're waiting in the pits. And I look over and there's the my flight leads fam writer and like she's just like looking terrible, just like sleeping in the backseat just from being sick. And she had to go through the whole thing again, so I felt terrible. Bad for oh, no, man. Yeah, girl. Yeah. Well, speaking of family, how have you found being a fighter pilot in the Air Force and how you've been able to balance that with your family life? I know. Now you have a baby and a beautiful wife and and you now are doing your reserve? Or you, you fly for the reserve. So I'm sure that lets you be home a little bit more, obviously. How have you been managed to balance that up until now? Yeah, well, speaking of family, I'm going to have to go check on my son pretty soon. Bye. No worries. Yeah, it's, it has been a challenge. And it's been tough to be able to prioritize, doing watching him, you know, flying, doing all these other things that I'm doing as well. So I think it's been challenging. And I'm still learning, the best way to do that. And for me, joining the reserves was was the big one. So joining the reserves, I get to stay here at Luke. And Luke is in the calf bass combat airport space, combat air force bases, those are the ones on the frontlines. That's like Korea. That's like Shah, those are the bases I was at before, you're working 12 hours every single day. Here, it's a little bit less, it's like, you know, eight to 10 hour days, still still pretty busy. But being a reservists I fly last summer only part time. So I can kind of adjust my schedule to to be able to take care of take care of my family, especially since my wife works full time. So she's a project manager. She's really busy. She's actually helping with the warp speed. COVID COVID Roll up. So Oh, yeah, she's doing important stuff. And so yeah, I think joining the reserves really suits us and will be able to allow me to really, you know, spend time being a father. Man, yeah, I have a few friends that are pilots, or Air Force pilots in the reserves, and they think they love it. They would say it's the best deal. I feel like this is literally the best deal in the Air Force. There's only like, I would say 10 of us total in the Air Force. So 10 reservists at 35 pilots. I'm guessing on that, but not many. And it's awesome. I fly a couple times a week and then can spend time with family. Wow. Sounds like a sweet deal. Well, I'll let you go. Check on your kid. And thank you so much for joining us. It's been such a pleasure meeting you and hearing about all of your experiences and your expertise. And so thank you so much for coming on the show and keep doing what you're doing. If everybody again, check out his YouTube channel. Check him out on Instagram just in fighter pilot. Yeah, so thank you so much, man. Well, thanks, Diane, this was a this was a lot of fun. And I actually learned stuff as well. So I really think you guys are putting out a good product. And thanks for having me on. And it was nice. Meeting you as well. Jose, you too, brother. Thank you, Anna. Yeah, congrats on everything in your family brother. I was so pumped that I got to hear a lot of your stuff. Because, yeah, I like that. 35. All right, brother. Well, you take care yourself. Yeah, I say. And what a wealth of information that guy is. I seriously, I learned so much from him on his YouTube videos. Lots of I just really didn't know about. I mean, being a firefighter, not being a fighter pilot myself. I wish I was one maybe in another life. If I were to fly any type of airplane, there would be like the word hawk. Talking about 810. No, though. Yeah, we've talked about that before. Yeah. Stand by that. I stand by that. Pretty intense. And but yeah, well, let's, let's talk about the interview here. We talked about a good debrief. Yeah. You know, I think having a good debrief is critical as far as you just doing it on your own as a pilot, or you as an instructor, talking to your students. Whatever the case is, having a good debrief, essentially, is a good way to communicate things that were positive things that were negative along your flight mission. Totally. So just building on that and pointing out the certain things that you can improve on, I think can go a long way. All right. All right. All right. What more can we learn about the debrief? I know it seems like we're beating a dead horse here. But there are a couple things that we can still talk about. So what does a good debrief do for us? Of course, it's going to help us minimize future mistakes and become the ultimate qualified pilot that we all strive to be. We're all human, we make mistakes. So first of all, you To commit to being 100% honest with yourself in the debrief. And this can be for your eyes only no one else has to see this. This can be for your own performance and your own improvement. So how can you perform when it can be in your head, which is usually what I do. But a more effective approach would be to write it down and keep a flight journal, which actually I think I'm going to strive to do and it's going to be one of my goals is here, I'm going to start a journal. Start by simply asking yourself questions about how you felt the flight went, you're doing and how'd you think the flight went? Oh, you know what, I think it was pretty well, a couple things that could have done better. Let's try to do that better next time, etc, etc. You can also structure it a little bit more, you could pre write yourself a debrief form, be objective, don't get emotional about it and give yourself a fair assessment. So one thing that Hazzard did that was a really good idea was to just write three things down that you think went well, and the three things that you think could have been improved on during your flight, or don't you know, do it makes you feel like a free woman or man, but do what you can to fly safe out there. Love you guys. Thanks for listening. Thanks, again to hazard for being there for us today. And have a great rest of your week. We'll catch you in a few weeks. Bye