Here Are the 3 Things You Need to Earn Your Wings

before you can emerge victorious in hostile skies across the globe doing the nation's bidding you have to make it through flight school you have to earn your wings i've been a flight instructor at both the training command and rag levels and what i know based on the successes and failures of the flight students i've dealt with over the years is regardless of branch of service or pipeline rotary wing maritime strike pilot nfo to complete the program and reach your goal of earning your wings you need three basic things aptitude adaptability and attitude showing up to military flight school you have to have a bachelor's degree in a commission both of those things assume a baseline level of aptitude but understand that flight school requires a very specific sort of aptitude the kind that allows you to interpret a weather brief in order to file a flight plan into a destination field and remain above approach minimums capture the correct air speeds and altitudes during a standard instrument departure know the specific performance characteristics of your airplanes at all times and deal with emergency procedures accurately and decisively this doesn't mean you need an engineering degree i'm a poli sci major but it does mean you need to have the ability to process numbers and data and do the math and turn it into the appropriate action so just like professional golfers need to be able to take their games from the driving range to the course once the tournament starts flight students need to be able to take what they've learned from the ground school and simulator environment to the airplane once the flying starts they have to be able to adapt their newfound skills from the static environment to a dynamic one so understand the first time that you made up an airplane for real with an instructor during a graded evolution you're going to be nervous maybe more so than you've ever been in your life and for all the amazing technology currently in use there's no way to fully replicate the actual cockpit environment in a simulator climbing into the cockpit wearing a helmet with a mask or a boom mic strapping into the seat and hearing the noise of motors and the crackle of radios and the intercom is going to feel foreign at first flying through choppy skies and a helicopter pulling g's in a fixed wing airplane are very unique sensations and it can be challenging to focus on the task at hand so you might get air sick at first in fact there's an unspoken goal among instructors to get flight students air sick on their first flights but in short you have to get comfortable with being uncomfortable i always admired flight students who got sick and got over it and got on with the mission that takes guts and instructors respect that also most students stop getting air sick after the first couple of hops some don't in fact down in pensacola the naval aviation medical institute nami has a special program for flight students who keep getting sick it's called spin and puke most students who go through that process wind up being able to deal with the sensation of being disoriented and they stop getting air sick some don't and those flight students ultimately choose another warfare especially generally it's surface warfare or if their grades are good enough they can go submarines again the bottom line of adaptability the second thing you need to get your wings is getting comfortable with being uncomfortable and that's actually a good posture to have throughout your career by the way the third thing you need to get your wings is the right attitude now if you're like me during college ac was good enough 2-0 and go as we say that won't work in flight school your personal standard has to be hundred percent on every exam and getting it right in the airplane every time you can't land safely or comply with course rules or make it to your intended destination seventy percent of the time you have to do those things every time so i assume you're in flight school because among the service selection choices you have this is the one you wanted unlike the mandatory courses you had in college calculus chemistry introduction to literature whatever all the course material in flight school matters and should be of great interest to you you'll want to fully immerse yourself in every detail of the community and know everything about everything my grade point average at the academy was 2.7 but it was close to if not at 4.0 for my entire time in the training command and rag to make it through flight school you've got to want it and let me give you two examples of where i went over and above in order to complete the program so during aviation indock you have to tread water in full flight gear so you tread water for 10 minutes and then you transition into what they call drown proofing where you put your head down and you just sit there and then occasionally get a breath and it's designed to get your heart rate down so if your life preserver didn't work you could stay near the surface for an extended period of time until you got rescued so i was having trouble with that transition it was hard for me to stop moving and i was getting exhausted and the instructors at the side of the pool are like stop moving and i just couldn't do it so finally one of them hands me a stick this long stick and i grab it and once you grab it you flunk so they have this thing called stupid swim that you can do after hours so i did a couple of sessions of stupid swim tried it again and i flunked again so i was on the verge of getting pulled back to the class behind me and i absolutely didn't want to do that i lived in an apartment complex on the northeast side of pensacola that had a pool so on the weekend i actually put on my flight suit boots harness and helmet and jumped in the deep end of that pool much to the amazement of my civilian neighbors and practice transitioning from the tread water to the drown proofing and during the course of that session i had the aha moment where i realized if you in fact just stop moving and at first it feels like your heart is going to explode out of your chest but if you stop moving if you're disciplined enough to stop moving eventually your heart rate does come down and you'll be fine so that following monday i did the flight gear tread water one more time and passed so later when i was in vt-10 i was doing one of the last two flights a low level in a t-39 and so during the flight i got one leg ahead of myself and wound up giving the pilot the wrong heading out of a turn point and got lost and by the time i discovered it it was too late to recover so i wound up getting a pink sheet a down on that flight this was my first pink sheet down in flight school and it very much concerned me so if you get two downs you wind up having to go to a board and i absolutely didn't want to go to a board because i only had two flights left i was near the top of my vt10 class and it was getting close to when we were going to pick our advanced phase pipelines and i wanted radar intercept officer because i wanted to be a tomcat backseater so i seriously did not want to down this flight a second time so i had a neighbor in that same apartment complex where i used the pool to figure out how to drown proof who had a private airplane and i went to him i said hey you feel like flying a low level over southern alabama this weekend and he was like yeah will you pay for gas i'm like sure i'll pay for the gas so we took my low level chart and flew the route and i was able to put eyes on turn points at the one where i'd screwed it up and the ones after that saw mill dam railroad intersection communications tower so that following monday i had my refly and i aced it so those two examples prove how much i wanted to get my wings and i guess the rest is history flight school is designed for students to succeed but it's also designed to measure student desire so there are opportunities for self-study things like after-hour simulator sessions where students can put their fellow students through their paces so you have to be willing to drive from wherever you live back to the base at night which brings up the topic of choosing where to live now in a fun city like pensacola for instance there's a temptation to live on the beach or near nightlife hot spots now i'm not saying you don't want to have fun in flight school you absolutely do and i absolutely did i'm just saying you don't want where you live to be the party house living in the party house makes it hard to study when you have a ground school exam or you need to sleep because you have the zero 5 30 brief the next day so choose your living situation wisely also in terms of attitude just know you're always on the clock in social situations like squadron picnics are hanging out with instructors at the officers club you're always being evaluated conduct yourself appropriately again i'm not saying don't be relaxed or personable or let instructors get to know you i'm saying don't unwittingly develop a reputation to somebody whoever does it or is reckless for instance i had a classmate in vt 10 the first phase of nfo training who had a porsche and one morning he was hauling ass down barrancas avenue on his way to naval air station pensacola and he raged by one of our instructors that instructor cornered him once he got to the hangar after the flight student and questioned his judgment and i guarantee you that flight instructor talked to the other instructors about the incident and now there's a black mark on the student's reputation that certainly informed instructor attitudes going forward that sort of unforced air can affect what pipeline you wind up getting assigned to helicopters versus jets for instance or worse it can affect the board's attitudes towards you in the event that things go poorly be careful with your personal conduct there's no reason to make life harder in flight school than it already is also part of flight school is getting criticized so from the outset you have to accept that most of the time even though you think you've nailed something your instructors are going to find something wrong with your performance do not develop a reputation to somebody who gets his or her backup or isn't receptive to constructive criticism worse don't argue with your instructors there are avenues for airing valid grievances with instructors but the need for those is rare remember part of the flight school syllabus is to measure how you react to feedback and pressure and how well you respond to those things just nod and say thank you and press on again instructors will talk about you among themselves do your best to make sure they say nice things so if you attended these three things you will make it to your goal and get your wings and at that point you're off on a career of the greatest consequence the kind of thing you can't believe you get paid to do and the kind of thing they make movies about good luck i know you can do it all right that'll do it for this episode we just hit 100 000 subscribers so let me take this opportunity to thank everybody for your support it's been amazing over the last four months or so if you're a first-time viewer please join this great community of subscribers by ringing the bell become a subscriber so you don't miss anything give me the likes and comment as you can see i love the comments and i try to engage as much as i can and if you'd like to help us take the channel to the next level please consider becoming a patron at patreon.com wardcarroll also check the links below for t-shirts mugs and how to get punks war my debut novel from usni press and stay tuned for details on the forthcoming reissue of the punks trilogy it's coming up in fact the press just sent me the new covers today and they look awesome and i look forward to talking to you again soon [Music] hmm

Channel: Ward Carroll

Views: 40,374

Rating: 4.9841599 out of 5

Keywords: Ward Carroll, F-14 Tomcat, U.S. Navy Flight School, Wings of Gold, flight school, military helicopters, military jets, fighter pilot, Top Gun, DCS, DCS World, rotary wing, NAS Pensacola, NAS Whiting Field, Naval Aviation, officers' club, pink sheet, aircraft carriers, instrument ground school, aviation simulators, swim/phys, NFO, WSO, RIO, T6 Texan, T 45 Goshawk, flight gear, low level flying, U.S Navy, U.S. Marine Corps Aviation, tailhook, F/A-18 Super Hornet

Id: vO7iRCHIOEs

Length: 12min 23sec (743 seconds)

Published: Fri Jul 30 2021