Ep. 229 | Merryl Tengesdal | U-2 Spy Plane Pilot - Former Action Guys Podcast

Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Hey, it was Gobody. Welcome to the former GUS podcast.
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(00:22):
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Speaker 2 (00:40):
Like everyone called it, merk. So back in there we are.
We recording right now.

Speaker 1 (00:45):
We are recording. But I can leave this in or
take it out. You just let me know.

Speaker 2 (00:48):
No, no, you can take this part out. I mean
you can leave it in, but it's just funny because
I met my husband at that point was called irc
chat back in the nineties. So when I got I
got in theater my first time and they're like merk chat,
and I'm like, this is Internet relay chat. What are
you talking about? Like people are doing stuff they're not

(01:09):
supposed to do in there. So it's really it's really
funny when people say merk chat because I remember it
in the nineties when I was using it to just
talk to people or maybe do things that I shouldn't
really have been trading information of sorts. Back in my
civilian days.

Speaker 1 (01:25):
Before, I think that was still happening.

Speaker 2 (01:29):
Yeah, so but you know my college days, I was, Yeah,
I was dabbling a little bit on the side that.

Speaker 1 (01:37):
That was pre instant messenger.

Speaker 2 (01:40):
It was pre instant messenger, so it was Yeah, it
was pretty cool. So when people say merkchat, I laugh.
I know this technology has been around for a long time,
but it was cool to use it in theater and
use it to pass information on it.

Speaker 1 (01:53):
So yeah, I actually know. I remember actually I don't
remember the specific guy, but he was talking to some
S two girl we were in, like Marja or something
like that. I can't remember. If it was Marsa or
saying it, but I think it was Marsia. So we
were at some like outposts and he was like messaging

(02:13):
some S two girl or some like I think it
was a UAV pilot or some whoever you communicate with
the UAV and they would have private chats and they
met up at some point, and I was like, you're
fucking crazy, man, Like what are you? Don't you all
those are monitored, Like what are you doing? But yeah,
it's pretty funny. That's old school technology. So we'll get

(02:35):
into let's get into the interview. But you know, it's
funny you bring that up because I tell people right now,
I'm like, with AI is like those early days of
the Internet, Like you're talking about that I r C chat.
I always bring up the because I made one, but
like the GeoCities websites, I'm like, that's the early days
of the like you know, public usage of the Internet.
That's kind of where we're at with AI technology, and

(02:57):
that's where I think people ought to be, you know,
making sure that they're staying up to date with that
kind of that kind of technology.

Speaker 2 (03:05):
And I so go ahead, No, No, I was gonna
say how old, are you.

Speaker 1 (03:09):
I'm forty one.

Speaker 2 (03:11):
Okay, so fifty three right, So I mean computers. I
tell my kids my first computer system was a pong system,
right with too little.

Speaker 1 (03:21):
I remember that Atario.

Speaker 2 (03:23):
Yeah, Atari Pong, and I said, I said. When I
used to chat with people online, I had a three
hundred bod modem dial up. You can hear the sounds
and then chat with some people. I remember my mom
one time was over my shoulders. Some guy was cursing
at me, like go f off, and I was like,
maybe I don't know, thirteen fourteen. And I looked at

(03:45):
my mom and I'm like, can I respond to this please?

Speaker 1 (03:48):
That's hilarious. I like watching war games occasionally, you know,
with Matthew Broderick and stuff, because that's old school for
people that haven't seen it. That's a classic, you know, early,
very early the internet kind of movie.

Speaker 2 (04:01):
Would you like to play a game?

Speaker 1 (04:02):
Yeah, that's such a good movie. Yeah, those early days
of the Internet with the dial up and if someone
would get someone else would pick up a phone, it
would kick you offline, and yes, you'd sit there and
wait on photos the load. It's similar to being on
the Internet on ship. That's what I tell people when
we're on CHIP, I'm like, this is how the internet
back of the day felt, you know, or three G
on your phone.

Speaker 2 (04:24):
My first deployment on the ship, email would come in
in a bundle and they actually had to have your
name in the subject lone and then they would pass.

Speaker 1 (04:32):
It to you.

Speaker 2 (04:33):
Oh, everyone could see your email, so everyone could, like
the person who was distributing that like a mail carrier,
basically could see your emails.

Speaker 1 (04:43):
That's a crazy I've never heard of that.

Speaker 2 (04:46):
Yes, so yeah, it was wild. I mean my first deployment,
my husband or my boyfriend at the time, we would
send each other cassette tapes with how things were going
and like play like silly music and stuff like that.

Speaker 1 (05:00):
Like what year was this.

Speaker 2 (05:03):
This was in ninety seven, nineteen ninety seven, So this
is before I deployed ninety seven ninety eight to the
med then to the Gulf North Arabian Gulf, and so
this was before women were they were starting to just
female modships. So I was on a ship that was
not female moded. So we were on a cruiser. We
were up next to the captain's quarters and they had

(05:26):
taken an office and made it there were four females
on the boat and that's that was us and we
just hung out there. So it was a pain in
the butt. And so you.

Speaker 1 (05:35):
Got a birthing area though nobody gets that.

Speaker 2 (05:38):
Yeah, it was actually dope, like you know, two racks,
four women. We had our own shower, so that was nice.
So uh yeah, my.

Speaker 1 (05:51):
First time on ship was one hundred and fifteen guys,
three showers, and two toilets, and it was miserable. We
were packed in there. Three high. Yeah, some guys were
for high. I was like, I never want to do
this again.

Speaker 2 (06:05):
My second long cruise deployment, I was on a frigate
and we shared bathrooms with the men because it wasn't
the modest chip and it was just guys are disgusting.

Speaker 1 (06:14):
I mean, come on, we haven't our disgusting too.

Speaker 2 (06:17):
It's not we are, no, but like how many times
you got to pee on the toilet seat. You're plumbing
is designed designed to actually aim at a target and
make it, and these guys would just pee everywhere.

Speaker 1 (06:33):
In the morning.

Speaker 2 (06:33):
It's hard in the's hard to do this and toward
I'm like, that's I'm sure, yeah, I'm like.

Speaker 1 (06:39):
Just know we are also disgusted by guys like that,
like I don't want to go to a toilet that
has piss on it, Like like, ah, man, come on.

Speaker 2 (06:48):
I mean women could be equally as nasty, because we
you know, we go through cycles and some women are
just gross. But I was, uh yeah, I mean on
my second deployment, we were it was kind of fun.
The guys would take showers in the morning and I'd
get up and I'd be like, hey, I gotta use
the bathroom. Stay in the shower and just use the bathroom.
It's like Ali mcbeal's style. If you remember that show,

(07:09):
you kind of share of it. Yeah, you just got
used to it. And you know a lot of people like,
oh women on a boat like these are from my perspective,
these are the brothers I don't want. So if I
saw naked, if I saw butt cheeks, if I saw
other body parts, I did not care. It was like, ooh,
this is awesome. It was like you, brother, you cover

(07:30):
up please, I can't with you.

Speaker 1 (07:31):
What was the vibe like on that first deployment though,
you know, if you're like the first four on a ship.

Speaker 2 (07:37):
The vibe was actually not bad. The vibe was there
are women on board. I didn't like the fact that
as a woman, I would befriend guys like this is.
Most of my men are men. I mean, most of
my friends are men, and so I don't like the

(07:58):
fact that if you're a friend with a dude, that
we have to be sleeping together. It's it's really annoying,
and so rumors start to spread. I was really good
friends with one of the one of the Navy lieutenants,
and rumors were spreading because we would be behind closed
doors that we were doing something inappropriate and it wasn't.
I mean, this guy was going through a divorce separation.

(08:20):
He was a hot mess, like emotionally, and we would
just get friends. We would we would go out in
town together, we would run together, we would do all
these things. And so it was just like that wears
a new more like the scuttle butt that goes around
because people just want a gossip to gossip.

Speaker 1 (08:36):
Yeah, gossip on ship is next level.

Speaker 2 (08:39):
It is it is some next it like it affected me.

Speaker 1 (08:43):
Especially after port calls you run into people were like, hmmm,
what are those two doing together? Like hello, funny here.

Speaker 2 (08:51):
Yeah, it's just crazy. So my Yeah, that was that
was annoying. But I mean guys on the on the
ship were really, you know, really good people like you.
You were there to do a job and if you
did your job, there was no problem. I was part
of the air detachment. So you know, Ship's company doesn't

(09:11):
like the air detachment anyway because we don't pull shift,
we don't do duty, we don't do any of that stuff.
So uh and.

Speaker 1 (09:17):
You get extra pay for being out on the flight deck.

Speaker 2 (09:20):
We do, and so you know, we have our twelve
hour crew rested. Like you guys suck. You guys just
suck our food and our time and our birthday and
you do nothing.

Speaker 1 (09:31):
That's how they feel about the Marines. When we got
off ship too, they're like.

Speaker 2 (09:34):
Yeah, but I'm like, shut up. We bring mail, we
bring packs, get out of here.

Speaker 1 (09:38):
We bring nothing. We bring nothing to the ship. When
the Marines roll in with a thousand people, HD, you
just see the sailors like now the child lines just
became you know, an hour long and everything. Gym times
are cut. It was uh yeah, a mutual hate.

Speaker 2 (09:58):
It's okay, I love hate relish.

Speaker 1 (10:01):
What made you decide to join the military, Like, what
was that driving force? And why did you choose your branch.

Speaker 2 (10:07):
I chose the Navy was my first choice because at
the time I wanted to be an astronaut when I
was a kid. At the time, when I looked at
how many what type of resume astronauts had, most of
them were naval aviators. So that was my ultimate decision
was between the Navy and the Air Force. Navy flew

(10:28):
on boats, which were more difficult, more challenging, and I
can attest to that as opposed to a long runway.
The Navy is more you know, as sister services, we
always make fun of each other, right, So the Air
Forces it's a little more lax in the way they

(10:50):
deal with things. The Navy is very As a Marine
Corps person, you know, we go out to see we
do business. You could see it when I went to
Officer Cannons school in ninety four. It was funny because
we had a competition with the Air Force ots, so
we were ocs and the drill instructors Marine Corps train

(11:13):
you know, they were like, we're gonna prepare for this,
and when I me prepare, like every morning at five
o'clock after we did our two mile run, we were
doing three legged race and other stupid events to go
against the Air Force because we didn't. We will, yes,
we will not lose. And then when the Air Force
rolled in for this competition, they were in our chow

(11:35):
hall and we were doing our like walking up, squaring corners,
slapping trays to get our food, doing our whole thing
getting in and the Air Force was just kind of
be bopping in, you know, talking to each other, having fun,
getting more milk, doing all this stuff, and drill instructors
were like, you nasty, get on the floor push ups now,

(11:57):
Like that's how like? I like that. I like that
discipline aspect, and don't get me wrong, I love the
Air Force, but it is a different it's a different animal,
and I loved it in my later years when family
life and all that, the Air Force is a little
bit more amenable and understanding, where the Navies like get
on the boat, go fly, go, do whatever you need

(12:19):
to do. So I liked the Navy and that was
my first choice, so I was glad I got to
do it. I almost joined the Army in the warrant
officer program, but at the last minute I went out
to San Diego to talk to a recruiter that said
if you pass the test, we'll get you into the
Navy with a flying pilling.

Speaker 1 (12:35):
That's awesome. I've heard a warn officer program is a
good program. Also, I've also heard it's not. I've heard
other people say it's almost a scam, like it takes
forever to actually become a pilot, or that you a
lot of people don't become pilots. I don't know. I've
heard good and bads, so look into it.

Speaker 2 (12:49):
But I mean, I yeah, I mean I wanted to
fly jets, but I was also open to flying helicopters,
which I did both at the end of my career.
I think the warn off the program would have been
it's it looks like a great program, but you're you're
wedged into just flying helicopters. And I'm that type of

(13:09):
person that don't put a label on me. I want to.
I want to. I want to be as versatile as possible,
especially as an astronaut, because there's things that you may
not see, you know for the first time, and you
want to be able to bring your skill sets to
the table. So I felt that flying helicopters, I loved it,

(13:32):
great mission, but to be able to fly jets to
be able to fly at fixed wing aircraft with props,
to learn those different things with something that I enjoyed,
I enjoyed more.

Speaker 1 (13:44):
Yeah, no, I understand that's flying. I mean I wouldn't
want an awesome opportunity to fly anything really, you know,
and get paid to do it. Is it? So you
wanted to be an astronaut and you looked into did
you do r O You said you did r O
TC right? Or is your that competition you were talking
about in OS.

Speaker 2 (14:01):
That was an OCS So, by the way, we totally
smoked them. So just for the record, just for the record,
the OTS people that came, they got smoked. I I
did RTC in in my at my university for two years.
I did Air Force RTC for two years and found

(14:23):
that that was not for me. So it kind of
solidified like, hey, I want to go Navy when I'm done.

Speaker 1 (14:33):
And then you joined. You know, you got that first
first ship assignment where you're pretty excited. Were you nervous?
How'd you feel? Well, let's talk about actually before the
first ship assignment, how was the training, how was the
flight school? How was you know, getting assigned to an aircraft?

Speaker 2 (14:50):
So flight training is typically about two years, a little
bit more, a little bit less depending. I did it
probably at the two year mark. School you go through
for so I can talk Navy and Air Force, so
I'm talking specifically Navy Navy flight training. You go through
primary training, you fly at that time was the T

(15:11):
thirty four, now it's the T six aircraft. You do
that for the first part. You do everything from basic flying,
to basic instruments, to formation basic formation flying, and then
you once you finish that, it takes about a year
six months, well six months to a year, and then

(15:36):
you select out of that. So whatever group is up
for selection, you compete for either jets, helos, or props
or occasionally like to seat you know, flying admirals around.
That came every once in a while. So I selected
out of my class. I did well, but I still

(15:56):
got helicopters. Most pilots in the Navy are helicopter pilots.
That's what they need, not as many jet pilots, so
it's okay. And then from there I went to I
was in Corpus Christi, Texas, and then I went back
to Pensacola for training in helicopters at Millington. So I
started out my flight training in Corpus Christie. You could

(16:18):
go to Pensacola, but I ended up going to Corpus Christie.
The only reason why I wanted to do that is
because it was easier flying to do what we call
course rules, so to get out into an area. Most
students will fail, you know, their flights because of course rules.
They'll do something stupid like, hey, you didn't at the
red barn. You didn't turn left. Well, I couldn't see

(16:40):
the red barn because it was cloudiet. Well, too bad,
you fail Texas. It's like you fly over the water,
you see this island, you turn.

Speaker 1 (16:49):
That's pretty forward.

Speaker 2 (16:50):
It's pretty straightforward. You get in your area, you call,
and then you proceed to do whatever. So that's my recommendation.
Course rules could be a killer for some students.

Speaker 1 (17:00):
Before you before you've selected to a platform, when you're
doing your initial flight training, you do you earn your
private pilot's license, Is't that correct?

Speaker 2 (17:09):
You don't, So I went into the Navy with zero
flight time.

Speaker 1 (17:14):
Okay.

Speaker 2 (17:14):
Some people come in with picker rating. Some people have
their private's license, some people have their commercials. Some people
came from the airlines, they're young, enough, you know they
go in. So I had zero flight time. Okay when
I was when I was done with my primary training,
I still didn't have anything until I finished advanced training,

(17:35):
which was in helicopters. Then I got my private pilot's
license in single engine fixed wing singling single engine rotary wing.
I got my commercial license in both, and I got
my instrument rating. So you come out with about four
ratings in that.

Speaker 1 (17:50):
How which one did that those initial licensing? Which one
did you find it be more difficult the fix wing
or rotary wing.

Speaker 2 (17:58):
I think it's apples and r as a person that
has flown jets, helos and props. Once you fly fix wing,
if you go helicopters, you could go back to fix wing.
It's not there's nothing cosmic about it. I actually think
flying helicopters helped me to get into the YouTube. The
reason why is because the helicopters are stick and rudder.

(18:19):
The YouTube. Believe it or not, it's a yoke, but
it's stick and rudder. Flying the U two, my altitude
aircraft suffers from adversary of effects. You actually have to
do coordinated urns. Most jet pilots fly with their feet
off the rudder pedals because of the sensitivity, and that's
kind of a downside for them flying the YouTube, they

(18:42):
find it more difficult. In general, I'm generalizing, so to me,
it is easy to fly fix wing. It's easy to
fly helicopters. It's just a different mindset. Helicopters. You have
a cyclic collective. It's once you learn the differences, it's
it's really not very cosmic.

Speaker 1 (19:02):
Like it's funny because non pilots are just like amazed,
you know you're flying, but like whatever, it's whatever. We're
all over here, like wow, you know that's pretty wild
that you can do. You're flying all these different things.
It's such a what an incredible skill. And like hobby,
I knew Submarne pilots, some both fixed wing and rotary
wing guys that would join almost like a like you

(19:24):
would with a rental car agency, like a group at
an airport where you can like rent planes all the time.
They were just like, yeah, this weekend, we're gonna fly
to wherever. And I'm like, man, what a good skill
to have just to be able to pick up and
like rent a plane for the weekend and go somewhere.

Speaker 2 (19:37):
It is so most people I always tell people, you
give me any type of mechanical device, I'll get in
and figure it out. Like it's just it becomes intuitive.
It's just really it's really fun. So I'm sorry, I
got a cat over here being a menace right now.

Speaker 1 (19:55):
No, you're good. I don't hear it. It's when you're
when you're flying helos. Now, let's talk about because there's
some rough seas out there for the Navy, what's it
like landing a helo, you know, in some rough waters
trying to you're basically doing a controlled fall there at
the end, making sure you let go of the right time.

Speaker 2 (20:14):
And it seems like yeah, so for the h so
I flew H sixties Seahawk helicopters. So I say, CHICKXI
Bravos was what I flew rough seas sea states of
four or five. It's it's a it's a big challenge.

(20:34):
So the big thing there when you're flying to the
back of the boat, the boat has what's called the
hars bar. So the bar it's a straight bar across
with a lighting system that tells you if you're on
glidepath below glidpath, above glidepath. So in that situation, you

(20:54):
could see from a distance that the ship is doing
all this. You can see the back it's doing all this,
but the horsbar is pretty stable. So that's what you
don't I don't want to say fixate on, because you
don't fixate on anything, but that's part of your scan
as you're flying the aircraft. So when you see all
the sea, you know, the sea moving and everything, you're like,

(21:16):
don't look at that, don't look at that. Just focus
on your instruments inside the cockpit, the horizon, the harsbar
on the ship, and as you get closer. In c
states are four or five, the sixty has what's called
there's a RAS system on there. And the RAS system
is a system that traverses the aircraft in and out

(21:39):
of the hangar, but it's also used to help assist
the H sixty to land. In rough sea states, the
H sixty has a probe and in that probe is
a cable that comes out and the cable can be
attached to the ship's RAS system and actually help assist
pulling the helicopter down straight into the trap. And then

(22:02):
the RAD system closes around the probe and then you
use that to move the aircraft inside it out. So
when you're in those high seat states, you come in
and you hover and you're getting calls from there's a
guy in what's called the LSO shack Landing Safety Officer
shack who's another pilot who's watching how you're flying in

(22:25):
and they're monitoring the safety of the operations. So as
you're coming in, you go to a hover I don't
remember how many feet the hover is. You got two
fire guys who are on firewatch come out. They're called
the hookup men. They get the cable from the ship.
You release the cable from your helicopter. You have an

(22:47):
aircrewman in the back that says the cable is touched down,
its grounded out. The hookup men come out in a
rough sea state. There's two of them holding on for
dear life. They get like pay the extra hundred bucks
a month. It's they don't get paid enough. Anyway, they
come out, they hook up the cable and then they

(23:09):
try to move away. As we reel the cable back
in the aircraft and get some tension on the helicopter
to the ship, and so we maneuver over the platform.
The LSO can either give us calls how we look.

Speaker 1 (23:26):
Oh I think I lost you. I lost you for
a second. You said, the LSO could give you calls
on how you look.

Speaker 2 (23:32):
Yeah, the LSO could give you calls how you look.
The air crewmen will be looking down. And then when
you're ready to land, you'll tell the LSO put on
tension because they can put on tension of the cable
from two thousand to four thousand pounds of force. At
that point, the hookup men are gone because they don't
need to be around for any of this. And then

(23:54):
you can land right in the trap. And so when
you're in, the LSO closes the trap around the aircraft
and secures it to the flight deck.

Speaker 1 (24:03):
Sounds like a party.

Speaker 2 (24:05):
It is a party. It's it's good. So we do traps. Also,
we could do it without a cable if it's a
good sea staate, but in rough sea states it's recommended.
We don't have to do it. So it just depends.
Because you have two hookup men coming out, it could
be really dangerous for them. So yeah, for sure, Yeah,
yeah they do. They do a great job. So that's

(24:28):
what it's like from a pilot perspective. It's exhilarating for me,
Like coming in to fly, especially at nighttime you're looking
at the Harst bar, you can get easily disoriented. Like
everyone's a little bit on edge. But it's exciting, Like
I love that stuff.

Speaker 1 (24:44):
Yeah. In the back, I'm just like, man, they know
what they're doing, so I'm just gonna ride this out.
Here we go, you know. It's like, uh, especially we
would take off from the osprey and the way they
would like take off on the osprey on the LHD
would like lift up and then it would like get
a few feet off the deck and then like kind
of fall to the left or fall one direction and

(25:07):
then take off. And you're just sitting there and you
feel it lift up, and all a sudden you're like, oh,
I don't know. I never liked it.

Speaker 2 (25:15):
You didn't like it. One time I was on a
A forty six. I was I had to go my
first deployment. I was in a crew a cruiser and
I was on the I was on the GW for
some reason. I don't know if it was medical or something,
and I had to take a a CH forty six
back and I was sitting back there going this aircraft

(25:38):
is terrible.

Speaker 1 (25:40):
It was the workhorse for a long time.

Speaker 2 (25:42):
I know it was, but like everything was leaking. You
couldn't see anything. As a pilot, I was like.

Speaker 1 (25:49):
That's how you knew it was working.

Speaker 2 (25:50):
Though.

Speaker 1 (25:50):
If it was leaking oil, it's still to go.

Speaker 2 (25:52):
This is true. This is true. It was definitely leaking.
So I was like, Okay, there's enough oil in the system. Great,
but it was just Oh, I like, I like my
Age sixty much better. But in the Marine Corps when
you were a pilot, they would call that SH forty
six God's aircraft. So yeahed to fly.

Speaker 1 (26:10):
The sixty is is a smooth flight. I did, like
I enjoyed flying in the sixty. I enjoyed flying in
the Huey. Also, those were probably my two favorite flying
in one of those two fifty threes, I had an
incident on one where they lost like hydraulics to like
stabilize the sticks of the aircraft. Was like going all
over the place, and we were flying over water, and

(26:35):
that time. I was always cool with flying up until
that point, and then after that I always had that
in the back of my mind because we were flying
over water and for whatever reason, this is the only
time it ever happened. The crew chiefs didn't give us
the bottles the uh the bottle, yeah, the vest and
the bottles, and we were all like, cool, we don't
have to wear those stupid bot you know things. And

(26:57):
then as soon as we got feet wet over leaving
San Clemente Island, they lost like some hydraulics and the
helicopter was just all over the place, and the pilot
didn't turn around, like we literally had just gone feet wet,
he didn't turn around. He kept going and did an
emergency landing at Camp Pendleton. So he spent thirty minutes
over water, and none of us had oxygen bottles or

(27:18):
anything on. I was like, we got off that aircraft.
And this is when I was with Anglico and one
of my firepower control team leaders was a fifty three
pilot who was riding in the back and when we landed,
he got out and started chewing the pilot out and
then he's like, I'm calling the airwing to let them
know what you just did. Like this was crazy?

Speaker 2 (27:40):
Did that guy get okay? So I didn't before I yeah,
before I judge someone. Was there a reason why he
decided to fly for thirty minutes with a hydraulic problem.

Speaker 1 (27:51):
I have no idea. I just I know when we landed,
I was sitting I just remember being like, thank God,
think and I remember flying the whole way. I'm watching
the crew chief and I'm like, if this dude freaks out,
I'm gonna freak out because this is a crew chief.
Like if anybody, if he starts sweating. And then when
we landed, one of my marines was like, staff sergeant,
I was watching you, and I was like, a staff

(28:12):
sergeant freaks out, I'm gonna freak out. And I was like,
there's a lesson to be learned here. Everybody cool, everybody.

Speaker 2 (28:20):
It's just like when there's turbulence in a commercial airplane,
look at the flight attendanc if they're just sitting and
talking on their phone, don't worry about it. Like some
people just totally freak out. And I'm like, it's turbulence,
it's cool, it's cool. Stop screaming. It's all right. But
but you're right, I don't know why the pilot would
take off, have a hydraulic problem and not come back.

(28:42):
That seems under intuitive. Yeah, it seems pretty basic. Is
there you know? Was there a reason? Like I always
try to give my peers, like, what was going through
your mind? What? Let's play this back again. Oh, I'm
sure he got in a lot of trouble because that
doesn't make sense, like if there's a problem on takeoff,

(29:03):
come back be done. Yeah, or maybe maybe he knew
it was going to happen. I don't know.

Speaker 1 (29:10):
They said, so we just happened to have a fifty
three pilot in our team. So he was explaining afterwards.
He's like, he can still fly it, it's still fliable,
but it takes away the any kind of like assistance,
so you're fighting to stick the whole time rather than
the hydraulics assisting you and keeping a smooth flight. So

(29:31):
he's like, he fought it the whole way over here
for no reason, and he was pretty upset about it.
He said he was going to contact the air wing
and let them know about the incident. He's like, there
was no reason because it was a fifty three with
like twenty of us on the back of it. You
had like twenty people in the back, and he's like,
there was no reason for him to do that. It
was a weekend. I think it was like a Friday,

(29:51):
so everybody wanted to get home. Yeah, so get home.

Speaker 2 (29:57):
Idis kills more people than anything. I mean, you look
at it, but in the fifty three, I don't know
how fifty three works. Like in a in a YouTube,
you lose hydraulics. Yeah, that's a bad day. Like you're not.
You're getting back home and conserving energy because to fight
that aircraft. If for some reason hydraulics fails and the

(30:20):
pitch of the nose is more than one degree's nose down,
you are ejecting. There is no doubt about it. You
cannot pull back on the force required to do what
you need to do. Yeah, you could be you can
be a weightlifter, you could do whatever. You cannot maintain
that to keep two feet off the ground to stall
the aircraft.

Speaker 1 (30:38):
It's a fickle beast.

Speaker 2 (30:40):
It is, it is. She will kill you very quickly,
as as slow as she goes. Speaking of.

Speaker 1 (30:48):
You mentioned uh, you mentioned the oh ye that what's
your cat's name?

Speaker 2 (30:54):
This is Mojo. He's like over here.

Speaker 1 (30:58):
He's wondering what you're doing when you not paying attention?

Speaker 2 (31:01):
Well, he's he's uh, he's very selfish. Every time I
do a podcast, he wants in.

Speaker 1 (31:08):
He makes an appearance.

Speaker 2 (31:09):
He makes an appearance every time. So there are brothers.
He is one of two. The other ones sitting there
looking at me Mojo and Mystic, So Mojo loves to
be loved and Mystic wants nothing to do with me.
They are both fourteen years old.

Speaker 1 (31:27):
Wow, yeah, that's pretty Is that standard for a cat?
And I'm more of a dog person.

Speaker 2 (31:35):
My last cat lasted to sixteen, so yeah, that's good.

Speaker 1 (31:39):
Yeah, I knew one. I knew uh something that had
a cat that was like twenty one and it looked
yeah they.

Speaker 2 (31:45):
Look yes, yeah, that's like one hundred and fifteen.

Speaker 1 (31:49):
My last dog he lived to be eighteen, and he
was a Lab beagle mix and he looked really bad
at the end. I probably should have had him put
down a little sooner, but or I didn't have him
put down. He passed away naturally, But I probably should
have put down. But it's just like when you've had
them that long, you know, it's like, man.

Speaker 2 (32:04):
Yeah, it's tough.

Speaker 1 (32:06):
Anyways, I don't want to get into that. Did you
have did you ever have?

Speaker 2 (32:12):
Like in flor conversation went dark very quickly.

Speaker 1 (32:18):
When when you're flying, so let's talk about you your
flying helos when did you how long did you fly
hels and when did you make a change to a
different platform.

Speaker 2 (32:27):
Yeah, So I flew helos from ninety six after I
got winged to two thousand and four, so I flew
SAH sixty Bravos East Coast Lamps. I was stationed at
Naval Station Mayport for four years flying.

Speaker 1 (32:41):
And you're you generally with the sixties or you generally
like kind of general aviation. I know there's a lot
of different jobs that sixties can do, counter submarine, close
air support, like all these different things. Are you expected
to do a good deal of those a specific mission?

Speaker 2 (32:57):
Right? So what's great about the the sixty? So SH
sixty is anti submarine, So that was our primary mission,
anti submarine warfare, anti surface warfare, because we were able
to carry at that time, we had in Penguin missile
held fire missile, we had flear system, we could do mvgs,
we could do search and rescue like every other helicopter.

(33:20):
So we were always like every day was a different
type of mission. So it was a very versatile platform.
You just didn't know what was happening. So my first
deployment on the Age sixty, we were the shotgun cruiser
for the carrier the GW Battle Group. So most of

(33:40):
the times we were out, our missions were doing a
little bit of sub hunting, but a lot of just
packs transfers, surface reconnaissance looking at surface ships that were around,
especially when we were in the North Arabian Gulf, so
we did some KAA combat missions, we go look for smugglers.

(34:01):
We would do all those things and report and back.
So yeah, it was pretty interesting. And then my second
deployment was a unitas in South America. So in the
beginning we would do maybe a little bit of drug ops,
but we would work with the other countries doing submarine

(34:22):
operations and then we did some other classified stuff.

Speaker 1 (34:26):
Was it interesting going from all water based, you know,
operations basically all water based to working in South America
and do more land based stuff shops or were you
doing counter like subs or something like that.

Speaker 2 (34:40):
So yeah, so my second deployment going into South America,
a lot of port visits, so we were working with
other South American countries, doing a lot of training events.
It was basically like a boom I don't want to
say a boondoggle, but unitas trips, I mean every two

(35:00):
days we were pulling into a port.

Speaker 1 (35:02):
So Ama.

Speaker 2 (35:05):
It is, but it's not because it's very disruptive because
you can't get on a good flight schedule cycle. Like
you go off for like three days and then you
pull in Cartagena, then you go off for you know,
you stay there for two days. Then you go out
for four days, and you go to like Bogata, I
don't know wherever, and you keep going.

Speaker 1 (35:25):
Everyone's screaming at you. They're like, no, what are you
talking about?

Speaker 2 (35:29):
Yeah, But I like the fact my first deployment we
were out for thirty days and we pull into port
for three or two days. And so I like the
I like the if I'm working, I want to do
flight ops. I want to have a good schedule. Mistakes
happen when you're when you're just going up and down

(35:51):
and scheduled. Don't get me wrong, I love look. South
America is beautiful. I got to see a lot of
things I didn't understand that. I made a lot of
realizations when I was in South America. Like I understood
the concept of poverty. I understood that America is a

(36:14):
pretty dagone good country to live in and to protect.
I met some good people in other countries that are
trying to do the same thing. I got to go
snowboarding the first time in the Andes Mountains.

Speaker 1 (36:31):
Oh wow.

Speaker 2 (36:32):
Yeah, I got to win my first we were in Argentina.
I won my first dance contest. That's another story for
another day. I you know, and a port visit like
it was a great night, Like I got to do
a lot of things and experience and have this different
perspective and so, but it was still very choppy and flying,

(36:52):
like if I want to fly and do the mission,
I want to, Like I want to, let's go, Let's
do the mission. Yeah, I'm a fly, I get that.

Speaker 1 (37:01):
I understand that. But as someone that's not flying and
doing less cool jobs on ship, it's like, thank god,
we're getting off this thing. I remember, I was so
lucky we were in well. First off, I want to
say what you described the experience of understanding poverty for
the first time. I think a lot of people in
the military come back with that when they go to

(37:22):
some of these other countries, especially because when you're on
these new deployments and you're working with other countries, a
lot of times excuse me, a lot of times they'll
have a opportunity to like go volunteer at a local orphanage.
You know, you go down and play soccer with them,
or you go down and play basketball with them or
something like that. They have like a little group, a
little detachment that goes out or they do some kind

(37:44):
of community service and whatever country that they're visiting. And
I think once you go to some of these countries
and you see the level of poverty, like you're like,
you're talking about that's why you come back here, and
you're like, you know what, this isn't that bad. You know,
like let's everybody chill up, and like, let's understand, we're
in twenty twenty five and I can I can literally

(38:05):
have my phone do almost anything, bring me food, you know,
make money, like entertain me. You know, we're living in
the future and we don't realize it. I think a
lot of people don't appreciate that. And yeah, it's great. Y.

Speaker 2 (38:20):
So it's and it's very interesting that even now twenty
twenty five, regardless of how you feel about the political environment, right,
we still got it. We still have it pretty good.
And people may, you know, disagree or agree with that,
but I mean to see children divvy up food that

(38:42):
someone has just eaten off of like brings that home
like holy cow, Like yeah, it's yeah, it's just kind
of it's eye opening. And when you come back here,
especially when you transition out of the military to civilian life,
and you see the things that people truly complain about,
and in the back of your mind, you're like, you

(39:04):
have no idea, you have no idea what you're complaining about.
Something that's a non issue as opposed to like choices
for survival, Like it's it's on a different level. And
I think that's one of the things when I transitioned
from the military to civilian life, it was one of
those things that was hard to get over because people

(39:25):
would talk about things that I could care less about,
Like I was like and it was like it was
like their whole world, and I'm like, I feel like
I feel like a foreigner on my on my own soil.
Like it's just like this is weird.

Speaker 1 (39:38):
Like this is what you're worried about. If this is
your biggest concern, we're in a pretty good spot right now.

Speaker 2 (39:42):
Yeah, Like your kid didn't make the comp soccer team, Okay, yeah,
you can get practiced.

Speaker 1 (39:46):
This is not and this is not to like invalidate
people that are struggling, because there are people in the
US that have issues. Also, obviously we're a country of
three hundred and thirty million people or more three unit
and seventy million maybe I don't even remember, but for
the vast majority of people, they it's like you're talking
about how oppressed you are on your iPhone, you know

(40:07):
what I'm saying, Like leave me, Like stop, you're doing
all right, you know, get get it, get it together.
I remember being in Djibouti and them telling us, like,
don't hand out any water bottles because if you do,
you're gonna be quickly surrounded by people that want water
or want food or whatever. Like you know, that's like
a people don't understand. In some of these countries, it's

(40:29):
an operation to bring food or medical supplies to them
because you can't just show up and start handing out
food because it becomes a riot almost. It has to
have like a it's a mission, you know what I'm saying.
It's like, and that's because of how how desperate they
are for stuff. But yeah, so that's an interesting thing.

Speaker 2 (40:48):
Yeah, So in the beginning when we were South America,
like if you have money, kids would come at you
and then you give one. It was like a whole
bunch of pigeons like.

Speaker 1 (40:55):
With fly yeah, exactly right.

Speaker 2 (40:57):
So and like I'm from New York City, so when
someone's asking me for money as a New Yorker, I
think we're very easy to dismiss people.

Speaker 1 (41:07):
Because that's what the say he does to you.

Speaker 2 (41:10):
Yes, I'm sorry. It's it's like, uh, New York City.
There is some I can't there's some savagery in the way,
like if you're on the train and people are like
coming by, I need money, like no one pays attention
to them. And so I did that at first. But
then when I realized like the significance of giving a

(41:30):
child some coins that I don't want to say meant
nothing to me, but meant so much more to them
than it did to me, I was like, I didn't
care like the pigeons.

Speaker 1 (41:42):
I don't know anybody that gave out actual money like that,
even like change. But we used to give out candy
a lot, you know, used to give out candy and
stuff to like when we're in Afghanistan and everything like that.
You're the kids wanted pins to write on stuff and
things like that. So but again you'd have to like,
you know, if there's like a one or two kids,
you could maybe give out something. But if you give

(42:02):
out stuff to a group, then it becomes an issue
and then you'll see kids fight other kids to get
what they got, and you know, yeah, it goes downhill quickly.
But yeah, the sound of port calls all the time.
I mean, I remember we were on the mew and
we were we were doing an exercise. I was ashore

(42:22):
for an exercise in Kuwait. We were working with the
Royal Marines and with the Kuwaitis and while we were ashore,
our ship got tasked with something to do some strikes
or something like that, I don't remember what it was,
and got pulled. So we were just kind of stuck
in Kuwait, which was great. It was like the ship
is gone, you know, and we were ashore doing like

(42:45):
close air support training with like apaches and sixties and
stuff quite a bit. And it was a good time
out there if you've ever been uh Udari range Op
ten and it was a good time compared to the ship.
But when we went back on ship a couple months later,
they hadn't they hadn't no one had been off ship
or had a port call and long enough where they

(43:05):
were getting a beer day on ship, and everyone was like,
we just came from the op where we're out doing
close air support. So we're all like sun baked and
like super dark, you know, like tan and everything. You
get on ship and everyone is like super pasty. You
can like see their organs through their their translucent skin
because they've been on you know, they they haven't gotten
any sun.

Speaker 2 (43:25):
Alabaster skin, and and you're.

Speaker 1 (43:28):
Like they were all so mad. They're like half your
marines are going on child. I'm like, dude, we were working.
Let's first off, we weren't out on vacation just because
we got a tan.

Speaker 2 (43:39):
I I was so mad at my first deployment because
every time we were a day or two short of
a beer day, they pull in the port and I'm like, hey,
I want my bear day, Like let's go, I want
my beard day. Yeah, they didn't give it to us.
I was so I was so angry they were.

Speaker 1 (43:56):
So they did a beer day and then the first
port after that was oh my on which is a
big sand pit. It was horrible. There was like a
dude that brought out Domino pizzas and sold them dominoes
out of the back of his car, and someone brought
a camel out to do camel rides. But I was like, man,
this is horrible. It was crazy. Oh man, that's that.

(44:21):
That's that ship life though.

Speaker 2 (44:23):
You know, I love ship life. It makes you tough
and it makes you appreciate being back on shore, except
if you're in Oman. I mean we we would pull
into port into not the Ua, into Dubai, oh, Jibali,

(44:44):
gerbil Ali. What do they call it nowadays?

Speaker 1 (44:47):
I'm not sure.

Speaker 2 (44:48):
Yeah, so we would pull into port there.

Speaker 1 (44:51):
Isn't that Saudi Arabia? No, no, not, So you're talking
about you So you're talking about Dubai.

Speaker 2 (44:58):
Yeah, Dubai area.

Speaker 1 (44:59):
Okay, Yeah, we must have because I remember going ashore there.
I don't remember why we were there, but yeah, we
must have also because I went it's all malls.

Speaker 2 (45:10):
Yeah, so I just remember there were there were a
lot of shipping containers, a lot of vendors that would
give you, like fake Nike stuff if you wanted to
buy all that stuff. Oh yeah, not that. I not
that I ever bought anything like that.

Speaker 1 (45:23):
Being a young I got a sick watch I got
a sick watch in Hong Kong. I was in some
shady apartment at the Mark. It was like one of
those apartments where you have to knock and they peeked
through the door before they let you in, so I
got from one of the streets. It does work. It's
actually really nice. It's actually a really nice watch. But
it's like a patec or patique, however you say it.
So it's like, in reality, it'd be like a twenty

(45:44):
thousand dollars watch, totally fake, but it works and it
looks nice.

Speaker 2 (45:50):
Yeah. Yeah, Dubai was like that at first, so I'm
sure it's changed. I was impressed that they had like
KFC there and all that, because you know, you come
from America, you think you have everything and you're like, oh, oh,
basket of Robbins is here. Awesome.

Speaker 1 (46:06):
Yeah, so anything that's not like pork they have. KFC's
huge overseas, especially in like Asia too.

Speaker 2 (46:14):
Yes, absolutely, it was.

Speaker 1 (46:17):
It tasted weird when we were in uh we went
to Malaysia and had it there and they cook it
in palm oil rather than like whatever we use here,
and it just that palm oil taste. I could not
get over it. I was like, I don't know how
you guys do this, Like this is this is kind
of wretched. I'm not gonna lie. I just couldn't do it.

(46:38):
I was excited. I was like, oh, kfc, cool something,
I know, you know, and then you get it and
you're like, oh, this tastes crazy.

Speaker 2 (46:44):
No, yeah, yeah, I got to consider a source. South
America had a lot of good food. I'm not sure
the source, but it was good. I didn't get sick,
so I.

Speaker 1 (46:53):
Was like, yeah, for sure. Yeah, I mean that's you know,
that was kind of the worst part. Not the worst part,
but that was one of the bad things. Is when
you go out with someone that doesn't want to try
anything local. It's like, I get it, Like maybe you
don't like seafood, I don't like seafood, maybe you don't
like whatever name your thing. But you can find like
a beef or chicken or whatever option that is a
local cuisine, you know, try a bit different, or.

Speaker 2 (47:17):
A local animal. Just try it.

Speaker 1 (47:19):
It's your local animal. I eat some stuff in Afghanistan.
I wasn't sure what it was. I was like, this
is probably maybe a goat. I think I'm not sure,
but you know, it was good. Right, Yeah.

Speaker 2 (47:33):
I believe that I have eaten dog maybe once or
twice unknowingly, but it good, you think, so, I think,
so we're at I was an ecuador so I think's possible.

Speaker 1 (47:43):
Why they do that in Ecuador.

Speaker 2 (47:45):
There's a lot of dogs from my recollection, a lot
of dogs in Ecuador, a lot of free range dogs
in Ecuador.

Speaker 1 (47:53):
I knew a guy who was in Vietnam and he
was like, Dude, they had like a pin like almost
like you'd have for cattle, that they had dogs that
they bred for meat. And I was like, and he's like,
it was pretty good. It's like all.

Speaker 2 (48:06):
Right, yeah, I mean they said it was beef. Not
sure if it was, but you know.

Speaker 1 (48:13):
I never seen beef look like that. The hell it's
ground meat, h yeah, dog burger man. You know. It's
again like we eat stuff that they would never eat
in other countries. So it's the culture things. It's like
again like we're talking about for it's like an eye
opening experience and gets to you know, see different cultures.
Especially what's cool for you is you saw probably all

(48:35):
the different you know, multiple different cultures in one region.
So in South America, all these different countries. You know,
it's easy to think like South America, like they all
think alike, or they all have a similar culture, and
that's you know, it's that's not true.

Speaker 2 (48:50):
I found of the countries that we saw, so we
went to Columbia, which was beautiful, food was great, Ecuador,
Panama before we turned the locks over to the Panamanians.
I was very impressed by. I didn't know Panama was

(49:11):
so afrocentric, so a lot of Africans had come there.
So I'll be honest with you. When I got there
and I saw people my complexion, I was like, I'm home,
Like I was excited about it because I was. I
wasn't in Europe, and I was shocked, but I was
pleasantly surprised, and so it was very it was very
neat to see that, and it was interesting to see

(49:35):
as you went further south to Chile, just the I
guess the nativeness. You would see people who were Hispanic,
but you would see there was this blend of native
South Americans that you would see. I can't even explain it,
maybe more like slightly Asian esque in ways. So the

(50:01):
population changed and as we went towards the Straits of Magellan,
you would see I don't even want to say, yeah,
I don't there were not Esquimo's, but they were just
native to the region and beautiful people. And then you'd
hit Argentina, very European centric, and then you would hit

(50:21):
you know, Brazil, and then it was just another flavor.
So it was just I canic. It was very eclectic,
and it was it was just a beautiful thing to see.
So I loved them a lot.

Speaker 1 (50:33):
Yes, that's awesome. I think a lot of people don't
realize that the United States is similar. You know, you
go to different states, there's so many different cultures and
stuff like that. I remember being in college after I
got out and one of the girls I was in
a French class or Italian class, and this girl in
my class was like, oh, the US has no culture,
and I'm like, what are you talking about. I'm like,

(50:53):
quit listening to haters online. I'm like, look at the South,
look at everything. I mean, look at I mean, the
culture in the United States is so vast, you know,
from the blues, comedy, the food, you know, how we
take other cultures and blend them and make you know,
our own unique like types of food and things, and
the way people speak, the way people act like it's

(51:15):
such an unfortunate thing, that's what people think.

Speaker 2 (51:17):
Yeah. So, I mean you go down South and you
see everything from like creole to like things that are influenced.
You know. You go to Florida, you see culture like
like Miami that's very you know, Latino culture. You go
to New Mexico, you see like a lot of Mexican

(51:38):
culture infused into it. California up and down, it's just different.
You go to the Midwest, it's it's different. So yeah,
there's and sometimes you'll be surprised, Like you go to Minnesota,
I think they're there are a lot of Africans in
that region that have migrated over there. Or I went

(52:00):
somewhere to the Twin Cities and there's a huge monk
population and I was like wow, So I went to
have some food, like to these vendors that like eat
food that's just authentic so good anyway, Yeah, yeah.

Speaker 1 (52:15):
People who good food everywhere.

Speaker 2 (52:18):
Yeah, people who come from other countries think we're not
uniform across there's just remember we're a melting pot in America.
Even though we fight a lot and we're.

Speaker 1 (52:28):
Huge, We're the country is so massive people. You know,
we would be individual countries in Europe. Each state would
be individual countries in Europe. Yes, you know, it's such
a huge change. Like there's mountain culture in Colorado. You know,
there's I was, I was. I lived growing up. I
lived in Tennessee and Indiana both, and so I got
a little flavor of both that Midwest and Southern culture,

(52:51):
you know, and it's just like such a great and
I lived in the Marines, I had lived in North Carolina,
and then I lived in California, and then I stayed
out here, and so just experiencing all the different places.
You know, I'm very lucky. I really appreciate that I
got to do something like that. I really encourage other people,
you know, that vacation to one place every year, which
is cool. It's got its benefits. Maybe occasionally, you know,

(53:15):
drive somewhere they've never been, see something they've never seen.
Kind of kind of deal.

Speaker 2 (53:19):
So yeah, I would say, if you want to change
your perspective, change your location, so go somewhere. Let's travel somewhere.
I would agree with you. I take my kids right now,
since they're twelve and ten, I want to make sure
they get that different perspective. So this year. Last year,
we were fortunate enough to take the family to New Zealand,

(53:43):
so it was their first time out of the country
to see New Zealand, to see the sites, to meet
New Zealand. Yeah, so I think they loved it. They
loved the different Like, I learned a lot about New Zealand.
I didn't realize that there were no natural predators there.
All birds. Europeans brought like rats and all those other

(54:03):
things onto the island. And a lot of their stuff
is hydro electric. So it's very it's it's very cool place.

Speaker 1 (54:11):
Yeah, that's awesome. The like we said earlier, the city
makes you cold. Growing up in the Midwest and in
the South, you always like, you know, say hi to
people on the street. You walk by something like hey,
how you doing, you know, good morning or whatever, you
make eye contact. And then I come to San Diego
and I live in the city here and people just
won't even look at you. You'll walk right by them
and you're like eh. And after a while, and then

(54:33):
the homeless people and then you see you start to
see like the same group of homeless people, so you
know you're like, oh, that's frank he's always cracked out
over there, you know whatever. There's this guy like not
giving money. There's this guy over at North Park who
I've walked by a million times and he always asked
for a dollar and a couple of times, well one
time I remember specifically, he was like hitting his fentanyl

(54:54):
pipe and was like blowing the smoke out and he's like, oo,
can I get a dollar? As I'm going by, I'm like,
get the fuck out of here. Talking about it.

Speaker 2 (55:02):
Well, see, you know that was one thing. Yeah, Midwest
South people are very friendly, but in New York that's
a sign of weakness. Like no, you have to be
unapproachable because then someone maybe with nefarious attent, will approach you.
You got to be as see.

Speaker 1 (55:20):
I always try to think the best of people, you know.
I always give people the benefit that obviously you. There's
like there's like ways you can tell someone you know
that you're giving off a bad vibe or something like that.
But for the most part, I'm like, hey, you know,
if you say something until you lie to me or
I know that you're approven, like you know, scumbag, then
I'm not. I think you're probably a good person. So

(55:42):
I and that's you're right, that's how people get ripped off.
People like that, I think the best. Like, yeah, man,
I'll give you one hundred thousand dollars loan. Oh sure
you'll pay it back.

Speaker 2 (55:51):
Yeah. So, don't don't get me wrong. New Yorkers are
great people. If you are in trouble, the New Yorkers
will come to your aid and fly. Maybe ten people
will help you, but maybe five out of ten will
additionally rob you.

Speaker 1 (56:06):
So you have to be playing the odds.

Speaker 2 (56:09):
You play the odds. So, but New Yorkers will always
help you when you're in need. But yeah, don't say
hi to anyone.

Speaker 1 (56:15):
Just keep walking, just keep on moving, keep it moving.

Speaker 2 (56:17):
Yeah yeah, don't don't take a personal don't stare up
at the skyscrapers because everyone knows your tourists at that point.

Speaker 1 (56:25):
I always look like a tours because I'm walking around
with a camera. I'll be walking around downtown with the
camera and stuff, and people will approach you. I'm like, dude,
I live here, man, I don't want your CD. I
appreciate it, know what I'm saying, Like, no, you just
got to donate, Like, no.

Speaker 2 (56:41):
Thank you your.

Speaker 1 (56:44):
So let's talk about back to the military stuff. You
at what point did you transition platforms?

Speaker 2 (56:51):
So, uh, I transitioned. I was about ten years in
the Navy. My last job was at Moody Air Force Base.
I was a flight instructor, so I was a T
six instructor. The Air Force and Navy had just purchased
this aircraft jointly, so it's joint student undergraduate pilot training
and Moody Air Force Base. I trained about twenty five

(57:14):
Navy students a year in addition to all the Air
Force students. So at the end of my time, it
was about the ten year mark, I decided I was
going to actually get out of the military. But my
commander at the time said, hey, come over to the
Air Force check out to see what we got. Maybe
you could do fly F one seventeen you two's you

(57:35):
know B too, like all these different things be fifty twos.
And I said, all right, let me look. And so
the utube was something I was like, this seems like
a pretty cool platform. It reconnaissance is something that I
was used to doing. Also the fact that it was
high altitude and I wanted to be an astronaut, and

(57:57):
I said, this could make my resume look different than
other people. So you're flying above seventy thousand feet, you're
in a NASA spacesuit, you're doing a mission. I said, well,
all right, let's see if I let me put in
an application and see if I get picked up. So

(58:18):
for the YouTube program, you have to apply. You have
to have prior flight experience in another aircraft, you have
to be an instructor previously, and you have to have
a minimum flight hours. I think at that time it
was maybe I don't know, fifteen hundred flight hours, two
thousand flight hours, maybe seven hundred and fifty instructor hours.
So I applied, I got picked up for the interview

(58:41):
to two week interview process. I went out as a
Navy person, interviewed and I got picked up. And at
the same time, concurrently I was working in Inner Service
Transfer package to go into the Air Force. So it
is in the instructions in both the Navy and the
Air Force side. And so I got hired. And so

(59:03):
I initially got rejected by the Air Force to inner
service transfer, but then I had to call up a
FPC and say, hey, I got an interview with the
U two and they said, okay, well, if you get
picked up. We'll let you come into the air Force.
That's what I did. That's how it worked.

Speaker 1 (59:17):
That's how it worked. That's awesome, that's that's that's a
pretty interesting program and kind of I mean they I
think the forces in general are always trying to not
lose pilots, especially pilots that have a lot of experience,
because it's very easy for you know, someone especially cargo
aircraft pilots. They can move over to commercial airliners and
stuff pretty easily. Yea, and the packages to come over

(59:40):
there are kind of lucrative, you know, it's like, hey,
there's a So it takes a lot to keep people in.
So I mean, having those options presented to you like
maybe this maybe that I mean, at this time, were
you were you still was that? Was that your goal
still was to try to get into space or become
an astronaut or did this reignite it?

Speaker 2 (01:00:00):
It? No? I look, you asked me, now I still
want to be an astronaut. If said, yeah, I'm still available,
I'm still I might have two titanium hips now, but
I am in good shape. It's all. It's all good,
just a flush.

Speaker 1 (01:00:16):
One who needs needs muscle.

Speaker 2 (01:00:20):
I mean, you lose muscle mass anyway. So it has
always been a desire for me to go into space.
I always wanted to be explorer. I always want to
do something new and challenging. I always want to test
my limits as a person, and so that has always
stayed with me even to this day. So for me,

(01:00:40):
being an airline pilot, I think is one of the
most no offense to those who fly in the military
and then go airlines. I think it's one of the
most boring things that you can ever do. Like I can't.
It's like being a race car driver and then getting
out as a race car driver and then driving for Uber.
The money is great, the money could be good, but

(01:01:01):
it's just it's not where it's at for me. I
can't taking passengers or packages from point A to point
C without breaking down at point B. It's just not
my thing. But some people really like it, they love it,
and that's that's their passion. My passion is to challenge myself,
fly different aircraft, go into space, explore, use all the

(01:01:24):
tools that I've accumulated in my lifetime to navigate me
for the future. So that's I love that part.

Speaker 1 (01:01:31):
Well, I mean, obviously this is the platform to get
you excited, you know, to be doing something. You know
that's the next step. Right, So how how was the
selection process for you? And then how was the training
and how how did that training differ from what you'd
already experienced before.

Speaker 2 (01:01:46):
Yeah, so the selection process for the YouTube specifically is
it's a two week interview. The first week you talk
to like commanders, You get the feel for the environment,
what you're going to go through, You do a claustrophobic check,
they do all these measurements, medical stuff. Then the second week,
if you pass the first week, some people don't. Some

(01:02:07):
people say it's not for me. And then sometimes the community,
the community is actually watching you and sometimes they go
in the community. If they say I will not deploy
with that person, your interviews terminated right there because you
have to we dead out together. So you have to
get along with people. And so the second week you fly.

(01:02:31):
You do three flights in the aircraft and they see
how trainable you are, so you do multiple landings, do
low flights only, and each flight you need to progress.
If you don't, they will say thank you at the
end of the third flight, thanks, but no thanks. And
if they accept you they'll say, we like to offer

(01:02:52):
you a job, and then you have a choice take
it or not. So I will tell you my first
flight was okay, a little rough.

Speaker 1 (01:03:03):
I was.

Speaker 2 (01:03:03):
Wing control was my biggest nemesis in the beginning. So
for those who don't know about the U two, the
U two has a bicycle landing gear system. Because of
the bicycle landing gear, you have to stall the aircraft
in the long wing span. You have to stall the
aircraft at two feet to land it. You can't do
it at three feet four feet. If you do, you're
gonna break stuff. You can't land it like a normal aircraft.

(01:03:26):
We're gonna bounce back up in the air at four
feet and then stall in. So once you land, you
still have to fly the wings and keep them level.
Most aircraft you just you know, you can let go
the stick at that point and do whatever. So imagine
being in the aircraft with a yoke, not a stick,

(01:03:47):
flying this aircraft, making quick adjustments, keeping it at two
feet to land, and then once you do that in
the flight to the imagine having to do that in
a pressure suit where it limits your view, your movement.
It's really claustrophobic. It's very small area, so it's not
for everyone. I always say, flying the U two is

(01:04:07):
like the land of the not quite right. You gotta
be a little mentally touched to sit in an aircraft.
For our missions typically go from nine to twelve hours,
sit by yourself, no bathroom, sucking out food from a tube.
You know, you can do number one, but you can't

(01:04:29):
do number two and fly this mission by yourself, and
then when you're you're most tired at the end of
the day, stall the aircraft at two feet and land.
Aircraft that does not like to fly low because it's
a long wingspan one hundred and four point eight feet
flies great up at altitude, but when you get down low,
you're just ratcheting. If you If you can imagine flying

(01:04:53):
up excuse me, driving a race car and you see
inside the car, you see the driver doing a lot
of it ratcheting. Same thing in the YouTube as we're flying,
so it's a lot of quick inputs taking it out
before it reacts like a helicopter. So you gotta be
a little touched in the head to love that stuff.

Speaker 1 (01:05:12):
That's exciting to me.

Speaker 2 (01:05:14):
Yeah, that's me, Like, that's me and all my YouTube
brothers and sisters out there. There's only there's eleven hundred
and sixteen of us in the seventy years that the
U two has flown, so crazy, that's crazy. Yeah, we're
a crazy bunch.

Speaker 1 (01:05:30):
How long do you So, once you've done those three flights,
I assume none of those are an altitude.

Speaker 2 (01:05:36):
That no, they're all yeah, they're all low flights. So
the first flight you go up, you learn. So in
any aircraft you have to learn stall characteristics, how the
aircraft flyes slow and how it's stalls. Those are for
anyone flying, those are your any aircraft future. You have

(01:05:57):
to understand those things. In fixed wing aircraft and helicopters
a little different. So you get the flight characteristic feel
of it. And then we go right back to the
pattern and you start just doing landings, different type of
landings over and over again, normal landings, no flat landings,
you do single engine, you do failure patterns over and over.

(01:06:19):
So they give you that information before you get there
for the interview, so you have to study all the
numbers and where you're supposed to hit. And you know
you're at this point in the YouTube community, you're seasoned pilot. Anyway,
most people have over two thousand hours, so I had
about twenty two twenty five hundred hours, maybe maybe more

(01:06:41):
than that, maybe closer now.

Speaker 1 (01:06:43):
It's quite a bit for people that don't know, that's
a lot.

Speaker 2 (01:06:45):
That's a lot. That's a lot of missions, that's a
lot of deployments. You know that I had two long
cruise deployments. I had about close to one thousand hours
in the T six flying students, so I had a
lot of flight time.

Speaker 1 (01:07:00):
So that's got to be nerve wracking when you're flying students,
you know, never know. Yeah, I feel like that preps
you right for the YouTube being nervous because you're like,
I've already phoned with some really bad pilots.

Speaker 2 (01:07:14):
So I've flown with some students that done some wild stuff.
Like the purpose of a flight instructor is to fly
with a student, prevent them from killing both of you,
and then teach them something along the way, like muscle
memory and knowledge, like if they come if I most
most military students they want to be there, so they

(01:07:35):
want to learn. It's not like civilian flying where you
got someone's like, oh, I feel like picking this up
and then wants to fight you about everything you're trying
to teach them. Yeah, that's why I'm not an instructor.

Speaker 1 (01:07:46):
Do you think that made you after being an instructor
pilot like that when you moved over to the YouTube,
Do you think that made you a better student because
you understood what this guy's trying to do or what
this other pilot's trying to do.

Speaker 2 (01:07:57):
No, I think I think most military pilots are professional
in that way. We don't take it personal like we
could be a student or an instructor. You never take
stuff like that personal.

Speaker 1 (01:08:10):
Everyone's getting feedback.

Speaker 2 (01:08:12):
Everyone is giving or getting feedback, either by another person
or the aircraft. So there's a point where if you
have too much ego, you're probably going to kill yourself
and the people around you. So that's why the pilot community,
when i've there's certain things that have happened recently since

(01:08:34):
the beginning of the year, like a lot of misapps
that have been going on where people are questioning like
a pilot's credentials, capabilities, how they were taught. In our community,
we police our own and we know that if there's
someone who's weak, we will get them. They will get

(01:08:54):
the feedback, they will get the instruction, and they will
get the help and either they are correct or not correctable.
They are not correctable, they will find another job to do,
or they will be taken off the flight line, or
they will lose their wings. I've seen it happen. I've
been on boards where it has happened, especially for students.

(01:09:16):
If they are not trainable to a point, we terminate
their training and they go do something else. So the
flight community is very serious, especially in the military field.
I can't speak to civilian, but they have the same
similar standards. We are very serious about how we train people,
and we would not let someone. Could you imagine as

(01:09:39):
an instructor, if I allowed a student who was weak
to go on a solo and then he crashes an
aircraft and kills himself, like like I can't. I would
never be able to Like that'd be hard to live with. Yeah,
So as an instructor, you always make sure your students
are on point, know their knowledge, know how to fly,
and they're safe. That's that's it. Yeah, I wouldn't let you.

(01:10:03):
I wouldn't let you fly solar if I thought differently,
And I think all military pilots are like that. You know,
we all fall in this spectrum. Some may be more
egotistical than others, some are humble, but we all like
flying skill wise, we all have that same basic foundations
so and we all think that way.

Speaker 1 (01:10:24):
So yeah, no, I agree. I mean when you look
at it, it's life and death. It's really life and death,
you know, And it's kind of like what we talked
about earlier about people how it's frustrating sometimes listening to
people's issues. You know that are civilians that have never
done something like that. When you go from a community
where there's actual life and death issues, if you mess up,

(01:10:45):
then you know it's We have that in the Jatach community,
which is an extension of the air community, because it's
like we're dropping live ordinance. You can't you can't mess
that up. You know, you have to be good at that.
And I've done I was in a I was a
Jatach evaluator and I've done an evaluation for a guy
that graduated from TCP school. But he got to his

(01:11:05):
unit and I was doing his evaluations and I'm like,
you're just not safe, man. And I had to sit
down with his first sergeant and CEO and tell him
and be like, he's not allowed to control. He's not
allowed to control aircraft, he's not allowed to drop live
ordinates because he's just not safe. He's not safe in
real life, and he's not safe when we're doing sims.
And because he continues to be unsafe and make these issues,

(01:11:26):
these things, he can't because like you said, imagine if
I'm like, oh, whatever, he'll be okay, and then he
goes and drops a bomb on himself or civilians or
something like that. You know, like you just you can't
accept that that level it has you have to be good.

Speaker 2 (01:11:43):
So right so, likewise as me as a pilot, like
I go through that same rigor right so, and I
and I will say this like if someone look when
I throughout my career in the NAVIER, the Air Force.
Maybe when I in the room, people thought that different things,
but it's not. It's like the brotherhood and sisterhood. This

(01:12:06):
is how it is. It doesn't matter who you are
because the aircraft doesn't care. The aircraftft doesn't care of
your gender or whatever. It doesn't your race or whatever.
You either put the correct inputs in to make it
do what you're it's supposed to do, or you don't,
and it will not do what you're supposed to do.

Speaker 1 (01:12:22):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:12:23):
So it's just it's interesting to me how people think
a certain way because if you're in the military where
life in any type of area where you're a doctor,
whether you're in the military where you're jatach, it's like
everyone who's in the community holds those our gatekeepers in

(01:12:47):
the way, like we're not going to let one person
destroy the reputation of everyone, right, So we police our
own in every situation. And there are times that you
may make a mistake, but you can't can't make a
really big mistake, like you have minor things. But if
you're consistently underperforming, it doesn't matter who you are, you're

(01:13:08):
going to get removed.

Speaker 1 (01:13:09):
It's just these rules are written in blood. That's how
it is. Yes, the rules are written in blood. And
and as I always tell people, you know, there were
guys that great dudes that I worked with that just
the they weren't good Jay tax, they didn't they didn't
pass a schoolhouse or something like that, or guys that
I worked with in jobs where it's like, hey, man,

(01:13:30):
you're not a bad person, you're just not the person
for this job. I'm not saying you're a bad marine.
I'm not saying you're a bad person. You got to
do something that fits your skill set and this isn't
you know. That's it's hard to tell somebody that because
I wouldn't want to hear that. I would be devastated
if someone came to me and told me that, you know,
and it's hard to tell somebody that, but you have to.

(01:13:52):
In those kind of communities where lives are on the line,
we always debrief all together. We all sit around and go, hey,
this was what happened on this mission, aircraft check at
this time, you said this, this, and this, you should
have said this. Everything else was good, and we go
through every little point and everybody hears it because we're
all learning because we want everyone to be better. And
that's the same with me, Like if someone's evaluating me,

(01:14:12):
we're all sitting there and everyone listens to me getting
you know, my own evaluation.

Speaker 2 (01:14:17):
So yes, So debriefs are very important right in the
pilot community. Sometimes deep briefs go longer than the flight themselves,
because that's how in the weeds people go like, what
were you thinking at the time, what were you doing?
And I think most pilots they're able to take that criticism.

(01:14:39):
Most military people take that criticism because they want to
be better. They want to make the team stronger. And
I think that's an emotional intelligence piece of those who
are able to do that because they want to see
things better, run smoother, or more efficient. Because at the
end of the day, we have that mindset like we
want to win, we want to be the best.

Speaker 1 (01:14:59):
Yeah. So yeah, I would if I made a mistake,
if I made a mistake on the radio or something,
I would think about it for weeks or months. I
would be sitting there doing something completely different and I
would think about it and be like, idiot, Like six
months later, idiot, I can't believe you said that, you know,
which is crazy, but it's like you kind of have to,

(01:15:21):
you know, you have to be able to beat yourself
up and be like ah, because it's to be better.
You know which is good and which, So go ahead.

Speaker 2 (01:15:28):
Yeah. So on the YouTube community, when we're deployed, we
fly once every three days because after you fly high,
no flying duties the next day because of the exposure
physiologically and we'll probably talk about that a little bit.
Physiologically to the altitude that you're at and the cabin pressure,

(01:15:50):
and so imagine you're coming into land after ten and
a half hour mission and you just have maybe your
landing is not the best. It's safe, everything is okay,
but you just don't have a great landing. You got
to think about that for the next like three days.
So you get back in the cockpit and you're just
like like an OCD person just going through every what

(01:16:12):
could I have done better? Why did I do this?
Why did I do that? Yeah, that's us.

Speaker 1 (01:16:16):
Yeah, that's a that's a good way to put it.

Speaker 2 (01:16:18):
You know.

Speaker 1 (01:16:18):
It's just like you have to be you have to
be like that though. That's how you get to that level,
you know, because you care, you know. And that's why
I think a lot of people have a problem when
they get out of the military, because they don't find
something that they care about like they did to the
level of the job that they were doing while they
were in, you know, And it's almost it's almost forced
upon you to care, you know, because you don't want
to be the person that's not providing something to the team.

(01:16:43):
You know, you don't want to be a liability here.
And I think when you get out and there's not
really that drive anymore, there's not. So people gotta find
that thing that they care about now in the U two.
So let's say you're you're getting past all your training,
At what point do you get Do you get your
own space suit? Is this custom? Do you get to
keep it afterwards?

Speaker 2 (01:17:04):
No? So the suit the suit runs six figures, so
we have two suits. Typically they during the interview process,
you're being fitted for the suit, so gloves, everything, everything's
Some people get a custom made suit, which is two
hundred and fifty thousand dollars. That was many years ago.
It's probably more expensive now to create. The standard suit

(01:17:27):
is about one hundred thousand dollars. They won't let you
keep the suit. I may or may not have one
in my possession right now as on loan.

Speaker 1 (01:17:38):
What do they do with them? I mean, if you don't,
because if they're customed to you, they're just hanging up
in some yeah warehouse somewhere.

Speaker 2 (01:17:46):
Absolutely, yes, I know, but they don't. You know, they
are NASA.

Speaker 1 (01:17:53):
I get all my military uniforms when I got out,
they're all hanging I know.

Speaker 2 (01:17:57):
I know qualifies No, perhaps one day, one day, the
opportunity to buy it back.

Speaker 1 (01:18:06):
If I mean, they're not using it, or or you
lobby and you get a museum, your local museum. You
get to put it up at a local museum so
you can at least go visit it all the time.

Speaker 2 (01:18:15):
I'm I actually, they were gonna send my suit to, uh,
the African American Museum, but somehow that Yeah, but they
the African American Museum, they said they wanted it. But
then do the paperwork anyway, It'll go to a nice home.

Speaker 1 (01:18:32):
That's cool. That's I mean, that's the spacesuit is awesome.
I mean, that's legit. You're getting fitted. You were probably like, yes,
I've made it. I'm getting fitted for a.

Speaker 2 (01:18:39):
Space Well that and then they're like, okay, now you
have to sit in this one for an hour to
see if you freak out because you have claustrophobia. I
fell asleep.

Speaker 1 (01:18:49):
I feel like it wouldn't be that bad and everything on.

Speaker 2 (01:18:53):
Oh it's great. It was. You just hear yourself breathing.
It's like, yeah, that's all.

Speaker 1 (01:19:01):
What was unique about it? What surprised you about having
a spacesuit, or like how it fit or what it did?

Speaker 2 (01:19:10):
What surprised me? I'll tell you a story. I don't
know if it's appropriate.

Speaker 1 (01:19:16):
What's your audience, like, go ahead, I think it'll be great.

Speaker 2 (01:19:22):
The first time. So in the suit you can't. You
could do number one suit. So peing in the suit's fine.
So for men when they put the suit on, we
have what's called the ucd Urinary Collection Device for men.
It's basically it's basically huge size. Actually have I'll send
you a picture of it's huge size, like condom that

(01:19:43):
fits over there, jas and you cut it to size,
and so it has a tube when they pee in it.
That tube connects to your suit and connects to another
hoose from your suit to a collection device in the aircraft.
So I think a leader of urine, and so guys

(01:20:04):
use that. For women, we have a pad. So we
have a pad with a hose that connects in our
suit does the same thing. So we pee on the
pad and then we kind of increase the pressure to
allow flow to happen. So when you saturate the pad,
there's you know, suction that takes that liquid away from

(01:20:25):
the pad. So my first flight in the high suit,
my first high flight in the suit, I'm in the suit.
I'm really I'm excited, but I'm sweating because the suit.
It's like putting a plastic bag. The liner is like
a plastic bag around you. So if you're moving a lot,
you generate a lot of heat and you sweat. And

(01:20:46):
so I'm there and I'm excited. I'm I'm sweating. I
can feel all the sweat because I'm getting cold because
of the vent air. And when you get integrated in
the suit, you have what's called the You have people
who are called physiologists that puts you in the suit.
They're from the Physiological Support Squadron. They maintain the suits
for you. They integrate you in the aircraft, they check

(01:21:07):
your oxygen, they do all this stuff. So I'm being
integrated and as part of the integration, they have to
check the UCD to make sure this good airflow going through.
So I'm sitting in the cockpit, I'm sweating, I'm excited,
I'm breathing too much oxygen. The warning lights are going
off because I'm just I'm like like, I'm fired up.

(01:21:27):
I'm just so fired up, and so as the guy.
So everything's sweaty, including the pad for the UCD. So
he's like, ma'am, I'm going to check your He's yelling
really like He's like, I'm going to check your post
and make sure it's okay, and I'm like, so he
opens the vet. So imagine just being hot and then

(01:21:50):
you get a blast of cold air and the private areas.
So I'm with an instructor and we're on hot Mike
because we're talking back and forth, and then all of
a sudden, I let out a big like whoa like
I got like it was pretty shocking the blast of
air in that area, and he starts laughing. My instructor,

(01:22:15):
also known as Huggy, he just starts cracking up. There's
another pilot listening. Who's the mobile and we didn't talk
about that yet, but he's they're dying. I'm like, oh
my gosh, that was exhilarating. Is this what the flight's
going to be like? So I start just talking and
I'm all psyched up and he's like, Meryl.

Speaker 1 (01:22:31):
You need to stop.

Speaker 2 (01:22:32):
I'm like, let's go. Like I'm I'm so excited. So
that's yes, that's how you.

Speaker 1 (01:22:39):
End up with a call sign. I said something like,
that's how you end up with a call sign.

Speaker 2 (01:22:43):
That's how you end up with the calls. I thought
about that, but I didn't say anything. I was too
excited about the flight, and uh yeah, it was that
about the suit was incredibly eye opening. Everything else I
was cool. But the blast of cold air, yes, exciting, exciting.

Speaker 1 (01:23:03):
When you're up at altitude. How are you affected by
radiation at all? I imagine is that part of the suits protection? Okay,
are you so? What's the gravity like? I mean, you're
not weightless at that point, right, I don't think so.

Speaker 2 (01:23:17):
No, So the amount of radiation that you they sometimes
they had us travel with docimmeters for radiation readings, So
it's nothing, it's nothing out of the ordinary. You still
have the aircraft, you're still in a suit. So the
the exposure is not, from my understanding, is not that significant.
I had to defer to my husband, who's a physicist.

(01:23:41):
He specializes in like, uh, nuclear physics, so he works
at Lawrence Livermore Labs. So he assured me that that's
not the case, so I will believe him. And so, yeah,
there's no weightlessness. Radiation exposure is pretty normal, And the

(01:24:03):
only thing that's really different is the cabin altitude. At
the time that I was flying the U two, the
cabin altitude was at twenty nine close to twenty nine
thousand feet so Mount Everest's altitudes. So exposure to decompression
sickness was a real thing. It happened to a lot
of my friends. So because of that, we have to

(01:24:25):
pre breathe oxygen one hundred percent oxygen in an hour
before we take off.

Speaker 1 (01:24:31):
What's out Like I've heard that's like gives you like
a head buzz almost from taking pure oxygen.

Speaker 2 (01:24:36):
It's not a head buzz, but I mean.

Speaker 1 (01:24:40):
Like you're more sharp or clear it I would a
little bit, yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:24:49):
When I you do it enough. When we did missions,
they would give us go jails. So I don't know
what made me more sharp the O two or the
actual amphetamines they gave us so or the ability to
take those. You know, your body likes one hundred percent
oxygen more so it will off gas basically the nitrogen

(01:25:11):
in your system. So yeah, it's it's not that much
of a pick me up in my opinion, but maybe
I was just used to it at a certain point.
I never really felt any difference about that. I could
just tell you that I didn't really suffer from any
decompression issues. When you're done with a flight, that's why
you don't fly the next day. You're not supposed to

(01:25:32):
work out the next day. You should stay hydrated when
you fly, have good diet, you know, do all those
things that you're supposed to do if you're an athlete
type thing. So I did that. I mean, I'm really
into maybe as you can see, working out, So I
work out a lot. I lift weights quite a bit.
More muscle you have, you know, the better you are physically.

(01:25:59):
So Unfortunately, a lot of my friends during the time
I flew the U two, especially in missions to Afghanistan
in Iraq, some of them really had some serious DCS issues.
One of my peers almost crashed in aircraft back in
two thousand and I don't know it was five maybe

(01:26:20):
two thousand and five because he had decompression sickness, but
it was neurological, so he was in a bad way.
He ended up getting out of the military, just getting
medically retired.

Speaker 1 (01:26:33):
Wow.

Speaker 2 (01:26:34):
Yeah, he's he suffered permanent brain damage, so that actually
the investigation board was out. Yeah, it was. It was bad.
And I have a couple of other friends that have
like they suffered almost like concussion type injuries, like football players.

Speaker 1 (01:26:50):
Why don't they have a lower altitude for your in
cabin pressure.

Speaker 2 (01:26:54):
Then, so they did change that. Back when I was
the commander at Palmdale for YouTube flight test, Locky Martin
lowered the cabin pressure in single seat aircraft down to
about fifteen thousand feet Zatan Well in the beginning. I
don't think they knew when they first created the YouTube,

(01:27:16):
but over time it was kind of cost prohibited to
do the modifications for the frame and structure. According to Lockey,
that's crazy, and they were able to reach some type of.

Speaker 1 (01:27:29):
What's more, I mean, what's worse having pilots freaking you know,
go through these issues and then you lose them or
crash an aircraft. I mean, imagine crashing an aircraft during
a mission because of something like that. What a what
a dumb assessment? You know?

Speaker 2 (01:27:44):
Well, we almost we almost had one, and they couldn't
understand because it was during the time I was flying
mission and so when we started doing a lot more
frequent missions maybe a little longer, they couldn't really pinpoint
because they actually did a study of U two pilots
and how many brain lesions that we.

Speaker 1 (01:28:03):
Have, you know, not if you have them, how many
you have? Yeah, You're like, how many like it's it's
it's crazy.

Speaker 2 (01:28:16):
So we all have them, like I had about I
was told I have about twenty. I don't know how
that wow. Yeah. So but some of the guys who
really had significant issues, they had a lot more a lot.

Speaker 1 (01:28:31):
What is what causes the brain lesions? Just the altitude
or the.

Speaker 2 (01:28:35):
Just exposure exposure to the altitude?

Speaker 1 (01:28:37):
Wow.

Speaker 2 (01:28:37):
So if you if you're a hiker, like if you're
doing like K two all the time, you probably have
something similar.

Speaker 1 (01:28:43):
How do those affect you or do they affect you?
Is it just a.

Speaker 2 (01:28:47):
I'll be honest, I wasn't. I didn't think I was
affected that much until I stopped flying the U two.
And it's very interesting because once once I was the
commander and I'm done. Of course, you know, you do
your command job, you're happy, and they stick your the
desk for a while. So I went to Right northcom
and worked there for three years from my joint tour
and six months after stopped. After I stopped flying, it

(01:29:09):
was I can only explain it as if I was
kind of in a fog, but it was lifted like things,
things were slightly clearer, And that's the only way I
can explain it. It's like, cognitively I could do things,
but I felt that I was slower. But after six
months it started feeling oh huh, it's like one of

(01:29:36):
those huh things are clearer, more focused. That's the only
way I can explain It's yes, so it's one of
those things you can explain, but something has changed for
the better. And that's how. That's how it was. My
friend who suffered more extensive damage. They would explain it,

(01:30:02):
like one of my friends said, he was driving to
work and he stopped. He pulled over because he forgot
where he was driving to. That's how bad it was.
And so another friend of mine, she became the wing
commander at Bill. She actually pulled herself out of flying

(01:30:23):
because there were things that were wrong that she really
couldn't quantify. But there was issues that she was having
just remembering certain words, doing certain things. So I get it.
I understand why I just was not affected as you know, severely.

Speaker 1 (01:30:44):
So yeah, yeah, I think you hear that similar kind
of stories from from people that have like hit an
ID or something to have like a TBI, the drasatic
brain injury, same kind of thing. Like there, I had
a slight I mean nowhere or anything like that where
I forget stuff all the time. I'll have to write
stuff down. I really lean on using my calendar to

(01:31:07):
remember stuff. I was never hit by an ID. Put
that out there. I was. The worst that I ever
had was when I was in the back blast of
an SPG nine, which is like a Recoilleiss rifle, and
that about knocked me out. And I don't know, it's
just like you hear from guys that and girls that
have like a lot of exposure or they hit like

(01:31:29):
really bad ID, you know, and similar kind of issues,
memory problems things. I don't know. That's crazy that you
guys can get better though you know that it kind
of I imagine you'll never get back to where you
were previously before all the brain leasions.

Speaker 2 (01:31:46):
But well yet, so I think brain leads just stay
with you. They don't know the long term effects. And
I'll tell you what I got to. You know, kids
of the preteens, and right now they're sucking my whole
life force. So I can't tell the difference.

Speaker 1 (01:32:02):
You's got my brain right now, I know.

Speaker 2 (01:32:06):
I just know I have to be five steps ahead
of them, which I am. So once they start out smarting.

Speaker 1 (01:32:12):
Don't think I've lost my edge yet.

Speaker 2 (01:32:14):
Yeah, I lost my edge.

Speaker 1 (01:32:15):
I have a teenage son. I know what you're talking about.

Speaker 2 (01:32:18):
Oh, how old is he?

Speaker 1 (01:32:19):
He just turned eighteen? Well in October he turned eighteen,
so he's about to graduate high school and you know,
move on. Yeah. Now I'm in the like trying to
give him some life advice, and I've made it very clear,
like nothing I can say. You can do whatever you
want now because you're eighteen, but you know, you really

(01:32:40):
got to understand that there's consequences for little things that
before wouldn't have mattered. You know. I'm like, know who
you're hanging out with, know where you're going, kind of
deal because those those are things. But anyways, we'll get
back to I want to talk. I want to ask,
and we go down to the Dad route. What was
it like on that first high altitude flight just looking

(01:33:01):
out the cockpit and seeing the view? I mean, that
has to have been amazing.

Speaker 2 (01:33:06):
It was Okay, after I stopped breathing so hard, I
fogged up my canopy. So like the first flight, because
you're so excited, you fog it up. So it took
about an hour to kind of like I could see,
but you can see the curvature of the Earth. You
can see the sky starting to get darker. It was

(01:33:29):
a daytime flight, so it was just really I was
with an instructor. The first two high flights. You go
in an instructor, and then after that you're solo the
rest of the time, so that's crazy. Yeah, it was
just cool, Like I got to try tube food for
the first time.

Speaker 1 (01:33:47):
What's the best and worst tube food? There's got to
be a good one and a bad one.

Speaker 2 (01:33:51):
Right, So they've changed some of the stuff since I've left.
I used to love caramel pudding that they took off,
and then I tried to stick with a vegetarian pasta,
which they took away too. The worst used to be
it was either Manhattan or New England. It was Manhattan
clam chowder. I don't know who the hell thought of that.

(01:34:13):
That is the worst. I've never even I've cracked it
open just to pource them out to see what they looked.

Speaker 1 (01:34:19):
Like an at seventy thousand feet.

Speaker 2 (01:34:23):
Yeah, horrendous caffeated pudding was cool. That was two hundred,
two hundred milligrams of caffeine in the two nice recently
since I left. They have like hash browns and bacon,
mac and cheese, or mac and cheese with caffeine, apple pie,
apple pie with.

Speaker 1 (01:34:44):
Caffeine, caffeinated mac and cheese.

Speaker 2 (01:34:46):
What a it's called jazzy mac.

Speaker 1 (01:34:49):
The Marine Corps had picked that one up.

Speaker 2 (01:34:51):
Ah, they they'd be like I was gonna say, they
conuna be like caged animals, but they used to.

Speaker 1 (01:34:56):
They used to give us some like an apple sauce
pack and some of them more would have like apple
sauce with caffeine in it. And then they had these
chocolate covered espresso beans. They called them like buzz beans
or something like that.

Speaker 2 (01:35:11):
Yeah, if you gave the Marine Corps a caffeine the pudding,
they would be unhinged twigs. I mean, it's like having
celsius enough.

Speaker 1 (01:35:20):
Well, honestly that's probably yeah. We I'd drink a pot
of coffee a day by myself, you know, I think
we used to. We used to run through coffee, especially
long days on the op. You know, a coff Having
coffee in some some former fashion was a must. I
used to bring out a French press and someone someone

(01:35:42):
else would bring out a what's it called. It's like
a camping stove to boil water, and then I'd have
the French press and I'd bring a bag of coffee
beans and I had a little hand grinder. I actually
started at it. I started doing that on ship because
they would never have coffee on the on the mess deck,

(01:36:03):
I'm like, how do we not have coffee? How are
we on a ship and we have no coffee? And
there were and sometimes it'd be like, we'll make it, sorry,
and then they maybe they would make it, or they'd
make it like garbage. It was just I got so
tired of it. So when I was on ship, I
got an Amazon and I ordered a ten pound bag
of coffee beans, a hand grinder so I didn't have

(01:36:23):
to use electricity, and a French press, and I would
just be up in my office and I would grind
out some beans and someone else would want a cup
of coffee. I'd be like, go clean the French press
out and get some fresh water and we'll have coffee.

Speaker 2 (01:36:37):
And it was just like, you should have started Starbucks
on the ship. You could have made out.

Speaker 1 (01:36:41):
I probably could have. Actually after I people saw me
doing it, and then French press had started popping up.
More people started doing it because I explained. I was like, yeah,
I just got a handgrinder and the beans from Amazon,
and like I didn't. I kind of wanted to start
a coffee thing, a coffee business, but that's like a
so so brovette. It's very much a veteran thing to do.

(01:37:02):
But I'm like, I actually did love making good coffee,
you know, like when we were out in the field
or something. The Brits loved it too. If you were
out in the field with the Brits and you bust
out and they'd be like, oh, make a cup, you know.

Speaker 2 (01:37:12):
Like did they have the alcohol?

Speaker 1 (01:37:15):
No? Not not when I did any kind of work
with them. We didn't. They do on their ships they
do have alcohol, though I was never on any of
their ships, though from what I understand, they have a
bar on their ship. Were there allowed? Oh have you
been on a British ship?

Speaker 2 (01:37:31):
I've been on just other ships. Uh yeah, everyone like America,
we don't do it right. They like to party.

Speaker 1 (01:37:40):
Yeah, they don't allow that on our ships.

Speaker 2 (01:37:43):
No, they don't.

Speaker 1 (01:37:45):
You get yeah, and you get the what is it
steel picnic if you're at sea for too long, get
your two beers or whatever. Miserable stuff.

Speaker 2 (01:37:52):
But did you, did you ever do swim call?

Speaker 1 (01:37:56):
No, I don't think they ever did it while I
was on ship. Actually they they did. They may have.
They probably did it while we were ashore, because we
were ashore for at least sixty days. I mean they
were on ship for almost three months straight without ever
seeing a port. So I'm sure at some point they
did something like that for him, because you know, insanity

(01:38:20):
will start to ensue for people that don't know who've
never been on ship. It is not you honestly have
to tell unless you work on the flight deck or
something like that. You have to remind yourself to go
outside and get sunlight because it's very easy to just
be on ship and never emerge from the skin of
the ship and it's like, have I been outside today?
I need You have to kind of set that in

(01:38:41):
your schedule to like get outside and get fifteen minutes
of sun because everybody starts going insane, like, oh, it's
so miserable.

Speaker 2 (01:38:52):
Yeah, but I did. I did a swim call once.

Speaker 1 (01:38:56):
It's fun. Was it what was it off of? Was
it off the So I think if we would have
done it, they probably would have done it in the
weld deck because we had a well deck on the LHD.
We were you guys doing off the side of the
ship or off the back?

Speaker 2 (01:39:14):
Yeah, we were doing off the back of the ship.
Was it in the cruiser? Almost?

Speaker 1 (01:39:19):
Cruisers and destroyers I've heard have the best deployments because
they can't be at sea as long, so they get
they get more port calls.

Speaker 2 (01:39:26):
No, we were with the shotgun crew. We were the
shotgun cruiser for the GW battle.

Speaker 1 (01:39:31):
What is that? What does a shotgun cruiser mean?

Speaker 2 (01:39:33):
So that means we follow the carrier everywhere, like where
the if someone breaks to the defense, we are like
the final like we are the most equipped to handle
anyone coming. We probably at that time had the most
missiles of anywhere. That's why they sent us. That's why
they sent the battle group up to the North Arabian Golf.

(01:39:54):
This was during a time where Saddam was just being
a just being jackknife about something. He didn't want to
sign some agreement, so they shipped us all. We were
supposed to be in the Mediterranean for four months. After
a month after we got there, across the Atlantic, we
did two port visits and they shipped us right out there.

(01:40:14):
And so yeah, I just remember we were the one thing.
He wasn't signing something. He un till twelve o'clock to
do it, and we were ready to fire on him.
And we were all on the flight deck. Came geared up,
ready to go, ready to rock and roll.

Speaker 1 (01:40:34):
That's crazy, It's crazy.

Speaker 2 (01:40:36):
I was just I was sitting there. I was sitting
there like, bro, what are you doing?

Speaker 1 (01:40:41):
I was so mad. I was like, I was like,
sign it?

Speaker 2 (01:40:47):
What does nonsense? Do? You know?

Speaker 1 (01:40:49):
What's wild about stuff like that? And it's easy to
look back and be like, oh, you know, like that
was crazy, But at the time, you don't know what's
about to happen. And when you're putting on like a
kimsuit for real, there's no way to be like, oh,
this is funny haha. Now it's like, oh, what are
we getting? What are we getting into right now? Like
this is about to be get real real fast.

Speaker 2 (01:41:11):
Yeah, you're thinking like, okay, if if the cruiser fires,
like what are we going to be doing? Like in
my mind, I'm like, okay, it's a pilot. What does
this mean? What is what is going to happen?

Speaker 1 (01:41:21):
How many?

Speaker 2 (01:41:22):
How many strikes are we going to do? What are
we launch it? So yeah, but now yeah, I'm just like,
damn it, Sadam Hussein, what why.

Speaker 1 (01:41:29):
It makes me? It makes me think about the ships
that are over off of like Yemen right now. Yes,
they're actually shooting down like anti shit missiles and drones
and stuff. And I remember, I remember on our deployments
we would always do you know, general quarters drills and
stuff like that, and for the Marines that means go

(01:41:50):
to your birthing area and just chill all the navy
desert thing and you'd sit there and you'd hear like
simulated impact left side in thirty seconds or something like that,
and they would be like counting, you know, as if
you're taking incoming missiles. And I'm like, that's to have
that actually be happening is wild to be in a

(01:42:10):
ship and being like, oh shit, please don't hit us, please,
don't hit us, please, and then you hear that it
got shot down or something like. I mean, it's easy
to be like, oh yeah, they shot them all down,
no big deal, But the people on those ships are
going through some roller coasters of emotions right there when
that's happening.

Speaker 2 (01:42:27):
Yes, absolutely, I mean it's when you know, flying over
like Afghanistan Iraq talking to you guys and saying do
you need anything, Hey, we just intercepted some transmissions that
this and this are going to happen, or hey check
this and this is within what the accuracy? You know,

(01:42:50):
I'm flying around and every so often I'm like, if
I lose an engine here, this is going to really suck.
If I lose my only engine, this is going to
really suck. Which area would I go? Oh, oh, I
don't want to be here this long? Like, you know,
there were times where you know, if you landed, you know,
in this in the sandbox somewhere, you're like, which tribe

(01:43:15):
is going to kill me the quickest? Like you know,
you you thought about those things, and yeah, the the
mental gymnastics that you go through a little bit like
oh and I make sure everything was taken care of
before doing all this. It's that's a real thing. So
whether you're in the boat, whether you're in the plane,
whether you're with the mew, like, it's just one of

(01:43:38):
those you know, you love doing what you're doing, but
you think about like it's it's gotten real real quick,
and it's like, oh, now what do I do? And
then once it's done. You kind of laughed on like,
oh that was fun.

Speaker 1 (01:43:52):
Yeah, you get those reality checks, you know.

Speaker 2 (01:43:55):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (01:43:55):
I always always think about like when we would get
ready for deployment. Uh, we'd have Basicallygal come down and
give us a class and then everybody had to fill
out their will. And I'm like, he's eighteen or nineteen
year old. Kids like this is probably the first time
they're like wait, hold on, you know, like yeah, like
what a what a reality check? Right, Like, hey, make

(01:44:15):
sure your family gets what's due to them, make sure
you fill out the will and and you know, and
all this stuff, and it's like wow. You know, for
some kids, that's probably the first time they're like, oh shit,
this is about to get real.

Speaker 2 (01:44:27):
You know, it's time to put your big boy, big
girl pants on, because it's like you, I don't know
if you've ever have had to be on the other
end to tell a parent that their no son or
daughter is being on or you know, has you know
or is deceased. But yeah, it doesn't feel good either.

Speaker 1 (01:44:46):
Have you done that? You've had to do that, I've
done that.

Speaker 2 (01:44:48):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (01:44:49):
God, that's got to be the toughest, toughest job in
the military.

Speaker 2 (01:44:52):
It was yeah, it was one of those things where
it was unexpected. I was a commander down at Palmdale
and the jurisdiction that the I forgot what the service
is called. They go as far south as you know,
not San Diego, but they went pretty far south. And

(01:45:14):
I got a call like, hey, we need you to
go tell a family that their son died in training
up at Effie Warren. So I was like, oh, okay,
so you know, you go with the group, you go
with the chaplain, you go with a group of people,
you're dressed up in your blues. You go there and

(01:45:35):
you look for the family. And so yeah, it was terrible,
Like it's just to tell a mom that they're eighteen
year old.

Speaker 1 (01:45:43):
You know, I wouldn't be able to do it. I'd
be balling the whole time.

Speaker 2 (01:45:48):
It's hard, I will tell you. When I came back home,
I sat in my office and had some whiskey at
the end, because it's just you could tell, like you
can only tell the family what happened and how it happened.
That's all you could tell them. You can't tell them
anything about arrangements, body or anything. But you could tell

(01:46:09):
Like when I did it with the mom because had
I had to be the one to tell them because
I was the more senior person you could tell. I
don't the mom was just thinking about maybe the last
interactions she had with her son or conversations that were had.
You could see her mind working in ways that was

(01:46:30):
just awful. Like I would never want that on anyone.
So when you're in a situation where you're the tip
of the spear or you're doing the mission, like the
whole end to end process. Yeah, you're out there doing it,
you don't think of the ramifications, especially when you're eighteen
or nineteen, of what it means to give the ultimate

(01:46:52):
sacrifice until you're there and you're like, well, crap, this
might be it. It's a it's a huge wake up call.

Speaker 1 (01:47:02):
Yeah, it's definitely. It's tough. It's it's a real world job.
It's I don't know, it's dealing with that would be rough,
dealing with that, doing the family notifications? What do we
I can't remember what we called it. There was a
whole If you were selected for that, I think you
had to do it for like six months or something.

(01:47:24):
And then this was like for officers. I think there
might have been some staff NCOs that had to do
it as well. But they put you through like training
and everything, and then when a call like that comes out,
it's that's that becomes your only focus. Like everything else
gets now put aside until you're the liaison between the
family and the military, until everything is settled. And I'm

(01:47:46):
just like, man, that's gotta be just not I mean,
somebody's got to do it. But and I think it's
better than you know, you're seeing like the old war movies,
how they would send like a telegram or something to
tell the family. Yeah, that's crazy.

Speaker 2 (01:48:01):
So I don't mean to lie, but that that is
very insensitive, so.

Speaker 1 (01:48:07):
To say the least, I would say very insensitive. Oh
by the way, those telegram here, But yeah, yeah, that's
that's tough. But you know.

Speaker 2 (01:48:18):
That's but it's part of the job. You know, I
as a commander, so it's part of it's part of command.
You know, you come to that understanding that as a commander,
it wasn't my people at that point, but you're in
charge of people's lives. You're in charge of the words
you say matter, how you conduct yourself matters, And so

(01:48:40):
I could be a commander that's unhinged and do things
however I want and not care about the impact of
other people. But I think if you want to be
a good leader, you have to understand that and be
able to take on the fact that you're gonna have
to tell some people, family members, civilians, some awful things,
things that have happened, and how do you how do

(01:49:04):
you convey that message with empathy and compassion? And you know,
that was something that I didn't want to do, but
I'm I wish I didn't have to do, but I'm
glad I did it because it taught me so much
about who I am as a person, as a leader,
and how to do that better.

Speaker 1 (01:49:24):
So, yeah, and it probably helps you understand the impacts,
especially as a commander, the impacts of decisions you know, yes,
that you make and how could it? How can this?
How could things have gone differently? Or you know, it's
that's the real world consequences of you know, I don't
know these specific circumstance, but sometimes it's the real world

(01:49:47):
consequences of bad decision making and by either the individual
to command or whatever. Yeah, it's unfortunate. The first person
I knew that died in the military was a kid
I went to boot camp with, and then I was
in MS training and then my MS training got held
back because my now ex was pregnant and I went

(01:50:08):
home for that for my son to be born, and
I came back and then he graduated like a month
before me or something like that. And then I got
to the fleet. I got to my first unit, and
I saw and his like best friend that had gone
through boot camp, he was in his platoon, had gone
through in MOS school and then they'd gone to the
fleet together. And he's like, hey, Mande, you hear about Bailey.

(01:50:30):
And I'm like, no, man, where's he at? You know,
I'm like looking around. He's like he died, dude, And
I'm like what. He's like, yeah, man, he died and
during a field up, during a training evolution. I'm like,
you know, And that was like the first like holy crap, man,
you know.

Speaker 2 (01:50:43):
Oh yeah, there your first I get that. The first
person who dies, like in your sphere of military, it's
it's a little jarring because, especially if they're the same
age as you, you realize that, like this is this

(01:51:03):
is not a game. This is something serious and it
can happen at any time. Get your act together and
make sure everything is done correctly. So yeah, I get that.
I understand that.

Speaker 1 (01:51:15):
Like we said before, the rules are written in blood.
It really reinforces why we do things the way we
do them, even if it's uncomfortable, even if it's whatever,
there's a reason why. And yeah there's sometimes there's overbearing rules,
but almost always when it comes to safety. For a
lot of most almost every rule there's an incident you
can look back to and go, we do this because

(01:51:37):
this happened and this person was killed, or this group
was injured, or this thing was destroyed. You know, there's
a reason why. A lot of it's not just you
know because.

Speaker 2 (01:51:48):
Yeah, so and the military. In the pilot world, when
you have procedures, you have notes, warnings, and cautions, so
notes is something too, no cautions because typically damage to
aircraft has occurred, and warnings someone has died, So where

(01:52:11):
someone can really die or you can destroy aircraft and people,
So yes, joining you know, definitely in blood. It's it's
it's an eye opener.

Speaker 1 (01:52:26):
Well, I've really enjoyed our conversation. This has been really
interesting and fascinating, and I have probably a million other questions,
but I wanted to go too long, so we'll have
to do something later on if you if you'd like two, Yeah,
we'll have to do something later on because I know,
I know between me and I'm sure other people will
have questions too. I've just you know, I started following

(01:52:48):
you may I think they follow your page. You may
know a guy called Extreme ross On And that's like
the first like photos and everything that I really enjoyed
of like the U two. And it's always been kind
of a fascinating job. And I've never seen like the
way he was showing photos from it. I was like, Wow,
that's really crazy if they allow him to do that.

(01:53:08):
But and the views are awesome, So which is kind
of where I led to me to you, and then
I'm you know, so I really appreciate you coming on
you know him.

Speaker 2 (01:53:17):
Oh that's my all. I'm gonna tell you some quick,
dirty stories. There's a reason why he's called extreme because
he does things to the extreme. We get to trouble.
So I think on two occasions he he was my
relief in the YouTube community. So he come out and

(01:53:39):
you know, just the first time was in Cypress. We
were in Cypress, so he came to relieve me. And
I saw, Hey, Ross, what's up. So we have a
couple of days of overturn together and then I leave
and I look at him and I look at Denny eyes.
I'm like, don't you dare get in trouble while you're
out here? Said, don't get any crap. He's like, yeah, yeah, Meryl,
I got it. Yeah. I don't know if it was

(01:54:04):
two weeks later or a week later. He got sat
home because he wrote he wrote an email that went
around the world, and when I mean around the world,
and left Cyprus, hit the West Coast, ended up at
the Pentagon, and came back from the Pentagon telling him
to get home because he was gonna get his butt chewed.

(01:54:25):
So you got to ask him the story. It's a
great story. And then when I saw him, I looked
at him. I said, what did I say to you?
He goes, I know, Meryl. He's like, he's like, oh no.
Fast forward. I'm in the desert and he's relieving me again,
and we relieve. When we're talking. I'm like, bro, don't

(01:54:49):
you get in any bleep in trouble. He's like, I'm
not gonna get in trouble for for real. I think
he got in trouble on his way back home, missed
the flight coming home because they were in Dubai, and
then they went and ended up going skiing in Dubai
and missed their flying some stupid and so he got

(01:55:11):
in trouble again. And I mean he he got.

Speaker 1 (01:55:15):
He was enjoying his time.

Speaker 2 (01:55:17):
Yeah, he came home and I'm like, bro, you're a
hot mess. But in all seriousness, he's he's a really
good friend of mine. You'll see some stuff on my
Instagram at Dragon l seven eight eight, you know, shameless
plug some of his pictures because he does photography and
he does drone shots. So we live, I mean we
live like ten minutes fifteen minutes from each other. Our

(01:55:39):
kids are about the same age.

Speaker 1 (01:55:40):
So I've actually asked him to even come on the show.
I just his page somehow led me to your page
and I was like, let's do that. You know, That's
why I sent you a message. It was just I
don't because I thought, I guess I thought he was
still doing it. So I was like, well, I'm not
going to ask somebody that's the airlines.

Speaker 2 (01:55:57):
Oh so yeah he is. He did Dad at three
and uh, his oldest sons are twins and so yeah,
he's no, he's extreme. His call sign for a reason. Extreme. Yeah,
he's a hot mess.

Speaker 1 (01:56:14):
Oh go ahead, sorry, Yeah he does some.

Speaker 2 (01:56:15):
Crazy stuff, gets in trouble. I'm here for it though.

Speaker 1 (01:56:19):
That's good, And people want to take a look at
his page if you want to see some really cool
photography from the U two. He's got some really good
images on there. It's extreme ross. So go ahead. Your
website is going to be in the show description, so
everybody can go and check that out if they want to.
If they want to go check out your website. Where
else would you like people to find yacht? You mentioned Instagram?

Speaker 2 (01:56:38):
Instagram dragon Lady seven eight eight because I'm the seven
hundredth and eighty eighth pilot. Nice dragon Lady. Because of
the shirt you could check out my merch because I
was on Tough as Nails UH season two and so
this was this was the shirt that I wore, so
it was designed by another Air Force cat then at

(01:57:00):
the time, Dana LaBelle the show like the shirt and
when they first introduced me to the show, like they
zoomed in on my boobs and I saw the shirt
logo and I'm like, we got to sell this and
do something so partial, like not partial. All proceeds that
we make off the shirt goes to Mission twenty two
Veterans Organization.

Speaker 1 (01:57:20):
Awesome.

Speaker 2 (01:57:20):
So yeah. So so with that, on the show, they
kept calling me the Dragon Lady, which is the name
of the aircraft, but it's I've kind of kind of
distinguished it. Yeah, I fly the Dragon ly but I'm
pilot number seven eighty eight Ross. Yeah, so Ross is
I think he's probably pilot number seven seven ninety something

(01:57:42):
like we're very close. Yeah, I was like, you new guy. No,
we trained around the same time. So yeah. And then
if you're doing LinkedIn because you're a professional, I'm Merril Tengkestol,
subscribe on my YouTube because I don't have a lot
of people following me. I do motivational stuff speak.

Speaker 1 (01:58:01):
I'll put a link to your YouTube channel in my
description too, so people can check that out as well hopefully.

Speaker 2 (01:58:05):
Yeah. I just yeah, I do some motivational stuff talk
or I interview some people, sometimes really short interviews about
aviation or just uplifting things that people do.

Speaker 1 (01:58:16):
That's good. I like the positive feedback to the community.
That's great. That's a that's good stuff. Everybody. You can
check my stuff out Former Action Guys and Former Action
News on Instagram. Uh, my website is jacremographics dot com
and that's it. I really appreciate you coming on.

Speaker 2 (01:58:31):
Thank you for having me

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Ep. 229 | Merryl Tengesdal | U-2 Spy Plane Pilot

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.css-14f5ked{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:2;overflow:hidden;}Ep. 229 | Merryl Tengesdal | U-2 Spy Plane Pilot