November 24, 2001 - NFTC – A student’s point of view !!!

Like Forest Gump said “ Life is like a box of chocolate – You never know what you’re going to get “. That pretty much describes what it was like to be a student on one of the first courses starting Fase 2A at the NFTC program in Canada.  As any other student just about to start pilot training we were all pretty exited and we all had the greatest expectation to this new program, although getting through Fase 2A and 2B wasn’t always a dance on roses. Some of those things caused by aircraft serviceability, and others by people in the system setting very high goals, which were not realistic at the time.

We arrived midt August fit for fight and ready to go in spite of the fact that we had heard a rumour that the whole Harvard fleet had been grounded. Soon we were to discover that it wasn’t just a bad rumour. A few weeks prior to our arrival, 2 instructors on a mutual trip experienced a leak in the oil cooler causing the propeller to feather, which basically means that they had to RTB (return to base) for a dead stick landing. Luckily they managed to land the aircraft safely, but it meant that an investigation had to be initiated. This investigation took a couple of months where we basically spent time burning of leave, travelling around Canada and preparing ourselves for the final go.

Finally, after approximately 4 weeks of waiting, the aircraft were ready to go. A new oil cooler had been tracked down somewhere and had been changed in all 24 aircraft. We got through ground school and started on flight line at the beginning of December 2000. We only got a few flights in before Christmas, but absolutely better than nothing after the long wait. Being SO close to getting into the plane I had been looking at an unknown amount of times on the internet was great, but having to wait just another second was like torture, so luckily we managed to get up before burning up from inside. They must have seen the pain in our faces and felt sympathy for us. 

After Christmas the flying started to pick up a little more, but not quite to the extent that we had expected nor to the speed that was required to finish on time. The weather was now really cold and being brand new, the aircraft had never been flown under these conditions, so they broke down quite often. Having 24 planes (hereof 2 for spare parts) and only 6 – 10 serviceable to share between 60 – 80 students just wasn’t enough, so all intake of students was stopped and a couple of course were rescheduled. At the same time it happened that a lot of instructors were leaving the Air Force and we ended up being short on instructors as well, but a continuous effort from the ones left, kept the x-count as high as possible for the circumstances given. Good job !!!

All these things caused a lot of delays here and there and in short terms it caused a lot of anger and frustration in my mind, which made it very hard to strive for perfection when you only flew between 1 – 4 trips per week. My "Clear-Hood" Fase took more than 5 months a consisted of 18 dual trips including tests, plus 7 solo’s. There were periods where I didn’t fly Clear-Hood for up to 26 days, and my situation wasn’t even the worst case. In spite of that we all managed to move on to newer and more exiting stuff. When IF (Instrument Fase) and Clear-Hood was over with we started moving towards LL NAV (Low-Level Navigation) followed by FORM (Formation Flying). At this time the speed had increased a bit more and we got more consistent flying.

As we got a bit closer to the date we were supposed to finish Fase 2A, people realised that it wasn’t really going to happen, so once again our graduation date got pushed a bit further. Keeping in mind that the total course up to and including Fase IV was scheduled to take 17 months we slowly realised that this was never going to happen and my personal perspective of time started to dissipate and I honestly started to care less about time for every day that passed. I found that a date was only there to be changed so why bother worrying too much about it. At the same time the total time on course officially changed from 17 months to 22 months. 

At the end of July I finished Fase 2A and we had now gotten our selections. Of the 6 guys on my course, 5 of us were going jets and one was to go multi engine. I got one of the jet slots and continued onto the advanced course: Fase 2B - still on the Harvard. This course consisted of some advanced FORM, Clear-Hood and a cross country of our own choice. This Fase was very busy because we now had the new date to work for. I flew the whole Fase plus a cross country in about 6 weeks which was great and I could not complain about consistency anymore. Unfortunately we didn’t all make it in time so our already moved graduation date got pushed another 14 days. Lucky I didn’t care too much anymore.
After finishing Fase 2B, I got a Friday off and thereby a long weekend to recover before starting ground school for Fase III on the Hawk the following Monday.

Fase III is now one third done and is nothing like what I went through on the 2 previous Fases. We are not as many students as we were before and the aircraft seem to work a bit better. In spite of all this I must say it seems that things are coming along a lot better now that they seem to find their rhythm around here. The new students on the Harvard seem to be flying way more than we did (even too much sometimes they say) and I’m truly happy for them and for the whole programme. 

Studying to be a pilot is not always an easy path through life and sometimes you sit down and consider whether this effort is really worth it or not? Is there an answer to this question? My answer in most cases would be “YES”. When things are feeling the most depressing and the whole world seems to go against you. Consider this: 

By these words I’m going to end this little story by saying, that in spite of what I/we had to go through, I’m now very happy to have gone through the programme as one of the first guys, and I must admit that there is no doubt in my mind that in a few years this place is going to be the leading place for training fighterpilots in the world !!!

Best wishes from Canda,                                        Karsten Andersen (TAE) , RDAF