{"id":10832,"date":"2016-01-19T21:04:22","date_gmt":"2016-01-20T03:04:22","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/hcstx.org\/?p=10832"},"modified":"2016-01-19T21:04:22","modified_gmt":"2016-01-20T03:04:22","slug":"6-lessons-being-a-military-pilot-taught-me-for-life","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thetacticalhermit.com\/index.php\/2016\/01\/19\/6-lessons-being-a-military-pilot-taught-me-for-life\/","title":{"rendered":"6 Lessons Being a Military Pilot Taught Me For Life"},"content":{"rendered":"

These are all tried and true Principles that every Armed Civilian can use..think about them and how they are all Applicable to you personally. -SF<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

\"Osprey\"<\/p>\n

Lessons from being a military aviator can make your life better, Carl Forsling, a former MV-22B Osprey pilot, writes.<\/h2>\n
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Being a military pilot has some skills that cross over to regular life and some that don\u2019t. In daily life, I have only an average sense of direction, for example. When my ex asked how I got lost on a drive when I could navigate a multi-million dollar aircraft just fine, my only explanation was,\u201dIn my aircraft I don\u2019t have someone shouting in my damn ear.\u201d<\/p>\n

At the same time, 20 years of flying aircraft like the CH-46E Sea Knight and the MV-22B Osprey does teach you a couple of things. To name a few:<\/p>\n

1. Aviate, navigate, communicate.<\/b><\/p>\n

Whether things are going really well or really poorly, you need to concentrate on what\u2019s important first. In an aircraft, the most important thing is to keep it flying, in my case that means keeping the rotor side up and the wheels side down. Until you\u2019ve got that under control, don\u2019t even worry about anything else. Then you can start to navigate, figuring out if you are where you need to be and making corrections to get on course.<\/p>\n

Only after all that\u2019s done should you try to tell anyone about it. As another clich\u00e9 goes,\u201dDon\u2019t drop the airplane to fly the microphone.\u201d On the ground, at perhaps the most literal level, this means don\u2019t crash your car while texting your friends to tell them you\u2019re coming. But there\u2019s a broader ramification, especially in today\u2019s communication- and media-driven world \u2014 we often worry more about when and how we\u2019re going to tell people about what we\u2019re doing than actually doing it.<\/p>\n

2. The most useless things in aviation are the altitude above you, the runway behind you, and the fuel you left in the truck.<\/b><\/p>\n

While flying, a lot of times it\u2019s easier or more fun to fly lower than safety dictates \u2014 altitude being important for both avoiding obstacles and for glide distance. When running behind, it\u2019s easier and faster to avoid topping off the fuel tanks or to accept a takeoff beginning at a taxiway halfway down the runway instead of all the way at the end. 999 times out of 1000, that\u2019s no big deal, but on that 1000th flight we have an engine failure or need to circumnavigate bad weather and we realize we should have done things the right way instead of the easy way.<\/p>\n

Oftentimes, due to sloppiness or laziness, we decide that it\u2019s no big deal that we\u2019re taking a shortcut. If there\u2019s a right way to do something, it\u2019s probably that way for a reason. Do things the way you were taught and the way you planned them before you got in a hurry. There\u2019s a reason you have to thaw the turkey before frying it<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Related: I wrote a letter to my 18-year-old self about joining the military.<\/a><\/p>\n

3. Follow a checklist.<\/b><\/p>\n

People are fallible. They forget things, they get tired, they get distracted. That\u2019s why pilots always follow checklists for important procedures in the aircraft. Even the simplest tasks are broken down by steps so that nothing important is forgotten. If you do important things the same way every time it will help you do things correctly, but it will also help you realize when something is amiss. In the Osprey, I checked that all the landing gear lights came on every time, so that the time my copilot didn\u2019t put them down we caught it. On the ground, if you pack your bag the same way for every trip, you\u2019ll be a lot less likely to forget to pack that charger you need.<\/p>\n

4. Chair fly.<\/b><\/p>\n

There\u2019s a commonly cited statistic that it takes 10,000 hours<\/a> of practice to master a skill. Whether 10,000 is the right number or not, pilots are always trying to get more flight hours than their organizations can give them. So pilots will practice every aspect of the flight that doesn\u2019t involve the actual airplane, so that when they get to the plane, they can just worry about the actual flying.<\/p>\n

Some student pilots will even sit in chairs, mentally walking through a flight while moving their hands and feet just as in the aircraft. In flight school, my roommates and I spray-painted the NAS Corpus Christi runway diagram onto the back lawn of our house so we could practice how to enter the pattern and make radio calls. This principle works for anything. You might not be able to perfectly simulate your next meeting or presentation, but you can talk yourself through it, or at least close your eyes and visualize each step of what you do.<\/p>\n

5. Know what you\u2019re going to do when things go wrong.<\/b><\/p>\n

Knowing your emergency procedures is a huge part of aviation training. Questions like \u201cWhat would you do if your engine failed right now?\u201d or \u201cWhat would you do if your oil pressure was at 20 psi?\u201d are constantly peppered at students. Pilots memorize basic steps for almost anything that might go wrong. Eventually, pilots start asking themselves these questions as they fly. A pilot who constantly asks himself,\u201dIf my engine failed right now, where would I land?\u201d actually improves the way he flies during normal operations because he is constantly making himself ready for the worst case.<\/p>\n

In everyday life, think about what could go wrong. Don\u2019t let that stoke a panic attack. Instead, figure out solutions and keep them in mind. If you know you can handle the worst case, that confidence makes everything easier. You are at ease while waiting to give your presentation because if your computer goes down, you know you\u2019re ready to do it off a whiteboard. If your car doesn\u2019t start, you aren\u2019t panicking because you already know which of your coworkers lives closest, and if that doesn\u2019t work you already have the train schedule linked on your phone.<\/p>\n

6. Preflight.<\/b><\/p>\n

Most pilots have some kind of preflight ritual or pattern. They check their survival equipment and they do a preflight inspection, or \u201cwalk-around\u201d of the plane. You don\u2019t have to waste hours, but taking a moment to check things before you use them pays huge dividends. As a pilot, you are literally being held thousands of feet in the air, traveling hundreds of miles per hour, by millions of parts working in unison that are built, inspected, and fixed by other people. It\u2019s a good idea to check their work. Even if they\u2019re good, they usually aren\u2019t the ones riding in it, and there\u2019s no interest like self-interest. I\u2019ve found plenty of things wrong with aircraft that could have led to outcomes from inconvenience to catastrophe if I hadn\u2019t checked.<\/p>\n

So many problems are easily avoided by just checking your things over before you start. Turn on your laptop and make sure the projector works before your boss arrives for that presentation. Pack, or \u201cpreflight,\u201d your briefcase so that you aren\u2019t looking for a pen and paper like a buffoon when you go to an interview.<\/p>\n

British aviator A.G. Lamplugh once said, \u201cAviation in itself is not inherently dangerous. But to an even greater degree than the sea, it is terribly unforgiving of any carelessness, incapacity or neglect.\u201d Pilots may be insufferable at times, but we do live in an environment that frequently seems to be trying to kill us. You may not ever fly an Osprey full of troops on a low-level flight on night vision goggles, but lessons drawn from those experiences can still make your life a little better.<\/p>\n

Read the Original Article at Task and Purpose<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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These are all tried and true Principles that every Armed Civilian can use..think about them and how they are all Applicable to you personally. -SF Lessons from being a military aviator can make your life better, Carl Forsling, a former MV-22B Osprey pilot, writes. Being a military pilot has some skills that cross over to…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false}}},"categories":[387,1247,397,398,1894,17,10,1898],"tags":[3883,3884,3885,3886,1582],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thetacticalhermit.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10832"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thetacticalhermit.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thetacticalhermit.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thetacticalhermit.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thetacticalhermit.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10832"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/thetacticalhermit.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10832\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thetacticalhermit.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10832"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thetacticalhermit.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10832"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thetacticalhermit.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10832"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}