Fast Jet Performance

Matt Izzo - Weight Loss and Fitness Legend!

Matt lost 70 lbs 3 times before working out finally how to embrace a lifestyle based on fitness and healthy eating. Matt teaches busy people how to increase their energy & level up their lives with fat loss & sustainable lifestyle changes.

He's also training for Ironman Florida and is an awesome dude - follow him on twitter @mattizzo

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Eagle Dynamics | Digital Combat Simulator Interview!

A chat about the future of Digital Combat Sim with Ben Whiteley and Simon Pearson from Eagle Dynamics!

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SHOCKING EMAIL from RAF - This HAS to STOP!

Here I discuss the forcing of diversity into the RAF and the problems associated with doing so after an appalling email surfaced asking Squadron bosses if they had any pilots who were 'not white men' to attend the Top Gun 2 premiere.

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British Army Sniper - Craig Harrison

A chat with Craig Harrison, former British Army sniper and author of 'The Longest Kill'.

In The Longest Kill, his unflinching autobiography, Craig catapults us into the heat of the action as he describes his active service in the Balkans, Iraq and Afghanistan, and gives heart-stopping accounts of his sniper ops as he fought for his life on the rooftops of Basra and the barren hills of Helmand province. Craig was blown up by an IED in Afghanistan and left battling severe PTSD. After his identity was revealed in the press he also had to cope with Al Qaeda threats against him and his family. For Craig, the price of heroism has been devastatingly high. - Taken from Craig's book, 'The Longest Kill'.

Craig's Instagram, https://www.instagram.com/cohcraigharrison/

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Truth Bombs with Will Knowland, Former Eton College Master | The Patriarchy Paradox

In this video I speak with Will Knowland, former Master at Eton College who was dismissed over a video he published called the Patriarchy Paradox.

'A view on patriarchy to provoke debate: 'if liberty means anything at all, it means the right to tell people what they do not want to hear' (George Orwell). Use it or lose it.'

Support Will on his Patreon www.patreon.com/knowlandknows

'Truth Bombs with Will Knowland, Former Eton College Master | The Patriarchy Paradox' - Tim Davies, Fast Jet Performance (www.fastjetperformance.com)

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Future Pilots and Drugs | A Hard Road Story

In this video I talk about Rob who hit a huge roadblock on his mission to be a fast jet pilot in the RAF - what effect did it have on him and what did he do about it?

I also talk about DEVSOC, a humility and fitness community on Insta.

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Simon Akam, author of 'The Changing of the Guard - the British Army Since 9/11'

A revelatory, explosive new analysis of the British military today!

Over the first two decades of the twenty-first century, Britain has changed enormously. During this time, the British Army fought two campaigns, in Iraq and Afghanistan, at considerable financial and human cost. Yet neither war achieved its objectives. This book questions why, and provides challenging but necessary answers.

Award-winning journalist Simon Akam, who spent a year in the army when he was 18, returned a decade later to see how the institution had changed. His book examines the relevance of the armed forces today ― their social, economic, political, and cultural role. This is as much a book about Britain, and about the politics of failure, as it is about the military.

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The Problem with Military Flying Training in the UK

This can only be described as an appalling situation in the UK Military Flying Training System (UKMFTS) and very much in the public's interest.

72 Sqn flies the Texan T1 at RAF Valley, the same base that is home to 25 and IV Sqn (formerly IV Sqn) flying the Hawk T2.

In 2012, I was a Flight Commander on IV Sqn which was going through an almost identical situation to that which is highlighted in this Defence Air Safety Occurrence Report (DASOR). I eventually managed to convince the boss to get an external Human Factors assessment done by the RAF Centre of Aviation Medicine (RAF CAM) who came and conducted an Operational Event Analysis (a close look at flight safety).

This led to the cessation of all student flying until I could train up my instructors who, as in this report, were not getting the flying currency and qualifications they required and were suffering from significant stress in the workplace.

So, when the RAF tells me that they have learnt the lessons of UKMFTS during this time, this DASOR suggests otherwise.

Personally, I don't believe the RAF and nor do a high number of service personnel pan-defence who sent me the same report. It doesn't seem like 'people are your greatest asset', here but it does help to clarify the RAF's retention issues.

Lastly, for the author of this DASOR (who I do not know and did not send this to me), from an old grey bomber pilot - if you are taking flak, it usually means you are bang on target.

(I informed the RAF that I was publishing this DASOR. This report is a Defence Air Safety Occurrence Report (DASOR) delivered through the Aviation Safety Information Management System (ASIMS) which states that 'The proactive reporting of air safety concerns by personnel from across the defence air environment (DAE) is fundamental in maintaining continual awareness of the risks facing our people.' - www.gov.uk)

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Is Today My Last Day?

A Doctor in the frontline fight against COVID-19 emails to ask...

'My question is how does a person maintain focus and protect oneself mentally when living daily with the threat of possible mortality.'

...also some free self-hairdressing advice

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Lost Job Advice - What to Do if Unemployed

Email...

Hi Tim

First I'd like to thank you for your podcast, I'm not Ex-Military, I'm only 26, I don't know why but I find your podcast quite reassuring. I really like way your project isn't just about planes (even though I'm a pilot) it branches out and covers performance in general from an aviators perspective, something I have said but nobody believes me is that learning how to fly teaches you to be good at "life". Please feel free to use my email for what ever you want, I trust you and if you're kind enough to advise me on my current situation your words maybe of help to a lot of people especially now. 

So 2 weeks ago I was laid off from where I worked, I had been a welder working at this small company for the past 18 months, it was not my first job since moving to France but it was my first CDI (permanent) contract. They helped me a lot, for example buying me French lessons and just being patient in general so I'm grateful and glad things are still friendly, it's not their fault it's just 2020. 

Honestly, I feel great right now, although I am grateful for the help, the job bored me, my input wasn't "their way" and it just wasn't for me. I feel like I have a great opportunity right now because Pole-Emploi (French job center) will retrain me but my unemployment benefit and retraining only lasts a year and I want to make the absolute best of it. Obviously, I am going to take every French lesson they are willing to give me but as for new job I'd like to do something different.

Although I am open to any ideas, my criteria for my new career is simple, it must pay for me to keep making my flying videos. 

My options as I see them:

1) Aircraft mechanic - EASA part 66 requires a year of school (pole-emploi will pay for my course) but it has a long apprenticeship and the end pay is only about 25,000€/year. I love aircraft and I do volunteer on projects but I would prefer to earn money and homebuild a kit than take a pay cut. Would also require moving and buying a car, happy to do but that would cut into my flying money.

2) High school tech teacher - Will be tricky to get into here (I never actually finished high school, I have an engineering diploma though). It would be stable plus I like helping kids.

3) Car or truck mechanic - I already fix my friends cars, I like cars, I love getting greasy. 

4) ULM pilot - I see a lot of ads in "pilote et avion" magazine looking for ultra light pilots to tow banners and do tourist flights, would be cool but its all short term contract and I can't see ULM turning into much after (ULM hours don't count toward CPL), I want a new path not a summer holiday.

5) Entrepreneurship - In France Pole-Emploi offer assistance to starting a bussiness, by following their formula you can raise between 4,000€ to 8,000€ unsecured, I have taken courses on Entrepreneurship before and would love to one day walk this path. Even though I have business ideas evevryday, I can't think of one that conforms to both the 4.000€ budget and the COVID-19 restrictions. But hej if you have any ideas 😉

6) Find another welding job - I have been looking for other welding jobs, could even be better than the one I had but doesn't feel like a move forward. 

What do you think of my options? Do you know of any others? Is there something I'm missing or doing stupid? What comes to mind? Go nuts! 

Sorry to drag on Tim and I am really grateful if you got this far! It's a weird time for me, I feel both more optimistic and more lost than I did when I turned up here with a couple phrases of French and a backpack two years ago. 

Cheers

George

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Harry Tangye, British Armed Response Police Officer Talks about his Career

Harry Tangye - Former Police Armed Response Sergeant.

His book is here... GO GET IT TIGER!

https://amzn.to/32eTiOb

Author of 'Firearms and Fatals', Police Consultant, Public Speaker and former D&C, VIP, ARV and Traffic Cop.

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Red Pilled Fighter Pilot Reacts to Virtue Signalling Woke Keyboard Warrior SJWs!

Sometimes people get things wrong but, if you go against an RAF fighter pilot then you'd better bring your 'A Game' because they are trained for war and they will not back down!

Today we look at a complaint that was made against a fighter pilot in the RAF by someone who got upset at a factually correct, yet provocative, statement that they found in his email signature block!

Thing is, if you go up against one fighter pilot, you go up against them all!

Music under license from Epidemic Sounds

Referral code: https://www.epidemicsound.com/referral/kwxvnf/

'Red Pilled Fighter Pilot Reacts to Virtue Signalling Woke Keyboard Warrior SJWs!', Tim Davies, Fast Jet Performance (www.fastjetperformance.com)

(Please SUBSCRIBE, comment and share, guys and girls 👍)

Please consider supporting through Patreon - BESPOKE CONTENT & LIVE Q&As every month! 🙂

https://www.patreon.com/timdavies

SPIN Recovery Programme

If you are a MAN who is struggling and wants to TAKE BACK CONTROL 💪

I run the The Spin Recovery Programme for groups of men looking to make real ACCOUNTABLE change in their lives - fully online, no more than 6 men (10-12 weeks + LIFETIME support).

🔥www.spinrecovery.com 🔥

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MAILBOX: How to ADD MAXIMUM VALUE to Your Military Application

Warriors ASSEMBLE!

3 Emails:

1:23- 17 YO wannabe fast jet pilot

21:30 - 19 YO Passionless ATPL student

44:55 - Future Intelligence Officer overloaded with what to read

30:20 - RANT, lol!

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Do I 'LEAVE' Military Flying Training?

Tim,

I'm currently serving in the Air Force as a pupil pilot (prefer not to mention which Air Force). The journey hasn't been easy, not that I thought it would be, just been testing in aspects where one wouldn't expect and be able to prepare for. What I mean with this is; physically I knew it was going to be testing so I could train for it; mentally is so broad you can only prepare certain aspects but others catch you completely off guard; lifestyle comes with its own challenges but one can gradually adapt to them I feel; spiritually you can't prepare for but you must allow for growth in the most demanding times, which is super tough as one doesn't always see the bigger picture in the moment, so a lot of introspection is needed (thank you covid 19); emotionally is truly the most difficult one even more so during these tough times, as I'm not an emotional person and I struggle to share emotions if I do feel them. 

How does one prepare oneself mentally, physically, spiritually and emotionally throughout the different phases? How does one keep adapting to the ever changing environments? How did you as a pupil pilot share or offload some of your emotions and feelings? 

My time in the military has come with quite a few challenges. I applied in 2015 while busy with my 2nd year at university, went for selection that year March and failed the psychomotor tests as I was trying to be to precise and completely disregarded speed. After failing I was eager to try again but had to take a 6 months break before being able to. The Air Force called me in October that year to try again, I improved on my previous shortcomings and passed. November that year I went for my interviews, which I found pretty easy as I had been for job interviews before. 

2016 is where the hiccups in my military career started. I received a call early January telling me basic training will start next week and expect a call in the week with information on where, what and how. I had to reapply for uni in that same week, naive as I was I didn't reapply to uni cause I was off to the military in my mind. Let's just say they never called and I spent a year working, started a handyman company with one of my mates and worked for a NPO. 

2017 came about and I finally received a call the Friday while away on trip with the NPO, had to travel home and get all my things packed and ready to ship off the Sunday. Basics is basics, don't think I need to elaborate much there as you have walked that path before. One thing I did find difficult during that time was sharing the experience with my friends as they had not walked that path but with the older generation it was easy and our stories were very similar. Officers training is my least favourite course to date, as it felt like an absolute waste of time, I just wanted to get to the flying part. Also felt that most of the people I was on course with didn't have the leadership abilities needed of an officer and they were just there because they knew someone in the right place. 

2018 was ground school, which was loads of fun and challenging at the same time. It is where I learnt balance in life is key, I learnt it the hard way by failing 1 of the exams due to me enjoying my birthday weekend too much. June that year we signed our contracts and were made to believe we will start ground school/flying September that year. So off we went to the flying school to go work on the flight line for the time being. This is where the major hiccups start.

We ended up working on the flight line for a whole year, where we were fed the same story of you will start next month. When next month comes around, we get fed more less the same story of next month. After a year we decided to write a letter to be sent to home units so we could be closer to family, as it came out our training was only going to start in January 2020. 

I do believe the flight line is good for pupil pilots but they must be put there with a set goal in place and it must be made a learning environment. To give them a better understanding of how things work on the ground and what challenges the groundcrew face. Instead the groundcrew see it as an opportunity to boss the youngsters around, not beneficial to the organisation or a future officer who would need to deal with groundcrew in the future. 

We all went home for 6 months and spent much needed time with family and friends. Was also able to partake in sport again as this was difficult while under training.

The year 2020 started off so well, we finally started with the much awaited ground school, passed all the tests. I got the instructor I wanted, while working on the flight line it came out we went to the same high school. Started with sim sorties, was 2 sim sorties away from getting in the aircraft and then covid 19 happened. Training was immediately stopped and we were told to hang ten in our rooms. We had asked to go home over this time to see our families, the request was denied later. They then decided to start with aspect briefs so we could remain busy and take our minds off when we are actually going to start flying. We were a week into aspect briefs then a member in our work enviroment contracted the virus. 

It honestly feels as soon as we get going something comes along and hampers our training. How do you recommend keeping focused and refocusing the negative thoughts and energy? How does one stay positive even at the most difficult of times? How to stay current with the work, keep feeding the brain information but with no ouput and how to make sure you are not engraving bad aviation habits? As we are vulnerable students at the moment, still fresh in the new field with lots of information but no opportunity to expand on it and make sure we understand the concept correctly cause we don't have the interaction with our instructors at the moment due to lockdown. 

It feels as if my life has been on hold for the last 2 years. Where if I was just told the truth from the beginning I could have made a plan to go study or do something that is beneficial for me and the organisation. I don't expect smooth sailing but I'm slowly losing faith in the organisation and it is not great to have such thoughts, especially if this is where one wants to be. How does one keep faith and stop questioning what the higher ups are doing, even though they are dragging their feet along with your career? I'm aged 27 at the moment and have nothing to show, except my life experiences up until now. Would you recommend studying after completing pilots course or to go straight to the Squadron if there is no backlog there? I would love to go to fighters.

Looking forward to your perspective and thoughts. 

Thank you and all the best - M

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How To Go Shopping in Enemy Territory

Today we talk about minimising outings, planning a shopping trip and how to brief it. Don't be a statistic, you only have to make one mistake and you will have exposed yourself - stay safe! (20 mins)

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Miki Mclauraine - Being the 'Best Version of Yourself' through humility and sacrifice

Miki Mclauraine tells us about the power of self-discipline in overcoming alcohol addiction and using bad experiences to power personal growth.

Facebook: Miki Mclauraine

YouTube & Podcast: 'Sun of Sotep'

Alcohol Explained - William Porter https://amzn.to/2TLPCxW

Depressive Illness, The Curse of the Strong - Tim Cantopher https://amzn.to/39yyfHj

Kaizen: The Japanese Method for Transforming Habits, One Small Step at a Time - Sarah Harvey https://amzn.to/2v0XgvM

Japonisme: Ikigai, Forest Bathing, Wabi-sabi and more - Erin Niimi Longhurst https://amzn.to/2vQf5Ov

Want to TAKE BACK CONTROL? Email me at [email protected]

12 Week online course, fully led by an ex-RAF fighter pilot and flying instructor who knows about recovering from a loss of control.

www.spinrecovery.com

www.fastjetperformance.com

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Great Advice for Those Looking to Join the RAF/RN/Army

A great and well written email from an 18 year old who is doing some great work on himself as he attempts to get into the RAF as a pilot - GREAT ADVICE here!

'The best advice I have to give to any prospective pilots is this: be pragmatic in your approach to joining the military with healthy expectations and no small amount of determination. Try to enjoy the journey without fixating on the destination or at least value the selection process as life experience, otherwise you will never be satisfied with any amount of progress. However, it is important to have a destination to aim for; it gives your life purpose. I agree with your words on your Facebook page Tim, ‘there’s a cockpit there if you want it, but you do have to want it’.'

Link to ASTRONAUT aptitude test.

Yeah, I did them - OWNED IT, obvs ;)

http://www.esa.int/Science_Exploration/Human_and_Robotic_Exploration/Astronauts/Test_your_astronaut_skills_and_help_ESA

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How to Not Destroy Your Christmas – Walk Your Fine Line

I can self-destruct.

I have the power to destroy everything in my world, but I choose not to.

Some days that choice is harder to make than on other days, but I take comfort in the knowledge that there are other people out there doing the same thing.

I know some of these people well but some I’ve never met; I watch from afar, keenly noticing how fine a line they walk. Occasionally, I’ll read about someone whose done something stupid and I’ll note that they made a different choice that morning – I then briefly consider my own vulnerability.

I can’t ‘do’ average and this is a problem for me.

I’m not saying this to gain any favour, I genuinely revere those who can be satisfied with a film or favourite TV show on a Saturday night but I just can’t do it and recently I was asked a question on social media that got me thinking...

https://fastjetperformance.com/podcasts/how-to-not-destroy-your-christmas-walk-your-fine-line/

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Why 99% of People Don’t EVER GET What They Want

What would you say if I said you could be anything you wanted to be, right now?

Today.

A famous movie actress, an award-winning scientist or a sports star who just got signed to their favourite team?

All you have to do, is choose. 

Now, imagine you’ve been invited over to a friend’s house for dinner. You check your diary – you’re free that night and some of your buddies are going too, so you accept. As the night approaches, you think about what to wear, how you are getting there and who you might know.

The night arrives, you turn up and thank your friend for the invite.

They introduce you to the room and it turns out you know most of the people there. Food comes out, you all chat away merrily and eventually everyone leaves the table to carry on in the lounge.

You nip to the kitchen to fill your glass and when you return, you find yourself briefly without anyone to talk to. Just then, a young lady approaches and asks what you do...

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Don't Die at Work - How to Banish Boredom and Anxiety

​Uniformed Police Officers, wearing body armour and carrying Heckler & Koch MP5 submachine guns pulled tightly into their shoulders, stepped silently through the busy supermarket’s doors.

It was a hot and humid July day on the south coast of England; people were going about their weekly shop and the smell of cheap sunscreen hung lazily in the air. The store’s tannoy was calling for someone to help at the checkouts and people were busying themselves taking items from the shelves and placing them into their baskets.

Some of the shoppers who saw the two men enter, stopped and just stared - their eyes following their movement with a sense of foreboding curiosity; others seemed oblivious to what was about to happen. 

The policemen aimed down their sights - wherever their eyes went, the barrel of the weapon would quickly follow. With each purposeful, yet muted step, they slowly drifted apart as they made their way to the back of the store where their target had last been reported. People would later report a strange sense of calm that accompanied the men, a professionalism or a seemingly innate confidence.

They would also later note that these men were not as young as they would have expected; these guys must have been in their forties, their grey hair complimenting their darkened and sun-wrinkled skin.

‘STAND STILL! STAND STILL!’, came the shout from the first Officer as he focused his weapon on a young man holding a box of breakfast cereal.

‘SHOW ME YOUR HANDS! BOTH HANDS! DROP THE BOX AND SHOW ME YOUR HANDS!’, demanded the second man.

Weebly referral code... WE BOTH SAVE!!!

https://www.weebly.com/r/7Z3QEB

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Death in the Red Arrows - When the Display is More Important than Safety

(Re-recorded and shorted to 50 mins)

There will always be a lack of necessary external oversight of flight safety and organisational competence on the most visible Squadron in the RAF.

The Royal Air Force Aerobatic Team, the Red Arrows, have demonstrated that they are the most dangerous and failing squadron in the RAF, yet continue to not be given the proper resources to function safely.

The same recommendations continue to be ignored with the excuse that the aircraft is soon to retire, only for it to be extended.

If I had been flying the aircraft at RAF Valley on 20 March 2018, with the same experience and currencies of the pilot - I too would have crashed, as would any of my team.

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'Conformity vs Creativity' - Why Military Service Forces Compliance and Restricts Expression

Email from a pilot in military training who has frustrations with the RAF - don't worry, we all did too, but keep someone in flying training for 7 years and this is what happens.

Essays mentioned...

Quora

https://qr.ae/TWYcI8

FJP...

https://fastjetperformance.com/podcasts/fu-i-wont-do-what-you-tell-me-to-not-conform/

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Are Women Stopping Themselves from Having a Flying Career?

This is my message to young women who are questioning themselves over whether to follow a career in aviation.

Inspiring the Future - Redraw the Balance

https://youtu.be/qv8VZVP5csA

Wigston Review

https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/wigston-review-into-inappropriate-behaviours

When Fighter Pilots Cry – Women and the End of Vertical Ambition

https://fastjetperformance.com/podcasts/when-fighter-pilots-cry-women-and-the-end-of-vertical-ambition/

Why You Self-Sabotage – How Planning for Failure is Giving You Permission to Fail

https://fastjetperformance.com/podcasts/why-you-self-sabotage-how-planning-for-failure-is-giving-you-permission-to-fail/

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'Letting It Go' - When the RAF Says 'NO' - FJP

A 19 year old has a medical issue that won't allow him entry into the RAF as a Pilot and he's struggling to overcome this disappointment.

FJP advice inbound with a few truth bombs delivered.

Essay that I refer to about passion vs purpose.

https://fastjetperformance.com/podcasts/the-passionless-pilot-why-the-advice-to-follow-your-passion-is-inherently-flawed/

Join the Warriors and support on Patreon 😘

https://www.patreon.com/timdavies

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How to Not Get Trapped By Your Passion - Why Passion is a Dick!

A pilot from Brazil wrote to me after reading one of my essays on why I left the RAF.

https://fastjetperformance.com/podcasts/why-i-quit-the-greatest-job-in-the-world-the-curse-of-the-bovril-snail/

Also words on alcohol dependency and why it is built into my Spin Recovery Course.

Yes, I've also reactivated 12MAWs, too!

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Transitioning Out of the Military & Change

What is like to leave the military after 20 years and why is change so hard to do?

Well, it wasn't an easy road for me, that was for sure. I had some expectations that didn't materialise, they weren't true and it was pretty apparent that I was institutionalised.

Coming out of the Services for me was like going form ORDER to CHOAS *truth*.

This is why I am building courses for people who are also going through change events in their lives - more in the podcast.

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Restoring a Hawker Typhoon to Flying Condition!

Interview with Sam Worthington-Leese of the Hawker Typhoon Preservation Group.

The Hawker Typhoon Preservation Group (Registered UK Charity no.1167143) is overseeing the restoration of RB396 with the intention of returning the aircraft to flight powered by a Napier Sabre engine – something that hasn’t been seen or heard, for nearly 70 years.

Once complete, this legendary aircraft will be the only airworthy Hawker Typhoon in the world, and the only genuine combat veteran in existence. She will serve as a centrepiece for a Heritage Centre, established with the intention of preserving the history and educating the public with regard to this iconic and forgotten aircraft.

https://hawkertyphoon.com/

https://www.crowdfunder.co.uk/rb396

https://m.facebook.com/hawkertyphoonRB396

https://twitter.com/project_typhoon

https://www.instagram.com/hawkertyphoonrb396/

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Keynote Presentation | The Power of the Debrief | Sweden | 10 Apr 19

In this presentation to an audience in Stockholm, I talked for 50 minutes about Predicting Failure, Ownership and Just Culture, The Power of the Debrief and To React or Respond.

For the FULL film please go to www.patreon.com/timdavies and sponsor me at any level - this will get you access to the presentation.

For corporate engagement/speaking work, please contact me at [email protected]

www.fastjetperformance.com

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Passed Pilot Selection for the RAF at 19 Years Old - INTERVIEW

Interview with a young guy who just passed selection for the RAF for pilot.

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How to Lead Your Friends

Leadership when you have to be in charge of your contemporaries. Answering an email from a young guy who is about to enter the RAF as a pilot.

Be Bold, Be Humble, Take Charge, Set an Example, Set a Direction and Boundaries and look after your people's emotional health.

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Reflection on the Shoreham Air Crash Verdict

If a pilot fails to attain set parameters, as demonstrated by Andy Hill at the Shoreham Airshow in 2015, catastrophe awaits. 

Mr Hill was flying a Hawker Hunter jet when it crashed into a dual carriageway killing 11 people. In court a verdict of not guilty to the charge of Manslaughter by Gross Negligence was found by the jury.

We can all learn from the need to have parameters in our own lives, to plan ahead and to give ourselves boundaries.

In this video I talk about the importance of parameters, why pilots adhere to them, the verdict itself and what the defence's claim of 'cognitive impairment' actually means. I also cover my own experiences of cognitive impairment and those of a friend of mine who died in a fatal crash in 2011 and the subsequent investigation into his death.

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Depression and Emotional Health - When Things Get Dark :(

Today we cover an email from an 18 year studying a vocational subject, as opposed to the traditional A-Levels, and we talk 'Mental and Emotional Health'.

I also talk about some comments I've had, banning people from the website, and some books that have helped me a great deal. I also speak about my own dark times and issues with alcohol.

Essays:

Sanctuary: Not just the Home of Lost Fighter Pilots

When Fighter Pilots Cry – Women and the End of Vertical Ambition

Books:

'Alcohol Explained' - William Porter

'Stop Thinking, Start Living' - Richard Carlson

'Depressive Illness: The Curse of the Strong' - Tim Cantopher

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Will my Working Class Background and Accent Stop me Becoming a Pilot?

A young lady on a University Air Squadron writes in to ask me if her lower class background and working class accent will prevent her from becoming a pilot in the military.

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When Fighter Pilots Doubt Their Own Abilities - Leaving the Military

So, a buddy of mine has entered the civilian workplace, has been given responsibility but doubts whether he is up to the task even though he was aircrew on the Tornado GR4.

This is useful for those of all ages but especially for those around their 40s.

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ASK FJP - What Happens When you are Rejected for Pilot in the RAF?

Email from a guy who has been selected through OASC but not for the pilot role he was so wanting and had worked so hard for - what advice do I have?

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I Made a Mistake that Almost Killed Someone - So I Told EVERYONE About It

Back in 2013, when flying Hawk T2s at RAF Valley, I had to put a flight safety report in: 'Failure to apply parking brake resulting in un-commanded aircraft movement.'

This made the Station Commander and my boss VERY unhappy because I was saying that, in sorting out the many number of problems that were part of everyday life under a poorly performing UK Military Flying Training System (UKMFTS), I was not safe to operate.

That wouldn't normally have been an issue except...

...I was the most senior flying instructor on the base.

If I was struggling, then so was everyone else.

When you make an error - tell people about it, it does two things - it makes everyone else safer AND it disarms those who wish to criticise you.

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Transition Out of the Military - Chris Chambers, Proudhouse Properties ex-Royal Navy Pilot

I talk with my good buddy, Chris Chambers about what Service life meant for both of us and what we are doing now we've left. Chris was a Lynx pilot and deployed multiple times to sea. What does a life of conformity mean, do the Services intentionally repress or is that done to the individual by the individual. Chris is a good guy and is still giving back to the community and the RN.

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What's my New Job? Confidence Issues as a Pilot and Is Being a Fighter Pilot as Romantic as it is in the Movies?

In this episode I talk you about my new role as the Strategy Director for Aeralis who are making 3 military flying training aircraft which have 85% commonality of parts, making savings for the customer of 30% over 25 years - go and buy your spouse a nice gift, we just saved you money (20.30)

Or, alternatively you could use those savings to add capability to your front-line platforms, just an idea.

I also reply to a young guy going through multi-engine training and struggling with confidence issues and nerves (4.15)

And, I answer a Quora question on 'Is Being a Fighter Pilot as Romantic as it is in the Movies - What Are the Down Sides?' (13.42)

Picture of Aeralis B (Basic trainer) leading Aeralis A (Advanced trainer) - Round 2 of Investment is open (EIS approved), email me at [email protected] for details and get invited to awesome investor events, too!

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A Chat with a 23 Year Old Joining the Royal Navy to Fly

Today I talk with Karl, a 23 year old guy, who has been through both the Admiralty Interview Board (AIB) with the Royal Navy and the Officer Aircrew Selection Centre (OASC) for the Royal Air Force, completing both.

He wanted to fly and yesterday he called me with the results - did he get in?

Links to books we mention:

'Team of Teams: New Rules of Engagement for a Complex World' - General Stanley McChrystal

'Extreme Ownership' - Jocko Willink and Leif Babin

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Why the Best Fighter Pilots are Often the Biggest Failures

‘Fail the trip.’ I said to the flying instructor who’d just flown with one of our top students. 

He gave me a confused look.

I was expecting it – my demand, to him, was entirely unreasonable. We knew the student well, I’d read her flying reports from her previous two flight schools and from our own Squadron where she was learning to be a fast jet pilot in the RAF. She was excellent; her flying was above average in all respects – she was hard working and well prepared for her flights.

But there was a problem. 

I’d seen it before but it was obvious to me that her instructor had not.

‘Fail her trip.’ I repeated.

‘But she flew well, it was a good sortie, she’s a great student, you know this – why should I fail it?’ he asked.

‘Have a think, brother,’ I said, ‘she’s a ‘great student’ – where’s she going to be in six months time?’

https://fastjetperformance.com/podcasts/why-the-best-fighter-pilots-are-often-the-biggest-failures/

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Emergency Engine Shutdown and Forced Landing - RAF Tucano (with COCKPIT AUDIO)

I speak with a buddy of mine, ex RAF Flying Instructor, Jon Dunn about his emergency in 2007 - his engine failure led him to conduct a very difficult forced landing. We talk about 'surprise', shock, preparedness, training, criticism and leadership. A great guy and a deep thinker with some very profound advice - don't miss this one!

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The Nolan Principles - the Seven Principles of Public Life

How are these relevant to you? I got your back legends - let me talk you through it!

In 1994, the UK government established a Committee on Standards in Public Life. The committee was chaired by Lord Nolan, and was tasked with making recommendations to improve standards of behaviour in public life. The first report of the committee established the seven principles of public life, also known as the 'Nolan principles'.

• Selflessness 
• Integrity 
• Objectivity 
• Accountability 
• Openness 
• Honesty 
• Leadership 

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Stealing Aircraft for Suicide - Aviation and Mental Health

I talk about Richard 'Rich' Russell, the Horizon Air employee who allegedly stole a passenger plane from Seattle-Tacoma International Airport (SeaTac) and crashed it into the ground. *CAUTION*

Some disturbing audio between Richard and ATC who are struggling to talk him down.

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I'm on the Radio!

Have a listen to a radio show I did with Becs for Cosford Radio during their airshow! We cover careers in the military and how I got into it!

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Sanctuary: Not just the Home of Lost Fighter Pilots

It was a blinding flash of sunlight that forced my eyes to squint into the distance and my heart-rate to soar - but it was no good…

I’d lost her.

The dim outline of a fighter jet, that I’d been pointing at head-on just a couple of seconds ago, was now gone.

It’s the biggest fear of any pilot, losing sight of the aircraft you are about to fight - you can’t fight what you can’t see.

The temptation was to frantically search the sky in the hope she’d reappear but I knew it was futile.

‘Ninja Two - confirm ‘tally’?’ I called, checking that my student could see me.

‘Negative,’ came the reply.

I checked my instruments - 0.76 Mach - I knew she’d be the same and that meant a closing speed of over 1,000 miles per hour - fifteen miles per minute. One mile every four seconds. We’d only been five miles apart when we’d turned to face each other so quick maths told me that I only had two and a half, maybe three seconds before we’d collide. And, in the world of military flying training, an instructor killing their student is generally considered to be a ‘bad thing’.

I started to climb.

‘Ninja One is also ‘no joy’, levelling 15,000 feet… SANCTUARY GO!’ I called.

And, as I steadied my jet and dipped a wing, I saw my student flash past me in a hard right-hand turn - I’d failed to keep sight of her and had done something about it.

‘Roll out North.’ I called, ‘It’s a low sun today Beth, and visibility is poor - I think we’ll try that again.’ https://fastjetperformance.com/podcasts/sanctuary-not-just-the-home-of-lost-fighter-pilots/

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HIGH PERFORMANCE Interview for a Business Owner

A recent interview for a business owner and vet who has a Podcast called Blunt Dissection'. ----

Dr Dave Nichol

http://www.drdavenicol.com

On today’s show, I am delighted to be joined by Squadron Leader Tim Davies, a qualified fast jet instructor for the Royal Air Force.

Over his 20 year career, Tim has been a frontline Tornado GR4 low-level strike attack pilot, before becoming a fast jet flying instructor. He served all over the world and clocked up over 2,500 flight hours.

As an instructor he flew the Hawk T2 in an advanced flying training role teaching students and instructors how to use the aircraft as a weapons system. If that doesn't mean a lot then think Jester or Viper in the film Top Gun.

Tim has been responsible for training every frontline pilot in the RAF since 2007. At the last count that’s over 350 highly skilled operators. So, I hope you’re starting to get a sense of why I am so thrilled to have him on the podcast.

Anyone who has successfully flown military aircraft for 20 years and says "I'm just into studying failure, that's kinda my thing” certainly gets my attention.

Though at first glance war and healthcare seem unlikely bed friends, there are, on closer inspection, many parallels between our industries in the shape of operational risk management, safety, recruitment and training/development.

This episode is very granular, there are so many learnings woven throughout that I ended up listening to it no fewer than three times and found myself picking up some new insight each time around. So, I strongly encourage you to do the same.

Now, just before we jump into the episode, I just wanted to drop a quick word from today’s show sponsor which today is my very own VetX Graduate Mentoring community. If you are a practice owner and want to offer your new vets a greater level of support so they grow faster and stay longer with your practice, then jump onto my website drdavenicol.com/vetx and learn how we are helping graduates across the world thrive in practices just like yours.

And with that said and done let’s get into the show. Tim was a fantastic guest so it gives me great pleasure to bring you my conversation with one of the most experienced fighter pilots and fast jet instructors on the face of the planet. Squadron Leader Tim Davies.

Topics covered in this episode include:

1. How the RAF deals with training in high-risk environments 2. Why all successful pilots are made to fail and the earlier the better so they can learn to build resilience. 3. How he deals with mental health, growth and development in high-pressure roles. 4. Deviant practice and how it can destroy lives and businesses. 5. What qualities he looks for in pilots (hint - they would be good to select for in veterinarians too). 6. An acronym that turns failure as an experience on its head.

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Why Fighter Pilots know that Quick Reactions are for Losers!

‘I plan for the 6th order effect and I do it in about half a second.’ If I had heard that from anyone other than another fighter pilot, I would’ve laughed them out of the room but, from my buddy, Jim - I knew it was true. I flown with him many times before. He was the kind of guy that radios weren’t invented for - he just didn’t need to use them. I knew what he was thinking before he’d even thought it because we’d both been trained in exactly the same way. We’d gone through flying training together and even served on the same front-line squadron; his actions were fluid, predictable and, when leading other aircraft in dynamic situations, was very much appreciated by other pilots. But, Jim was in trouble.   He was explaining to a young Air Traffic Control Officer why he had gone against their direction - a serious offence. He looked over at me - not for reassurance - he was annoyed and I understood why. If you haven’t spent the last two decades flying military fast jets, you’d be forgiven for thinking that fighter pilots must have amazing reactions to do what they do.  But, it’s not true. http://www.fastjetperformance.com/podcasts/why-fighter-pilots-know-that-quick-reactions-are-for-losers Donations welcome at https://www.patreon.com/timdavies

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'Are We Going to Die, Again?' - The Power of Positive Thinking

‘Are we going to die, again?’  ​ That’s all my Weapons Officer (WSO) said to me when I asked him for the time. ‘Bro, the CHECK-IN-TIME, when is it?’ I repeated as I yanked an ejection seat strap from it’s housing and towards my lap. There was no reply. It was obvious he was busy in the rear-seat of our Tornado bomber and heavily pre-occupied with the complexity of this evening’s flight. It really was a ‘dark and stormy night’ and our plan was going to take us into some of the worst weather we would ever see on the West Coast of Scotland. The rain was pouring down and the winds were fierce. I was soaked to the skin from the ‘walk around’ of the aircraft I’d done pre-flight. The winds drove the freezing rain through my flight gear, rendering all of my paperwork unusable. ‘A bit wet are we, Sir?’ laughed my engineer as he helped me with the straps.  I flashed him a quick smile as the raindrops dripped from my nose and onto the cockpit floor; his humour would keep me warm at least until we got airborne and the real work began.

http://www.fastjetperformance.com/podcasts/are-we-going-to-die-again-the-power-of-positive-thinking

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Email from a Young Guy who Can't Get a Job

My response...

1. How did you motivate yourself and stay positive? 

Tim Davies

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Why this One Forgotten Email Proves that Millennials are the Luckiest Generation, Ever.

I like millennials.   There, I’ve said it.   And, before my inbox explodes with all the hate mail from my more ‘senior’ readers, let me explain.   I like millennials because they have so much potential and yet, they don’t even know it. They are today's 'underdogs' and, once upon a time, I was an underdog, too - all the criticism aimed at millennials could have been aimed at me. ​When I was young, I too was arrogant, self-assured and confrontational.     But, there’s another reason I like millennials.   Millennials have learnt from politicians that it's wise to have a healthy disrespect for authority and conformity and that makes them similar to other people I also like.   Pilots.   The thing is though, unlike pilots, most millennials haven't yet realised that just having ‘passion’ isn’t going to get them very far in life. And, that’s fine because it means that when they do work it out, they will be the ones who will go on to change the world.   Pilots understand this.   Whilst most millennials are still trying to ‘follow their passion’, there is a small cadre of young people who realise that it’s not the ‘following’ of a passion that is going to make them successful - it’s the ‘crafting’ of one.   Telling young people that only hard work and sacrifice will lead to success, is not always a popular message. That's because it’s not easy to communicate with a generation that feel let down by their elders but, a great leader will always find a way to get his team to 'go the extra mile'.   A great leader sacrifices her own time to grow her team.   A great leader uses the language of his team so he can be understood.   A great leader is very hard to find.   But, a few months ago I was forwarded an email from the Commanding Officer of a United States Marine Corps Harrier Squadron to his pilots. The email was so in-line with my own thoughts on leadership that I planned to write to him, thank him for his wisdom and cunningly find a way to make him my mentor.

Why this One Forgotten Email Proves that Millennials are the Luckiest Generation, Ever.

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FJP Live Event Webinar | January = Positivity

January will signal the start of the 12 months of experimentation - but in a good way and one that you'll enjoy.

We will talk about why we are programmed to have a NEGATIVE MINDSET and what we can do to understand it. We'll then look at what we can do to bring MORE POSITIVITY into our lives without alienating our friends and family.

Contribution is always welcome, come onboard - we GOT THIS!

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Let's Talk Failure - Why Millennials are Going to Change the World!

Here I talk about why I think Millennials are going to change the world for the better through their energy and by being disruptive. 

I ran a slide show alongside this talk, it's on the Facebook page if you want to watch the full video but, in all honesty, it's just me talking to a camera. I've included the pictures I used, below. Link to Facebook Video here... CLICK ME

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'Wing Girls' Movie (2018) Interview with Susannah Jane and Cabrina Collesides

Six female air show fighter pilots for the U.S. Navy, find themselves at the head of the squadron on a pre-emptive strike on North Korea (North Kiyung) - Interview by Tim Davies

YouTube Video here https://youtu.be/zesFvI1JdPM

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Why I Quit the Greatest Job in the World - The Curse of the Bovril Snail

‘Well, that's the flying done.’ I thought, as the jet slowly rolled to a stop. And, as I moved the throttle to the closed position, I knew it would be the last time I ever flew a fighter jet. I opened the canopy and, as the engine wound down and took the generator offline, my screens turned black. I could see the crowd walking out from the Squadron carrying the fire extinguishers with which to spray me, just like I’d done to many of my pilots before and yet, I felt little emotion. I had a last look around; it was a familiar and comfortable environment but one I knew could have killed me at any moment. Like the family dog you think you know well, right up until it bites you. But, I hadn’t been bitten. I’d flown these machines for many years and by luck, judgement and the work of some exceptional engineers, I’d brought them all back home. Nope, it all looked good - I stood up on the ejection seat and stepped outside to meet those who had come out to celebrate the end to my twenty years in military fast jet aviation. I didn’t regret a thing. ​

http://www.fastjetperformance.com/podcasts/why-i-quit-the-greatest-job-in-the-world-the-curse-of-the-bovril-snail

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7 ESSENTIAL Yet Overlooked Lessons from the Mayweather - McGregor Fight

It looked just like any other overhyped boxing match of recent times.  The older guy who had already made a tonne of money being challenged by the younger guy who was also looking to make…a tonne of money. But to many of us it was about so much more. A lot of guys will often say that their wife doesn’t understand them and, at 4 am on this particular morning, my alarm was telling me that I was about to become one of those guys.  As I shrugged off the disdain coming from ‘her’ side of the bed, I prepped a vein into which to inject neat coffee. Opening the laptop, I hit the link that I’d bought to watch the fight and crawled under a blanket on the sofa. I was ready. ‘This could be the greatest fight ever!’ I thought as I struggled to keep both eyes open. The fight was between two masters of their craft, Floyd ‘Money’ Mayweather and Conor ‘The Notorious’ McGregor and whenever you see masters at work you should be respectful, stop what you are doing and pay attention. Even if it means getting out of bed at some ungodly hour. If you missed it, don’t worry - I got up early so you didn’t have to. This is what I learned.

http://www.fastjetperformance.com/podcasts/7-essential-yet-overlooked-lessons-from-the-mayweather-mcgregor-fight

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The Underlying Brutality of Military Life

Email from Rob.

As so many have before me, I wanted to put pen to paper, (to coin an old phrase), to say thanks for your unwavering desire to help people succeed and to congratulate you firstly on what I believe to be very pertinent and grounding articles and podcasts, and secondly for what appears to have been a very successful flying career, (I say that because by now you may well have left the service and you’re still here to tell the tale, having undoubtedly made a big difference in a lot of young pilot’s lives).

I’ve so far listened to probably a dozen of your podcasts and YouTube clips dating back to mid last year, (2016), so I have no idea whether you’re still pursuing this type of coaching as your new vocation so I’ll no doubt discover this as I slowly get through the rest as my busy family life and job permit. Nevertheless, I’m impressed with your coaching style and how you get the message across.

After listening to your podcasts in the car on the way to and from work, it’s kind of inspired me to write a little of my story. Now I have no idea whether it would ever be read, or in fact whether it would be of any use to anyone like yourself, (as these stories must be ten a penny), and it wouldn’t bother me if it wasn’t - I’m writing it more as an exercise for me to bring it all back, and to allow me to then learn more from it. If you did want to read it, it’s not that long so bear with it............................

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All I Want is Excellence!

In this 25 minute episode I look at the Royal Air Force's Air Publication 1 - Ethos, Core Values and Standards' and what it means to work somewhere where excellence is the minimum standard.

I talk about the 4 Core Values of Respect, Integrity, Service and Excellence and what they mean to us in our day to day lives outside of the Service.

Basically, some workman promised that my driveway would look awesome and it didn't quite work out that way.

'Be a yardstick of quality. Some people aren't used to an environment where excellence is expected.' - Steve Jobs

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Answers to Some Interesting Qs - Email Clean Up

In this episode I discuss...

• Ethnicity and racial attitudes in the UK military
• Convincing family to support your application to join
• Persuading a selection board that you have changed
• Finding help on aptitude tests & pilot maths
• Thinking about your attitude - what should you say to the military
• The difference between corporate and military leadership ethos
• Boredom in the military (social life, housing locations)
• Ownership - THIS ONE THING WILL MAKE YOU AWESOME!

Have a great time, Warriors!

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Dull Day at the Office? At Least You're Not a Fighter Pilot.

Emotionally, and especially for a fighter pilot, it was going to be a difficult day.   It started with the fact that I hadn’t stopped the blast that killed them.    I was over 100 miles away staring at my watch, wishing time away so I could go home. Maybe, back at the airbase, it would be pizza night or I might start the next series of '24'.   You see, my world wasn’t a swelteringly hot cloud of dust and debris.   I didn’t have the wreckage from one of my Land Rovers spread over half a kilometre of a town, far from home, that nobody cared about. I couldn’t hear anyone screaming for help in my cockpit and, as I looked out towards the snow-capped mountains, the clouds were fluffy and the sun was bright.   I was so bored.   And, if anything, a touch warm - I turned the aircon down a little.   I don’t think I’d spoken to my Weapons Officer for over forty minutes - everything we needed to say had been said in the previous three hours. I could see my wingman a couple of miles away; Steve was new to the Squadron but solid. He was beginning to understand that our tour of Iraq was going to be anything but exciting.   'Exciting' for a military fast jet pilot is anything that involves death, either the delivery or the acceptance.    It’s part of the job and comes with the territory.​ http://www.fastjetperformance.com/podcasts/dull-day-at-the-office-at-least-youre-not-a-fighter-pilot

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'F.U. I Won't Do What You Tell Me!' - To Not Conform

You know the feeling you get when you’ve done something wrong and you’re about to get into trouble? You’re afraid of what people might say. You’re afraid that your actions may have hurt someone. You’re afraid that your judgement will be questioned and you’ll be asked to explain yourself. But you know what’s worse than knowing you’ve done something wrong? Being completely unaware of it until an angry Senior Naval Officer opens his huge office door and shouts, ‘Davies! Get in here - NOW!’ That’s worse. ​ And, as I stepped sheepishly into his office, all I could think of was how this giant of a man could end my career. Today.

http://www.fastjetperformance.com/podcasts/fu-i-wont-do-what-you-tell-me-to-not-conform

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Presentation Tips (Email Request)

What top tips do I have for presenting to people?

What is the 20/20/20 rule?

Why should you try to introduce yourself whilst standing on tip toes?

Why you should NEVER talk to the board!

Why are TED talks all 20 minutes long?

...and more awesome advice!

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Why Fighter Pilots Jettison the Baggage and Why You Should Too

I have a question for you. If you had to go to lunch tomorrow with someone that you’d never met before, would you feel nervous? It’s just like a blind date, I guess. But wait - there’s probably something that I should tell you before you commit. You are going to meet ‘yourself’ and there’s a catch. ​ http://www.fastjetperformance.com/podcasts/how-to-be-the-best-version-of-you-jettison-the-baggage#

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Why You Should Forget the Awesome, for Now

Want to know a pretty good way of killing yourself? Fly an aircraft long enough that you get lazy, let your standards slip and do something stupid. Highly skilled jobs need razor-sharp concentration but sometimes people lose focus. Look at some sportsmen who got to the top of their game and then messed up, think Tiger Woods or Lance Armstrong. It wasn’t their technical skill that let them down, it was their standards. I’m currently writing a book about decision-making and analysing how I have made decisions over the last 20 years of flying military fast jets. Some decisions have been intuitive, ‘do or die’ ones and others have been long, drawn out rational thought processes. In flying training, decision-making is not something you are ever formally taught and tends to be wrapped up in the catch-all of ‘airmanship’. ‘Airmanship covers a broad range of desirable behaviours and abilities in an aviator. It is not simply a measure of skill or technique, but also a measure of a pilot’s awareness of the aircraft, the environment in which it operates, and of his own capabilities.’ ​Although I might have hinted at ‘skill-fade’ as a precursor to a pilot’s untimely demise, awareness, environment and capability also play a part. I tend to fly less than I used to as now my primary role is office based. I make sure that contractors give the RAF the aircraft they’ve promised to deliver, on time and to the required specifications. What this means, however, is that when I do fly, I tend to see a ‘snapshot’ of flying that was previously not available to me when I was doing it full-time. And this interests me a lot.   http://www.fastjetperformance.com/podcasts/why-you-should-forget-the-awesome-for-now

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INTERVIEW: Psychiatrist on why the wrong food and environment leads to poor mental health and performance

Today I get together with Theresa who is a Psychiatrist and mental health practitioner to talk at length on diet and nutrition and how to increase performance.

Also covered are the problems with priorities, why we feed pilots poor food, alcohol (good and bad), clinical depression, the power of small changes, the detrimental effect of mass media, why a lack of mentors is creating a depressed workforce, suicide, PTSD and much more...

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When Good Pilots Go Bad - Mental Health Issues in the Air

It was all going horribly wrong. I was a military fast jet pilot and I was in a spin, things were coming apart and I didn't know what to do. I was losing control and all I could think about was the end. But, as I sat in my office looking out over the airfield, I wished that I was having a real emergency in my aircraft because the one I kept having... ...was in my head.   Imagine that there's an illness in the UK that the government doesn't fully understand. If you are a man, and you catch the disease, it will kill you faster than road accidents, murder and HIV/Aids combined.  http://www.fastjetperformance.com/podcasts/when-good-pilots-go-bad

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Why Pilots Think ‘BIG’ and Why You Should Too

‘EJECT, EJECT!’ screamed my student from the front seat of our military training jet. That got my attention. Now, there’s probably not a situation that requires more of an immediate ‘ownership’ of a problem, than in the precise moment when a pilot calls for an ejection to be initiated from an aircraft they are flying. If we were to break down exactly what would happen in the next few seconds, it might help us to understand the magnitude of my student’s decision. Initiating the ejection sequence is done by an aggressive pull of the ejection seat firing handle which detonates explosive miniature cord that is embedded in the canopy above your head. This canopy now explodes into millions of razor sharp fragments only a few inches from your face. Simultaneously, a telescopic tube with two explosive charges is fired at the rear of the seat which starts to move it up the guide rails activating an emergency oxygen supply. Personal equipment and communication leads are automatically severed. Leg and arm restraints rapidly draw your limbs in towards your body to minimise injuries that will be caused by your sudden projection into a exceptionally violent airflow. As the seat moves up and out of the cockpit, a rocket pack is fired by a lanyard attached to the cockpit floor. You are now subjected to 25 times the force of gravity which is so brutal that often your head will impact your knees should you not have time to adopt a proper ejection posture.

Continue...

http://www.fastjetperformance.com/podcasts/why-you-are-still-acting-small-and-what-you-can-do-about-it

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Why Fighter Pilots Keep the Maths Simple and Why You Should Too

I decided that I was not going to die today.   And with that I closed the throttle and, as the nose of my fighter jet lazily dropped below the horizon, I rolled out on a rough heading for home.   'Jester 3 is bingo, RTB.' I called over the radio, letting the other two aircraft that I was with know that I was heading home and on minimum fuel.   I was on fumes.   It's a daily occurrence when you are flying to one of the most tightly packed flying schedules in the world. In order to maximise the training value for the student pilots you have to stay in the air for as long as possible and that often means running your fuel down to frighteningly low levels. Think of it as driving past a fuel stop in the hope of reaching another one even though your car's fuel light has been on for the last 10 miles.   Except there is no hard-shoulder to park in should you get it wrong.   And the penalties for making mistakes become harsher depending on the discipline being flown. If you are flying a low-level navigation sortie, intending to pull up and fly home some 100-odd miles away from your base airfield, you calculate your required fuel to get home on the ground before you even get airborne. This way you can check that your fuel airborne matches the fuel you calculated in the planning phase when you were on the ground and your head wasn't trying to do a million other things. http://www.fastjetperformance.com/podcasts/-why-fighter-pilots-keep-the-maths-simple-and-why-you-should-too

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It's all my Fault and I'm Going to Make it Right

It was the sort of thing that only happened to other people but now it had happened to me. 'That's so wrong mate, I'd put a complaint in for sure - how dare he!' cried my friend down the phone when I told him my bad news. I'd been 'grounded' which, as a pilot, meant that I wasn't allowed to fly again until I'd been further assessed by a doctor.  I'd just had my annual aircrew medical and there had been a problem; I was over the maximum boarding weight for the aircraft by a few pounds. The doc said that he would have to inform the Squadron Boss and I knew what that meant.  But unlike my angry friend, I wasn't mad.  I was actually quite calm. CLICK HERE FOR FULL POST

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Well, You Got that Wrong - Let's Talk about ‘Military' Courage

His fist connected with my lower jaw, throwing my head back several feet from the impact.​ I didn’t feel pain as such but more of a huge disturbance, a very sudden and very real shock. I could feel something in my mouth, a tooth maybe, or part of one; I spat it out, I wasn’t going to need that anymore. My assailant stood in front of me, his hands by his side and a look of disbelief on his face. He had just thrown the hardest punch he had and, for some unknown reason, I was still standing. I’m sure that neither of us expected that. I’d been hit before but never with so much force and never with so little warning; I didn’t know why I hadn't fallen. If I’d had my mouth open it would have broken my jaw for sure; I wasn’t sure that my jaw wasn't broken, the adrenaline that results from such trauma doesn’t always allow the damage to be revealed for some time. He was stood there, looking at me. The colour was starting to drain from his face and the voices of his friends that had, until a few seconds ago been loud and eager, were now hesitant and hushed. I looked over to them; I was outnumbered 3 to 1. I knew that there was only one thing that I could do that was going to stop me getting a severe beating and it was something that I really didn’t want to happen. ‘This is not a good day for you.’ I said.  And with that, I swallowed hard and took a step forwards.

http://www.fastjetperformance.com/podcasts/well-cameron-you-got-that-wrong-lets-talk-about-military-courage

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Why You Self-Sabotage - How Planning for Failure is Giving You Permission to Fail

My team of instructors had just told me that they were never going to fly with him again and here he was, sat right in front of me.  He had no idea.  If you are a student going through military fast jet flying training and the instructors won’t fly with you then that’s it, you fail - it really is that simple.  ‘I’m not going to fly the test for you, you are good enough to pass this course but you just need to believe that you are!’ I shouted at him.  It was the first time I had raised my voice in over 5 years of teaching fast jet pilots.  ‘I don’t want to see you for the rest of the day. Don’t go to the gym, don’t go home and play Xbox - I want you to go and think of 5 honest reasons why you shouldn’t fly a front-line military aircraft. Tomorrow we’ll fly the trip again. You will pass it when you finally believe in yourself and not a second before.’  He wasn’t a bad student and he’d had a good flying course. He’d made some early mistakes and had flown a few trips again but his performance wasn’t out of the ordinary. He was just having trouble completing the last couple of sorties - it was quite common.  But often an instructor will get upset with a student. Sometimes a student will be uncharacteristically underperforming and this can be due to problems at home, a bad nights sleep or an indifferent approach to their training.  The first two we can deal with but the third just gets us irritated and instructors don’t get upset easily, we are some chilled out dudes.  http://www.fastjetperformance.com/podcasts/why-you-self-sabotage-how-planning-for-failure-is-giving-you-permission-to-fail

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When Fighter Pilots Cry - Women and the End of Vertical Ambition

She was crying. It happens, and I knew that the best thing to say was nothing at all. 'Fuck! My eyes just leak, I don't know why they do it, I'm so sorry!' she stuttered. Women always apologise and female pilots are no different. It’s a flaw they have that I suspect is borne out of living in a male dominated and patriarchal society that has yet to recognise them as equal. She was crying because I had failed her flight.  I’d failed her flight because she was unsafe. But, as I told her, 'We've all been unsafe at some point in our training, we just needed further guidance.’ A simple re-fly would do it.

http://www.fastjetperformance.com/podcasts/when-fighter-pilots-cry-women-and-the-end-of-vertical-ambition

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The Passionless Pilot - Why the Advice to 'Follow Your Passion' is Inherently Flawed

Something was very wrong in my aeroplane. My student had locked the missile onto the heat plume of the hostile aircraft and I could hear the familiar 'growl' signalling it's imminent departure. But nothing happened. We'd been flying for over 40 minutes and my trainee pilot had gradually become less talkative and less animated and, for someone who was heavily engaged in air combat with two other fast jets, this was a problem.  'You OK there, buddy?' I asked, as my student disengaged from the hostile aircraft and climbed skywards, out of the fight. 'I just think I could do it better, it didn't look right.' came the reply. But I'd seen this before and I knew it wasn't good. 

The Passionless Pilot - Why the Advice to ‘Follow Your Passion’ is Inherently Flawed 

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When Pilots Quit - Why We Must Stop Telling People They Are Valued Unless We Truly Value Them

I am expensive. Not that I have an apartment in Knightsbridge and wear Louis Vuitton shoes, no, but to the taxpayer, I am worth a lot of money. ​ Every trainee fast jet pilot in the last 7 years has come through a school that I have been an instructor on. Training each pilot has cost the taxpayer £4 million and there has been about 30 of them per year. Quick maths says that I’ve been involved in £840 million worth of training. And my own training costs, well I could only hazard a guess. There aren’t many instructors who train instructors (how to teach other instructors) how to teach the students. It gets complicated after that but, because I commanded the team that did just this, I know there’s not many. But ‘illusions of grandeur’ and humour aside, I turn 42 this year and I really need to start thinking about finding another job. Years of teaching air combat have convinced my neck and back that they would prefer to become mattress testers but I reckon they could still be involved in some pretty fierce typing if the right consultancy firm came along. My desire to stay in the cockpit meant that further promotion passed me by like a ship in the night but I am not bitter. As I approach 18 years of service I have only worn the shackles of a desk job once - in the job I am currently in and even now I still hold a cockpit for a couple of weeks of the month.

http://www.fastjetperformance.com/podcasts/when-pilots-quit-why-we-must-stop-telling-people-they-are-valued-unless-we-truly-value-them

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'Hit the Target, Don't Get Shot Down' - On Goals and Life

​​'Wolf 3 defends SA-11 bearing 020!' came the call from the back pair of our low-level 4-ship of Tornado GR4 bombers.   Our formation had stumbled upon the enemy Air Defences and they were not happy to be disturbed over their lunch hour.   'Well, there it is!' proclaimed my Navigator confirming what we'd both been expecting; 'I told you they'd get themselves killed!' he laughed.   I chuckled with him as I hugged the valley floor, pressing on towards our target which was now only 2 minutes flying time away.   'Wolf 4 defending SA-8 bearing 270, egressing to the east!' came a call soon after.   'That's the back pair out, that's not good.' I said, noting that there were just two of us left to hit the target.   We thundered on as low as we dared, trying to use the undulating terrain for cover. The wind over the hills buffeted our 26 tonne war machine making it hard to plot the enemy's systems onto my kneeboard.   'Mike,' I called, 'I've got an SA-6 looking at us right 2 o'clock - make it go away.'   Our Radar Warning Receiver was displaying the familiar lines associated with a particularly aggressive Surface to Air Missile system. I pushed the throttles forward marching the speed up towards 500 mph in an attempt to progress us away from the threat.   'That 6 wasn't in the brief,' he replied, 'Come left 30 degrees to put him on the beam.'   http://www.fastjetperformance.com/podcasts/hit-the-target-dont-get-shot-down-on-goals-and-life

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'Life is What Happens To You While You’re Busy Making Other Plans' - Death On the Roads

A quote that is often attributed to John Lennon was actually first used in 1957 in an issue of Reader’s Digest by a man named Allen Saunders. …and Mr Saunders was absolutely right.But he wasn’t the only person who knew what the quote meant.When I was young, my father was a Police Traffic Officer and an Accident Investigator. In-between catching speeding motorists or breathalysing drink drivers, he would sketch intricate portrayals of vehicle accident scenes using very fine pens and on tracing paper that was admissible in court. Investigating accident sites, especially where there had been a fatality, was never an easy task and some nights, after arriving home from work, he would take a whisky up to his office where he would set about drawing his day’s work.Often I would have a sneaky look at the plans that he would create. I would wonder at how a car’s skid marks would finish where my father had drawn a tree or how neatly he had sketched the outline of a motorcyclist but had somehow forgotten to draw some of the limbs.

http://www.fastjetperformance.com/podcasts/life-is-what-happens-to-you-while-youre-busy-making-other-plans-death-on-the-roads

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'If You Don't Make a Decision in the Next 5 Seconds... We Are Going to Die.'

Yep, my instructor had made it pretty clear that I had a choice to make and I was going to have to make it fast. Ahead of me was a valley full of low stratus and, above me, solid weather that extended up to 20,000 feet. The tops of the cavernous walls faded into grey as they were consumed by the low cloud and there was no way that I could be sure that we would make it through. The alternative was to climb out of low-level now but then the sortie would have to be repeated as I wouldn't be able to get back down to hit my target. I didn't know what to do. I was a student pilot flying a military fast jet at a height of 250 ft and covering 7 miles every minute - I had to think fast. If I pushed us into the valley, I might get just get through but if the cloud became too low then I wouldn't be able to turn around - I would be committed. And there was every chance that I might not be able to out climb the valley walls either which would mean certain death for both of us.   'Arrgghh!' I thought, 'Which decision do I take?'

http://www.fastjetperformance.com/podcasts/-if-you-dont-make-a-decision-in-the-next-5-seconds-we-are-going-to-die

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A Fighter Pilot's Thoughts on Managing Talent Through Empowerment

Let's talk about our relationships in the workplace whether that's in a fast-jet cockpit, a ship at war or somewhere a little more traditional.Because I think that there is a better way of working today and it's not by still going to... ...the office. For as long as people have worked together they've come to one single place to do it. Normally this is a building that has all the things that a worker needs to generate output. Computers, coffee machines, somewhere to park the car - those sort of things. These workers gather together and their managers tell them what they need to do to make 'stuff' happen and eventually an output is achieved, something is sold and everyone gets paid. But it doesn't need to be that way any more. ​The majority of people in today's workplace are 'makers'. They make something: a car part, documents, sales, clothes, TV sets or baby pilots. They 'do' something at work. And above these 'doers' we have managers who manage them. Managers are important - I know this because I used to be one. I used to manage 12 of the country's (if not the world's) most highly qualified and talented fast-jet flying instructors. I was responsible for all instructor and student training on the largest fast-jet flying squadron in the Royal Air Force.I would manage the instructors and they would 'make' new fast-jet pilots. http://www.fastjetperformance.com/podcasts/a-fighter-pilots-way-of-managing-talent-through-empowerment

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How to Create Insane Success with Just 3 Simple Steps

Did you know that some people come up with great ideas everyday that could earn them millions? It’s totally true.I had a buddy who came up with an app that he said was going to make him the next Mark Zuckerberg.He spent months refining his idea, built a business plan so he could get some capital together and kept it secret from all of his friends and even his family.He even started to learn to code so that he wouldn’t have to share his idea with an app developer.​He did everything right.Except one thing.

http://www.fastjetperformance.com/podcasts/how-to-create-insane-success-in-just-3-simple-steps

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The One Essential Piece of Career Advice that You Missed Out On at School

Want to know what we should've been told at school? Remember those career advisors who told you to do the right thing and get a steady job like your parents did? Well, they should have been saying something else. You see, every week I get a lot of people emailing me asking what their next job move should be.

• Should they join the military or the airlines?

• Should they change careers from banking to something more ethical?

• Should they start their own business?

 And my answer is always the same. But before I tell you, there's something you should probably know about me - when I signed up to fly military fast-jets, I had no idea what I was doing.Really, I didn't. I was just a young kid who'd seen planes flying around at a few airshows and thought 'Hey, that looks cool!' I'd built some model aircraft, seen 'Top Gun' maybe 20 times and thought that one day I could be Dougie Masters from the film 'Iron Eagle'! And that was about it. So, when people ask me what they should do with their career choices - this is what I tell them.

http://www.fastjetperformance.com/podcasts/the-one-essential-piece-of-career-advice-that-you-missed-out-on-at-school

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How I Almost Destroyed a £50 million War Plane and The Normalisation of Deviance.

‘RECOVER!’ came the shout from the back seat of my Tornado GR4 combat jet but it wasn’t necessary - I had already started to yank back on the controls as hard as I could! Our 25 tonne fuel laden bomber was now a treacherous 40 degrees nose down and shuddering madly as the airflow violently separated from the wing due to my impossible demands. As we broke through the base of the cloud, my Head Up Display was suddenly filled with a sickening amount of earth and fields. This was bad. The Ground Proximity Warning System sounded. ‘WOOP, WOOP! - PULL UP, PULL UP!’ ‘7, 6, 5 - that’s 400 ft Tim!’, called my Weapons Systems Officer. We were well outside ejection seat parameters and we both knew it. How had I got us into this mess?

Post Here

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How You Can Build a Solid Foundation for Change in 5 Simple Steps - Even If You've Failed Before.

We think about ourselves a lot. If you were stuck in a cage with a crocodile you'd think about that a lot too but you're not stuck in a cage with a crocodile. But you are stuck with you. And, unlike crocodiles, we humans are easily deluded by the next great thing - I mean, ‘Everything will be OK when…’ 'We get the new car…' 'We get the new job…' 'We move to a better area…' We imagine that when these things happen, everything will be OK. But it won’t. It won’t because we often use these things to replace an emptiness inside of us, a foundational fragility, and if that emptiness isn’t addressed then no amount of cars, promotions or houses will make us happy.

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Arguments in the Cockpit - How to Have Better Relationships and be Liked at Parties.

We all know that pilots are an overconfident bunch. You've seen the airline captain wearing sunglasses as he walks through the airport terminal or you've met the pilot who insists on telling you what he does for a living before you've even asked.​But pilots are also flawed in other ways. The problem stems from the fact that normally pilots have always been the best at what they've done when growing up. So much so that they will even avoid or stop doing something that they are not very good at just because they are not very good at it. If they played rugby in the first team at school but suck at playing the guitar then their focus will drift more onto their sporting, rather their musical, endeavours. Pilots want to solve things and be impressive to people and if they can't then they quickly lose interest - this can come across as egotistical. But they are not alone with their narcissistic attributes. Who has never said 'When I lose some weight, get a new car or climb Mount Kilimanjaro people will think I'm awesome and I'll have loads of friends!' Pilots want to impress people, of course they do. But so does everybody else. But what if I said that the secret to being liked was not to be impressive but to be impressed? One of the strangest things that I've found is that the less I say at parties, the more people talk about me. If I meet someone and they talk about themselves all evening, I'll hear back the next day that they think that we had a great conversation. Even though they only spoke about themselves all night! 

Read more here...

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Tread Carefully on the Road to Success - But Make Sure that it is YOUR Road.

We are all blinded by success, now more than ever. Never before have we been able to see such meteoric rises of nobodies to somebodies who are able to attain significant wealth and status on the way.  Take Zoe Sugg aka Zoella. Zoella is a 25 year old YouTube vBlogger who started her channel 6 years ago and has over 7 million followers. As of 2015 her net worth is thought to stand at an incredible £3 million. Or the boy band 'One Direction', just some guys that entered a singing contest and who are now officially the richest boy band in history - each of them worth £15 million! I've flown fast jets now for 17 years but I don't consider myself a success, I mean - I'm not an astronaut, now, surely that would mean I was successful?

http://www.fastjetperformance.com/podcasts/tread-carefully-on-the-road-to-success-but-make-sure-that-it-is-your-road

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Fast Jet Pilot gets an Office Job! - 6 Tips for Better Communication in the Workplace

So, I've just swapped the cockpit of my military fast jet for a desk in an office and, WHOA... ...Am I learning about communication! Or the lack of it. I'm probably just not familiar with all of the nuances yet, I mean - I've only been there a month or so. But I've become fascinated with the way people exchange information and, as I still fly a few hours each month, I've been comparing how pilots communicate with how it's done in the office. Communication in the Cockpit. This week I had to check one of my flying instructors on his annual flying ability test. This instructor is one of my top guys and an ex-single seat ground attack pilot. His flying was excellent but there was just something he did that caught my eye.

READ MORE :)

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The Aggregation of Marginal Gains - Why Improving Every Small Thing by 1% Creates Massive Change in Your Life.

So I haven't signed up to the new gym yet and I'm probably not going to start that language course I looked at but I might learn the sousaphone - except I don't think I can commit to it right now because, you know, I'm busy with other really important stuff.​Successful author, coach and motivational speaker Tony Robbins believes that people have the ability to achieve huge changes in their lives but that they are limited by the lack of belief in their own potential.

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Familiarity Kills Pilots - A Lesson for us all!

We’ve all done it and if you haven’t you probably know someone who has.

You're having a conversation, driving home from work or watching TV when you suddenly realise that you can’t remember the last 5 minutes of what you’ve been doing.

A recent survey suggests that 23% of all car accidents happen within 1 mile of the owner’s house and over 50% within 5 miles.

It's fairly obvious that familiarity is causing problems for drivers and, the resulting inattention, costly insurance claims.

It's no different with pilots either but the results can be a lot, lot worse.

In aviation, inattention is often referred to as ‘low-arousal’ and is an issue that has caused many a pilot's demise. I was recently caught out by this and it made me realise that I needed to re-evaluate my approach to flying.

I’ve been flying for 17 years and have over 2,500 hours, mainly fast jet. To an airline pilot this figure would be laughable but, as any Service pilot knows, the variation of content in military fast jet flying makes this number significant.

But although the content on each flight might be diverse, the departure and recovery to the airfield can become very routine and it was on one such recovery that I was caught out.

For Full Article Click Here

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How Smart People Gain Massive Success using 3 Key Essentials - Hint: Talent isn't one of them!

When 25 year old Taylor Swift sold her 40 millionth album and became the youngest woman ever to be included on Forbes' '100 Most Powerful Women' list, it would be easy to think that her success could be put down to one thing.Talent. I mean, that's why she made it, right? If you'd had her talent then maybe you could've been a super-successful recording artist with millions in the bank.It's just not fair that she has all of the talent and the rest of us have none!But what if I told you that talent was pretty much irrelevant to her success?And, what if I also said that there were more important factors at play and that they are accessible to everyone?You see, most people think that they can't be successful because they lack talent. They aren't as talented a singer as one of their friends or they have a mate at work who has a talent at giving presentations and is always getting noticed by the boss. Maybe they've tried to write a small novel but it reads nothing like their favourite Stephen King book because they just don't have his talent.But here's the thing - these people are wrong.

http://www.fastjetperformance.com/podcasts/how-smart-people-gain-massive-success-using-3-key-essentials-hint-talent-isnt-one-of-them

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Are You Really Going to Make it on Your Own?

Have you ever wondered why you missed that promotion at work or why another person always gets the great assignments?

You work as hard as the next guy but he always seems to get the breaks!Maybe you have some great ideas and, if only someone would listen to you, your workplace could be awesome and so much more productive.What if I said that I had an answer for you...And it’s been around forever.You see, most of the emails I receive from my readers are not about the articles I've written or pictures I post. No, the majority of people write to me for career guidance or to ask my advice on a life or business decision they're making.If I was to offer one piece of advice to you and all of these individuals, it would be this.Get a mentor.

http://www.fastjetperformance.com/podcasts/are-you-really-going-to-make-it-on-your-own

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The Fighter Pilot School of Winning - How You Can Use Aggression to Achieve Success!

What's wrong with the youth of today? Recently we had some young employees doing a project for our civilian partners and when they had finished, and the contract had been signed, they all left the company even rejecting an increased salary offer to stay! They went and found work with another company having only worked for our partners for 18 months. Speed and agility are key in today’s fast moving workplace and this was what these young employees knew. They were not prepared to risk leaving their future employment chances to someone else and were aggressive in their planning.  I had to admire them - they knew the project they had done would look good on their CVs and now they were off to get more experience from somewhere else.

'There is no such thing as security. You have to be aware of your options and not be afraid of change or failure. In fact, change is vital.’ – Captain Richard Champion de Crespigny, QF32

It is exactly the same in air combat - at the merge, he who manoeuvres first dictates the fight. What this means is that when two aircraft meet head on, at speeds of up to Mach 1.5, the pilot that makes the first move will have the other pilot reacting to what they have done.

http://www.fastjetperformance.com/podcasts/the-fighter-pilot-school-of-winning-how-you-can-use-aggression-to-succeed

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5 Essential Productivity Tips to Fighter Pilot Performance!

You've heard of the saying 'If you want something done, give it to a busy person' but often it seemed that the more I did, the less I actually got done. My three year tour as a Senior Executive on, what was arguably at the time, the busiest fast-jet squadron in the RAF, was a brutal and demanding tour with high workload and long days.  In effect we were building a brand new squadron with a brand new aircraft. The infrastructure was also new as were the civilian partnerships that we had entered. I pretty much worked myself into the ground but towards the end, ironically after I'd taken my option to leave the Service, I managed to seek out some working practises that helped to lower my stress levels and increase my productivity.So, 5 quick tips for a more productive and less stressed you! 1.         Stop procrastinating.  As I found out, when you have so much work to do it can be hard to know where to start. Just as you're getting on top of one thing another task comes in! In 'The Pomodoro Technique', author Francesco Cirillo recommends allocating a chunk of dedicated and focused time to concentrate solely on one particular task; he calls these chunks 'Pomodori', the Italian plural for tomato, as it was a kitchen timer, in the shape of a tomato, that he first used to develop the technique. He recommends that you have a timer (kitchen timer or phone) set for between 20 to 40 minutes (he suggests 25) and, for that length of time, you solely concentrate on one task. When you have finished the 'pomodori' you can go and take a 5 minute break, make some tea, check emails etc. But the 'pomodori' must be uninterrupted - he recommends being firm with people that might try to steal your time during this period by telling them that you'll call them back later. He also suggests getting a timer that clicks as it counts down - it'll remind you that you are in the 'focus zone'. A 'TED' talk is 18 minutes long for a reason - it's because that's realistically the longest time that we can concentrate for before getting 'Candy Crush' withdrawal symptoms and ruining our focus.....

http://www.fastjetperformance.com/podcasts/5-essential-productivity-tips-to-fighter-pilot-performance

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How Fighter Pilots Deal with Change and Regulation

It's a familiar story to all of us. We're struggling with a heavy workload when along comes the boss and hands us yet another task - we roll our eyes and accept it. We might even rebel a little and let our boss know how busy we are and we might even believe him when he says that he 'Understands' and continues with 'don't rush it - Friday will do!'If your workplace is anything like mine, then you are probably having to ‘do more with less’. Our bosses are output driven, they have to be, and they will attempt to maximise the output whilst minimising the costs. Employees' salaries are normally the largest cost for any business which is why, when times are hard, jobs are the first thing to go. Recently, when UK airline Monarch transitioned from being a traditional charter carrier to a low-cost airline, they cut 30% of their staff and reduced the pay of those who remained. Leaning processes are a key management tool, more so in hard times it might seem, and are deemed essential for a company to remain competitive. All well and good, you might think, but how do we know when it’s gone too far?In UK military aviation we operate under the Military Aviation Authority (MAA) and, having faced a series of recent financial cuts, find ourselves having to think up innovative processes to do 'more with less' whilst under this increased regulatory framework.

http://www.fastjetperformance.com/podcasts/how-fighter-pilots-deal-with-change-and-regulation

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Massive Formation Flying for the Queen and Embracing Failure as the True Route to Success

In early 2012, I was flying with a good friend of mine when I made a mistake that very almost killed us both. I was an accomplished jet pilot, as was my buddy, but something happened that was totally unexpected and almost resulted in the loss of, not one, but two of the RAF's very new and expensive aircraft and four highly experienced pilots.We were practising for a display that would be conducted in front of the Queen for her Diamond Jubilee Flypast. We were being led by an experienced display flight leader who had recently arrived at RAF Valley and was an ex-Red Arrow. His task - getting 27 Hawk pilots from the RAF and the RN, across four squadrons, to perform as a huge formation that would form the letters 'EIIR'. The practises were hard and the learning new. It was obvious that in order to be successful in front of the Queen, we were all going to have to embrace failure as a learning tool and many times over.It was going to be hard work and in essence, to create success in front of the Queen, this work-up was going to have to suck.Most people, and especially pilots, concentrate too much on the 'what ifs' in life. What if I'm not good enough? What if I fail? What if they laugh at me?Pilots all fear failure. For them, failure is a constant as everyday they are routinely being assessed by their peers. In fact, as most pilots know, to ultimately fail can result in their death or worse, that of one of their buddies. But pilots are still able to climb into the cockpit, everyday, even though they have a fear of failure. You see failure comes in many different forms and for many different people. I know people that cannot and will not speak in front of a crowd, even if they know them really well - public speaking is a human's number one fear, our second biggest fear is death!http://www.fastjetperformance.com/podcasts/massive-formation-flying-for-the-queen-and-embracing-failure-as-the-true-route-to-success

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SAM Dodging Over the Nevada Desert - Why Low-Level Flying is Still Necessary

Of my friends and colleagues that have been killed in military aircraft they have all had one thing in common - they were all in control of the aircraft when they died. Low-level flying is an unforgiving business and it doesn't take much to get it wrong. This is why we have currencies, proficiencies and rules, to make sure that we are safe to operate when close to the ground.You see, humans are exceptionally poor at multi-tasking and pilots are no different. Everybody thinks that pilots must be good at it but nothing could be further from the truth. Pilots don't multi-task - they just prioritise a task list exceptionally quickly. When a pilot is flying they try to have as clear a mind as possible, I liken it to a blank piece of paper or a whiteboard on an office wall. When a task comes in, such as a radio call, radar contact or something that requires an unplanned action from the pilot, it needs to be dealt with as efficiently as possible. It's like the task is automatically written onto the whiteboard but only one task can fit at any one time; the pilot must deal with it as fast as they can so that they can clear the whiteboard for the next task. Sometimes this might mean that the task gets half done or postponed as the next task that has come in is deemed more important; this is called prioritisation. If one task is ongoing when another task comes in then the pilot will attempt to compartmentalise the tasks, putting them both onto the whiteboard - in this case both tasks are now being done poorly. If another task comes in and the pilot cannot clear the whiteboard quickly enough then task-saturation can occur.It is at this point that most of my friends have been killed. The experienced pilot recognises task saturation approaching and applies the mantra 'Aviate, Navigate, Communicate'. For most pilots hearing is the first sense we lose when we become overloaded, you miss a radio call. Personally, when I stop being able to effectively communicate with my formation or with air traffic, I recognise this as my first indication that all is becoming too much. At this point, especially if I am at low-level, I prioritise the flying of the aircraft and step my height up a little.I prioritise the flying.'You start with a bag full of luck and an empty bag of experience. The trick is to fill the bag of experience before you empty the bag of luck.' I have a friend who was the rear-seater (WSO) in a Tornado GR4 that crashed on the east coast of England. They were flying at 250 ft when his aircraft hit a flock of birds and lost power to both of the engines. The pilot was so involved in trying to get at least one engine relit that my friend had to initiate the command eject system removing them both from the aircraft seconds before it stalled, quickly lost lift and impacted the ground. The subsequent inquiry concluded that if the ejection had been over a second later then they would have both been killed.http://www.fastjetperformance.com/podcasts/sam-dodging-over-the-nevada-desert-why-low-level-flying-is-still-necessary

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Experience or Education - How Darts and a German Race Track Can Get You into the Top 1.24%

If I gave you some darts and stood you in front of a dartboard for a year, could you become the next Phil ‘The Power’ Taylor with just practise or would you need the help of someone who had some knowledge of darts? This is exactly what bored office worker Justin Irwin did in 2008. He decided that he wanted to excel at a sport but he had a problem; he was 35 and past his sporting prime.So he picked darts. He quit his £50,000 job to practise full time and prepare himself for a life of darting glory - what he found out, though, might surprise you. But before we talk about Justin's experience, let’s take the question further.  What if you could only have one of those options for a whole year - practise OR knowledge? You have a choice and in a year's time you will be entered into the prestigious Lakeside World Darts Championships in Surrey. Now, you could either stand in front of the dartboard for a year and practise for 8 hours a day but with no help whatsoever OR never throw a dart for the whole year but have every expert in the world demonstrate their technique, talk you through it, watch expert videos and give you their undivided expert advice 24/7. Which would you choose?

http://www.fastjetperformance.com/podcasts/experience-or-education-how-darts-and-a-german-race-track-can-get-you-into-the-top-124

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'Don't Talk to Me in the Corners' - Lewis Hamilton’s Guide to Multitasking & Focus

If you are reading this then you are most likely to be a high-achiever or on the road to becoming one. You see, only 10% of people read or listen to material with the sole intent of self-improvement. You probably read productivity blogs, business magazines or listen to industry leaders, in your particular employment sector, talking about the future so that you can stay one step ahead of your competition. Whatever you are doing, you are doing it because you want to be more informed and, in doing so, become more productive. As you’ve most probably noticed, the top high-achievers seem to be calm, confident and, above all, incredibly productive. The amount they write, talk and accomplish is phenomenal. They seem to be able to do it all - they have truly mastered the art of multitasking. How can you be as awesome at multitasking as them, for surely here lies the holy grail of productivity? Or does it? Formula 1 World Champion, Lewis Hamilton, does not multitask.At this year’s Malaysian Grand Prix, on Lap 41, Lewis was in second place and struggling with the team’s current tyre choice and pit stop strategy. He’d recently used the radio to complain about the tyres when suddenly his team accidentally broadcast a message from Mercedes technical director, Paddy Lowe. Hamilton responded: “I can hear you. I don't know what I'm supposed to be doing. Paddy says I might be doing another stop!”There was confusion in the cockpit.But Lewis kept on pushing - he had only 14 laps in which to catch the race leader and he was only 14 seconds behind. He was focused.And then, another radio call came through. It said that if Hamilton kept pushing he could catch Vettel with 5 laps remaining.But that one radio call almost ended the race for Hamilton. He was entering a corner when the radio call came and his attention was momentarily diverted - he struggled to keep the car on the racetrack.‘Don’t talk to me through the corners! I nearly just went off!’ he responded to his race engineer.Yes, real world champions - they don’t multitask. Those at the top, the high-achievers we all aspire to be, they do one thing at a time and they do it very well.You see multitasking actually does two things to your brain; it makes you less productive and it reduces your Emotional Intelligence (EI).Stanford University professor Clifford Nass, who studied the social and psychological impacts of media, says that multitasking and the swapping back and forth between different types of interactive media makes us less not more efficient."The research is almost unanimous, which is very rare in social science, and it says that people who chronically multitask show an enormous range of deficits, they're basically terrible at all sorts of cognitive tasks." says Nass.He says that not only are those who multitask less productive than those who focus on one task at a time but they tend to be socially and emotionally immature and find it hard to read people in social situations. They also prefer to hide behind a text or email rather than call someone.When was the last time you called someone instead of sending them a text?Multitasking lowers your performance because your brain can only focus on one thing at a time, your brain works sequentially, so when you attempt to do two things at once you perform badly at both.Let’s look at some everyday examples.

• Watching TV whilst eating and using your phone or tablet to look something up on the internet.

• Writing an email whilst in a business meeting.

• Texting whilst driving.

• Working out whilst listening to music and reading a book.

• Cooking, talking on the phone, texting, watching YouTube and uploading photos of the awesome meal you’ve just made.

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Management over Leadership - An Acceptable Inevitability or Purposeful Neglect?

Management over Leadership - An Acceptable Inevitability or Purposeful Neglect?

When writing I often find it all too easy to end up widely off message narrating a vitriolic polemic about some imagined injustice in the world - this post was no different. I, like so many in the military, have strong views on leadership and we don't tolerate those who shirk that responsibility lightly. But that got me thinking - why do we place such importance on leadership; maybe the problems lies with an individual's expectation of leadership where management might have been more appropriate?

Command is the whole complex business and a position enshrined in law;

leadership is about people and turbulence; management is about stuff and

numbers’. - Watters & Horton, cited in Leadership in Defence

So if leadership is about people and turbulence, and management is about stuff and numbers, leadership just sounds so much more interesting, doesn't it? As a member of the Chartered Management Institute (you join these things when on resettlement) I receive their magazine 'Professional Manager' through the post every quarter - it makes me cringe every time I see it. The truth, however, is that it is an interesting read and this spring's edition contains articles on the value of an MBA, how email lost its way and the rising stars of the business world. It interests me as it parallels the work I do in the military but something about the term 'manager', especially if I apply it in a military context, still makes me shudder.

You see, in the military to be seen as a manager is to be thought of as uninspiring, uncharismatic and output driven. It is true that an officer will have very little formal leadership training outside of initial officer training and has to rely on learning through osmosis from those above. It could be argued that an officer should be resourceful and seek out qualifications and publications in order to prove their own leadership development; they shouldn't expect to be spoon-fed. I've always felt that, away from a theatre of operations, it can be hard to demonstrate functional leadership especially when you may not have an adversary to rally the troops against. Back at home the days flow one into another, the task is routine and the job becomes dull - yes, management can all too quickly become the order of the day.

An important thing to acknowledge early in this post is that, as abhorrent is the thought that senior military officers might be more akin to being managers than leaders, an understanding that this might actually still serve a very real purpose is important. For example, in flying training, the hierarchy is responsible for using of all of their resources in order to get students to finish on time to meet their next course start dates. If they miss the start dates then front line manning will suffer and adjustments will have to be made that will not be conducive to a steady, well-trained and functional war-fighting machine. So although a desire for inspirational leadership, through all levels of military command, might be what we think we need, actually managers might be more appropriate in certain situations.

As the services get smaller, senior figures continue to promise the Government that the task is still acceptable - after all, no one wants to tell their boss that they can't do what is being asked of them. Unfortunately, by the time we realise that we might have forgotten that 'integrity' is one of the core values of our Service, it's probably too late and we now need to deliver on what we promised. We need to deliver the same but with less and some things will have to go. Wednesday afternoon sports or physical training went many moons ago, centrally funded educational staff rides next and the one week a year adventurous training has slipped to one week in every three years. Alongside this erosion in leadership development opportunities we still have fewer people to get the job done; but it still needs to be done - is it really a surprise that some commanders get so busy that leadership becomes a second thought?

Command, leadership and management can often be referred to as the Officers' Trinity; command being the exercising of both leadership and management. Management is about achieving output whilst leadership is about getting buy-in with your message and taking people with you on your vision. Positional power gives commanders authority but if this is solely the method of control, then in times of dire need the commander will become unstuck. At these times a very real form of leadership will be required - this can be described as 'Personal Power' and it is this that differentiates the leader from the manager when in a command position.

Increasingly in the military, but also in many businesses, more and more contractors are being employed to fill in the gaps and to provide a more cost-effective way of delivering defence. In the RAF, the Whole Force Concept sees contractors and civil servants mixed in with regular and reserve servicemen and servicewomen creating a very unique environment in which to operate for both sides. On my station there are 40 contractors and sub-contractors who make up 70% of the Station strength; this means that only 30% of people on the Station are military. Each contractor has their own way of operating and their own pre-conceived ideas about defence which requires the military person to employ a very unique and individual approach to their working practises. In the military we all agree that an order is an order; they are rarely delivered in such a perfunctory manner, however, but still the expectation is that, once given, the direction will be followed. This approach is not always possible when working with contractors who may have different aims and objectives.

When Tim Collins, as Lieutenant Colonel of the 1st Royal Irish Regiment, gave his rousing eve-of-battle speech to his men on 19 March 2003 it was necessary and appropriate. It was what a leader is supposed to do and there is no doubt that the message Collins imparted to his men that day saved lives and helped to achieve their unit's success on the battlefield. When Winston Churchill delivered his famous 'We Shall Fight on the Beaches' speech to the House of Commons on 4 June 1940 it was at the height of the battle for France and he warned of a very real possible invasion by Germany. His speech was another stirring battle cry that motivated the country to engage in war and inevitably ensure its victorious outcome.

'We shall fight on the beaches, we shall fight on the landing grounds, we shall fight in the fields and in the streets, we shall fight in the hills; we shall never surrender...' - Churchill, 4 June 1940

Both of the above examples demonstrate effective leadership but do these speeches have any real place in the peacetime military or is the expectation that 'everyman will do his duty' enough to warrant a more distant leadership style more akin to management? I guess the question is: In peacetime, why bother with leadership at all?

I have served under many men and women in all three UK Services and under international commanders, too. Some I greatly admired but others I am happy to never encounter again - I am sure in business the same can be said. I have witnessed people progress through their careers gaining promotion based on qualities that have no place in war-fighting and who are loathed by the people they command. I have also seen commanders whose careers have been limited by being committed leaders, putting their people first and the paperwork second and who I would have followed into a high-threat environment without a second thought. So how can leadership be defined when away from the core task of war-fighting; is it truly just 'management with a smile'?

Personally, the best description of leadership that I've ever heard is:

The quote above is not too colourful and kind of bland but as a usable description of leadership, I think it works. A Google definition search on management finds it described as 'the process of dealing with or controlling things or people'. If we look at these two definitions, albeit with the recognition that there are many more out there, leadership talks of getting someone 'wanting to do something' and management describes the 'controlling' of people.

These are very different things and here, I believe, lies the fundamental problem.

Although management, in theory and in times of peace, can most definitely be applied effectively in the pursuit of outcomes and goals, it should be acknowledged that it possesses a destructive influence on the longer term strategic aims especially in a dynamic businesses or the military. Management lacks inspirational intent and if we don't inspire our people they will eventually walk away. And let's not think that all our senior people are leaders either - I remember someone saying to me 'when you don't aspire to be the boss, it's time to leave'.

Leadership has nothing to do with rank; routinely I will witness a junior serviceman or woman showing significant leadership ability amongst higher ranking peers - this can be found at work or when operating in all ranks adventurous training exercises. However, with a reduction in adventure training opportunities, as the services reduce in size and the task stays the same, other ways to develop leadership will need to be found. I think we have discussed the difference between a commander and a leader but to re-iterate, all bosses have authority but they are not all leaders. I believe leaders have a responsibility for those they oversee. Leaders must make sure their charges are progressing in their careers and that they are growing as individuals; this is where I believe the difference between leadership and management is most stark. As a manager I cared about output and, because of this, I had to make sure that those responsible for that output where functional. Without a functional team I could not output students to the front line. Now, as a leader this wasn't enough - I had to make sure that I was inspiring my team, that I personally took responsibility for their growth and career progression and that the product I outputted (students) were motivated to succeed on their front line squadrons; a very different task indeed.

‘Strange as it sounds, great leaders gain authority by giving it away’. - Vice Admiral James Stockdale, US Navy, 1987

In the military, and in business, care must be taken to understand the difference between management and leadership and the consequences of both. I believe that we can, and do, populate command positions with managers that are very good at securing output, but let's not expect anything else from them. As a military we must understand that if we follow this policy we are losing something else, something that is so very important. We are losing the ability to inspire the next generation of leaders and maintain a front-line focused, core fighting capability and this is no different in business. It might be acceptable in the short-term but as a 'plan' it is a poor one that will lead to the growing of process driven decision makers further down the line.

So what can be done? I think that we need to recognise that developing leadership in benign conditions is a difficult process and we should expect that the majority of our authority will be managers. This doesn't necessarily have to be a bad thing if it is recognised within an organisation.

To be an effective leader takes practise and, if you attempt to become a leader on your own, you will probably gain haters as you are leaving the other 'managers' behind. A leader is someone who has integrity and sacrifice, someone who is passionate in putting the team first and themselves second. Someone who recognises that a failure of one of their subordinates is a failure of themselves. A leader will actively look for ways to make their workplace better for all, opportunities to grow their team's skill-sets and progress the team's careers. If you put your team first then they will find that they are capable of so much more - I have pushed my team into positions that they felt were way above their abilities but, as they saw the belief I had in them, allowed them to achieve more than they ever could have imagined.

'The task of the leader is to get his people from where they are

to where they have not been.' - Henry Kissinger

It's hard to practise getting better at playing a sport if you don't have anybody to play against - leadership is no different. In order to practise leadership, you need to facilitate the opportunity for doing so. Organisations must make time for team building days, adventure and educational training and individual development. If we do not do this then we can only expect to develop managers who might be good at 'stuff and numbers' but won't be good at 'people and turbulence'.

It should be an organisation's priority to not allow leadership to be left to chance.

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7 Essential Questions New Pilots Need To Ask

I've had a guy in his late teens write in to ask a few questions so I thought I'd share them as it might help others who are looking at a potential career in the military. This is a military centric post so skip this one if you are in the business world but there might be one or two things that could help you at job interviews or with your working relationships. The guy who wrote in was looking to become a more well-rounded candidate for when he attends the Officer Aircrew Selection Centre (OASC) at RAF Cranwell later in the year.During our conversation I had to make it clear that it has been many years since I attended OASC and even when I spoke to our youngest students it was also clear that it had been a few years since they had attended too. The RAF Recruitment Offices should be able to provide you with the latest recruitment information although I have heard that they are not always the best places to find out what serving on an RAF flying squadron is actually like. This is because few pilots can be spared for recruitment tasks as they possess a valuable skill-set that is of more use in a cockpit and not behind a desk but luckily you have me! I've gone and trawled the squadron speaking to staff and students on your behalf and some of the answers might surprise you, they definitely surprised me!

• Firstly, What do you believe are the most important skills/qualities for a potential pilot and officer to display in general?

http://www.fastjetperformance.com/podcasts/7-essential-questions-new-pilots-need-to-ask

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The 90% Solution, Some Guy Called 'Pareto' and Why the Best Air Combat Pilots are Often Seen as the Laziest

The 90% solution, some guy called 'Pareto' and why the best air combat pilots are often seen as the laziest.

It became apparent to me during my last tour that a lot of the effort that I put into my work was inefficient. I remember speaking to a senior officer whilst I was deployed to Kabul, Afghanistan with the US Army and she said - 'you have to just get the work out of the door as complete as you can - I aim for the 90% solution'. In the military we have to be as efficient as possible because we work with taxpayer's money and there is a lot of work to be done. The workload on some postings can be quite extreme and I have had tours that are no exception; I have worked genuine 12 to 16 hour days in my career for 5 days a week (or 7 days a week on ops, which, of course, is entirely to be expected). Now, I get that people in civilian life also work long hours (and rightly so if combined with the appropriate remuneration) but when you have long hours mixed in with flying a £20 million aircraft twice a day - that's when you realise the value of the 90% solution.

Life-saver. Fact.

So, here's the deal. Your boss sends you a document attachment on email. Firstly, it is quite good to remind people that email is 'email' and not 'immediate' mail - sometimes you aren't able to respond within 20 minutes (especially when I'm flying). Maybe put in your signature block something that says that you only look at email at 1100 and 1600 and then get yourself involved in really connecting with people like talking to them face to face over some tea, maybe. So, you have the document from the boss and he's asked you to précis it for him before tomorrow; the issue being that when you open the document you realise that it's a 100 page long freaking nightmare and it's 'late o'clock'. The 90% solution means that you don't bother with a detailed read, just skim-read it and get it back out; don't invest too much time on it as the truth is your boss won't either. Unless you are an artist with a significant amount of time to wallow in your own narcissistic indulgences, you will probably find it hard to accommodate all of the tasks you have to complete. One of the major issues of the modern workplace is that it is full of bosses that do two things: they accept every tasking from higher authority without reservation and they delegate far too expeditiously and without restriction. We'd all probably do the same in their position too but, as a worker, we need to have a system that can get that work done without the 12 hour days - and the 90% solution is just that.

If you have the same routine task coming in every so often you can make it into a simplified process and write it down. For instance, when the squadron was first starting up we had 3 or 4 VIP visits per month. This became totally overwhelming and young instructors that should have been perfecting their core skills in the air found themselves writing instructions for the visits - a time-consuming task. The instructors soon found similarities in these visits and started to develop processes to ease their workload. They made a template that had everything necessary for every visit already completed; all they had to add were the names, dates and times, print it out and send it. They got very efficient in achieving the small amount of work that really mattered to deliver the 90% solution. They were then able to go flying again which made them more confident and experienced - two essential requirements for keeping young jet pilots alive.

This leads me on to another core principle that has saved me a huge amount of time over my career - the 80/20 or 'Pareto' Principle.

'The Pareto Principle states that 80% of the effects come from 20% of the causes' - Wiki

The Pareto Principle was first defined by an Italian economist called Vilfredo Pareto who, in 1896, recognised that 80% of the land in Italy was owned by 20% of the population; he was at university and being all creative like academics are sometimes. In some businesses it is found that 20% of sales account for 80% of profit, that 20% of motorists account for 80% of accidents and 80% of a company's complaints come from 20% of its customers! If you can identify the 20% of the work that you do that causes 80% of the results then you can use the remainder of your working time more efficiently thus saving considerable time and effort. For example, when you go into work, you probably have a list of tasks in mind that you need to complete that day and you probably allocate time for them all (even subconsciously - ie. I'll do that phone call at midday for 30 mins etc). What the Pareto Principle says is to look at your day and find the core tasks that are the most important to achieving the biggest outcomes and hit them hard, putting the other tasks to the bottom of the list. By doing so you will achieve 80% of what you are supposed to achieve. One good way of proving this theory is to just not do a low level task that you have been assigned and see if anyone notices - chances are that the task was a throw away comment from your boss and will be forgotten about in a day or two anyway. So, if we apply the law and look at what we do that really achieves the most of our outcomes we might be able to free up time to invest in relationships - maybe talking face to face with people instead of 'immediate mailing' sorry, emailing.

So, why are some of the best air combat pilots also the laziest? Remember the 80/20 Principle and the 90% solution that we just heard about - well, some jet pilots are just pretty good at applying those two techniques. You see, to get from the top 10% of high performing people to the top 1% actually requires little extra effort. This is because those in the top 10% become extremely comfortable and are happy to stay in the top 10%. If you want to get into the top 1% you have to 'stretch' yourself and 'stretching' just isn't very 'comfortable'. What the best air combat pilots realise is that sometimes it is easy to get stuck in 'analysis paralysis' or 'trapped in lag' to use some fighter pilot jargon. When you analyse too much you can get bogged down - you start looking at, and investing your time in, the minutiae. So what the best pilots do is look for the 20% of what they do that will give them 80% of the return. Incidentally, on my aircraft in 1v1 air combat the 20% that gets me 80% of the results is the following:

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Impostor Syndrome and The Fine Line Between Confidence and Arrogance

So, it's fair to say that the majority of the population would probably view fast jet pilots as an arrogant bunch of people who display significant narcissistic attributes. Any high-achiever whether a race car driver, wealthy stockbroker or famous musician/actor would also most probably be thought of as cocky and arrogant but this is often not the case. It has been said that the Millennials, or Generation Y (those born in the 1990s), are the most 'self-satisfied' and entitled generation yet and they are frequently dismissed as lazy by the baby-boomer generation (those born between 1946-1964). In the UK we are currently seeing a shift from hereditary wealth to a meritocracy where hard work and ideas are the order of the day - Generation Y are at the forefront of this change.

Generation Y are confident, connected and open to change

Generation Y are confident, connected and open to change and this can be threatening to other generations who might feel a bit redundant or can't work 'them interwebs'. The baby-boomer's place as the wealthiest generation is caused by 3 things - size, social change (women in the workplace) and education. The current class system in British politics is slowly being replaced by a meritocracy. Yes, the new generations are slowly getting wealthier but arguably only because of inherited wealth and a public school education. Michael Young, later Lord Young of Dartington wrote, at the age of 85, of his worries. 

Young observed in his 2001 article, “if meritocrats believe . . . that their advancement comes from their own merits, they feel they deserve whatever they can get. They can be insufferably smug, much more than people who knew they had achieved advancement not on their own merit but because they were, as somebody’s son or daughter, the beneficiaries of nepotism. The newcomers actually believe they have morality on their side.”  A confusing picture indeed for generations split apart by many years.  Right now, though, the current generation of movers and shakers are this 'smug' Generation Y as Lord Young so eloquently states - they are also the new pilots and high achievers to be found in emerging enterprises such as tech start-ups. So, what does this have to do with Impostor Syndrome or confidence and arrogance?

Impostor Syndrome can affect up to 70% of people in the workplace today

'It is a psychological phenomenon in which people are unable to internalize their accomplishments. Despite external evidence of their competence, those with the syndrome remain convinced that they are frauds and do not deserve the success they have achieved. Proof of success is dismissed as luck, timing, or as a result of deceiving others into thinking they are more intelligent and competent than they believe themselves to be. Notably, impostor syndrome is particularly common among high-achieving women.' - Wiki.  Impostor Syndrome affects more women than men and, as a demographic, more African Americans who are thought to suffer from it as a result of positive discrimination policies. Facebook COO, Sheryl Sandberg, suffers from it and the condition was the basis for her book 'Lean In' which promotes the role of women in the workplace. It is taught, by performance coaches, that three-quarters of those sat at a business meeting are worried that they don't know what they are doing, that they are a fraud and that they are going to get found out. Although the example above concerns a business meeting, it is equally true of a cockpit, especially if occupied by a student or underconfident pilot who is low on flying hours. Military aviation is an unforgiving business and in my career I have lost more than 30 of my friends - I stopped counting at 30. These are not all from fast jet incidents; I have lost many from helicopter and multi-engine incidents too. I call them incidents because I believe none were accidents; there is always responsibility somewhere whether from pilot or maintenance error all the way up to Governmental neglect and under funding - the subject of another post, I'm sure.   

So, if 70% of the population suffers from Imposter Syndrome then does this 70% include pilots?  I can assure you it does

When I was in training I was fully engaged in my mission of getting to the front line - it was all I could think about. Your whole life seems to revolve around it - our initial training at BRNC Dartmouth or RAFC Cranwell is immersive - it has to be in order to turn you from a civilian into a military Officer. Then you move onto flying training which becomes arduous and totally unforgiving, placing you firmly in your stretch zone for months at a time. You see your course mates struggle and fail trips and you might fail the odd trip yourself. The guy or girl you thought was a 'sure thing' for a Harrier or Typhoon cockpit stumbles on a check ride and you start to have massive self-doubt - 'If they can't pass it how will I ever be able to?' Friends are 'chopped' around you (removed from training) and, if they are lucky, they might get a chance to be re-streamed onto rotary or multi-engine but, if not, then their military flying career ends. You've invested so much of your life pursuing this goal that you start to wonder if it's worth it. The stress can be life changing - relationships end and girlfriends/boyfriends leave. I was once asked by a student who was struggling towards the end of Advanced Flying Training on the Hawk T1 'Is it all worth it?' - he never found out, he was chopped 2 trips later.

If a student is doubting their ability when flying with an instructor in the aircraft then you can be doubly sure that they are doubting themselves when they have to fly solo. At our flying school we have a dedicated 'Student Solo Outbrief'; this is there to make sure that the authorising officer of the solo student has covered everything necessary to confirm that they are in date for the multitude of currencies and qualifications that they need to fly solo. This is because the authorising officer has to be sure that the student is going to bring themselves, and the £20 million Hawk T2, back home. The list is extensive - have they flown dual in the last 7 days, did they pass the preceding sortie to a satisfactory level, is their instrument rating fit for the actual and forecast weather conditions, do they have any outstanding currencies and are they in date for the many drills and evolution's that they need in order to fly as Captain of the aircraft? It is extensive and appropriately so but it can also be incredibly daunting for the student as the magnitude of the responsibility they are about to be given starts to dawn on them. 

As pilots their character does not allow them to appear weak in  front of their peers

As pilots their character does not allow them to appear weak in front of their peers so when you ask them 'Are you happy to take this aircraft by yourself?' they will always reply with the affirmative. But, away from the squadron, when they are back in their comfort zone with family, friends and maybe even some of their closer course mates, they will reveal the truth - they are scared as hell and, as instructors, we know this. When we were students we were scared as hell too, not only of doing something wrong and throwing a jet away, but also of failure. The same goes for an instructor who is required to teach a student a discipline that he hasn't practised in a while. The more dynamic the nature of the flight plus the more aircraft and people involved plus the recency and flying currency of the instructor involved all add up to the level of apprehension felt by the instructor. This can be huge, the responsibility immense and, in my time as a Flight Commander on the squadron, I have had many instructors approach me with their fears. This is a good thing as it at least means that the communication channels to higher authority are working but the need to manage the variables that are causing the apprehension is very necessary. Sometimes I'd remove the instructor from the sortie for further dedicated training with an experienced and appreciative instructor or I might just fly with the instructor myself (if capacity for this existed in the sortie profile).

So, when we think of a fast jet pilot as arrogant, or even a commercial pilot, who carries huge responsibilities, maybe what you are observing is a coping mechanism which is helping the individual remain confident enough to get into the aeroplane and do the job. After Andreas Lubitz supposedly flew his airliner into the French Alps, many Germanwings pilots refused to fly the next day - was this truly due to concern over the Airbus design as was cited in the news or was it a display of severe and sudden apprehension? I recently saw an airline flight roster for a new First Officer who had just joined the company (albeit after a 16 year long career flying military aircraft). Over the year the First Officer's roster would give him one weekend at home per month. Now, if he had a small family or his wife was working, how much is he going to be at home to support them? Not much, I'd guess, as on his mid-week days off his partner is quite possibly at work and cracks in their relationship will, no doubt, soon appear. Now transpose that roster onto a young First Officer straight out of flight school with maybe some financial debt from his flying training and earning not a great initial wage - you now have problems both at work and at home. 

A pilot's arrogance is just an attempt to portray confidence

It is nothing more than thinly veiled Impostor Syndrome that is common throughout society - those that fly aircraft are no different, they are just trying not to get found out either. As your experience grows and you become more confident you start to care less about the opinion of others and you become more content. But until then, pilots are just not too keen on letting people know that they are all too aware of there own mortality and limited ability. So, the next time you think of a high-achieving pilot as arrogant, they are probably just feeling like an impostor which makes them more similar to you than you think. Until we slip the surly bonds of Early again - fly safe!

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How a Fast Jet Pilot Returns to High Performance Flying After Time Off

I've recently been away from work for a couple of weeks having to take some remaining leave before the deadline of 31 March when all leave resets. I've done a few things; I went on a long hike with the wife, went to see some family - that sort of thing. But when you are away from the cockpit for any period of time you have to 'come down' from the level that you have been operating at. Conversely, before you go back to work you need to re-energise yourself to get back up to speed. This is the same with any job; the more complicated the profession the harder it is to 'switch off' when on holiday. Some people take a few days to fully relax and some need longer. One of my pilots will only take his holidays over two weeks as he says that he can't fully 'switch off' from work with only one. When I was a student pilot I would sometimes not be able to 'switch off' at all or would find that I could be quite relaxed by the Tuesday of my holiday but by the Thursday I was starting to think about the cockpit again and would get worked up about it. 

Training as a fast jet pilot has to be one of the most uncomfortable and stressful things that you can do

It only takes one failed trip for the instructors' eyes to start looking in your direction and if you don't pass the next trip then you are definitely in trouble.

So how do I get myself back into the groove after a lay-off. As it stands, tomorrow I have an 'Emergency Sim' which is a 60 day currency that tests me on my emergency handling. Fast jets can be complicated little things and the Hawk T2 is no exception. Although the aircraft has two cockpits in tandem, the simulator has only the front cockpit represented. We have two simulators on the squadron - they are called Full Mission Simulators (FMS) and you have to wear your full Aircraft Equipment Assembly (AEA)  when in them. This means that you dress as if you were going to fly the actual aircraft wearing your flying helmet, mask, Life Jacket and g-pants. The FMS isn't a motion simulator as these tend to be used for multi-engine aircraft to simulator asymmetric thrust which, as long as you're not flying a Canberra, SR-71 or Maverick's F-14 in 'Top Gun', should not present too many issues in modern fast jet aviation. The FMS has 360 degree visuals and we use it to not only prepare students for an airborne sortie but also to consolidate the students learning at the end of a flying phase - the FMS can be the last event on the Air Combat Manoeuvring (ACM) phase for example. But, unlike the Hawk T1 on our sister squadron, we also have 6 Flying Training Devices (FTDs) which are very similar to the FMS but are an extension of something that we used to use in the old days which was the 'Cardboard Cockpit'. The 'Cardboard Cockpit' is just that - it is a cardboard representation of the aircraft's cockpit and in the good ol' days you were issued one to learn your checks on when you were in ground school and before you started flying. On the Hawk T2 we don't have these anymore and we use the FTDs instead. The FTD is something that you can sit in without all your flight gear on and practise your checks but it also flies like the FMS! It isn't a truly representative flight model, for example it will climb faster than the actual aircraft but it has 90% of the switches you'd find in the actual aeroplane. It has 3 touch-screen monitors that you can setup the Multi-Function Displays (MFDs) with - these are like very small monitors that show things such as your weapons stores page, moving map, synthetic radar display and even your hydraulics status page as there is no analogue display for this anymore. The great thing is that you can pretty much use the FTDs at anytime to practise any of your checks. 

In the FTDs you can even get airborne and practise your circuits or link them up and just chase your course mates around the sky hoping that an instructor doesn't walk in and tell you all to stop acting like children

So the FTD, and before that, the 'Cardboard Cockpit' are two great ways to practise getting back up to speed with the complicated task of flying the Hawk T2. But, at home I don't have a 'Cardboard Cockpit' as none were made for the Hawk T2 and the FTDs are, well, at the squadron. So how else might I work myself back up for the simulator tomorrow? When you are learning to fly for the first time, this might be on gliders at 16 or on a light aircraft in the military/civilian flight school later on, your instructor will introduce the notion of 'chair flying' to you. 

Chair flying is a very powerful tool which allows you to imagine yourself actually in the aircraft practising whatever it is you are needing to do on your next assessed sortie

The 'Cardboard Cockpit' was actually very good in this respect as you could touch the printed dials and switches and instil some aspect of muscle memory into your checks sequence. Chair flying is a visualisation technique that pilots, racing drivers, public speakers and sport persons have all used to enhance their performances.   When I prepare for a complicated sortie or have been out of the cockpit for longer than a week I will invest time in visualising that return to the cockpit - this is also essential if your flying rate (the number of hours you fly per month) is low. It is critical that a pilot keeps themselves up to speed and each person will have subtly different ways of doing it. I prefer to give myself a hour alone with my Flight Reference Cards (FRCs) - these are the checklists for the handling and emergencies that can affect the aircraft. 

I then use the Overview - Preview - Inview - Review process

Overview. I normally go through each card first, skim reading them really - this I call an overview. Unlike in other aircraft, the checks that are done in fast jets are not routinely done from the cards. This is not true on the Tornado GR4 as the Weapon System Officer (WSO) will initiate a challenge and response from the FRCs but on single-seat aircraft and fast jet training aircraft such as the Hawk T2 your FRCs are unlikely to be used in flight at all. All of your drills are memorised as there is rarely enough time (or space in the cockpit) to be dragging your check cards out the whole time! It is important then that you are familiar with the cards in case you need to use them. This overview is a process of just looking at the layout of the normal drill cards and looking through the boldface emergencies. The boldface emergencies are the drills that a pilot or WSO must know verbatim; students are routinely challenged on their boldface drills at the morning meteorological brief, on airborne sorties and in an emergency simulator - just like mine tomorrow. 

As part of my overview I will imagine me getting into my flight gear, going to the Operations Room and signing the jet out and then walking out to the aircraft 

I might even look at tomorrow's weather so I can forecast what runway we might be on and can plan which way I will taxy out of the line. I will imagine doing my initial checks, the aircraft walk around and strapping into the ejection seat. I will visualise the dials and displays in front of me - I'll think about what radio calls I need to make before engine start and I might even look at the flying programme (if it's been emailed out the night before) to see what callsign I'll be using so I can practise using it - it all helps to build a mental picture. If I had a cardboard cockpit I'd use that - some people close their eyes but you need to make the environment as similar to the one you'll be in when you are actually doing the event - this is why using a simulator to practise or the FTDs on the squadron is so good. When chair flying there is little point in having music playing in the background if there isn't going to be music in your aircraft - we're not on an EasyJet flight here, well - not just yet anyway! I might practise my start-up and pre-take-off checks here too but I don't go any further than visualising lining up on the runway. I then visualise that I'd just landed and I was taxiing back in - I'd go through those checks too right up to and including vacating the aircraft and walking back in. I separate the actual airborne content and save that for the preview - it just works better for me that way, you might like to do it differently. Preview. If you were looking at a textbook the overview would've been to look at the front and back covers and maybe the index. The preview extends on this - you'd now read the first and last paragraph of each chapter. In the world of aviation this is the bit where I'd look at the sortie content - I'd write this down on an A4 piece of paper as a list something like this (the italics are for your understanding):  SUTTO (start-up, taxi, take-off) SID 31R  (Standard Instrument Departure - runway 31 Righthand) HASLLT Cx (Checks we perform for every sortie to make sure we are tolerant to the effects of 'g' and that we are operating in a safe area) Stall Max Performance Manoeuvres Spin LL (Low level) Instrument Recovery - TAC/PAR Circuits (Norm, LL) - Flapless straight-in approach  Inview. So, the preview part gave me some more information and I can now visualise the sortie in more detail. The inview part is when I fill in the blank spaces. I'd get my charts out and read up on the SID (departure) that I might be flying anticipating level-off heights, radio calls and power settings required. I would go and make sure I know my HASLLT cxs and practise them so they are fluent - Height, Airframe, Security (for an inverted check), Location, Lookout and TCAS. I would read up on what the Stall entails, what is the fight profile? I would draw it out and then run it through moving my hands to where the gear and flap levers are.

I even go so far as to anticipate the trim changes required 

Are they pitch up or pitch down? I would read up on the max performance manoeuvres and then think about the area I need to fly to in order to get my spin done - I need to be above 25,000 ft to enter my spin so I'll need a handover to a different Air Traffic agency for that and I can practise that radio call now so I don't stumble over it tomorrow. I'd read and write about all of the sortie content and put it on an A4 piece of paper - it will become a crib sheet that I can look at before the sortie briefing tomorrow. Some people use a mind map but I prefer a list of how the sortie will flow. It is also critical to think of your 'link' flying here - how are you going to transition from one event to the next? Will you speed up or slow down, change height or transit to a different piece of airspace? Review. This step is the most critical one and I normally do this twice, once after the inview and then I repeat it prior to the sortie briefing the next day to refresh my knowledge. The review is looking at that A4 piece of paper on which you have written a crib sheet that will help to jog your memory the next day. Take this opportunity to add any more information that you feel might be pertinent to the sortie you are about to fly. And that's it - put the crib sheet somewhere safe, take a break and don't spend longer than an hour on this; the mind gets tired after 30 mins so maybe do the Overview/Preview - tea break - Inview/Review and only then can you go back and watch cats falling off chairs on YouTube.

Visualisation is a powerful tool that, used correctly, can really improve your chances of success in the cockpit and in business

Remember, you lose half of your capacity when you put on your flight helmet and strap a jet plane to your back. It's the same in business, don't wait until you're making that sale or giving the presentation, it'll be too late and you'll look like an idiot - practise IS your friend.  Until we slip the surly bonds of Earth again - fly safe!

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Some Important Things to Know About Fast Jet Pilots (before we start talking about performance!)

I've been a UK based fast jet pilot since the early 2000's having joined the military in 1998. I've flown fast jets for all of my career and have never had a 'ground tour' (that's when you have to fly a desk for 3 years...not good). I currently teach instructors and students to use the BAEs Hawk T2 as a weapon system in the applied phase of their training. I realised some time ago that there were many things that we were teaching young pilots that were applicable to many other professions; after all, high performance is high performance whether you are at 20,000 ft or attempting to climb to the top of your career.Before I post about performance, it makes sense to talk about what exactly a fast jet pilot isIn 1983, US Naval Flight Surgeon Frank Dulley wrote a paper entitled 'The Life Style Keys to Flight Deck Performance of the Naval Aviator — Another Window'. The paper presents Dulley's views on the coping mechanisms that the Naval Aviator brings to his occupation. What is so interesting about this paper is that it highlights the attributes of a fast jet pilot and makes uncomfortable reading for those it describes. A fast jet pilot is normally male, in fact only 11% of the RAF is female (the highest number of all the UK's armed forces) - how many fast jet pilots are currently women? I can count 8 out of approximately 160 active pilots that I know of.  The premiership has 220 players this year so it is true that there are less fast jet pilots in the UK than premiership footballersThe Royal Navy also has fast jet pilots but a small number in comparison to the RAF and most of those are flying the F/A-18 Hornet with the US Navy awaiting the introduction of the F-35 to the UK. To qualify as a fast jet pilot takes four years of training with 300 hours’ flying on various aircraft; this can cost up to £4 million per pilot.  Fast jet pilots are mission oriented compartmentalisers who lack emotional sensitivitiesAs Frank Dulley states in his paper, fast jet pilots are 'mission oriented compartmentalisers' who lack emotional sensitivities that are normally found in the general population at large. Well, what does that mean? Pilots are very good at concentrating on one thing at a time without being distracted by external issues. When they fly they are able to leave their problems on the ground and concentrate solely on the task at hand. Dulley also states that pilots' male-female interface is characterised by emotional distance. Pilots marry controllers; their partners, just like them, are the eldest son or daughter or, if this is not the case, then they are the controlling sibling. Pilots do not want a weak spouse as they are represented by their partner and expect them to be strong in public. They surround themselves with other controllers as they know that they can trust them as they are similar to them. Pilots have few friends and get their social validation from the other pilots they work with - it's the only validation that really matters to a pilot. A flying squadron can be a tough place to be especially if you are not good at banter and are unable to make fun of yourself. Banter is the thing that pilots use to keep other pilots in check. The squadron is a place full of egos and your social standing is decided by one of 4 things - rank, seniority (age/flight hours), ability in the air and personality. Banter is 'taking the mickey' out of people, it lightens the mood but to an outsider can appear as exceptionally harsh.  Fast jet pilots must be the ones in control - they are systematic and methodical  They shave and shower the same way each morning/night and don't ever change the way that they do it because they've proved it works. They can be infuriating to live with because they have an uncompromising stance on even the smallest of issues and they rarely go and see a doctor; they are pilots - they believe that they can work out for themselves what is wrong!If you tell a pilot about a problem you are having they will attempt to give you the solution even if you haven't asked for itIn a marriage this can prove disastrous especially as the spouse invariably wants to just vent after a hard day. The problem is compounded by the fact that a pilot will only tell their spouse about any issues they are having - they won't tell their boss, doctor or colleagues as they don't want to appear weak or not in control. They do look for affirmation from others that they work with - praise from another pilot is the highest form of praise but very, very rare. Normally the praise comes in the form of promotion, medals or courses/work-ups as they become more senior. If you give a pilot a pen, they will take it apart - pilots have inquisitive mindsThe understanding of the workings of a pen or the reasoning of a decision by higher authority is very necessary to a pilot. Pilots are all 'Maverick' - even the quieter ones are still rebellious. They are passionate risk takers who don't like authority but will tolerate it because it allows them to fly and the cockpit is what defines them. They believe that 'If you aren't a pilot then you don't get a vote' - it's like the saying 'You don't know, man - you weren't there!' This applies equally when referring to an air combat sortie as it does to a night out in Las Vegas - mention the 'Witch Doctor' cocktail and all pilots will shudder...we've all made that mistake. It gets worse with fast jet pilots because they see themselves as above all other pilots - which, due to the selection process, they are. Even in the land of the fast jet pilot there is a hierarchy. The 'single-seat' pilot used to be above all others - Harrier pilots were notorious for having huge egos, followed by Jaguar pilots - fighter pilots on the Tornado F3 also seemed to love themselves! The single-seat F-16 and F-15 community in the US are always claiming to have the better pilots. It has changed somewhat in the UK as the Typhoon is easier to fly than the Tornado GR4 but the Typhoon is a single-seat aircraft which can be more demanding in certain environments. I once knew a fast jet pilot who was sent to learn to be a Test Pilot at Edwards Air Force base in the USA, the home of test flying. This guy was a single-seat pilot who was obviously quite fond of himself and once found himself at a black tie dinner sat next to an older guy who also used to be a pilot. My friend spent the evening talking about himself and how good he must be as so few British pilots get chosen to train in the states. It was only the following morning that someone asked him how his evening with Neil Armstrong had gone - he hadn't even asked his dinner guest's name! To be honest, this is a common story with fast jet pilots - they are most comfortable when talking about themselves.Pilots deal with facts and find it hard to accommodate inaccuraciesWhen my wife told me that if the builders moved the fence 3 ft closer to the kitchen window then she'd be unable to see the trees in the next field I got out the calculator and drew the trigonometry on a whiteboard to show her how wrong her mental calculation actually was - my wife has since informed me that this was exactly the wrong thing to do.For a fast jet pilot everyday is potentially the last day of their careerIf you make a mistake flying fast jets it can kill people and, believe me, it happens very quickly which is why we place so much trust in each other. Individual integrity fosters trust within teams and that is what makes flying fast jets with other people safe. But a mistake airborne opens yourself up to questioning and no more than from yourself. Self-analysis is a constant for any pilot whether in an airliner, glider, light aircraft, rotary or jet - we all evaluate our performance and it can and does cause sleepless nights. The thought of letting ourselves down is nothing in comparison to the thought of letting the team down. It is said that you are the average of the 5 people you spend the most time with and for a pilot that is other pilots - you let them down and you may as well leave the squadron - there is no place for you. That is why, when you are ill, your squadron mates will tell you to go home - you are under performing the moment you walked in to the building. They don't want you with them today, you are a liability - go home and suffer daytime TV. Lastly we are extremely predictable, we like routine and lack spontaneity. So how are fast jet pilots high performing individuals who are able to excel in highly dynamic environments?Until we slip the surly bonds of Earth again - fly safe!

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