HELICOPTER OPS: GEORGE TONKING
PREPARING PILOTS FOR
REAL LIFE American fighter pilot Col. Robin Olds stood by the mantra “preparedness wins the battle.” He should have known, becoming a triple ace in the Vietnam sky while flying 152 missions in Southeast Asia in an F-4 Phantom jet, a pig of a dog-fighter. IN THE GUN-TOTING MIG-INFESTED North, he sharpened his previously demoralised men into formidable fighter pilots, embedding his experience and cunning into their young hands. Robin Olds taught that the key to air superiority was not only regular battle-ground training, but last-minute flexibility, the very ability to change and adapt to any environment and deal with unpredictable enemy tactics.
develop from a merely competent pilot into a flexible operator pilot requires an immeasurable amount of input from many spheres. As you may have read before in this column, throughout my helicopter flying career I’ve had the advantage of great mentors and teachers. It’s a crucial enough topic to mention again. So this month I’d like to take you into the operational training environment.
It was also said that Olds valued all of his people – from the base’s support staff to his airmen. This remains true in our context – the business and human resources side of things keeping the flying work coming in, while creating the opportunities for further training and development.
Unlike basic flight training, or ab-initio as it’s known, operational training, also known as line training in airline circles, is never complete. For as long as you remain a pilot, ab-initio should be an ongoing calendar item to keep your skills sharp. Of course, this type of training is invaluable to any pilot, whether commercial or a private license holder. We can and should all learn continuously.
operational training is never complete
But what does half-century-old fighter pilot lore have to do with the modern helicopter pilot? To
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May 2022
