A Non-traditional Learner
In 2000, I was a qualified RAF pilot, stationed in the north of Scotland. Life as a pilot is not what most people expect it to be, rather than Top Gun, life is a series of grueling year-long periods of schooling as you progress through the RAF system. On this particular occasion I was learning to fly the Nimrod MR2 aircraft. The Nimrod was a complex aircraft of 1950’s design. It had the computing power of an iPhone but the mechanical and electrical complexities of a rubiks cube.
I was not mechanically minded.
The technical manuals were inches in thickness. We would carry them in our rucksacks each day as we walked through the Wintery showers to and from our accommodation block. The expectation was that we would simply read all the books over and over again, sit through the lectures and pass the exams. Only once we had proved our worth would we be allowed anywhere near the aircraft. Even when we were allowed to fly the aircraft, the non-stop examining and checking was exhausting.
There was a problem.
Faced with multiple pages of technical line diagrams, I couldn’t make sense of things. I could understand individual components within the diagram but was missing a big picture, a concept. My brain just didn’t seem to work the same as the other guys in my syndicate. I was going to fail.
A word about failure in the military. Just don’t fail, be seen to be failing, struggling, or tired. Always be the first to arrive at the bar and the last to leave. Be the loudest and the most outrageous. Just be confident and get things done. Do not fail.
Those that failed were simply removed from training. Although, in a later life, I went on to see all the work that went on in the background to look after those that failed, at the time, as a student, it just looked like people had disappeared over night. Reputations were everything. If you showed even the slightest weakness, the pilot gods would disown you and the vultures would start to circle you. I could fit everything I owned into the back of my car for this reason. Removal from training would be swift and losing my status as a pilot was unthinkable.
Enter the saviour in this story. One of my ground instructors was watching my reaction during a lecture on the Nimrod MR2 pressurisation system, a system of check valves, pressure relays, valves, pumps, electrical signals and switches. Knowing that I was keeping my struggles to myself, he asked me to remain in the class at the end of the day. He was a god to us, someone who had actually been there and done it, someone who had the power to send us home with one signature on our training records, yet he saved me in less than 30 seconds.
“Think of the aircraft as a bath tub with the taps stuck ON. How would you maintain a certain depth of water in that bath? What would you use?”
By simplifying the pressurisation system to being equivalent to a bath, I’d been given the key to unlocking the concept. Obviously, if the taps are stuck ON, I’d need to open and close the plug regularly to keep the water level at a certain depth. And that was what the aircraft did.
I never forgot that 30 seconds.
I started to look for simplifications in everything I did. Meteorology, Principles of Flight, working harder and harder to distil the complex down into child-like building blocks.
Military flying training was a difficult place to be when you started with “Why?” yet I wouldn’t change my experiences. Starting with “Why?” became a philosophy, a challenge to those enforcing a set position. An exhausting stand point that requires courage but produces so much fulfillment.
