00:00You're kind of in the center of a storm and it's a really peaceful, calm feeling to be inside a helicopter while it does what it does.
00:08Music
00:25I do aerobatic maneuvers in a helicopter, so it's an aerobatic display that was developed by the Flying Bulls, which is our aviation team.
00:33And there are five of us worldwide who do it, and I'm the lucky guy who gets to do it in America.
00:38And what it means is that I get to do loops and rolls and cubinates and backflips and frontflips and all kinds of stuff that helicopters don't normally do.
00:47So when you're doing helicopter aerobatics, that's a hard thing to get used to. It's not natural.
00:51Most of my training was spent unlearning the muscle memory of having flown helicopters for over 20 years previously.
00:58So to overcome all that and to do the aerobatic maneuvers was a challenging part of the training.
01:04But now I love it. I crave it. I think about it all the time.
01:08And I just always think, how can I do this better? How can I make this move more precise?
01:12How can I bring more energy to it?
01:15[♪upbeat music playing♪
01:31My military experience was tremendously helpful for me.
01:34And not necessarily because the skills I learned in the Army are transferable to the civilian world, because mostly they're not.
01:41But what was transferable was the attitude and the mindset and the perspective of what it takes to see a project through
01:49and how to work together with your team, your friends around you, and spend a lot of time with people and learn to work out problems.
01:55If I were to give unsolicited advice to anybody getting out today, I would say rely on your teammates, your friends that you've served with.
02:02And those are going to be the people that understand where you're coming from and how you can use the tools that you gain in the Army
02:08or whatever branch of the military you served in, you can use those to your advantage in the civilian world.
02:13In my case, it's worked out better than I could have ever dreamed.
02:16I mean, I'm having so much fun. I'm the luckiest guy in the world that I get to do this, and I appreciate every second of it.
02:22[♪upbeat music playing♪
02:28I wouldn't go for this particular job because there's not very many of them.
02:31There's only five of us in the world that have the FAA license to do it.
02:36So I wouldn't recommend pursuing that. It's not a wise career choice.
02:40And there are a lot of different ways to make a living in aviation.
02:43You don't have to necessarily go fly passengers, and you don't have to necessarily go do loops in a helicopter,
02:49but there are a lot of different professions that are very rewarding and very diverse from one another.
02:55So whatever you like to do, whatever your passion is, there's room for you in the aviation world for sure.
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