Kevin (35:27.17)
The B-52 is a very viable weapon because of how it was built and what it's capable of. It's not the latest and greatest. It's not the fastest or sexiest, but it's a big dump truck that we can put a bunch of bombs on and we can make those bombs smart and do some really cool stuff with it. So it's going to be around until 2050 or 2060, which is going to be crazy. It'll be a hundred years old. There'll probably be one flying. And now they're dumping money in it. So the top, something like the top three projects in the United States Air Force are all B-52
Hopefully I get to see this stuff, but you know development research all that stuff gets dumped into it So it'll be seven to ten years before all the new toys come But it's a really cool time in the industry I came to the buff hating it thinking like it's you know old slow dumb airplane and I had my eyes opened that you know what? Yeah, don't judge a buck by its cover Join it and see what it's like and then
Jay (36:19.845)
Mm.
Kevin (36:27.501)
do with that what you want.
Jay (36:29.211)
Sometimes that old set of doubles and that old salty wing in backplate just do the job just fine, right?
Kevin (36:36.798)
Well, yeah, man. Like, yeah, that whole I've started reading that book. I don't have it with where is it mastery, George Leonard. And I was telling, talking to James earlier today, and it's like, man, like all my buddies in Florida are all on rebreather and doing some pretty cool stuff and that kind of stuff. And I'm like, man, just jumping in the pool with that single tank and back backplate, just trying to teach someone how to, you know, maintain buoyancy and trim, and then they finally get it. It's just like
Jay (36:46.5)
Yeah, yeah, great.
Kevin (37:06.774)
You know, you're trying to teach someone how to land and then you're quiet and then they touch down and the wheels go and they do everything that you told them. It's almost the success of other people that you've taught is cooler than any kind of toy that you can buy. I mean, don't get me wrong, I would love a rebreather DPV and to go back in the caves and have cool stuff there, but not saying I won't, it just, hey, that might be five years down the road. Might be 10 years down the road, but if I can turn out.
five really good divers who respect the environment, who are safe and competent, and can pass that love of diving on to other people. It's what I try to do every day in flying, but.
Jay (37:46.553)
Yeah, yeah, no, I went because back in Texas, doing all the students.
Kevin (37:55.747)
Hello?
You back?
Jay (37:59.637)
Yeah, hold on. We got a little technical. My phones are so sensitive right now that if they get bumped at all for some reason, they freak out. Let's see if this does it. Can you talk real quick? There we go. All right. Kevin are let me write that down because, oh, see I bumped them again. Hold on. This is what? 38 minutes in something like that.
Kevin (38:16.182)
Yep, can you hear me? Everything good? Awesome.
Jay (38:31.089)
I swear it's been on my list to buy a new set of headphones for, I don't know how long now and I just haven't done it. So anyway, um, what I was going to say was, you know, it's funny cause you mentioned the, the rebreather and all that fun stuff. Uh, just, uh, yeah, no, two days ago, two days ago, I went on a dive and in Texas there really wasn't a lot of applications I would say for a rebreather. I mean, there, there isn't a lot that's interesting about a lake that deep.
necessarily yet. Um, there are some applications where they're, where they're really useful as a tool, um, but for the most part, really you become a traveling rebreather diver, but here in San Diego, since I moved here, there's so many applications and we went on a, I went on a dive a couple of days ago with a couple of guys who were on, um, kiss rebreathers. And I didn't get a shirt by the way, but, um, they're on the kiss, kiss rebreathers and
It was interesting because we were all diving together. And again, I was very focused on depth because I needed to know. I was on a set of doubles and I had to manage my gas, you know, because I'm with two guys who are not thinking about their gas and not thinking about depth really, right, not depth limited. And so it was interesting because, you know, we were swimming along a big shelf and I was up on the top of the shelf. So it put me in a good position to.
Kevin (39:42.346)
not gas, not gas limited.
Jay (39:56.341)
take great video of them, you know, just having fun and things like that. But I missed all of the, you know, marine life that was on the shelf because I was staying a little bit more shallower to extend my gas, um, right over there's still within our team formation. No, well, we, they went right down to, to a hundred without really realizing it in some ways, because it wasn't on their radar. I stopped at 99 feet. It was like, okay.
Kevin (40:10.946)
Yeah, were they dropping below 100? Were they?
Jay (40:25.897)
I'll hang out in the mid water while you guys are down there. And, uh, and then eventually you're going to realize that you're past a hundred feet and I'm not going with you. Hopefully you realize, and they did, you know, Oh, whoops. Oh, look at the depth. Oh yeah. I mean, come up a little bit and then we, we continue to dive. But yeah, it was, you know, I was pretty proud of myself. Got a, out of a set of doubles, um, double 100s got a full 80 minute dive, uh, at depth, but it was, it was managing.
Kevin (40:50.926)
It's not bad.
Jay (40:54.258)
NDL, you know, like how long are we down here?
Kevin (40:55.118)
Why don't you, why don't you, you got, you got, you got a set with 25, 25 in it.
Jay (40:59.257)
I did. Well, I asked that before we made this dive, like, do we want to go down and do, you know, 150 feet? And the decision kind of was made on bottom time that we were going to do a different dive so we could extend the bottom time. But then based on the current, we got blown way off of that original dive plan. The current was crazy, swirling current. Anyway, I say all this to say that, like, I'm...
Kevin (41:06.231)
Something actually to see, yeah.
Jay (41:25.061)
I'm kind of pushing accelerate on my rebreather journey because I see the direct application now and it's like, yes, this is pretty cool. But I think what you said about, you know, if I can create five students, Greg, who you know well, or you know as well, he and I just did a whole episode on eco-tourism that was super interesting. And it was really about that, you know, training, um, divers, not only that the environments that we dive in are sensitive or a lot of them are.
But then how do we have the requisite skills to protect and preserve those environments? And we talk about ecotourism and all that stuff. So anyways, long story short, I really like what you have to say about, you know, training those divers to in the right way. And again, it's the same thing that the joy of a new pilot landing the plane. I mean, I love watching a new diver navigate, you know, a little changing bottom where they have to come up.
you know, 10 feet, 20 feet, and then go back down 10 feet, 20 feet on the other side. It's like, this is going to be interesting. Like, do they start reaching for that power inflator? Do they start dumping a bunch of gas or are they breathing? Like, where's the bubbles? Like, how's it going? And it's really cool to see that. So that's cool. But let's, uh, let's maybe go back to the simulator because that's where a lot of the stuff happens. So.
Kevin (42:43.79)
Yeah. You're just jealous. You just want your simulator ride and you move further away from it.
Jay (42:48.965)
I do want my simulator right. Although now I know it's more of an Atari game that might still be fun.
Kevin (42:52.782)
Eh, it's alright. We can still bring up... The fun thing is you bring up the Vegas Night strip and you go fly through the fountain at the MGM Grand.
Jay (42:58.534)
Oh nice.
Heck yeah, I'm selling on that. Which by the way, Kevin and I did a, when we were in one of those museums, Kevin took me in one of the 360 degree simulators and just about got me to blackout. Ha ha ha. With him.
Kevin (43:06.631)
Oh, I know.
Kevin (43:16.493)
Oh, the one where it's like, all right, you can begin. And the first thing I do is roll it upside down and all the blood rushes to your head.
Jay (43:21.765)
Oh yeah, my head felt like it was going to explode for a minute. Yeah, it was pretty fun. Uh, at the moment it was like, okay, this is fun, Kevin. Now go back over, Kevin, go back over. I think I'm going to pass out. No, it was a lot of fun, but, um, but yeah. So the simulator and I do think it's interesting because the, yeah, the closest we can get as divers to a simulator outside of like, I don't know if you've done any of the virtual reality scuba diving, but, uh, that's the whole thing, right?
It's not a whole thing. It's a thing trying to become a thing. But outside of that, the closest we can get is a pool, but it's still, and even the closest you get to that is maybe like a long hose, a 25 foot hose, hookah hose or something like that, where you don't have to have gear on. It's just a regulator in the water basically, but you still have to have gas. You're still under the water. You still, things can still go wrong, right? You don't hear a lot about pool drownings from scuba.
Kevin (44:13.922)
Absolutely.
Jay (44:17.537)
but they can, you can still go wrong. And so I think it's very interesting because the repetitions that you're talking about are in an quote unquote close to simulated event or space as possible. So talk a little bit about maybe the parallels between what you're trying to achieve in a simulator as a pilot and where our kind of simulation in a pool comes in from Scuba.
Kevin (44:46.254)
Definitely. I will back up just a little bit because the simulator in flying only came in when I came to the military. There were a few civilian simulators, but I mean, they were expensive, bulky. They were at the big flight schools, not the mom and pop small hometown airport ones. So flying once a week for an hour, I would be reading all the stuff during the week, having a good time, and then you get to your first lesson and you retain 20% of what you learn in there.
And you're like, cool, I'm gonna go home and memorize this. You come back for the next lesson, and the first half of that lesson is just repeating the stuff you did the week before, because you didn't retain nearly all of it. And you rinse and repeat, and that's why it took me longer than, I was average on my learning to fly, but it didn't click until I was flying every other day. And that repetition was gone. Now, this is still not the ideal case. This is more of like, hey, we're gonna, we're gonna,
go to confined water in a quarry once a month and then over four or five months, hopefully you get all your skills together to be able to check off and then go to open water. Granted, I feel my diving significantly took off and made leaps and bounds when we entered the UTD program and Jeff's like, go get a GoPro, put a tripod, put a weight on it, sink it to the bottom of the pool and videotape yourself. Never had done that in diving.
Jay (46:10.043)
Mm-hmm.
Kevin (46:12.586)
I'd been in the pool a bunch in college. We had the collegiate pool and every other week there was a scuba class and I would jump in. But the ability to see yourself and critique yourself is huge. And in the simulator, I have the ability to stop it mid flight, I have the ability to back it up and I have the ability to go to the console and print out basically the flight path of the airplane or its parameters. So.
Jay (46:35.649)
Hmm.
Kevin (46:38.114)
the ability to basically go in and put yourself in, you know, basic learning situation. I can block everything out. I can block the weather, I can black out the other crew compartments. We can keep it so that it's just pure mechanics on flying. And that's what our early simulators are. It's just fly the airplane. How do you take off? How do you land? How do you take off if there's multiple engine failures? How do you land with multiple engine failures? How do you do emergency procedures?
I'm not worried about the mission. I'm not worried about dropping bombs. I'm not worried about any of that. And I can pause the SIM and go see the gauges. When you push this button, this happened. When this happened, this happened. And then because I don't have to fly the airplane all the way around the pattern and I can back it up. If the person's having trouble with their landing, I can let them land. I can pause the simulator and I can pull them back to a five mile final. Reset the airplane and let them go.
Jay (47:15.693)
Mm.
Jay (47:30.413)
Mm-hmm.
Kevin (47:30.838)
So in an hour, we can do 25, 30 practice landings to get that picture of coming into the runway right. Whereas in the airplane, it's after we do one, it's a 15 minute trip back around on radar vectors until we can do it again. Not to mention if other airplanes radios, the environmental, you know, hot, cold, left and right. Well, the cool thing about that in scuba is that with filming yourself, you can put yourself into those situations. You can't really stop it.
Jay (47:44.225)
Mm-hmm.
Kevin (47:58.166)
but you can film yourself and you can go back to your video and go, hey, at 28 minutes, this was looking good and then at 29 minutes, you were fumbling and you can't reach us, cool. That's what you need to work on is you need to be able to find this bolt snap or this. And then you talk about setting yourself up and making it more challenging. Well, I mean, it comes to your imagination. If you wanna go take doubles with three bottles and start playing bottle rotations, go for it. I mean, it's your limit. If you're working on a scientific...
Jay (48:11.561)
Mm-hmm.
Kevin (48:27.19)
diving thing where you need to be very hands-on with dexterity. I mean, that's what the astronauts in Houston, in the big pool there, before they go up into space and do their spacewalks, they're in a gigantic pool doing a simulation where they have multiple cameras on them. So the ability to basically be in a confined area that's still very similar, if not the same thing, but safer, and to practice small parts of it over and over again until you get it perfect.
Then the only difference is when you go out to the real thing, you just look at your wrist and instead of it saying nine feet, it says 130 feet and you're like, huh, well, everything else is the same. The only difference is, is that it took a slightly longer to get down here and I had to put more air in my BC. And then everything goes over and over again. So the, I will say to anyone listening, even if you're not associated with UTD, you're in the, go get a GoPro, mount it to the bottom of your pool, as long as you're a certified diver and you're safe, like just don't be stealing gear and.
Jay (49:11.155)
Mm-hmm.
Kevin (49:26.058)
sitting at the bottom of your pool alone. But the filming yourself is huge. And then I have friends who do aerobatic flying. They have GoPros all over their airplane, on the wings, in the cockpit, on the tail. They come back and they analyze that over and over again because when we talk about it took 25 years to do this, yeah, it would take 25 years to do this if you just had to figure it out.
Jay (49:27.041)
Hehehehe
Kevin (49:53.726)
you can speed up that learning curve. And I'm not saying, you know, experience is one thing, but getting a bunch of dives and ramping up that experience learning curve in a simulator is going to help you out tremendously. Now it's no replacement for seat time is what we call it. Like you can't do 300 hours in the simulator and then jump in the airplane and think it's gonna be perfect. It's not a one for one, it's not a hundred percent. Some of the airline sims are, but not ours. So yeah, there is that, hey, I have...
hundreds of hours of me sitting in the pool, practicing my back kick, hundreds of hours doing buoyancy drills. I still need to get out and dive, but because I've put that work in, I'm head and shoulders above the person that just did a hundred dives in the same location over and over again. So that's how I look at it.
Jay (50:36.845)
Mm-hmm.
Jay (50:40.061)
Yeah, and I think the point you're making about video, it's no matter how great your instructor is, and I say this as an instructor who desires to be very good at what I do, there is no better teacher than the video. You know, like it's just, you see it. Our memories are short, and especially because it's a, you know, our memories are of what we think happened with our bodies. It's so wrong.
Kevin (51:07.732)
the perception.
Jay (51:09.661)
right? And it's funny because even to this day when I'm, you know, out diving, and I'm adding something new, right? Or I'm or I tried something a little bit different or whatever it was, I remember a part of the dive where I did something that you know, I wasn't 100% sure how it went. I crave that video, you know, I still want video of myself doing things. Because you want to see how it went and how you can improve it and where, you know, it's funny, because I've been diving a lot with, you know, just a deco bottle on right.
And it's funny cause this dive that we did a couple of days ago, I didn't have a bottle on. And one of the benefits of having a Deco bottle on or a stage bottle is that it keeps that D ring out, right? You're about your hip left hip D ring out because the bottle is hanging from it. So it makes it very easy to find and reclip your SPG when you're doing a gas check and it was funny cause I was like, my first clip off of my SPG, I couldn't get the D ring out.
Like, like, who used to doing this in a certain spot and I'm like, Hey, wait a minute, where did it go? Like, it's not there. Why is it not up? Like, why is it laying down? Okay, now I got it up. And I was like, Oh, okay, that's because, you know, there's not a bottle hanging from it. So it's that stuff of reps.
Kevin (52:19.758)
Yeah, but the...
Kevin (52:23.946)
But the bigger thing from that is that even though you didn't grab it on the first try or the second try or it may have taken the third try, the subconscious buoyancy propulsion and trim was there so that you didn't get frustrated and lose the basics while you were trying to do a task-oriented skill. So that's the big deal is no one's perfect on everything. I've missed radio calls, I've bobbled level offs and some landings haven't been perfect, but the basics were there.
to keep you within a safe realm so that you could problem solve and figure yourself out. It just depends. Is that problem small in finding a D-ring or much larger of going, hey, we're out of gas, we're lost and there's current. So it's all, get the basics down pat so that while you're troubleshooting or problem solving, however you wanna call it, you're still in a safe environment. And yeah, I mean,
you spent all that time with the Deco bottle and now it's gone, it actually should be feeling. It'd be like, woo, I don't have to lean on one side anymore.
Jay (53:28.627)
I still was probably winning the ones I just out of compensation and habit and then you realize, oh wait.
Kevin (53:32.482)
Does your calf on that side cramp more than the other one? Cause you're kicking to stay right?
Jay (53:35.917)
Yeah, exactly. Exactly. No, I mean, and yeah, you have weird stuff that happened, like, when we were diving together that one time where all of a sudden, my boot just came, my dry suit boot actually came over my heel. And I was like, this is weird. Like what in the world just happened? Like, I feel like I just lost a fin, but I know I didn't because I could, I could feel it back there, but not really. And it was like, okay, what's going on? You know, and again, when those things come up, you're still not
Kevin (53:44.151)
See ya.
Jay (54:05.617)
Yeah, now I can't really go anywhere, at least very efficiently, but I, I'm not on the surface, you know, choking on whatever. It's like, okay, hey buddy, we need to go up because I, I can't solve this here. It's not going to happen right now. And we were, we were on a little recreational diet. It didn't really matter, but I think you're right. The foundation and that's how I've always referred to at least my training. And what I've really appreciated about my training at UTD is that it's, it's been a
a strong foundation. And I would say that about DIR diving in general, whether you're learning it at UTD or you've taken from other organizations like GUE or I know there are some TDI instructors out there who are still teaching DIR or however you learn it. What I found is DIR as a, which is doing it right, which is a really presumptuous term, but it was not something we created, it's just what it's become known as.
you know, provided that strong foundation so that when, when things are either being added from a skill perspective, because you're changing an environment, you're going into a cave or you're going deeper or you're, you're doing Deco or whatever those things start to change, those foundational skills all stay the same. And, and that foundation is solid. And I read some something the other day, just, you know, on wherever it was about there's a big argument going on, of course, in the interwebs.
about how, you know, teaching on the knees. And I actually think it was pointed at some comments that Greg and I made on the last episode here. So it was a big debate and I haven't entered the fray there. But you know, this one person, individual is making an argument that, you know, hey, we should be teaching on our knees because humans learn best doing one thing at a time. So we're gonna teach them skills that, you know, then they don't have to think about their buoyancy and their trim and all this stuff.
Kevin (55:42.126)
Ha ha ha.
Jay (56:03.053)
And the other side of that fence was, you know, yeah, but the number one skill in diving is buoyancy and balance. So they should be doing that first before they're taking a regulator out of their mouth and things. And I enjoyed that back and forth. And obviously I side on one side of it. But the other thing I was thinking in that whole thing, exactly. Yeah. But one of the things that I think really settled in for me, um,
Kevin (56:09.742)
point.
Kevin (56:18.578)
Yeah. Check the bio, paddy master scuba diver 200. Okay, cool. I know where this conversation is going now.
Jay (56:30.149)
observing this argument was the law of primacy. And that is really that what you learn first is how it's going to stick with you. And that's where for me, neutral buoyancy, teaching neutrally buoyant, all those sorts of things, the foundation from a primacy standpoint gets set and it's so, so important. So I think that's what you're saying in some ways and how it relates back to scuba. But yeah, I think in the same way,
with flying if you learn first the wrong way, that it's harder to unlearn that and then relearn the right way rather than starting from learning it the right way. From the beginning, what are those primal skills and those foundational skills that you have to have in place in order to make everything else easier?
Kevin (57:19.246)
Absolutely, I mean, I'm not on day one in the plane, I'm not teaching them how to do complex, multiple formation bomb runs and stuff like that. It's, hey man, can you take off? Right? Then we get into AR, right? So I'm not, I mean, that's a whole nother world, you know, being within 10 feet of another aircraft and purposely letting it contact and touch you and all that stuff. It's one of those things, it's like, you have to do the building blocks and you have to figure out what is the...
Jay (57:40.286)
Oof.
Kevin (57:48.17)
what's gonna keep you alive the best? Is it some fancy skill, some crazy rebreather thing? Like, no, it's buoyancy. It's making sure that you can stay at one place to solve a problem out or not get yourself into more problems and that kind of stuff and flying with airplanes. I'm not teaching you how to do instrument approaches or aerobatics or flying. The first thing I'm teaching you is can you stay straight and level?
If you get crazy, can you at least get the airplane straight and level under a constant airspeed, not climbing, not descending? Cool, once you get that done, now we teach turns. Now we teach climbs and descents. And then those build on top of each, because each one of your takeoffs back around to a landing involves a climb, involves a level off, involves power changes, involves putting the landing gear down, stuff like that. And then from there you build up. And then from there you go, okay, cool, now we're gonna do a loop.
just with a single airplane. And then you build up and then you go, okay, now I gotta teach you how to fly five feet from another aircraft and then do a loop at the same time. Same thing with the bomber, just obviously we're not five feet and I can't loop it. You can try in the sim. When you come, you can try looping the buff in the sim.
Jay (58:59.835)
Is it physically possible or outside of the realms of physics?
Kevin (59:04.47)
I think the SIM crashes when you go that high, like to do like a loop, to barrel roll it, I think you need something like 25,000 feet of altitude. Like some guys have tried it, but somewhere in there, you lose thousands and thousands of feet and you potentially overspeed and over-G the airplane. But you can try it. Yeah.
Jay (59:08.725)
Mm-hmm.
Jay (59:12.706)
Hmm.
Jay (59:20.765)
Yeah, that's you can try. Yeah, you see what happens. Yeah. Well, good. Well, maybe let's wrap this one up with a couple. I mean, by the way, producer Daniel has never been more excited about a guest than you. Because I think he just goes back to his 10 year old brain of all the cool things about the B 52. Because I think he might have been 10 around the time that was new. So I'm just kidding. I know, but he was geeking out about this. So maybe
Kevin (59:47.762)
I should just set a date and say whichever one of you shows up at the gate of Barksdale on this date gets a sim ride. I mean he is closer now.
Jay (59:54.309)
Yeah, exactly. He would be there. I guarantee we'd be fighting each other. I'd pop his tires and he's also a monster, a monster fiend. So maybe, maybe that's the, uh, the through line, but
Kevin (01:00:00.404)
That's a very J thing to do.
Kevin (01:00:05.138)
You got a Costco in San Diego, we gotta just raid Costco this time.
Jay (01:00:08.161)
That's right. That's right. So maybe let's wrap this one up with all right. What are what are some interesting facts you can share about the B 52 that maybe most people don't know so I can share one because I know it. And that is simply that there, there is no potty on the airplane. So you told me that There's no little boys room.
Kevin (01:00:30.178)
There's a, yeah, so there's, there's it. Well, I mean, there is a boys room. There's a piss can on board, but yeah, there's no toilet on board. So we call it vitamin I for a modium. So somewhere, not on the local flights, but I will say my longest flight in the B52 was 38 and a half hours.
Jay (01:00:45.037)
Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha
Jay (01:00:52.417)
Woof.
Kevin (01:00:52.822)
damn near close to two days in a metal tube that's roughly the size of a one bedroom. No, it's less than a one, it's basically the size of a bedroom when you do the whole square footage. There is a camping kind of chemical toilet, but we shun everyone who uses it because it then stinks up the entire aircraft and everyone has to be on oxygen. So imagine like a hot, nasty porter potty. Yeah, that's probably not great. That's probably not great. But...
Jay (01:01:19.699)
Oh, that doesn't sound good.
Kevin (01:01:21.674)
Other crazy things about the airplane. So our wing can flex, I think about 15 to 17 feet. So while it's flying, it can flex that much because it's 185 foot wingspan. We can carry about 42,000 gallons of gas fully loaded. Normally we're taking off with 180,000 pounds on our training flights. So for all of you doing your part for the environment with your Priuses or Teslas, I turn the engine on and go for one sortie and I've...
Jay (01:01:32.468)
Wow.
Jay (01:01:38.836)
Wow.
Kevin (01:01:51.818)
You're not making the backup. Sorry. Not happening. We did it. We did the math. The amount of gas it took me to fly from Louisiana to Guam, we put that in my wife's Prius, and it would go to the moon and back twice. So, yep. So we can cast through the gear to land into some pretty interesting crosswinds, which is cool.
It used to have six people. We used to have a gun, a tail gunner. We got rid of that when our adversaries started having more advanced missiles. So right now we're a crew of five and we'll eventually go down to a crew of four. What other crazy stuff? We can go up to 50,000 feet, although it's not really useful. It's more of like a hey cool this is where you can go because to fly up that high you have to be very light which means not carrying a lot of gas and a lot of bombs.
We can carry about 70,000 pounds of bombs, a whole variety, both conventional and nuclear. And on about one tank of gas, so that if we put that 42,000 gallons in there, we can normally get about 8,000 miles. It takes about 12, 12 and a half hours. So, yep, what else? Oh, yes, we can. So, which, I mean, we had to do that.
Jay (01:03:02.557)
You can refuel in the air as well, right?
Kevin (01:03:07.426)
four times on my flight that was 38 hours. There are buffs, they've done it where they've flown around the world, nonstop. Let's see what else. We have ejection seats that go down. So there are four, yes, yeah. So there's four, so it's two levels. So the navigator and bombardier sit downstairs. The pilot, co-pilot and defender sit upstairs. So you have four ejection seats that go up and then two that go down.
Jay (01:03:18.993)
Oh, down instead of up. Okay.
Kevin (01:03:35.407)
which is very important on takeoff that we get to at least a certain altitude just in case there's a problem that the guys downstairs have a fighting chance.
Jay (01:03:42.974)
Mm.
Jay (01:03:46.269)
New Year's the pilot and the co pilot and the defender go down as well. Or do those ones go up and the guys don't I see
Kevin (01:03:46.615)
Yeah.
Kevin (01:03:52.926)
No, they go up. They go up. Yeah, because the guys downstairs, if they went up, they would go through the bottom of my seat. So obviously they can't do that. But yeah, it's a two-story airplane. So there's a little ladder to get into the airplane, which is the bottom row. And then there's a ladder that we set up. So I sit about, I think about 14, 15 feet off the ground is where the pilot window is. Yeah, man, it's...
Jay (01:03:59.646)
Yeah, no good.
Jay (01:04:12.523)
Okay.
Jay (01:04:15.829)
What about naming? So do you, I know it was popular back in the day to name your plane, like just all I know is that is World War II documentary. So is that still a practice or how does that play into things?
Kevin (01:04:29.45)
A lot of the, a lot of the, because the airplane is that old, a lot of the names came around back during the 60s and 70s when they were on nuclear alert and in Vietnam. During that time, they fell under a, the organization of strategic air command, which was in charge of all the bombers and missiles that today has sort of changed into Air Force Global Strike Command. And that nose art is on the airplane, but unfortunately in the PC culture, a lot of the good nose art has been removed.
but the names of the airplane still. So yeah, it's very much a, every airplane has a personality. Some like to start Monday morning, others don't. But I will say on the reserve side, the maintenance guys and gals are amazing. They work extremely hard on a very old aircraft that doesn't tell it what's wrong. So they have to figure it out the hard way. They're working in a hundred plus degree heat.
Jay (01:05:09.13)
Hmm.
Kevin (01:05:25.646)
with very little shade out there in the elements and I've been very happy. They've done an awesome job. So yes, the old adage that it's not really our plane, we just borrow it for a few hours. It's really the maintainers. That holds true and they are an awesome bunch of men and women that do a great job. So unlike the new ones, you just plug it. It's like your car. They plug a computer in it, tells them what's wrong. Nothing on the buff like that.
Jay (01:05:44.543)
shout out to
Jay (01:05:49.425)
Yeah. That's crazy. What was, can you share the, the name of the, the B 52 that you have the most hours in the seat on? Oh, okay.
Kevin (01:05:59.407)
I don't know that one. I'm pretty sure I could go back to my flying history and do the calculations on which airplane I flew the most. I just don't know.
Jay (01:06:11.049)
Yeah, I'm sure we'll make it share that to the to the Facebook group later. And, uh, that would be an interesting one. I just out of a, that'd be a good Kevin trivia there at the bar one night. What's what, if you think, you know, Kevin, what's the name of the B 52 that he spent the most time in the seed on the Enola gay, right? Was that the answer? All right. Oh no, that's not it. What wasn't you? That wasn't you. Okay. Good. Good to know.
Kevin (01:06:21.922)
Yeah.
Yeah.
Kevin (01:06:32.65)
No, that's in a museum, Jay.
Kevin (01:06:37.578)
We take, no, it wasn't, not that old. Airplane's not that old, but close, but no.
Jay (01:06:44.081)
Well, good. Well, this has been fun. I mean, I think, I think the, the big takeaway for me is like anything. And what's interesting is the last little caveat here is if you're still listening is one thing we didn't get into that maybe we could write on and gripe on later, but is it's interesting because scuba diving is so alike from a training perspective in a lot of ways and even a control perspective to flying. But you, when you
Kevin (01:07:01.326)
Thank you.
Jay (01:07:10.893)
If I was going to go to learn to fly, I definitely wouldn't be like Google searching discount flight instructors. Yeah, the group. Yeah. Yet in scuba, that seems to be the way we approach it in some ways. So it's, I don't know why it's so interesting, maybe because, you know, there there's pretty fish and things that maybe that's the reason mentally we just get to a place where we want to buy down.
Kevin (01:07:18.369)
You don't want the Groupon flight instruction? $99 for your first lesson?
Jay (01:07:37.237)
But anyway, long story short, that'll be something that we can gripe on in a short sometime, but I find it very interesting. Any last thoughts before we jump off the air here?
Kevin (01:07:47.691)
Flying and diving, it's both been the most rewarding thing I've done in my life. Obviously, I've done it. It's what I went to school for. I put a lot of long hours, tireless time deploying overseas and stuff like that. I've been to some really cool places. I've met amazing people. And then the parallels, the same thing with diving. Put a lot of time and energy in, got to travel.
Got to meet some really good people. Yeah. Every, every organization, every industry has its bad apples, but normally they don't last that long. So what I can say is when you find a hobby that has consequences, but is attainable if you put the time and energy into it, and then gives you plenty of opportunities to excel at different levels, whether that's open water, advanced, rec, cave, rebreathe, whatever, flying small airplanes, big airplanes, jets, you name it.
really comes down to what are you willing to put in? Are you willing to delay gratification, enjoy the plateau and work your butt off? Because when you do, people around you will see it, they will come help you out and they're gonna introduce you to the same things and same experiences. And it just, it's been awesome. The biggest question I have every night and primarily my reason I have to go work out tonight is what do I do if I can't do either one of those? And it's...
get physically fit so that I can continue all the way until I'm 65, 70 years old enjoying both of these hobbies. So enjoy it, love it, respect it, but then go make a bunch of friends and have some good memories.
Jay (01:09:23.137)
Well said, well said. Well, great. I've had a lot of fun talking about the parallels between flying a B-52 and scuba diving. We'd love to hear your thoughts. So if you'd like to reach out, send a message, jay at thedivetable.com. Love to hear from you, love to hear your thoughts about this episode. And potentially if Kenvin is feeling in a amped up caffeine led mood and feeling somewhat not an introvert, but extroverted, I might.
introduce you to him. So we'll see how Kevin's feeling that day. I'm kidding. Getting more smoke coffee. But, uh, but yeah. Uh, yeah. Reach out, Jay at the dive table.com. We'd love to hear from you and make sure that you subscribe wherever you get your podcasts, whether that be Spotify or Apple so that you get notified when new episodes drop. And if you'd like to see our beautiful faces, uh, if you're not already,
Kevin (01:09:56.627)
I gotta go get more coffee right now.
Jay (01:10:16.753)
Uh, brand new thing. We are YouTube channel is up and running and pretty standard has been working hard to actually publish these as not only, uh, full episodes, but also clips. So if you just want to hear one piece of it, you can on YouTube. So looking forward to the next one with you, Kevin. And, uh, I think we're going to talk, uh, our, our IDC instructor journeys together. Uh, something that'll be a lot of fun and we might have to have a bunch of, you know, donuts around for we'll see.
just to make us feel better. But yeah, we're gonna have that one in the next episode. I think looking forward to it. So tell all those out there in the scubaverse. Thanks for joining us. And we hope to have you back on the next episode of the dive table.
