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Bits and Pieces
Interview With Pete McLeod, Red Bull Pilot
By Ian Brown, Editor – Bits and Pieces, EAA 657159
Hello Pete. It’s a pleasure to meet you. How was the trip from Bagotville?
I came in this morning and the weather was nice, just headwinds, that’s it. Things were fine for my practice this afternoon. The clouds are high enough, I only use 2,500-3,000 AGL even for my high show and we need a minimum of 1,000. It’s got to be just socked in and raining to be unable to do our show. The permissions for the show are “free of cloud” but we’re typically doing 2,000 feet AGL vertical penetration.
Apart from needing good weather, what qualities do you think it takes to be a good aerobatic pilot?
Probably some of the same qualities as being a good golfer. Being able to put up with frustrations and keep practising. As you know, I come from the competition aerobatic background. It can be extremely tedious at times because I mean it’s not just about going up and burning holes in the blue sky and saying, “I had fun doing that.” You’re learning to fly the airplane from the outside because all that matters is what it looks like. The marginal return on your practice diminishes all the time. It takes some of the same persistence. You have to learn good spatial awareness. Just like a gymnast needs to be able to visualize where that beam is and how to land on it, I can visualize my entire flight sitting here on the couch. Obviously my primary inputs inside the cockpit are not so much what control inputs I make so much as what I see. So much of it is reference, too. Controls make the airplane do what you want.
Do you rehearse physically on the ground as some aerobatic pilots do?
Yeah, I do. Some pilots do it with their hands. Others use their hands and arms as the wings. You just get one chance at it. It’s not a marathon race or anything. So if you make a mistake on a line or you over-rotate something, or even for a second, pause to think what direction you need to do something, you’ve probably already lost the spacing or the line, and you’re going to start losing points. So that practice over and over on the ground works.
The trick on how to make things look really comes into play with the wind. You can learn to fly a perfectly round loop in a no-wind condition, but on a day like today with a strong wind pretty much down the runway, if you fly it the same way, you’re going to get an oblong. You never really know what the wind is going to do to you, so it’s feel. That just comes from a lot of practising, with someone on the ground to give you feedback, so you start to learn what’s required with different winds. Then you start to learn what’s required side to side. The really interesting thing with some of the top aerobatic pilots is not to watch them on the X-axis but on the Y-axis. Then you’ll get to understand how they can move the airplane depth wise in the box, and that’s not obvious to the crowd. But they’re doing that to position things without changing the shape of things for the judges or the crowd.
I noticed when you were climbing up straight you had the aircraft inclined into the wind.
Yeah, yeah, if you want to hold it in a wind like this for sure.
What would be your dream plane to fly if you were to pick one that you don’t have access to right now?
Well, first off, in so many ways, I get to fly my dream plane every day. I’ve always been into aerobatics and racing, and the Edge is just the perfect plane for me. But if I was to think outside of that, I’d love to fly a CL415, the water bomber. I grew up in Red Lake, Ontario, and they were stationed there. And there’s a big fire base there. They’re amazing airplanes. If you’ve ever seen them do a demo, when they’re empty they are quite impressive. You could probably do some decent aerobatics with a plane like that, and they are huge.
I grew up flying floatplanes, but a flying boat would be interesting, too. Not so much the little ones like a Buccaneer or something, but like an Albatross or a PBY would be amazing planes to own.
What would you do with one?
Oh, just go off and have adventures with friends. One of the drawbacks with a small floatplane is that obviously you’re limited to small lakes. If you were to get into the ocean with bigger swells and so on, you need a bigger plane. I like the idea of old-school design and the great load-carrying capacity, but maybe not the huge fuel cost!
Yes, maybe you’d need lots of friends on board to share the avgas bill. Can you tell us about your status with Red Bull?
Yes, I’m what they call a Red Bull-branded athlete, so they have just over 300 athletes worldwide who do anything from cliff diving, aerobatics, to soccer, to hockey.
…and the Crashed Ice races in Quebec!
Yes, but the difference is that those are not athletes who are contracted to Red Bull, so it’s an open event that you can qualify for. The event is very cool, but that’s the difference. There’s F1 of course. They have a couple of teams and have won a couple of championships. It’s a great company to be part of, and they certainly share a passion for aviation, not only on the performance side but also on their warbird collection. They like to fly just like the rest of us.
How many Red Bull pilots like you are there?
Um, I think there are five or six worldwide. There’s one in the states, myself in Canada, a couple in Europe, one in Japan.
I suppose they’re all eager for the resumption of the air races?
Absolutely. It’s something that the racing itself is an amazing sport, and you can have so much fun on that track. It’s remarkable that they were able to create this playground that we get to use. It’s unbelievable, being in that racetrack. I mean I get to do wild flying all the time, but the racetrack is a lot of fun for sure.
I think they’ve invested a lot in the technology of the race. Is there any likelihood that they’ll change the format at all?
You know, when it comes back I think you’ll see something that looks very similar to what you’ve seen. They’re not really overhauling so much on the sport side. I have heard some talk of slightly higher pylons. That being said, they’re not going to be towers, you know. They might add 10 to 20 feet maybe. In my opinion the format and the sport were great as it was. People understood it. From the competitors’ point of view it made sense. It made sense to go from a 12 to an eight to a four format instead of the head-to-head brackets. The problem with head-to-head is that if the guy ahead of you makes a mistake and clips a pylon or something you could just throttle back the finish. Just don’t hit a pylon and you’re good. Whereas with the format now, in the final four, anyone can win. In that format you’d have to have all three ahead of you muck it up, and if that happened it would probably be due to the conditions, meaning you’d be at fairly high risk of having the same thing happen to you. It makes it exciting right to the end for sure.
When are the Red Bull Air Races going to resume?
Well, right now the status is that they’re still restructuring. There’s a lot of interest in bringing it back, and there’s been a lot of work done on it. We’ve been told that there should be a new calendar announcement no sooner than 2013. Obviously we’d all like to see a calendar announced in 2012, but hopefully we’ll see one announced in 2013. But that doesn’t mean that we won’t be in the track training exhibition-wise. I don’t know how that would play out but for us, and for me as a race pilot, the sooner the better for me.
Have any decisions been made about future locations for the Red Bull Air Races?
No. I think from a public standpoint they’ll announce a calendar with locations at the same time. All I can say, all I know is that everyone both on the organization side and the racing guys like to race in Canada, so I’m confident that we’ll be back somewhere in Canada. I don’t know that for a fact, and maybe some of that is wishful thinking, because I like to race in Canada. I think you’ll see a similar schedule, not necessarily the same cities, but definitely global. But for me I hope that we get a race in Canada.
Yes, I’m sure we’re all feeling the same way about the restart of the races and especially about a location in Canada. I guess those places that qualify are places on the water with a big a population close by?
Yes and no. One of the last races was held in Germany in the middle of a speedway. A lot of people were under the perception that being on the water was a requirement, but the only absolute necessity really is the space. Of course they like to have it with a nice setting, visually, so no buildings. And that’s one advantage of water.
Yes, water is space really, isn’t it, if they can just stop shipping?
Exactly, and that’s an issue in a lot of places also, where you have shipping lines. But the big factor is markets for attendees at the races, so population is important. There are only a handful of Canadian cities capable of attracting a big enough crowd.
Detroit/Windsor, Toronto, Vancouver, Montreal?
Yes, that’s about it, really.
So, changing topic completely, are you married? Do you have kids?
Not married, no kids! I have a girlfriend that puts up with my flying and my being away quite a bit on the road. You know I grew up flying, but I got into aerobatics while I was still at university, and things were going well. And I made the decision to try to do it professionally as soon as I graduated. So I basically went from the classroom, for my economics degree, finished my last exam, and I basically got in my airplane. And I’ve been flying round the country and round the world doing silly things since then.
You know, I’m 28 now. I started this when I was 21 to 22, so it’s amazing how time flies. I spent a year or so in Europe doing that and then a couple of years in the air show circuit.
It must be a bit like the life of a professional golfer, too, is it? Being away a lot.
You know, any athlete that is doing stuff on a high level, your life is not normal. Normal being maybe a 9 to 5 job, a couple of weeks vacation, and you’re normally around home. When you compete internationally the boundaries of the world shrink. You learn, well, for me, small-town kid, Red Lake, Ontario, the world is a big place when you grow up there. I mean, Asia, Europe—they’re just place names on the globe. Then you start to see that they’re just an airline ticket away, so now I have colleagues and friends that are worldwide. And I think I’m going to call my buddy, but I have to think about what time zone he’s in. And it could be like a day later and four in the morning. Sometimes you just don’t notice and you call anyway. But it’s given me a real appreciation for other athletes and the immense amount of effort they put in.
You know, the London Olympics are coming up, and you realize what those athletes have given up to get that good. It takes focus and dedication on just that one thing. The only way they do that is to scrap a lot of other things. My golf game is nowhere near as good as it should be, if I wasn’t doing this.
Do you play golf? How much?
I’ll get maybe a couple of games in the flying season. I play a little bit in the off-season, say, late fall. There are definitely a lot of days that I’m driving to the airport and I’m not going there to have fun. It’s like I have to go practise today, and it becomes like a task at that time. It’s still fun, but…
It’s like Tiger Woods’ dad telling him to go out and practise if it’s raining because he needs to know how to hit balls in the rain?
Yeah, yeah, I mean there are certain things that you have to do, so there is a “job” element to it for sure. But there’s a passion that fuels that.
Have you had any aircraft building experience or got involved in the hands-on side of it?
You know, definitely not building, but for sure the hands-on side. You know it’s a bit like learning at the school of hard knocks, with most of my aircraft maintenance knowledge, because I’m on the road all the time, a lot of the time by myself. Fixing the problem is important, but what’s even bigger is assessing what’s wrong. And of course in the racing world, we’re always trying to make the plane even better and faster. So we’re changing things, and you make those changes a little bit at a time. You’re fabricating things, and I have an interest in it. So I keep myself closely involved in it. Some of the guys who are doing the same as me, I do know that they distance themselves more from the mechanical aspects of the aircraft, and they just want to get in and fly. You know, I grew up around equipment. I really like composites, and maybe sometime in the future I’d like to build a composite plane. But really, right now I don’t have the time.
I guess you know every inch of your aircraft, regardless of whether you fix it yourself or not.
That’s for sure. I’ve always maintained that the best inspection of a plane is cleaning it. I’ve always felt that a guy who doesn’t clean his own airplane doesn’t know enough about his airplane. I mean, equipment will talk to you. Rarely do failures just happen. They develop over time, and it’s the little things that slowly amount to bigger things.
You know, for us, we run our equipment really hard, and of course we have to be on top of things in a preventative way. And so I like to know what’s going on with my airplane all the time.
Do you have to do more maintenance on your aircraft than a regular plane in terms of hours?
Well, I do more inspections for sure. I take my cowls off quite a bit and look for signs of anything developing. I don’t just let it go a hundred hours and not see what’s under the hood. But you know, we’re probably going to overhaul a motor after 500 hours, and it’s a 2,000-hour TBO engine. Mind you, we have it pumped up, more power, and that’s going to bring down the life cycle of your engine. You know, with the aerobatics, there is a lot of force on the crank and the bushings and bearings inside—temperatures run up higher. Pretty much all the aerobatic competitors run the Lycoming 540. They’re a pretty good motor that just keeps turning for the most part.
How old were you when you first got into aerobatics?
Sixteen, I got into it for some safety training. I grew up flying floatplanes. I had to be 16 to get my licence. My dad sent me out to Harv’s Air in Steinbach, Manitoba, and they put me in a Citabria there to start me right off in a tailwheel right off the bat. I had been flying the family 180 on floats and then on skis in the wintertime. At 16, getting my licence was more of a formality rather than “Oh, this is how you fly.” I already knew how to fly. I did my private at 16, and they gave me a recreational permit which automatically turned into a private pilot licence at 17. And then I went back at 18 and did my commercial. When I was there they taught some aerobatics at the school, and I was flying the Citabria. Just a 7-ECA, non-inverted, 115 hp, and my dad wanted them [to] work on some basic aerobatics and some more advanced departure stalls stuff and more spin work than would normally be in a private course at that time. And I just got hooked with it. I grew up flying, so the flying part was not abnormal to me. So for me it was just like sitting on a couch. I always had a passion for speed and performance. I rode a snowmobile like a crazy man ever since I was little. So I just got hooked on it.
That was my first introduction, and I wasn’t really able to get into aerobatics until 18 when I came down to London, Ontario, to go to school. Then I was able to get more instruction with the guys at Fighter Combat International out of St. Catharines, Ontario, who were flying a Decathlon. I got my aerobatic instructors rating and was able to get into competition aerobatics.
So 16 was when I got my first taste of aerobatics, but needless to say, around Red Lake there were no aerobatics. If it didn’t have floats on it or it couldn’t carry minnows and beer, it didn’t fly out of Red Lake.
So were you able to begin aerobatic practice in Red Lake?
Yes, the big step obviously for most people is access to an aerobatic aircraft because flight schools don’t even have them. It’s not like you can just go and rent an aerobatic aircraft and go practise. The best you can get is maybe some dual.
After two-and-a-half years of begging and pleading, my parents said, “Okay, we’ll get you a Pitts Special.” And you know, we’d had airplanes in the family, so having an aircraft was not new to the family. They said, “You can start competitions,” but it was really there as a form of education for me, not as a toy. It was not as if I could just go flying when I wanted to. It was a case of “Well, if you’re gonna do this, you have to be serious about it.”
Red Lake actually turned out to be a great spot to practise. I would spend a lot of time in the states competing, practising, and getting coaching, and every once in a while we’d bring a coach into Red Lake because they’re just watching you from the ground. The airport is quite busy, but not busy with flight training or anything. Only just a few scheduled flights and then a few cargo planes going up north and a lot of float traffic around obviously. Red Lake can be one of the busier airports in Canada on some days with float traffic, but what’s good about it is that people are used to airplanes. So I was up there for hours and hours practising just basic stuff, producing the typical drone of an aircraft just going up and down. The community just got used to it, and it didn’t seem to bother anyone. There’s Norsemen taking off downtown in the bay, and they’re almost breaking your windows with the noise. As a result, I was in an environment where I was able to practise a lot without much interference. Knowing what I know today, there are a lot of places where I have to be careful where and when I practise just because of noise issues, and that’s in Canada. We’re about as tolerant to noise as they come. But even so, there can be someone five miles away, and they don’t want it to happen.
Is your Edge 540 your cross-country ride, too?
Well, it is and it isn’t. I’d love to have something like a Mooney or a Bonanza. Something I can get in with a couple of people and have some IFR capability, even if it’s light IFR. And spend money on one of these fancy headsets they make that make the world quiet and comfy and just cruise. The Edge 540 is not cut out for cross-country. I liken it to going cross-country on a motorcycle. It gets you there, but you’re far from refreshed when you arrive.
So you can probably do a couple of hours and then you need to stop.
Oh, yeah. By then your butt’s pretty sore and you’re half deaf. It’s a pretty loud airplane. We’ve taken all the compromises out of it for performance. Things that make an airplane smooth and quiet, like interiors and comfy seats.
…and soundproofing, I imagine. So you just need a good headset instead?
Yes, really the helmet with ANR is the quietest thing for me. ANR is like standard issue. If you don’t have it, your ears are ringing after about half an hour, but it is fast. I cruise pretty fast so if I have good weather I can cover ground.
Yes, for me, Bromont to Barrie, Ontario, is maybe two-and-a-half hours. I imagine it’s a lot faster for you.
That’s true. It would probably take me about an hour and a half, two hours to London.
That’s a nice ride, too, along the lake over Toronto Island.
Yes, it’s a nice spot. From London, there is a guy with an F1 Rocket that I do some flying in, and that’s a nice cross-country plane. It’s sporty and fast. It’s not really that far off the concept design wise of what I’m flying, but it’s very quiet and smooth relative to the Edge.
I guess unless they’re going to Reno, they don’t really have to make the kind of compromises you do.
That’s right, and for most guys if you have an airplane that is doing 185 to 190 knots, then you’re going to put some instruments in it and make it comfy. It’s only you that knows about that extra 5 knots anyway.
…and you don’t notice the difference when you’re doing a cross-country.
Exactly, and that only saves maybe a minute or two on a long trip. So I’ll go flying into Toronto Island Airport. It’s a blast to land there, but it’s getting busy.
Have you had any scary moments?
Yes, if you fly long enough, you will. I’ve had a few things break on me mechanically. And sometimes you’re lucky that you’re practising at an airport, so you can just come in and land. I’ve done a pretty good job of not getting myself into too much trouble on my own with flying. Really, I’ve had excellent, excellent coaching, and mentoring along the way. I’ve been able to learn quite a few things without learning them the hard way. It’s like any industry, but mentoring has been huge for me. In Canada, you’ve probably heard of Bill Carter. He flew the Imperial Oil Pitts for 20-something years. He’s been a real great help in the air show world. There have been a lot of people, and that’s been a big thing for me as far as being safe and not making the same mistakes as other guys have.
Speaking about safety, do you always practise near an airport?
No, not always. But I like to practise near a place I can land, and the reality is that it’s not always possible to practise near an airport. I do limit the amount of time that I do aerobatics practice in a spot where I have no option for a good landing. You know, I’m based out of southern Ontario now, and there are so many fields with grass strips now that it’s not so bad. After you grow up flying around Red Lake, any field looks good compared to just trees.
Well, thanks for coming to Bromont and flying for us. We’re delighted to have you here. We’ll be looking out for that Red Bull Air Races calendar in 2013.
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