I recently sat for a three-hour Zoom interview with Robert Hoeting, a Dutch friend who follows my blog. He’s starting a podcast featuring pilot interviews and our talk is the first installment: the subject being my experiences in the U.S. Air Force and flying the F-15 Eagle. We covered a bit of my personal history as well, stories I haven’t shared with anyone in ages.
Robert distilled those three hours of conversation into a six-segment YouTube broadcast. I’ve embedded the videos below; you can also visit his YouTube channel, Bobcast, by clicking here. There’ll be more interviews in the future, and you may wish to subscribe.
Robert’s a retired commercial pilot with over 15,000 hours, 9,000 of which were in Boeing 737s, and extensive experience flying in the American Southwest. He grew up near Soesterberg Air Base in the Netherlands and as a teenager was fascinated by the F-15 Eagles based there. Just coincidentally, I was one of the Eagle drivers at Soesterberg during those years. He’s a fan of my blog (and my Air-Minded posts in particular); I’m honored to be the subject of his first interview.
I’ve seen a lot of aviator interviews on YouTube. Despite my love of all things flying, I get bored with them quickly. Why? Because the camera’s almost always focused on a talking head, sitting at a desk. Luckily for Robert and me, there was a problem with the video and the footage of my talking head disappeared into the ether, never to be found, leaving only the audio. What Robert has done is to use photos (many of them my own) and short video clips instead, splicing them together over the background audio of our conversation. It makes for a far more interesting interview, I think, and hope you’ll agree.
Without further ado, here’s the interview:
Part One: Undergraduate Pilot Training @ Vance AFB, Oklahoma