A Navigator Named Yehor (A Ukrainain Drone Pilot)

Yehor wanted to be a pilot from the time he was old enough to know the word. He earned his way into the Ukrainian air force academy and finished it, then flew the Su-24 and the An-26. That is the whole dream, start to finish, and he was living it.Then the war came and he walked away from the cockpit to go stand with his brothers on the front line.He volunteered. His wife was expecting their child and she did not want him to go. He went anyway, and she stayed with him through all of it. They are still together today.On the front he started flying drones, and the men around him could not make sense of it. A real pilot, an academy graduate with fixed wing time, sitting in the dirt with a controller in his hands. To them a pilot was someone who lived at an airfield and flew things with people inside. To Yehor it was the same job with a different aircraft, and the mission in front of him was the one that mattered.In this conversation Yehor walks through the path from the academy to the front, what transfers from crewed flight to a small unmanned aircraft under fire, and what does not transfer at all. We talk about how quickly the drone side of the war moves, what the men in the field figured out on their own without a manual, and how you keep your standards when nothing about the environment is standard.We also talk about the cost. The decision he made at home, the version of himself that came back to it, and what it takes to hold a marriage together while doing this work.Yehor is the kind of aviator this show exists for. He built the career the hard way, and when it counted he put it down and picked up the mission that was in front of him.An AeroVis Drone Solutions Production. More at flyaerovis.com.Send me his last name and callsign if you want them in, and confirm the paragraph about his wife is cleared with him before it publishes.