As we shake hands, I can see Matt Hall’s eyes.
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I thought those eyes may have been shielded. Given the acclaimed aircraft racer is a former fighter pilot and “Top Gun” instructor, I presumed he would be wearing sunglasses. Then again, maybe that’s just in the movies.
“Fighter pilots have got a bit of a reputation globally for being gum-chewing, mirrored sunnies, ‘Did you know I’m a pilot?’, that sort of thing,” Hall concedes over lunch at Merewether’s Burwood Inn, not far from his home.
“It’s not like that because the [Air Force] training system is so long and personal, an ego like that is weeded out very quickly.
“A good fighter pilot has to be very confident in his ability, because there’s no point in sending someone into combat who is going, ‘Oh, I hope I don’t get shot down’. Well, I hope I don’t get shot down, but I know I’ll come out swinging. I’m very confident that I can get the job done. But you’re not arrogant.
“The difference between confidence and arrogance in my definition is that a confident person has the utmost belief they can do a very good job and win a fight, but they’ll always listen to advice. Whereas an arrogant person has the same amount of confidence, but they don’t actually listen to anything either.
“If you think you know everything, it’s not going to go well.”
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Confidence, and a great deal of training and ability, has kept Matt Hall in the air. From bombing missions during the Iraq War to manoeuvring his plane around a scarily tight obstacle course only metres above the water in the Red Bull air races, Hall has stared mortality in the face. But that view from the cockpit is all that Matt Hall has ever wanted.
MATT Hall was born in Scone in September, 1971, the son and grandson of pilots.
Hall’s grandfather flew transport planes during the Second World War. He loved watching his fighter pilot grandson fly.
“He was just fascinated to hear me talk about the jet fighters, because he used to fly around in a plane that did 100 knots, 120 knots, and I flew around in planes that do 1000 knots,” Hall recalls.
Hall’s father, Rohan, was an electrical engineer, working in power stations, which led the family to Lake Macquarie when Matt was a small boy. Rohan Hall’s passion was flying, and he would often take his son.
Matt’s first flight was when he was about two, but that sense of leaving the ground kicked in a few years later, flying out of the airfield at Marks Point.
“I remember the feeling of freedom every time we took off,” Matt says. “I didn’t understand how it all works back then, so it was, ‘Hey, I’m with Dad. Off we go. And, wow, this still doesn’t seem like it’s going to fly. I don’t know if this is going to work. But every time, magically we took off.”
That airfield has come to figure prominently in Matt Hall’s life. Lake Macquarie Airport, as it is now called, is the base of the Matt Hall Racing team. He is also a part-owner of the airport and operates a string of aviation businesses there.
Young Matt also flew in gliders with his father at Warkworth. Hall guesses he was about 10 when he had his first hands-on flying experience. After many attempts and encouragement from his father in the front seat, Matt had grown enough to reach the control lever, touching it with his middle finger. He was actually flying. Then the glider hit turbulence and Matt said to his Dad, “OK, you’ve got it!”.
“But it was a good thing, because it taught me to fly with fingertips, taught me to feel an aircraft,” Hall says.
Matt Hall kept improving that feel. At 14, he began formal training in gliders and had his licence by 15, then he learnt to fly his father’s ultralight aircraft.
Every dollar earned, every Christmas and birthday present, went into paying for flying lessons. The teenager knew what he wanted to do for a job. He had learnt that at the gliding field as well.
“I was just the kid sitting in the background, and all the adults would be talking about stuff, and I guess they were in their 30s - really old - and I’d listen to them,” he explains.
“Everyone’s complaining about their week - ‘I’m glad it’s now the weekend’. And I thought, ‘Surely they’ve got this round the wrong way. Why would you do something that you hate for five days of the week, and then hanging for the weekend?’.
“So I thought, ‘What would I do then for a job so I’m not hanging around complaining?’. And I thought, ‘I’ll be a pilot’.”
Hall planned on being a commercial pilot.
When he finished high school, he took a job at the tax office for the sole purpose of earning money for flying lessons, accruing his hours in the air. However, heading towards the RAAF didn’t seem like an option.
He had seen “Top Gun” at the cinema, he loved going to air shows and watching the F/A-18 Hornets screaming past, but he couldn’t imagine himself in the cockpit: “You watch a fighter fly past, you don’t actually think there’s one person sitting in that big piece of machinery, going that fast, making that much noise.”
Then he had a “life-defining” experience while his father was in hospital. Matt was visiting Rohan, and a distant relative who had been a Spitfire pilot during the Second World War also dropped by.
Matt Hall told the older man he was paying for flying lessons, with the aim of being a commercial pilot.
“I’m not sure if he read my eyes, or what happened, but he basically said something that took a while to sink into my 17,18-year-old brain,” Hall recalls. “He said, ‘There’s one thing I regret. I regret I was born in the wrong era. I was born too early. I’d give anything to be in your shoes right now so I could go and join the Air Force and go and fly these supersonic jet fighters. It would be absolutely incredible to do that for a career. Don’t you think?’.”
A few hours later, Matt was in the shower when he was struck by what that man had said: “This guy effectively is saying he wants to be me, to have the opportunity I’ve got. And it’s an opportunity I’m not taking, based on other people’s opinions. I’ve got the potential to spend the rest of my life doing something amazing, or I have the potential to spend the rest of my life going, ‘I wonder if I could have’.”
He turned off the taps, and said to himself, “Done! I’m joining the Air Force.”
He was accepted and began with the Royal Australian Air Force in early 1991. He was being paid to fly. Hall still remembers the sensation of being in a PC-9 turboprop plane for the first time during training.
“It’s got an ejection seat, you’re wearing a G-suit, you’ve got an oxygen system, you’re flying at altitudes where you can’t survive without the oxy,” he explains, “and you’re pushed into the back of your seat when you accelerate.”
Hall progressed to flying F/A-18 Hornets at Williamtown, so training took him over his boyhood home at Mandalong, from where he used to gaze up at jets: “I never would have thought, ‘Hey dude, this is you’.”
By the age of 27, he was a fighter combat instructor, “which is our version of Top Gun”. Then, from 2002, he was in the land of ‘Top Gun’ for three years, on exchange in the US Air Force. He was given a call sign: Matty.
“That was the most boring call sign!”
Flying with the USAF placed Matt Hall at the crossroads of history in March 2003. He was deployed to Qatar, flying F-15E Strike Eagles in the early stages of the Iraq War.
“I was on day one of the bombing into downtown Baghdad,” Hall says.
“What was that like?”
“Surreal,” he replies, adding that he was nervous before each flight.
“You just had these clear memories of back in ‘91 [Persian Gulf War] with the POWs and all that sort of stuff. So before each flight it was nerve-wracking, thinking, ‘I don’t want to be the guy on TV tomorrow morning’. But it’s like all things, when you’re on the mission itself, you’re so busy and focused, you don’t get nervous.”
Hall says he wasn’t concerned about dying, but his squadron lost a jet, killing its two crew, and “they were both pretty close friends, their wives were close friends of ours. That was probably one of the lowest points of my career when that happened, and one of the hardest things as well.”
Over the course of about 20 missions, Hall had a few close calls with missiles fired at his plane. He was also awarded combat decorations for providing air cover for Marines who had been ambushed by enemy forces.
“Yes, you get a medal for it,” he reflects, “but it’s flying home after a mission like that, when you’re sitting there at night time, limping home with hardly any fuel and no weapons left, and you’ve got your wingman sitting a mile away and it’s quiet, you go, ‘Oh my God, I can’t believe we just did that’.”
Real-life air combat, he says, is not like how it is portrayed in “Top Gun”.
“The flying scenes are spectacular, but that’s not really how it is. You don’t fly in as close quarters. It’s a lot more aggressive, the flying. You’re not sitting there, looking around, having a conversation.
“It’s very dedicated and very tough in the cockpit. So not a lot like ‘Top Gun’.”
After about six weeks in the Middle East, Hall flew a night mission then was on an airliner back to the United States the following morning.
“It was just such a mind shift to go, ‘I was just in a combat environment, getting shot at in the desert, and less than 24 hours later, I’m sitting in my lounge chair in America, North Carolina,” he says.
While in the US, Matt Hall formed the core of his life ahead, beginning a relationship with his future wife, Pedita. She was a doctor and fellow RAAF officer, who was also on exchange.
“She always outranked me by one rank,” Hall laughs. “We came back to Australia, got married, had a kid, I was promoted to Wing Commander. We were then equal rank, so then she resigned!”
The couple married with a backdrop of Tiger Moths at Luskintyre airfield in 2005. Their son, Mitchell, is 12, and Hall has a 20-year-old stepson, Cameron, and 18-year-old stepdaughter, Amelia.
Once he was back in Australia, Hall spent another four years in the RAAF, taking on new responsibilities as a pilot and instructor but asking, “What’s next?”.
He wanted more stability, to know they could stay in their home in Merewether and not worry about being transferred. He also desired a greater sense of safety for his family and questioned whether he would be prepared to go overseas to another conflict and “be shot at again”.
Seeking those qualities, he looked to aerobatics and air racing.
“I know, it’s weird, isn’t it?,” he chuckles.
In the US, after his combat experience and being constantly driven by goals, Hall had pursued aerobatics as a new challenge. He began competing and winning, and he brought this hobby home.
The hobby led to an offer of a new chapter in his flying career – to be a competitor in the Red Bull Air Race World Championship.
At the end of 2008, Hall left the RAAF with “mixed emotions”, and he and Pedita mortgaged their Merewether home to help pay for his racing preparation.
“There are not many fighter pilots who go from flying fighters their entire career, including what I got to do, and then actually take a step up in the flying game,” he says.
“Generally, if you’re going to leave flying fighters, you’re off to a desk job or an airline.”
If he wanted safety and security in his life, why didn’t Matt Hall do that?
“Yeah, safety, security – and excitement,’ he laughs. “Not so much excitement, but challenge. I enjoy big challenges.”
In 2009, Matt Hall became the first Australian to compete in the Red Bull air races. And the competition has been providing challenges ever since, as Hall flies up to 400 kilometres an hour about 10 metres above the water around pylons. It’s both thrilling and enormously risky.
Hall was millimetres from disaster in Canada in 2010, when his plane skimmed the water. His fighter pilot training allowed him to think through a recovery in a very short amount of time: “It only lasted point six of a second from when the plane stalled to when it came back out of the water.”
Competing is expensive, with his team costing about $1 million annually, and it makes enormous physical demands.
“There’s a lot of load on our body, a lot of load on our spine - I’ve had back surgery once already with a blown-out disc that wouldn’t recover - and you can blow out blood vessels in your arms, just from the pressure that’s generated,” he says.
Hall is competing this weekend above the River Danube in Budapest, Hungary. He’s won two races so far this year and is leading the championship series. After being runner-up twice, Hall is working towards being the Red Bull Air Race world champion this year, and he believes he can fly to the top.
But, just as he’s learnt to do in life, Hall is enjoying each race, savouring the journey.
“Don’t look too far ahead,” he says. “Have a plan, plan it out, but then in the execution phase, just live in the moment.”
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