#10 I’m struggling Learning To Hover will I get it?

This look familiar at all? If you are new to this, you may have a good idea. You may have been through this already. And we get a lot of emails and if you want to watch this video, it's on YouTube. Learning to hover, student pilot, first flight. I'll put the link down below, but I wanted to cover this one real to cover this one before I head to the airport real quick because again, I've been thinking about this as people ask the questions. And I jot down some memory notes here about learning to hover. They say, you know, people are panicking. Like Kenny, I've. I'm really worried. I'm at five hours and I'm not hovering yet. And I'm, you know, should I stay with it or should I give it up? So we want to hear your comments down below. Put down there what you experienced, good and bad, what your struggles were, what maybe a tip was that finally made the light bulb come on for you. I got some points here I want to cover just to kind of make it kind of fun. I want you to think about this. When I first started, the guy that I flew with my first two flights wasn't the best instructor ever. And he, you know, I went down, talked to him about a lesson. He said, here, buy this book. It was the basic helicopter handbook. Back at that day, back at that time, he's like, read this and come back. And then the first two flights he's yelling at me because I don't understand what he's trying to tell me. He didn't do any ground or really explain anything. So my first experience was bad, right? I don't go back for a year. Then the next young kid says, forget that guy. Let's go out and start fresh. And I had a brand new experience once. I had a young instructor who was very patient and said, forget that guy. Let's start from scratch. So give yourself some time. Don't get frustrated. I can remember when I went back with this new instructor. Start making progress. In the beginning, I'm struggling learning to hover. And he said, it's more like it's a willingness to move than actually moving the controls. And to me, that made a lot of sense, right? The average person, when you get there and you start learning to hover, you're going to over control. Absolutely, everybody does that. Okay? The everybody over controls. And that is the whole problem when you're trying to learn to hover. It's just moving everything too much. But give yourself a break, calm down. Everybody does it with time. You are gonna get those movements, okay? And as you start putting those together, it's gonna get better. Hopefully your instructor's got a good technique for helping you out. And he's giving you a little time with pedals, a little time with the collective, time with the cyclic. Then maybe he's combining them, putting these two together with these two and then combining the three and breaking it up and doing some different things for you to help you learn. So along the lines of just little thoughts that kind of help you along, there's Levi, look outside at a distant object, it will click. Absolutely, Levi. That was gonna be my next thing. I had a gentleman who I helped learn to fly. He was a 20 some year police officer, sheriff's deputy, rough and tough, military guy, and man, did he struggle learning to hover. And he would get really frustrated. So I'm trying everything I can do to get him to calm down, right? So we started joking about the Yoda saying, do or do not, there is no try. So we start kind of joking about that, right? Because many people will say, use the Force, Luke. When you're learning that simple touch of just barely moving everything, you know, use the Force, Luke. You're thinking about it more than you're actually doing it. And with this gentleman, he ended up making up something kind of cool that he called the Yoda tree over across the ramp, there was this tree out there, we'll say 50 to 75ft or 100ft, a good distance away. So because we were teasing about the Yoda and the Star wars and the Use the Force, Luke and the Yoda saying he called it his Yoda tree. Well, guess what? He ended up getting it. And we just used those mind, you know, those, those, those thoughts were to help kind of make a joke of it and laugh and relief, release the pressure a little bit. People ask, oh my God, you know, it's three hours, I'm not hovering yet. You know, should I just give up or should I quit? You know, people ask, well, how many hours is it going to take me? It depends on any individual person. Okay. If you really excel, you might get it in a couple two or three hours. If you're struggling, it might take you, you know, five, eight, ten hours. Don't worry about it, doesn't matter. Everybody learns at their own pace. I've been teaching 20 years, as I say all the time. I've never turned somebody away and said, oh, go home, because you're never going to learn to hover. It's never happened. Eventually you will get It. So, you know, try to come up with your own things, you know, using good thought process, looking outside, remembering that everybody struggles learning. Absolutely everyone. I can remember, I have a note here. Light bulb. I can remember my. One of my instructors saying, you know, right now you're struggling to hover the helicopter and talk on the radio and do what you have to do. Read this comment real quick. Couldn't figure out my first flight. Bell 47. Somehow had an aha moment. An aha moment. That's good, because that's kind of what's going with the light bulb. I remember my instructor saying, a light bulb is going to come on. And he goes, I can't tell you what day or when, but pretty soon, all of a sudden, one day, the light bulb is going to come on, and all of a sudden you're going to be in a. You're going to pull yourself into a nice hover, and you'll be talking to me through the intercom, and you're gonna be looking outside and even talking about something else. And then all of a sudden, the light bulb will come on and you'll go, oh, my God, I'm doing it. Right? Because if this makes sense to you, when you finally get it, you're not thinking about every single control input, right? It's too much for the human brain to be going, okay, I'm moving the cyclic this much. I'm moving the pedal this much. I'm moving the collective this much. I'm moving the throttle. Those are too many things that you can be thinking about all at the same time. You can't do it. So you're learning to hover through muscle memory, and that's why your instructor is probably breaking up the controls for you, letting you work and get experience with each control, then putting them together. Because you're creating that muscle memory so that your brain knows what to tell your arm and your hand and your wrist and your feet, it's going to tell them what to do. So it is an awesome feeling when it hits, okay? So if you're struggling, don't worry about it. Take a big, deep breath. Realize every single person out there struggled to learn to fly a helicopter. And because Joe Blow did it in a couple hours, don't let that stop you, because you're probably going to excel in some area that Joe Blow didn't, right? I mean, we all are different people. We all learn in different ways. So give yourself a chance. Take a big, deep breath. You know, do study and learn about the controls. You know, read about Them in the helicopter flying handbook. Read about each control, study it, think about it. But on the flip side of that, one other thing I can remember when I was struggling with the pedals big time, right? I'm kind of getting the hovering down. And my last big trouble was the pedals. And everybody has their one. That's their, their problem, right? Every student. It might be the pedals, it might be the cyclic, it might be the collective. Whichever it is, you're probably going to have one that's going to be your big struggle. I can remember on the pedals when I'm kind of, you know, putting everything together and getting it nice and smooth and I'm struggling with the pedals. And this gentleman I was flying with the time was Adrian, right? Real neat guy. And he was like, don't think about it, just do it, you know, And I kind, I laughed. And at first it didn't really make sense, but once he explained it, I got it. He said, you're. If you're, the whole time you're thinking engine torque, right pedal, left pedal, I got to do this, I got to do that. He goes, you're thinking too much. Just do it. Whatever it takes to keep that nose pointed at that pole or that tree, do it. Just do it. And it worked, right? It ended up working when I understood what he was getting at. So give yourself a break, take your time. Doesn't matter whether it takes three hours or it takes eight hours. Don't beat yourself up over it. You know, it's frequency of flying. It's about how people learn. Don't worry about it. So put your comments down below. Let us know what your struggles were. Learning to hover. Funny story. Whatever tips that worked, things that, that you struggled with, things that maybe an instructor said to you that kind of made that light bulb come on for you again, we all learn differently. You know, we're all human, we all make mistakes, we all learn in different ways. Learning from different structures and different people and hearing what other people talk about can help you kind of put it together. So, hey, we've been enjoying these daily videos. We're doing one a day, answering our members questions as they come in, you know, trying to hit the ones that come in over and over again that people really want to know about and hitting some of the ones that people don't talk about that people want to know. So make sure you put those comments down below on what you'd like to see in upcoming daily videos real quick. It's like learning to ride a bike. When we struggle to put in the first gear from neutral and it just went away, I can't read it. You're right. Once you get it, you won't forget it. You could go, once you have the hovering down, people maybe don't fly for six months a year and go, oh man, I'm not even sure if I'm gonna be able to hover. You get back in it. Once you've got it, you'll go back in and you'll pull it right together. It's muscle memory. You know, it will come back to you and it doesn't take long. So again, put your comments down below. Please subscribe to the channel. When you subscribe, click the bell so you can be notified of the upcoming videos. I'm gonna put a link down below for this. First the video I showed at the beginning where this guy's out there and it's first hour, brand new student and the instructor's kind of keeping it from getting too far out of control. But I'll put that link down below for that video. There's a link for helicopter online ground school. We're also putting links down there for our Amazon number one best selling books. My number one bestseller, Helicopter Checkride, will ship you the book for seven bucks. Shipping and handling. We bought the book, ship it for you then Amazon number best seller I did with Taz Christman 2018 Flight Instructor of the year. We put out a book called Top 10 Checkride Tips. Hit Amazon number one best seller in like four hours. Put a link for that down below. We bought that book as well. We'll ship it to you for seven bucks. So those links will be down below. So leave your comments below. Give us a like Share the video, subscribe, click that bell and we shall see you in the next video.