#105 HELICOPTER PILOT KNEE-BOARD | For Flight Training? For Professional Pilot?

Hey, welcome to day 105 Coffee with Kenny. I'm Kenny Kuller, creator helicopter airline ground school. And I'm going to answer a question about knee boards. And this is from within our helicopter online ground school site. And this is from David and it's a really good question. It's a basic question. But you know what? Some of the best questions are the basic ones and some of the best tips to help you in your flight and ground training are the simple, simplest things. And we have so many people struggling just in the past couple weeks. It's funny how we kind of go through phases of things that people are struggling with and a lot of people are struggling on cross countries. And this is also a good video because I don't think I've ever done a video on kneeboards. And his question was, I noticed you write notes down on your knee board. Yet in a lot of videos of people flying helicopters, I've only caught a glimpse of a kneeboard on a pilot once. I am wondering, when do pilots use kneeboards? Is this more startup than put away? No. While training or in the professional field? Thank you. Great question. I remember back when I got my first kneeboard and it was during my commercial training and my instructor was Dan Luby and I haven't heard from this guy in many, many years and I'm wondering, Dan, where are you? Have you ever caught any of our videos? I'd love to hear from you. Anyway, Dan said jump on the Internet flyboys.com helicopter pilot kneeboard. I got one. I loved it and I just got a very simple knee board for helicopter pilots. Here's the trick. Do not order one. That's for airplanes. Airplanes have a lot more room in them and you don't have a cyclic between your legs. So the wider airplane kneeboard will be an issue for you. So you need to get a helicopter kneeboard and go ahead and jump. In your comments let us know what you're using and if you use them or if you don't use them. Why not? And to his question, is it something you use and then put away? No. Wear the kneeboard the entire flight. I highly recommend a kneeboard. I remember struggling in the beginning, learning all kinds of things, right? Even the startup and shutdown. And I remember that helped me. Once I had a knee board, the kneeboard had a simple strap across the top. So I would slide my checklist in there and as I was learning and perfecting the startup, I would just reach down and just each time I completed a step in the checklist I would slide up the checklist because I remember one of my instructors who kind of kicked me in the butt. He's like, well, you kind of struggle on the startup. You need to sit in there and practice that and learn that. So having a kneeboard really helped me with my startup. Just keeping track. Instead of getting nervous and getting confused, I just work up the list. I just kept sliding the checklist up as I completed a step. So I do highly recommend a kneeboard. Again. Let us know what you're using down below in the comments. Again, the one that I bought was 20 years ago or something, and it was flyboys.com very simple. I did some research and looked at them before I started the video. But there's a ton out there now, of course, right? And they've got iPad attachments and all kinds of cool stuff, and there's a lot out there. I would say keep it simple, but you're welcome to use whatever you want. And especially on these cross countries, if people are struggling, I wonder how many of them are struggling, how many of them are not using an E board? And I like his point because he said, you know, in these videos, I don't see a lot of guys using them. And it brought the thought process up. And I thought, you know, most people I can think of that I've flown with in the past few years, pretty much nobody's used an E board. And the black instrument that we use. And I talk about my good friend Dr. Nick Nakis. He's a private pilot, flies for fun. That guy has a knee board on every single flight. And I don't fly with him very often. Once every year or so, just to go out and do some autos and. And freshen up his maneuvers, he religiously wears a kneeboard every single time that dude is on his leg. And he has all the frequencies for any flight he's gonna do. Anything that he needs for that flight is on that kneeboard. So what a great question. Yes, I highly recommend them for training. And then also in the professional environment, there's a lot of guys that do use them as professional pilots in the EMS field. Last base I worked for, the base manager used one, and I don't remember anybody else using one. So a lot of guys do use them. And it might be kind of a macho thing, maybe why some guys don't use them, I don't know. But yes. So for this ground school member, for any of you that are just getting started, or maybe somebody who's flying for a while and Quit using them. Maybe you want to go back to using them. They are great again. Make sure you get one that's narrow enough made for helicopter pilot because you gotta remember you have that cyclic, you're operating and if the knee boards too wide, you're gonna end up dinging that thing and you don't want it getting, you know, you don't want the kneeboard causing you problems with your control movements. There also has been a couple accidents. I can think of two. One is where a knee board came loose and went out a window, went into a tail rotor and this pilot was killed. I believe that was a female pilot and that was quite a few years ago. And then I recently read another one where a knee board got stuck in some tail rotor pedals and caused an accident. So the knee board is there to help you stay organized in the cockpit. The knee board shouldn't be something that gets you into trouble. So again, cockpit management is big, right? And for those of you that might be struggling with the startup or struggling with cross country, struggling to remember things, I highly do, I really highly do recommend an E board. This is a great coffee or great coffee. Great topic for Saturday. Like doing them. Try to do these quick and get off my day because Saturday is my favorite day of the week. Man, rainy and windy again for like four days in a row. This is bumming me out. Anyway, let me know what what you're using, whether you use them or not and go down below for a test drive on helicopter land. Ground school. Our ground school is built to help you get through the checkride for private pilot, commercial pilot, instrument pilot, certified flight instructor. Yes, they are full fledged courses. Back seven years ago it started out as just checkride prep. They've turned into full fledged online ground school courses for all the ratings. We do recommend private for private. If you're going to do the commercial route, the private's included. So we recommend go through all the private first, then go through the commercial stuff. Same thing with CFI and then the instruments. Kind of a standalone, standalone program depending on where you do it. Doing instrument between private and commercial is a great idea. So that's all I can think of on kneeboards for right now. But I like that question. And again, that's from inside online ground school. I'm going to pop that link in there for this gentleman. Hopefully he'll like my answer. So yes, I recommend them for trading. I recommend them in the professional environment. Thanks for tuning in on day 105. Put your comments down below. Please subscribe and click the little bell. After you subscribe, click that bell to be notified of our daily videos. We're covering so many things. This is the first time, I think, in 10 years of making videos that I've ever talked about an E Board. So let us know down below what you're using. Like subscribe, have a great Saturday and we will see you all in day 106. Can't thank y' all enough. Still having a blast. This is awesome. Sa.