#159 Enstrom Helicopter Transition Complete for HOGS Member Day 159

Hey, welcome to day 159. Coffee with Kenny. Today we're in the hangar. We've had a beautiful week of flying. We went out, flew three times yesterday and the instrument was doing awesome. Doors off, sun shining, beautiful outside. And this week has been a blast. We've had a great time flying. Last night we get an email or I got an email from the owner of the another Enstrom. And this NSTROM owner was all excited because he's from Colorado and want to make sure I connected him up with Ray so when Ray gets back home they can get together with a bunch of NSTURM owners out there. And he made a comment on how much Ray's going to be happy with his choice of the NSTROM for flying in the higher altitudes and offered to get together with him for lunch.

That's fantastic.

And I'm going to share a picture of this helicopter. I'll just share it right now so you can see it. It's a cream puff. And this helicopter was. I talked about one of my videos from like seven, eight years ago, probably eight years ago at least, where I compared two instruments and basically said, you know, the one I started learning in many years ago, we called the piece of shit nstrom. And just everybody called it that because it was always broken. But after figuring out that it was ran hard, it didn't get the proper maintenance. I come back to Indiana and I fly the, the brother or sister to that F28F. Only two made in that year. And that helicopter was a cream puff. And I it was available at a place that I worked. And so once I got flying that I realized the instrument wasn't a piece of shit. The instrument was a great frickin helicopter. The problem was the one I cut my teeth on was just flown really hard, didn't get the proper maintenance. I know the mechanic kind of always complained because they pushed him when he really wanted it a little bit longer and they're pushing him to get it back to the flight school with busy paying students. Right. So anyway, the point of that video all those years ago was the instrument's a great aircraft when you maintain it like any helicopter out there. Not just instrument, any aircraft, airplane, helicopter, whatever it is, any aircraft's probably going to be a good aircraft. If you treat it right, fly it the way it's intended to be flown, and you do the property factory maintenance, you're probably going to have a pretty good luck with about any aircraft. But I wanted to highlight that today because of his email and because Ray's here. And, you know, the instrument owners are kind of getting together and we've been talking about, you know, instruments all week. I like all helicopters. They're all awesome, right? But it. But it's really down to this point in my career. Instrument is kind of my specialty. And, you know, this one sitting back here really, truly is my favorite aircraft.

I can tell you. Kenny knows his instruments, so he knows how to fly them. And great.

I don't call myself an expert. I just know what it takes to fly him, and I know what it takes to fly them and keep them in the limitations. And even though I don't fly high altitude, I feel like I'm. I'm helping Ray and I think he's gonna thank me when he gets home.

Because I can tell you I'm already happy with what I've learned from Kenny. I really appreciate that, Kenny. And I'm actually ready to fly mine now. But I really would like, you know, a couple more hours with Kenny. Unfortunately, today we've got a thunderstorm that looks like it's going to hang around all day, so maybe I'll not get those two hours. So instead, we're going to do a little maintenance on this helicopter and just clean and buff it a little bit.

Yep, we're cleaning up today. You know, we did a nice buff job on it on about a month and a half ago, but today we're just kind of cleaning the blades and going to maybe do an oil change and just little, you know, odds and ends. He does want to fly one more time, and we're hoping this afternoon we could fly one more time. And we are. And I am trying to dig out the GoPro for those of you that have asked this week, they've been saying, hey, can you guys do some in flight footage? So we know most of you know, we just recently moved, and I've been digging through the boxes trying to find the GoPro. May have to.

Don't. Don't critique me too much on this flying now. I'm still. I've still got a lot to go.

But he's doing fine. And one or two more flights a day, if he can get him in, is going to be just for his own confidence and just kind of polishing. But he's transitioned very easy. 20 years and not flying them. Coming from the R22, it's what I preached for years. It's such an easy transition. And I have people that email and say, oh, well, my instructor said, though, that'd be a hard transition. You know, that's someone just trying to keep you at their flight school and trying to keep you away from Enstrom.

The instrument, it auto rotates like a beauty. I mean, it. It does everything. I mean, when you pick up and set down, you're thinking, am I really off the ground straight? And when you put it back down, you're on the ground and it's like not wiggling around. It just. It does what a helicopter should do, as far as I'm concerned.

And it really does. And, you know, we've discussed at length instrument. You run into people around the country or around the world, and they all say the same thing. You know, I've heard good things about them, but I've just never flown one. I've heard they have a good auto rotation. And a lot of people will say to me, oh, are they still making those? And, you know, and we laugh when that question is asked because, yeah, they're still making them. They never quit. So it's just kind of. Kind of the underdog. But you know what? That's okay for those of us that appreciate them, enjoy flying them. I still think for a private owner, for a person, man or woman, that wants to fly a nice, safe helicopter with some class and some style that's really safe in the piston market, I think the instrument's the way to go. Nothing wrong with all the others, depending on what you're doing. If you're doing commercial work and giving rides at a fair, an R44 is probably the way to go. But for private owners, people that want to enjoy their own aircraft, go, have fun, be safe, fly them, maintain them, fly them within tolerances, and you're going to be just fine. And what we were talking about with the high altitude thing, I think Ray's going to be fine because everything we're doing, we're doing like we were at high altitude, super slow, super smooth.

Yesterday. He was really pushing on me to, you know, go in slow and just take your time. And then we did some. Some tight, confined landings, which was good for me because in Colorado we've got the dense altitude thing to worry about. So it was really good training yesterday to fly into a farm field that was surrounded by trees and you had to get out of there. So he taught me a couple techniques to get out there when you're hot and heavy like that, and it works just fine.

And he has invited me out to do a video in Colorado at some point. And his beautiful aircraft, which, if you didn't catch our earlier videos, his aircraft was on the at the instrument booth at Heli Expo 2018. And I did stand there that day going, I thought it was a brand new aircraft. I had no idea it was used. And I stood there looking at it going, man, God, if I wanted one right now and I was ready to buy, I would be trying to take this one home.

Well, I'm really bummed about my aircraft because it's got a little scratch, it's about that long, and it's really driving me crazy. But I'm gonna go home and fix it. So it's him.

He will. He's been here helping me all week, Just doing little odds and ends. When we took a break, he's like, I can't stand around, can I? Can I wipe out the oil? You know, the oil down in the bottom of the engine compartment? Yeah, go ahead. Why not? So it's been fun having him here. I've really enjoyed flying with him. And this morning I came in, I said, you know what? I'm a lucky son of a bitch. And driving to work today, I'm like, I love what I do. And having people like ray that, you know, come from around the country to come here and fly with me makes me feel, you know, makes me feel really good.

And Kenny, you should feel good. Because when I'm flying with kenny, I don't feel like I'm under pressure, you know, you never feel. Make me feel like I'm a dummy for not holding 60 like you tell me all the time, or using right pedal like you're telling me, you know. So it's nice to have an instructor that kind of can sense what you're feeling and actually at the same time you're learning something. That's great.

Awesome. Well, we're going to wrap up so we can get back to cleaning. I do want to mention our cream puff back here is getting ready to go home to Dr. Nick this summer and I hate to see it go. He's going to be very happy when he gets there that it's all cleaned up and nice and shiny. We always take it back looking better than when we picked it up just to really make him happy. So I want to put something out there. I am not in the ready to buy helicopter. May never be. Maybe, maybe not. We'll see. But we're getting pretty accustomed to the nstrum in the background. So I want to put the word out there if you've got an instrument sitting around somewhere, a good quality one, but maybe you don't have time to fly it or maybe you're Trying to sell it something along that, along that lines or you know somebody, or you know somebody. I'm gonna be looking for an instrument to do some, to be the background of the videos used for some ground school videos. Maybe fly a little bit if it's available to do that.

Sorry, Kenny, but you're gonna have to come out to Colorado to use mine. Just so you know.

I think we're gonna do that. I think I have to go out there and make a week of videos just flying in Colorado and having fun. Because it's gonna be fun to update with Ray a little later and see, you know, how it turns out how his instrument feels being a much newer instrument compared to the old 1983 that we have here. I've explained to him they all have a little bit, you know, every single instrument has a personality. Not one flies exactly like another. So even though they fly similar and the techniques are similar, they all have their, just their little, little nuances and little things that make them their own personality, which in a way is actually kind of cool. And it's going to be fun to hear a report from Ray later on how similar or not they are. And this one starts really good cold, but we've been struggling starting it hot and we've been trying some different techniques and it'll be interesting to see how he does when he gets home and how his starts for him and whether the things we've been working on doing the hot starts if they work or not. So that's going to be fun. So yeah, we're going to try to wrap it up here. Anything else you want to add before we go?

I think that's it. Like I said, I'm totally happy right now, even though I'd like to get another two hours in, but I'm jonesing to get in my craft and see how it performs compared to this one and just find the nuances of that one and report back.

Awesome. Like and subscribe the channel for us. Click the bell when you do subscribe. Put a comment down below for us. There's links down below for our 24 hour test flight. For our private commercial instrument CFI. We have R22 specific training, R44 specific training, instrument specific training so you can learn the specifics of your aircraft. There's going to be a link down below for my two Amazon best sellers. That'll be down below. We'll sell you, send you those books for just shipping and handling. The one I. I co authored with Taz Christman, 2018 Flight Structure of the year. So go down below to get either one of those books. We ship them to you. Oh, all right. Ray went to grab them. Hell, yeah. Awesome. Those two books are great. Awesome. Thanks for running over there and grabbing those. I. I don't want him to go home. I want him to hang around. Man, we've had so much fun this week, and he's such a great guy to have around the shop, but just, hey, can I work on that? Hey, can I fix that for you? That's awesome. Love it. All right, we're gonna sign out, like, subscribe. Leave your comments down below. We will try to get. If the weather clears up, we'll try to get some inflow in flight footage today for you. For those that have been asking, because I know a lot of. A lot of people want to see it, we'll do that if we can. If the weather doesn't improve and he slips out, I guess we'll just have to get some footage when I get out to Colorado and go fly. His purpose maroon and gray instrument. That's just going to be a joy to get the fly after I get to see it. When he told me which one he had, I'm like, oh, my God, that's the instrument you bought. That's so awesome. All right, thumbs up, subscribe, click the bell, and we'll see you in day 160.