#164 I injured Heather's foot running over it with the Helicopter Dolly Monster

Welcome to day 164, coffee with Kenny. Happy to be here. But I'm a little bit feeling guilty today. Heather's home resting her foot because of a little accident here yesterday at the HOGS hangar. And I feel totally guilty and I'm going to tell you more about that. I am Kenny Keller, creator of Helicopter Line Ground School. This is day 164 of Coffee with Kenny where we discuss helicopter training topics every day. And today I got an admission to make. I get in a hurry sometimes and getting in a hurry and being a helicopter pilot is not a good thing. And sometimes really dumb things happen in and around the hangar. And I'm pretty sure I've never done a video specifically on this subject. A couple of the stories you may have heard. But you know, everything starts at home before you even leave the house, right? Or the night of or the night before. On a before prior to flying, what'd you do the night before? Did you get good sleep? Did you check whether when you left the house? How's your day going? Are you taking your time, being careful? Are you rushed and in a hurry? And I can tell you some of the best pilots I've ever seen and some of the best medical crew I've seen in the helicopter EMS industry. Some of the best or the most calm, cool, collected people that you'll run into. Not the people in emergency services that are running around with chickens like their heads cut off. It's usually the people that you think are slow and wonder if they're even very smart sometimes are actually the very best because of their laid back attitude. They do a really, really good job. And I'm going to relate this to both flying and in and around the helicopter and basically in life. Right? So we'll take a little field trip the other side of the hangar and I can show you where the debauchery started yesterday. So yesterday Heather's up in here minding her own business. This is Heather's office that you haven't seen since the day that I brought her in here and showed it to her. This is where she works every day, taking care of customers, shipping books. Here's more of the helicopter checkride and top 10 checkride tips. Bunch of boxes just came in. So she's up here working yesterday doing her thing and I thought, hey, let's give her a little break. So I'm getting ready to go down and mess with these panels that we've been talking about that are really cool. And I put the music on. We're listening to some theory of a dead man. I'm having a blast. So Heather comes down the hangar to help me. So we got the music going, and we're messing with these panels and, you know, trying to figure out the hog's wall and how we want to angle them and where we're going to put them and all that stuff. And we're even back here on the backside, you know, angling and stuff. And with the music blaring, you know, we're having a blast going, man. We feel like we're backstage at a concert or something, you know, just having a good time. Well, we have an R44 coming in today. One of our helicopter long line ground school members from a long time ago. I talked to this gentleman first five years ago. The helicopter dolly is over here, so we want to move it to get it out of the way so we got room for the R44, right? So brilliant. Me and all my wisdom. Instead of getting the jeep and hooking it up and just moving it that way, I will just move it by hand. And it's a heavy dolly, and it's even heavier because we got two more of these panels we got to put together. We're waiting on a couple of new wheels for it. As you can imagine, this thing is heavy. So I grab the tongue, start maneuvering it, trying to move from there over to here. And I'm like, hey, you know, would you help me move this? So Heather jumps over here, we push it out the door. We had the door open, and we want to come back in by the truck. And she's pulling, I'm pushing, she's pulling. First problem, right? And I'm like, I should have you come over here and help me push. And she's like, oh, no, I'm good. And as she goes to readjust herself to try to get the corner going back over, she gets her foot under that, right over the end of her foot. Not the toes, just past the toes. So she screams out, immediately hits the floor. And I'm thinking, oh, my God, we just broke her leg. We just broke her ankle. And I'm feeling like total dirt. So she takes her shoe off, and right away it starts swelling up, right? And she's like, I'm just gonna go home and put some ice on it, or I can finish helping you today. I'm like, you're not helping. You're going home. And that was, once we looked at it, started swelling up. I'm like, you know what, let's just go to urgent care. And she's like, no, no, no, it'll be okay. I'm like, yeah. And then 4am you're gonna be, you know, hurting even worse and wondering, should we went to the doctor. So we went down to the urgent care, got her some X rays. So she's home today. I'm sure she's got some ice on it. I'm waiting to hear from her. This morning they did the, you know, they did some X rays and they couldn't see anything right there in the. In the office. And they said, we think probably nothing broken, but we'll have someone check it again in the morning. Mixtures, not any hairline fractures or anything. So she's home resting today. And I feel horrible, right? I should have made her come over there and help me push. Or I should just use the jeep, right? So why did this happen? It happened because we were in a hurry. Here we are having fun, having a blast, and we really do love it here, and we really do have so much fun. And it's almost like we got repaid for having too much fun. We end up running over Heather's foot. So I want to show you something else dumb I did. Just in the short time we've been at the new hogs hangar, I went to take my daughter for a flight on a Sunday. She wanted to go flying. It was a beautiful day. And I go catch the fuel, guys getting ready to go home. He's like, well, you caught me just in time. I want to go home. So we rushed down to get the helicopter to push it outside. And this I've never done in 20 years. What do I do? I'm not paying attention. We're in a hurry. Boom, right there. I ding the end of the rotor blade into the metal. So did I hurt the helicopter? No, we checked the blade. The blade's fine. But, you know, within the first couple weeks, this brand new, beautiful hanger with all this nice, beautiful white metal, and I dinged the door, or the door jam anyway. Why? Because I was in a hurry and wasn't thinking something else to think about. Another example, right before we moved here, I was taking my daughter on a flight at the old hangar where we were at community hangar. Old hangar, old doors. And we're going to go over and look at the latch on this door. Now, luckily, this is a really nice door, right? With an appropriate handle, all made nice. So when you release it, it hangs back out of the way and there's nothing really to catch on. So pretty safe there. So back at the old hanger, Community hangar, old doors and those. The latch mechanism is homemade, right? And it's real long and it dangles. And at the bottom of the door, it has a section that hangs out pretty far. There's a fly in here, and it won't freaking leave me alone. So my daughter's out with me in the hangar, and I'm moving the truck around to hook up to the helicopter. And as the door's going up, I should have stayed there, right by the door. You should always stay by the opener or closer of a door, right? Because in case something happens, I actually moving the truck as the door's going up, and the part of that latch catches the bottom of the door. As the bottom of the door comes up, my daughter yells, dad. And I look over and this bending, this piece of metal twisting and it's coming around, and I'm like. And I yell at her and hit stop. And she does, what if. What if that thing would have snapped and broke off? I mean, God knows what could have happened if that piece of metal hit her. I don't even. I can't even imagine, you know, the bad things that could have happened if that metal come shooting off of there again. We were in a hurry. So every day, people, we have to, you know, tell ourselves to slow down, be careful. And, you know, going back to my law enforcement training, I was a firearms instructor, and they told some firearms instructor, school, you know, this is why we train and retrain and retrain, right? As human beings, we learn something and then over time, we forget. And a lot of these things we have to remind ourselves every stinking day. And just yesterday, I'm in a hurry to pick my daughter up because she's going to school for just part of the summer. Not because she's a dummy, because she is doing something really cool to advance her career. She's going to be a licensed cosmetologist when she graduates from school. So during part of the day, for the next two years, she's going to be in cosmetology school during her high school, right? So she had to take summer classes because she couldn't get it all in. But when she graduates, she's going to be a licensed cosmetologist, then she can go to college and make money while she's going to college, if that's what she chooses to do. So yesterday, because I know, you know, I got this little Chevy Cruze I use for good gas mileage, right? And I'm buzzing around, buzzing there, buzzing here, happy about the gas mileage and Every day I come to work, make a video, try to, you know, I take her to school, come to the airport, go back and get her, take her home, come back to the airport. I'm always running right back and forth, back and forth. Yesterday I'm in a hurry and my gas gauge is low, which I should never do. And it's like on the way to school, I'm hitting every freaking red light. Why? Because I manifested that I should have got gas the day before, the day before that, and I told my daughter about my frustration going to pick her up and I go, that's my fault. I manifested that because if I'd have got gas two days ago, I wouldn't have been in a hurry, I wouldn't have been worried about being low on gas. You know, think about if I acted that way in the helicopter, you know, how dumb would that be? So I just want to kind of bring up, you know, the safety in and around helicopters is not just about the helicopters flying. It's everything we do every day and everything we do in the hangar getting ready. I could tell you more hangar stories. Dumb things that have happened. Well, here's a quick one where people get hurt. I know two guys have been hurt. These wheels on the instrument right here, there's a bar to flip those wheels up, right? One of the first guys that taught me, or not taught me, guy that checked me out to be an Enstrom approved instructor, he'd been flying instruments forever, right? And he tells me about the bar, he's like, be very careful when you go over that center of gravity point, at a certain point that that whole mechanism will pop, right? So if you have a hold of it and you're ready for that pop and you got a good grip, you should be fine. But if you're ever just not being careful and that thing pops. Two guys I know went to the doctor's office with stitches in their forehead, including this gentleman that was training me. He went to, he had to go to the doctor because he split his head open. My poor nephew. The mstrmayon had dual wheels on it. With the dual wheels you had a literally, you know, like a five foot, great big bar that you use to flip these wheels up. And I didn't properly explain to my nephew. And when this thing flipped, it hit him in the side of the head. Oh my God. And I still feel horrible about that to this day. Thinking back to even being around the helicopter, right? It's not just about flying the helicopter in pre flight and post flight and walk around, it's just getting out of the hangar and all the things that you got to think about how a person can get hurt. You know, climbing up on the helicopter during pre flight, moving the helicopter in and out, operating the doors. There are so many things to think about as a helicopter pilot. It's really amazing. You know, when Holly was here for a few days and hang her here with us while she was stuck with some bad weather, you know, she was here every day for coffee with Kenny and we had supper every night and she was just like, you know, and we both talk about this, how, how much there is to know to be a helicopter pilot. It is a lot of stuff. So what I want to say is this is why we train, right? This is why we train repeatedly over and over. And I want to put out the message that, you know, you go, let's use private pilot, for example. People like, oh, well, I'm going to train for the private pilot and I don't have to study anymore. I'm a pilot. That's not true. We have to train and we have to retrain, and we have to retrain again. Training is never ending. We learn every single day. 20 years flying, I learned something new every day. You know, it's amazing how much I don't know. And it's fun to learn new things. And that's what happens, right? Through experience, we learn. I hope that some of you can relate to this topic because, you know, the being in a hurry thing is something that I deal with every day, right? Because I love what I do. So don't get me wrong, I'm not complaining. But right now I'm producing a video every single day along with taking care of customers, doing any flying. I've been flying a lot lately. Customers coming in or members coming up to fly with me, spending time with my daughter, trying to spend time at home in the evenings and enjoy the pontoon and have fun, you know, trying to have that life balance. So when it's time to work, I'm in a hurry and so I have to continually tell myself to slow down, slow down. And I want to mention, you know, talking about there was these couple of two guys that I flew with an ems. One was a paramedic, the other was a nurse, male nurse. And these guys just, they talked real slow and they walked slow. Well, I learned right from their peers, they were, those two were considered the best, right? Even though they were going to accident scenes and they're taking care of critically ill people, the way that they were able to Approach it, they were more productive by going slower and making better decisions versus someone who's like, oh my God, going like crazy, right? Kind of like I learned when I went to EMS and they said, the base manager said, okay, I realize you have police and fire background. So when you go to the helicopter, you walk to the helicopter, you don't run to the helicopter. Coming from emergency services, I kind of thought that was strange, right? I was even in the towing service for 10 years and I used to go out and do accident extrication. So they'd call you and of course we're driving the wreckers like we're going to a fire, right? And so when I went into EMS at first I was surprised. Now I get it in and around the helicopter. You have to go slow, you have to be careful, you have to be methodical. And the best pilots and the best people are slow and methodical. And I want to tell one more story. And I've been wanting to tell this one for a while. I worked for a guy named Zane and this is back earlier in my career. And I was the Czech pilot, right? So the couple guys I worked for once a year for the insurance, I would go out and fly with them. And Zane had the most beautiful 180 degree auto rotations that I've ever seen in my life. And he could do them every single time repeatedly, over and over. And I've never seen anybody that can execute a 180 auto so smooth and so just slick every time. And this guy just had this really laid back attitude, really calm. Whenever he would talk, he just talked in a real slow manner, you know, thinking about what he's going to say before he says that, you know, and I'm kind of opposite that. I try to be really calm and cool in the helicopter, right? And I am pretty decent at keeping myself calm in the aircraft and going slow. And I am a, I do do things slowly. But I admired this guy so much because he would smoke the 180s every time and he was so laid back about it. You know, we go out and do this, you know, yearly flight and I go, okay, well let's, you know, show me a 180 auto and you'll be done. And he was just like, okay, Kenny, you know, and he'd come up, get about ready and just, he'd enter that thing and do this great big old 180 degree sweep, swooping turn, put a nice flare on it and level out right over his spot. And he did it every single time. And I was Always amazed. And I will never forget that. And I doubt I see I'll ever meet anybody again that can go out and smoke a 180 like that every single time. And I still believe it was because of that laid back attitude. You know, 180s is like a lot of the time the biggest problem when you're teaching somebody and you're getting ready to go for a checkride. Not everybody, but a lot of people struggle with 180s. A lot of instructors struggle with teaching 180s when they get out there in the. And teaching in the teaching world. So going, you know, slow, smooth, methodical. I teach it, I preach it. Sometimes I need to listen to my own. My own advice, right? It's not really a problem when I'm in the aircraft. I'm careful and slow in there. My. My thing I need to work on on a daily basis is slowing around, slowing down, going in and out of the hangar, getting ready to fly, you know. Do you know the Alabama song? I'm in a hurry and I don't know why All I really got to do is live and die. I was thinking about that last night when I was driving home, because I took Heather home after we went to the doctor as her foot was hurting. And I'm like, I'll just run you home and when you're ready, come back, you know, come pick you up, but take a day or two and just rest. Rest your foot. I feel horrible, right? And I do. And I am responsible for that. And she's like, well, no, you did tell me to come over there. And I said, now I'm okay. I'm still responsible, right? Pilot in command. And we are. We're always responsible for those around us. She's held here working with me. I'm responsible for her. So I feel. I feel bad that that happened, you know, do their best to get her healed back up and get her back in here and working. And I appreciate what she does, but how can I not feel guilty, right? I'm the one that knew pulling backwards is probably not a smart idea. I should have said, no, get over here. Just help me push. Or I should have done it myself. Or I should just got the truck, right? Because I've hurt my back before trying to move that damn thing. So the ending note is slow, smooth, methodical. And think about all these things in and around the hangar when you're getting ready to go fly. Everything starts from the night before, right? What kind of night did you have? Did you get a good night's rest how was it on the way to work in the morning? Are you stressed out? Are you calm and cool? Taking care of all these other little nuances or all these other little things around us could hamper getting in and flying. Here's what I want to mention, just came to mind. You know, I like to complain about EMS once in a while, but there was so much good I learned in EMS too, right? And one of the coolest things I saw in ems, and there's that damn fly. One of the cool things I learned in EMS or one of the cool things I saw is for the one company I worked for, they had a sign out in the hangar and the mechanic would put it up when he was doing inspections and the sign said, you know, mechanic, whatever, mechanic, pre flight or performing maintenance, please do not disturb the mechanic. Something along that lines. And I thought that was one of the coolest things that that EMS company did was have a nice big sign in the hangar. Because mechanics get distracted, pilots get distracted. It was great having that for the mechanic. Heck, the pilots needed that too. And so many times you're pre flight and trying to do things right, you got the checklist in your hand. Somebody comes into the flight school or somebody comes into your hangar or you're flying ems, whatever the case is. People, other people don't always understand that when you're pre flighting, you really kind of need to be left alone because an interruption during a pre flight is a problem too. So, you know, it's something that you need to think about. And if you're pre flighting aircraft and somebody's walking up, say, hey, I'm pre flighting, I'll be done in about five minutes. I'll come over and talk to you when I get done, right? Not, not easy to do. It's easy to just go, oh, hey Joe, what's happening? Hell yeah, I'm getting ready to go fly, blah, blah, blah. So anyway, I've been trying to make these short and every day I run into 10, 15 minutes. I'm gonna wrap it up because I got other things to do today. Got our Hogs member coming in in the R44. He's agreed to do coffee with Kenny tomorrow. He's coming in today and we're gonna go out and fly the instrument. He's been flying Robinson's quite a while. We first talked back in 2014. He is part owner of our flight, part owner of a flight school and they have several R44s. I said, you're more than welcome to come in and Plug your, the company you're affiliated with that your helicopters fly with. So he can talk about that tomorrow. We're Gonna bring the R44 in here, set up side the instrument. Be kind of cool, right? So we're gonna do that and talk to him. We're gonna go fly the instrument, have some fun. He's just kind of looking for maybe a, maybe buying an instrument because he said, you know, looks like a great aircraft for a private individual. And I'm like, it is, Absolutely. I get why they use R44s at your flight school. I get it. But if he's looking for something kind of classy and cool for himself, one of those is the way to go. All right, thanks for tuning in. 164 not leaving without mention. Helicopter checkride and top 10 checkride tips. Both Amazon number one bestseller that I did with Taz Christman 2018 flight structure of the year. You saw the books upstairs? Heather ships them. Heather emails. Everybody that buys a book says hello, make sure she gets your order out to you. We ship those for just shipping and handling. We bought them. You saw them in the boxes. We paid for those. We shipped either one of those for just shipping and handling. And down below you can go to helicopterground.com to take a 24 hour test flight on our helicopter and ground school. It's a great deal. Tons of tons of tons of happy satisfied helicopter line ground school members. We've helped get through checkrides. And there's one other thing I wanted to mention I'll think of as soon as I hit stop. Oh, well, maybe I'll think of it tomorrow. I'll put in the video, like subscribe. Do us a favor like and subscribe. Leave us a comment down below. Tell us about your hanger story, something dumb you did in the hanger or something. You did good in the hangar and we'll see you all tomorrow.