Kenny Keller answers a viewer (John) who flies multiple helicopter types and asks how to remember aircraft-specific numbers (torque limits, emergency procedures, etc.). Kenny advises repetition for checkrides but recommends a practical daily approach: memorize critical hard limits (e.g., EGT 1650°F) and otherwise use a simple green/yellow/red mental model for gauges—stay in green, investigate yellow, and avoid or exit red. He also reminds flyers to study exact numbers when preparing for checkrides.
Chapters
Hey, welcome to day 185 Coffee with Kenny. Quick handheld video today. It's been a long day, so this one's coming out at night. Had to make an Indianapolis trip today and it's been one thing after another trying to get caught up after holidays. Right. But I got a great question here I want to cover. And this is coming from John and he said, kenny, I see you covering all these topics in the coffee with Kenny section and it made me realize I have a question of my own. Currently I'm flying four different aircraft, frequently an R44, 206B, 206L MD500. Sometimes I fly three different aircraft in the same day. I hear you. I know what it's like, man. I used to do that. Do you have any tips or tricks for remembering all the information about each aircraft you fly? Such as torque limits, EPS, emergency procedures, etc. Or is it just repeat, repeat, repeat as I've been doing? Thanks, John. Okay, well there is a lot of repeat, repeat, repeat. You know, there are certain things of course, like limits, you know, torque limits, manifold pressure limits. Those are hard numbers you gotta, you gotta memorize. You know, on the example of the instrument here, EGT, exhaust, exhaust gas temperature, that's 1650, you can't exceed it. That's a number you have to know. Now with that being said, I've played this game jumping around different aircraft and we played IT in the EMS world environment and we would jump between BK117, EC135 different backup aircraft. So you had to be qualified and have all these things memorized. But one thing you can kind of do to help yourself, of course, is something I haven't talked about in a while and that's green, yellow and red. Right? Now for a checkride, some examiners are number picky, right? And they want you to know what's the lower limit for cylinder head temperature in number of degrees? What's the upper limit in number of degrees? Okay. And then some examiners are not. So when it comes to checkrides, you better be studying pretty much about every number. I mean, how many rivets are in the tail boom, who cares, you know? But checkride specific, I'd refresh all the numbers, but when it comes to day to day flying and John's question, the way that he said it, and I'm going to use a Navy pilot that I flew with when I was flying ems. And you know, I already had this thought process from other places that I flew, but you're out there flying Day to day, red, yellow, green. Right. When you're thinking about the instrumentation, your gauges, I don't have every single number memorized on a daily basis. Right. Green, yellow, red. If you're in a green range, you know you're good. Once you get into yellow, you need to be finding out what's going on, figuring out why are you in that precautionary range, and then doing whatever you have to do to avoid going into the red. And if you hit red, you got to get back out of it as soon as possible or possibly land immediately, depending on the aircraft. So to answer John's question, yeah, there is a lot of repeat, repeat, repeat. Of course, again, checkride specific, man. For all my checkrides and for students, I always say, you know as much as you can memorize, the better. But when you're jumping out of these different aircraft, yeah, you got to keep changing hats and the hard numbers is what I would, you know, sure, it's a pain to be keeping track of those four aircraft, but heck, look what you're flying. R44. Those are cool, right? 206B, 206 Long Ranger and MD500. You're a lucky man. You should be very happy that you have the opportunity to fly all of those aircraft and that sometimes you fly three of those on the same day, you're. You're lucky guy, right? There are people out there that would kill to be flying those aircraft. So my advice is yes, repeat, repeat, repeat. And the hard numbers, torque limits, you know, limitations. The hard numbers, vne. VNE for auto rotation. All those numbers, they need to be stored in your head. So hopefully that answers the question a little bit. And those are those. Those of you doing the day to day flying, you know, very simply put, yet red, yellow and green. Right. Knowing the exact temperature, does it really matter? Some examiners are going to want you to know that. Some places you fly may want you to know that. Exactly. But one little, one little area where you can kind of save a little bit of time is making sure you understand the red, red, yellow and green. All right, I'm gonna get out of here. Day 184 tomorrow be day 185. Thanks, everybody. Man, the cell was amazing. I'm sure there'll be another one coming in the future. Subscribe to the channel so you can be notified of our daily video. Go down below, leave your comments. And when you subscribe, make sure you click that little bell so you can be notified of the video we come out with each day. So I'm going to get going so I can get this thing uploaded up and get ready to go after another day. We'll see you all later. Go below, click that little, like button and we'll see you in the next video.
