#195 Don’t be Afraid to Divert, Turn Around or Land

Don't be afraid to divert, turn around or land. Day 195 copy with Kenny. And this is number seven of the seven things just put out from the US helicopter safety team. These seven things are things they compiled together to help reduce the accidents for the second half of 2019. Go back and catch the previous six videos if you want to learn. If you need refresher, you know, these are the basic things. And I got a short story, not back when, you know, I walked to school with no shoes on. It's not like that. A flight I just did this week, since I've been doing these videos talking about the notice from the safety team. I just did a cross country trip where I had to divert. Very simply, I knew I wanted to go on Monday, right? I wanted to get this helicopter delivered. I know the whole week is going to be hot, but it's going to get hotter as the week goes on, right? Just like it's very hot in here right now. So I knew I wanted to get it done on Monday, right? But I don't want the normal rush, the push. I want to enjoy this flight because I'm taking my daughter with me and I just don't want the pressure, right? I've done enough of that over the years. I want to have a fun flight and I don't want to have any pressure. I'm getting things to run on Monday and I want to leave in the evening around 7ish, hopefully cooler part of the day, right? So at 5pm I'm running home to kind of get some things together. So I call flight service on the way home, but I'm not ready to go yet. I'm not ready to go for two more hours. So I call up flight service, have a nice conversation with the guy at flight service. Basically ends up saying, well, you're pretty good at Toledo. There are some isolated storms. But he said, you and a helicopter, they're small enough now that you're going to be able to, you know, see them and get around them. He said, but later they're probably going to build. And he said, so if you want to go right now, that would be better. And so it's a toss up, right? Because I'm not ready to go right now, so that's really not an option. And I just told him I go, well, I'm, I'm not ready yet. So I'm planning on about two hours. He's like, well, you know, you might want to call back in a couple hours, but just know that you got Those isolated storms out there right now probably going to increase. Okay, cool. So I know, I know, I'm on the lookout for that, right? Because we know it's summertime, it's hot, it's humid. What happens? Thunderstorms. We know this. So my daughter and I take off on this cross country trip and it's beautiful, beautiful all the way. And you can see some clouds way off to the east, but no lightning or anything. And on the way over, I'm teaching her how to do foreflight in the iPad. And so she's running the iPad and running her iPhone and looking at weather and there's some stuff building, but it's just a little bit of green rides, nothing real heavy. And of course I'm watching an area where I'm thinking, well, we continue on, I'll sneak through first half of the trip to right there where we got fuel is beautiful. Oh my God. Land at sunset. Took some cool pictures. Sky looks pretty decent again out to the east, some green and green, but there's a spot in between where I'm thinking, well, I can kind of, you know, probably meander through there. So we take off at sunset, right? So there's still some light. So we start taking off from there and my daughter hears, of course, my daughter's around me quite often. She hears the things I preach about, she hears the videos. So her 16 year old kid, she's pretty, pretty sharp considering she's never, she's not a pilot, hasn't been taking any lessons as of yet. Hopefully at some point she'll decide to. We take off and you can see my squiggly line here. Okay, I'm kind of sightseeing here. I'm following a river. That's why that squiggly like that, because it's beautiful flying this river area, right? So we get our fuel, we take off and we go just a little bit farther and she's, you know, showing me what's on the foreflight, what's happening with the weather is kind of building. I still see that one little hole, right? And about that time we see some lightning off to our left out the front. And so I'm, you know, I'm flying, I'm looking over at the iPad and all at once my daughter goes, once we saw that lightning, it spooked her just a little, right? So she's like, dad, why don't we just turn around? And I go, okay, let's do it. So there's what a diversion looks like. Pretty simple. All right, we turn and headed back to Toledo, hotwired a hotel, got an Uber to the hotel, had a nice supper at the place next door, got this wonderful room, finished the trip the next morning, no problem. Now, is it always that easy? No. Boy, you could complicate this. And the scenarios are endless. It's not even millions, it's endless of the scenarios that we put ourselves in. And, you know, this is what we're talking about the last few days, Scud running and all these different things. So many times, we just want to push on. And even with that, I was in that kind of. That mindset of, oh, well, you know, because of my past and things I've done. It's like you learn how to navigate storms and time storms and go in and out, all of these things. And you can do that sometimes, and you can do that within reason, safely, in the daylight when you could see, preferably. But am I on any kind of a. I'm not on a time crunch. I had the next three weeks to move the aircraft, so no problem there. My daughter's out of school. I wanted to have a for fun flight. So the second she goes, sees the lightning, he goes, dad, why don't we just turn around and go back and just be done? And I'm like, great, call Gloria. Let's do that. So we looped around, went back. It isn't always that easy. Let's go back to the. Exactly what the safety team said. Don't be afraid to divert, turn around, or land. Yes, you can always. Or, yes, you can divert from your original plan. You can turn around or you can land. Always make sure you have an alternative course of action available should the weather conditions preclude the completion of the flight as planned. In other words, don't be afraid to land and live. Sounds simple, right? And it's simple. And we're sitting around hangar flying and hangar talking. We all brag and, oh, you know, I'm not afraid to land or I'm not afraid to divert. It's all macho talk, right? And I'm sure there are some, you know, many of you out there are already conservative and you never push the envelope. Then there are plenty of those that do, including me. And I have. And I sometimes still get in that mode, you know, where, you know, I'm computing in my mind how fast I'm going, what's my ground speed, what's the storm doing? You know, again, you can do it, but you always got to think about to, is it worth it? I'm going to put the Link down below to the U.S. safety Team Article and in that article you can see the PDF that I've been talking about the last seven days. And let's just hit them real fast, let's just repeat them. Know how much fuel you need or may need. Take time for a walk around and for checklist, recognize the potency of OTC medications. That's over the counter medications stop the scud running visual flight rules and instrument conditions can lead to death. Don't succumb to get thyridis. Don't be afraid to divert, turn around or land. And I want to end it with I don't think we preach it enough. I think as an industry and as instructors, maybe we should even be harder on our students and maybe we should be asking even more questions about whether and pushing more into the issues and hammering in harder about not taking chances and helping them create their personal minimums. You know, I don't know what else we can do in an industry besides get these conversations going. Do me a favor and comment down below please and share this video or give us a like do something. Get your friends to watch them. You know there's seven things that sound very simple, but you know what? There's a reason why they why they name these seven things and you can bet your sweet rare that these are the reasons people are getting killed and dying. Okay? These things we have to, we learn it and then we need to retrain and retrain and we need to relearn. I've talked about in law enforcement academy how they taught us as a society we forget. I was reading an article earlier from an FAA publication about digging in a little psychology of all this and how if you're part of a community, you know, you have more success and you'll be safer if you're talking to people and you're getting involved in, you know, any kind of furthering your furthering your education education or hangar talk or you know, some type of flying group anytime you're staying or being social with other pilots that that's a good thing. I just want to keep hitting, you know, it's all about the basics. It really is. And I've always said I'm just a basic instructor, right? I just always tried to stick to those basic private pilot things we learned. I had great instructors. Luckily I had some awesome people that I learned from awesome people. And all I've done is just taken the stuff I learned from all those awesome instructors and just tried to use the best of the best. Best of everything I learned from all of them. And that's all I've ever done. And that's all we really can do, right? But we get so wrapped up in electronics and navigation and this iPad and this app and this electronic device over here. You know, that stuff's all cool and fine and dandy, but you can't overlook the basics. The basics of what could get people killed. All right, that's day 195. I'm going to wrap it up, go back and watch six previous videos. I am Kenny Keller wiping off the sweat Crater Helicopter line Ground School this is Coffee with Kenny. Tomorrow be day 196. Been having a blast doing these for you. Share this content Please give us a Like Please get these discussions going with your fellow pilots, your flight school, anybody and everybody related. We are the ones that will turn the table on this 2019 horrible year of fatal crashes. I mean, I'm sure many of you get upset by it too. And my heart sinks every time I hear another one go down. Always has, right? And I'm sure most all of you feel the same way. And we all want to go home at the end of the day, right? That's all we want to do. We all want to go home at the end of the day. Well, unless you got a death wish. And we know some people like that. Anyway, subscribe to the channel. Click the bell when you do. Go down below. For helicopterground.com we have four courses private commercial CFI instrument. You have monthly and yearly options. With those options you have a 24 hour test flight where you're not billed for the first 24 hours. You can go and check out the training. After that you have a 30 day money back guarantee that is on the monthly and yearly options. Then we have a big professional pilot package that's private commercial instruments. CFI all together. Doesn't expire. You purchase it one time and you're done. That's it. And I've been getting pretty frisky with the code. Now I'm going to throw it out again because this is the last day of the seven days of these things. And not saying we're not going to revisit them because we are. I'm going to hit a lot more of this kind of stuff. I want to hit some more accidents. I usually pick accidents a little bit further from the past because recent accidents are too fresh, you know, for so many people. For the friends and family of the people, you know, in respect for those. I don't like talking about recent ones. But we'll go back and pick some to talk about. So go down below, take a check out. Oh, yeah. Helicopter all in ground school. So the code KK25OFF for 25% off that great big professional pilot package. That way you got it for six months, a year, four years, five years. However long you need it, however long it takes you to get your ratings, that training will be there for you. So you go to the code or just go to the coupon box at checkout, enter KK25OFF for 25% off that big professional pilot package. All right. Peace out. See you in day 196. Hell, yeah.