Kenny Keller (YouTube day 218) responds to a private-pilot ground-school member who was told to consider quitting after struggling with pilotage/dead-reckoning navigation despite nearly 100 flight hours. Kenny strongly encourages the student not to quit, shares his own experience (he took 88 hours to earn his private and nearly failed parts of his check ride), and gives practical tips: climb 500 ft (or 700–1,000 ft) to aid visual navigation, practice cross-country in a home flight simulator (e.g., Microsoft Flight Simulator), draw and keep airport diagrams on a kneeboard, get more dual instruction, and consider changing flight schools if the current school is unsupportive.
Questions this video answers
88 hours.
Climb 500 ft (he suggests also trying 700 ft or 1,000 ft).
Microsoft Flight Simulator.
Chapters
All right, day 218, coffee with Kenny. And I have a great question here today and I'm gonna help out this ground school member. I'm gonna get right to it. It's about being told by their flight school that maybe they should give up. And I don't like this. I'll just read you. I'll read it to you. Hey, Kenny. Private pilot member here. I was just told in my flight school that I was not ready for my check ride. I have almost 100 hours and I'm up to speed on about everything except navigation. Took me 88, so you got almost 100. Who cares? Don't worry about it. Keep going. I'm having trouble navigating by pilotage dead reckoning. I can get very close, but airports are hard to find when it's just you an educated guess at where you are and the ground below. Today I got so close but almost missed the airport to the side of me. I got confused at where I was and so mixed up the runways. Okay, you can work on that. You can get through that as well. My school said that I should maybe just continue flying. Bullshit. I do not want to and have lots of money invested in it. I think I could still be a good pilot. Do you have any advice for me? Yes, as far as quitting? Hell no. Don't you dare quit. Hopefully this will make you feel better. Took me 88 hours to get my private. I failed my first oral and then when I went back, I did well. That's part of my story, right? I kicked ass when I went back, but then I almost failed on the flight. I took off with my cross country on the wrong heading. It was like supposed to be 2:50 and I picked 215 or something and I took off. And the examiner didn't say anything. He just let me kind of get mixed up. And at a certain point I look off and I see this landmark that everybody knows. And he goes, yeah, that theater over, that's a pretty cool place, ain't it? And I go, yeah. And the son of bitches right over there. I go. He goes, so you know where you're at now? And I go, yeah. He goes, what did you do? I go, I screwed up. I took up on the wrong heading. So he's like, what are you going to do now? I went back to the airport, got on the right heading and took off. After the checkride, he said, I almost felled you on that. He said, but you did so well on the oral. I wanted to give you the benefit of the doubt. And he said, at least with you, I know you can get confused and then you can find your way out of it. And he said to me, people that completely smoke a check, right, and do nothing wrong. He said, those people actually concern me because I don't know how they're, what they're going to do when things get scary or spooky, right? So you do not quit. You're almost at 100 hours. You know what, maybe it's time to change flight schools. If you've handled all this so far and your only trouble is navigation. Here's my tip. And this is very simple, but I'll bet five bucks that this will work for you. Climb up 500ft, do that cross country 500ft higher than what you've been doing it. Hopefully you don't have some restriction with overlying airspace. You will be amazed at how just climbing up 500ft will help you find something. And that's from my 20 years of flying experience. There's been plenty of times I was looking for something, a city, a lake, an airport, a town, whatever it is. And so many times, you know, all sudden you get knocked in the head and you go, oh, duh, how about I climb up 500ft? You'll be amazed at how much just changing your altitude and going up an extra 500. You will be amazed how many things will come into view that you can't see 500ft lower. Heck, go up 700ft, go up a thousand feet if you need. I'm telling you this is a very simple, easy trick. But I'm telling you this can help help you. Hell no. I would not give up. You got almost 100 hours. You got all this time invested. If your only struggle is finding airports and getting a little confused on navigation, heck, you could use flight similar simulator at home. I did that when I was working on my private. I used flight simulator to help learn navigation and to help learn cross country navigation. It's pretty cheap. You could do it at home, at your own, you know, leisure versus going out and spending a bunch of money in the aircraft. I would recommend doing some more duel with your instructor, you know, get a couple more flights under your belt. But if you're getting confused, you know, I'm wondering if how much time did you really spend studying the airport you're going to, you know, make sure that you draw that diagram out, handwrite it, because if you hand write it, you remember it. Put that on your knee board. If you don't have a knee board, get One, if you're not that organized in the cockpit, you know, maybe you are, I don't know. But cockpit organization is key, right? So putting your own drawings on an E board, draw that airport out, draw those Runway numbers and do whatever you got to do. So that can help you keep that straight in your mind. God, I would not give up. At almost a hundred hours and you're struggling because you're finding, you know, a little trouble on the navigation, flying airports, you can get through this. And I would. I'm not telling you you have to change flight schools, maybe change instructors. You know, I can't tell you for sure on that one because I'm not there. But I'd be inclined to leave a flight school that told me after I had almost 100 hours, I'd be very inclined to leave that flight school and go find somewhere else. Because they've taken your money that far, right? If you were that much of a problem student, then why didn't they work with you sooner? Why didn't they try to call it off sooner? And I've done this video before in the past talking about this subject. I think anybody can do it. You know, you go for your dreams, you never freaking give up. Doesn't matter how many struggles, you know, every one of us has something that we have trouble learning. So you got a handle on everything else and you're struggling a little bit with navigation. You can frickin work through it. Absolutely, you can work through it. Do not give up. I'm telling you, you either straighten it out with the flight school, say, no, I'm not quitting. You want my business or not? You know, I told a story once about, I had a guy who had close to 100 hours and I had that talk with him and he said, this is when I was a young instructor. He's like, the money's none of your business. Doesn't matter how many hours it takes me, I want to do this. And I was like, whoa, okay. You know, I was just kind of mentioning that I know you're getting a lot of hours and I've never said that, I've never made that comment to a student since because, you know, it's not, it's not my business if you have the money. Any person that wants to come to you, if they have the money to spend and they, and they don't want to quit, who cares? God, I hate that. Maybe you should just continue flying. I hate that I'd leave that school, man. That's what I would do. All right, day 217 coffee with Kenny. 218 man, I screw that up every time. It's day 218. Do us a favor and subscribe to the channel. When you subscribe, click that little bell that way. That way you'll be notified of the daily video when the daily video comes out. 218 Days of Answering Member member questions Helicopter land ground school members we're answering questions about learning about your careers, about checkrides. We're celebrating your successes and we're talking about your failures. And I mean I talk about my failures all the time. And that's you know, one thing that we put into the ground school is you know it's in the beginning I, you know I called us something like you know, real world flight training or something. We all screw up, we all make mistakes. And most helicopter pilots, well let's say a portion of helicopter pilots, you know, have that standoffish attitude and can never do anything wrong. And you know, they're all cool and they don't make mistakes. Right. And I guess that's with any profession. So we're all human, we all do dumb stuff now and then and we all have that area where we struggle learning. So what yours is a little bit of trouble on navigation. You know, God, I had plenty of my own struggles and when we all have. So I'm gonna wrap it up. I like this video already and I'm so glad that this helicopter aligned ground school private pilot member reached out to me and asked me for help because you're not going to quit after this video. You better not quit because I will hunt you down and kill you. No, I'm just teasing. You got to keep going and let us know what happens. Email me after you work through this problem or if I can help you some more with it. Don't be afraid to email me back again and I'll discuss it with you further. But I think work a little harder at it. Don't give up. Work harder on the cross country navigation. Maybe do some flight simulator stuff like Microsoft flight simulator or some home, some, some home simulator and practice going, doing cross countries and navigating and following a course and looking for objects, looking for cities, looking for lakes. Well that's what I would do. Absolutely. 100% that's what I would do. All right, please give us a thumbs up for this video. And if you didn't like it, when you dislike it, make sure you dislike it twice because that way we'll really know how much you dislike the video. Alright, looking forward to day 219 not sure what's gonna happen, but we'll see tomorrow. Alright again like and subscribe. Put your comments down below. Tell us about your struggles. Tell us about what you've learned or struggled learning and what you used to get over those struggles. And particularly for this this HOGS member, if you've had some problems with cross country navigation, what trips did or tricks, what tricks did you use or what methods or what did you do to get to those problems? All right, like subscribe, comment below and we'll see you in the next video.
