#25 Helicopter Nirvana with the Dolly Monster Landing (state of enlightenment)

Hey, can you see the steam coming off the coffee? I'm going to help you reach a place of nirvana with your helicopter dolly landings. So yes, no high production value here. I did make a video on this eight years ago with the helicopter. I'm not sure if I'm going to put a link below or not. It's eight years old and I'm not sure how proud of it I is. I is. I'm gonna do another one and we'll do one with the aircraft. But you know what, the theory of it I can demonstrate just about as well with this. And this question comes from Holly. Oh, and I'm Kenny Keller with helicopter on ground school. By the way, helicopterground.com go down the link below to find out about our ground school. But Holly came here a few years ago and did her CFI with me. Holly showed up super prepared, transitioned to the Trant to the Enstrom, did a CFI in less than two weeks and she did an incredible job. And I just mentioned her in a video the other day that I hadn't heard from her for a while. So she emailed me last night. And this is the topic of the video today. Hey, Kenny, got a couple questions. First is, have you ever done a video on landing on the dolly monster? Yes, I have. It's eight years old. I just watched it this morning. It's an okay video but you know, it's eight years old. So anyway, I am going to make one out with the aircraft, but to get her question answered for me, that was my very first experience when I was flying with you. And I still think of some of the tips you gave me when I when I have to land on the various monsters in my own world. I don't recall seeing that video again. I got one, but it's eight years old so thought I'd bring it up in case you were looking for new ideas. So I was like, oh my God, I love this because I like talking about this. I was very lucky to have an old timer show me, which I guess I'm turning into old timer now, but showed me many years ago and it's helped me so much over the years. So I want to share this with you. So again, high production value here. I got a super high tech tripod here that I'm going to twist down. So bear with me. There we go. Okay. I was lucky. Many years ago when I first started flying was my second job at around 300 hours and the company had a dolly. And prior to that I only had a little bit Experience landing on dollies, but not much. So today our Dolly is top 10 checkride tips with Taz Christman, 2018 flight instructor of the year. I will put a link down below if you want to grab that. We bought the books for you. These are autographed with me and Taz Chrisman both in the front. So while supplies last, you can grab that down below. So this is our dolly. Okay. What this guy taught me is very simple. Simple is good. Simple works. And I've watched people over the years and I'm going to tell you what I've seen. So first off, what he taught me was he said, here, I'm going to show you something. He goes, people will come up to a dolly and they come here and then they start coming down, of course. And then what happens is they start wiggling around kind of like, you know, on a normal set down. Like we had a video the other day on the air cushion, People start dancing around. They do the same thing with the dolly. If they come in like this and then they come down, they come down and they could look real nice. Their approach might be nice, and when they're coming down, it might be nice. But then the old dolly monster, you know, it's a mental thing. Pretty soon they're all over the place. Okay, so what he showed me was, he's like, kenny, bring yourself to a hover. Just back a little ways from the dolly. Get yourself stabilized, get feeling good about it. And when you're ready, just make a nice smooth approach, bringing some forward speed in there very gently and just keep moving in. And again, eyes outside, using your peripheral. People want to stare down at the dolly and that will mess you up. You're using your peripheral to keep track of the dolly and just bring it in, come in, and when you feel good about it, you go ahead and put it on. And the other thing he taught me is he said, and then here's what you do. If you're having a bad day where you're just kind of wobbly, we all do it, right? Some days we hover like, you know, we're so good, and then some days we're not so good. That's any pilot on any given day. He said, if you come in, he goes, kenny, if you come in and you start having trouble and you get nervous and you start wobbling around, he goes, here's what you do. Just pick it up on up. Do a hovering square pattern, right? Because you're practicing. This takes your time. You can breathe in and out, Go all the Way around, of course, clearing your tail each time. And you can do this either way, bring it around and then do the same thing. Get a nice stabilized hover going. Breathe in and out. Another thing this CFI taught me, this guy was awesome. His name was Joe. And he was like. When he was checking me out in the instrument, he's like, you need to breathe. You're not breathing, you know. So it's a 300 hour CFI. I'm all tense and not breathing. He's like, breathe. So anyway, and then come in again with your thoughts together. Big deep breath, come in, come in and go like this. So what's funny? As I did that and very quickly, that just sunk in with me now. Over the years I've watched people landing on dollies. And I can remember even back early watching, and I won't mention the names, doesn't matter, but a guy who was a military pilot, experienced pilot, out flying civilian world, and he flew at the same airport I did. And the guy was great pilot, right? And he was always smooth and everything he did was really nice. But every time he'd come in, he would do that and I would watch him. He'd get down there and he'd get nervous and you know, this guy's thousands of hours and he'd be out there screwing around and then finally, you know, boom, slap that thing on the ground. There's a video I just watched this morning of that helicopter that crashed trying to land on a dolly. The one that hits a tail road or something and ends up spinning around the ramp for like two or three minutes and kills both the occupants. Horrible video. I mean, it's a good training video for us to learn the lesson of what bad can happen. Another good friend of mine says there's two kinds of helicopters. Those that have fallen off the dollies and those that haven't yet. Okay, that's kind of a drastic comment, but that's basically saying you could wreck a helicopter. And it happens. Happens quite frequently. There's other videos out there on YouTube as well. So I really like this, and this is very simple, but I'm telling you, over the years, I've watched this happen over and over. It's a platform. You know, we called it the Dolly Monster because we all struggled with it. I struggled with it till I showed, you know, was shown that by the older pilot. And then I've taught this for many years. That's why I taught Holly this while she was here. And she said so she said, hey, do you have a video on that if not make a new one. So there you go, the dolly monster. Right? And that's why I picked up a couple new coffee cups last night and I thought nirvana, I looked it up. It's the state of enlightenment. Okay, so for nirvana landing or for your Nirvana, your state of enlightenment on helicopter dolly landings. Don't rush it. Like everything else we do in a helicopter. Slow, smooth, methodical, come up approach, stop, take a big deep breath, come in, set the thing down. If you start wobbling, you start getting nervous. Any given day it can happen. Anyone, don't risk rolling the helicopter over. Just go ahead and go. Okay, I'm gonna abort this little practice hovering. And this is great with students. You know what I've always done is we don't let students, we don't let them land on the dolly until after they're private. And we've worked with them. Right. Because this is kind of dangerous. So we don't let. I've never let students go on and off the dolly alone. They get their private rating. They got some confidence. You work with them and then eventually you know, you can approve someone to land and take off from the dolly. But at the private level, we don't. I was trying to think of one other thought I wanted to add there. Being very careful. I mean that's it being. Taking your time. It's not really a dally monster. It's just a platform. Come in nice and slow. And especially in training, tell your student, hey, it's just like anything else. When they get nervous going to just sit down on the ground and they do that, they're going to, it's going to amplify here, right. And there might be days where I come in, it's kind of windy. Oh, I know. Here's what I wanted to think. Want to think about most of you know, and maybe you don't. If you're brand new to this. We always want to park our dollies into the wind just like we want to land into the wind. Many times you'll take off and you go out to fly for the day and the wind turns around 180 degrees for you. I've worked at airports where line the line crew would just come out and turn a dolly for you and move it into the wind. Something to think about. If you're out flying and you have line service and the wind has changed, ask them to go out and turn that dolly for you. The other option would be the wind has changed or you're tired and you come in and you're just struggling. Set the thing on the ground, take a minute, shut down and depending on what else you got going on, take a little breather if you need to, or if there's somebody more experienced that can come out and put it on for you. Or again, if it was turned the wrong way, just land, shut down, take the time, get to get the tow motor and turn the thing around, point it towards the wind because you are going to struggle. If you try to come in here and do a dolly landing with the wind behind you, that is not going to be good. That is going to be an issue. So I hope that helps. I'm gonna flip up my high tech camera here, my high tech tripod. There you go. So I do hope that helps you again. I am Kenny Culler, Creator, Helicopter Line Ground School Put the link down below. We have a private pilot membership. It's only $49 a month. You get a 24 hour free test flight where you can sign up, enter your credit card, check out our entire site for 24 hours. If it's not right for you, remove your credit card before the end of 24 hours and you won't be billed anything. If you're a PayPal customer or you sign up with PayPal, just go into PayPal to end that subscription. 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These daily videos. I. I'm sorry, I'm having a blast doing them. Cup of coffee number three. Almost done. That's the whole trick is, you know, I usually have the idea, either I have an idea in the evening, previous evening, but then if something good comes in overnight, like Hollies, I'm like, oh, I want to do that today. So I thought with the new Nirvana Cup. State of enlightenment. State of enlightenment with your dolly landings. Heck yeah. Give us your thoughts down below about dolly landings. What you've experienced, what techniques you used, thought processes. That's a lot of what's been popular about these videos is people get a chance to jump in and tell your side, tell your story, what's worked for you, what hasn't worked for you. And other people can log in and read these comments. And it's just, you know, my way may not be the best way. This I really like, and I like teaching it. One thing to remember, there's a lot of great instruction going on out there, and every instructor is going to have a different method of teaching you something. Because two instructors show you two different ways does not mean one or the other is wrong. You know, you learn by seeing different techniques. Long as it's safe, who cares? You know, like, Quick Stop is one of my favorites. People email me questions about, but this guy in the Quickstop taught me this, and this guy teaches me that. And it's like, you know what? There's a million ways of doing a Quick Stop. A million ways. As long as the maneuver is safe and you're slowly de. Accelerating the helicopter and you're doing it safely, should be called Slow Stop, not Quickstop. Another thing I was taught many years ago. Anyway, I'm going to wrap this up. Please subscribe to the channel. Leave your comments down below. Click that bell and we'll see you in the next video.