#256 HOGS New Production Studio

All right, day 256. Here we go. Finishing up. Coffee number three, ACDC cup, man. It's a rock and roll kind of day, man. I'm having a blast. I'm having so much fun. And today for day 256, coffee with Kenny. I want to show you around and show you what we've been up to. And I'm gonna throw this on Facebook today, too. I haven't been on Facebook in a while, and a couple of my buddies last night are like, well, hey, Colin, you're not. Are you still doing coffee with Kenny? And I'm like, yeah, it's just been all on YouTube. So anyway, here's what I've been up to the last few weeks, and this is. It's getting freaking cool. And I just popped this out of the storage over there. I just wanted to remind y', all, that's what I started with all those years ago, and I've turned into a geeky gear freak. So you've all seen the Hogs hanger that we're super proud of right here. This is the back end area. We still got, you know, spare computers and monitors, stuff we had hanging all over the place over there. And we spent a bunch of time still going through the boxes. Now here's the coffee area, going through the boxes and making a nice assortment, getting everything nice and organized. Been hard at work at all that. And I have showed you before. Heather's office is up there. And then what I'm really proud of is what I worked on last night. We've been working on this for a while and rearranging, but. So here we go. Just for the geeky nerdy people like me that into this kind of thing. Got our safety thing on the floor to run some cords over. And we've been tripping over each other, moving things around, trying to do this in different ways. And I think I finally kind of nailed pretty close to what I want. And we're not done yet. There's still going to be more to come, but we got a nice open area to work with. All the stuff up off the floor with the trusses. You know, we can run cords and wiring wherever we need it. Four lights right now, and then a fifth light that we can move around manually. So we come up with different configurations of what we're doing. You've been seeing the Hog's Wall, but here's a really good look at it. Yesterday's video we did. A congratulation for Ryan. So here's everybody that's up and we're waiting for our server next week because we still got another 40 or 50 to reprint from the old Hogs wall. And luckily all our data was saved on that server crash and we got a guy putting us a new one together. So next week when the server gets here, Heather can get back to reprinting the ones from the previous HOGS hanger. So don't worry everybody if you were up, if you're not up yet, you will be back up very soon. So again, more fun part of the story just to be able to, you know what I worked with for all those years in a tiny little office, real tiny office. And then I moved to some bigger offices, but still where I was and what I was doing, I mean, hey, it was a great start, but you're always cramped and it's just hard to work in a really tiny area. So you know, I thought with this there's enough room in a hangar that we can do this right, you know what I mean? So we can have room to move, have room to operate. Getting our camera set up over here, our cool remote job there, set up this back wall to start trying to help knock down this echo. And most people say, oh, the echo's fine, it's not bad, but it drives me insane. We're going to keep working with that. We're going to probably do some sound, not proofing, sound absorbing overhead. And then maybe something on the ends like a, you know, I don't know, kind of a pull across black drape to help deaden some of the sound. I just don't like sounding like I'm in a big echoey 50 by 400 building, which we are. So anyway, I can just keep geeking out on this stuff, man. These trusses all have holes where you can, you know, supplied the hardware. You can add lights, you can add microphones, so much you can do. And then still got our trusty old, you know, kind of getting set back up kind of the same way we were, just with a lot more room. And now everything's mobile. I just put this dude on, on wheels, our presenting table. Boom. Now, oh yeah, I can just roll that dude around. And that's been the whole idea with setting up this new studio is everything's mobile so that we can rearrange at any time. We can move the walls if we need to. We have a guy building us a 50 style diner that I mentioned and I've been waiting on this for a year. Excuse me. And the guy actually called me recently and he was like, apologizing going, man, I'm sorry it's taking me so long and I want to get this done for you. And I lost my partner and things have been really tough. And apologizing, he's like, I'm going to finish it and you don't even have to pay me for my labor. Just, I just really want to get this done for you. And I'm like. And I called the guy back, he left me a message and was like, dude, it's okay. You know, practice what we preach, right? We all have problems, we all have struggles. But anyway, the 50 Styles diner booth, we're just going to wait when it arrives, then we'll rearrange and do whatever. But so we'll have that, I don't know, kind of a cool interview type place. And we'll do something cool with the background where, you know, we have somebody visits, stops by for coffee with Kenny, stops by to visit with us. We can sit down in a nice 50 Styles booth and maybe have some Hogsmember pictures on the wall, something like that. So I just wanted to show you around and make that today. Taz always checks in. Taz has got surprise showing up to his house tomorrow. He already knows kind of what it is, but basically Taz is going to start the weather next week. He's been working on the slides and we did a little bit of chatting about, you know, he said there's some, you know, new things that have come out that he's going to add to the presentation. So he's taken the weather that he originally built for the instrument course and just revamping it for the basic private pilot course. And we're super excited about that. And then I sent him some toys that he'll get tomorrow. Be kind of like Christmas in Vegas at Taz's house. Just sent him some, a few pieces to, you know, help up the production, production value a little bit. Taz Christman, if you don't. If you're new to our videos, Dan. Taz Christman is 2018 Flight Instructor of the Year. And Dan was a Hogs member first. And we met several years ago when he was in town because he's from Indiana, not far away from where I live. Grew up in Indiana, learned to fly here, went to the Air Force. And he's been, of course, lived in a lot of different places, but now living in Las Vegas, flies for the Air Force, fixed wing and helicopter, double eye, super accomplished individual. And we became friends and now he's one of our guest instructors. And dan appears probably 50% of the videos in the instrument course. And we just. I was talking about the weather section a little bit ago or, you know, a few weeks ago, and Taz is like, let's just build a new one. And I said, all right. And the beauty is, you know, we all have the things we like to teach. And Taz said, I love teaching weather. And I'm like, you know, that's cool, right? Because we all like to do what we're passionate about. And weather is a good subject and it's an important subject. And you know what, when I polled people, it's been now, I don't know, four or five years ago, we should do this again. But I polled all of our members and viewers and everybody just said, what are your top problems? You know, what are the top things you get overwhelmed with in your training? And number four, I think, was weather. It might have been higher in the list. I'd have to go back and look. But so weather's right up there in one of the things that people struggle learning. And of course, understanding weather is how you keep yourself alive, right? I mean, you got to understand what's going on with the weather and you got to understand forecasting and metars and understand what the weather is going to be doing, what it's doing at any current time, but what it's going to be doing during your flight. So the weather that I have, you know, I had a nice email from one of our members, Orison, I think he said, kenny, do you know, quit? You don't have to apologize for your older stuff. You know, it is what it is and I appreciate that very much. But I love that weather. When I was teaching it, it's just like a lot of that stuff is kind of dry and kind of goes on and on. And so the what new weather section, I'm confident not only will be better because it's going to be really the weather that you need. The weather section that we currently have, I kind of went overboard with it and really taught a lot of stuff that you're never going to use except for maybe on a written test. And so I'm confident that the new weather section with Taz doing it, who not only is a, you know, I've mentioned this many times before, very laid back and no chip on the shoulder. So for being a super, super experienced guy, I love his teaching style. I mean, because he's just, you don't feel like, you know, he's not in there, like, oh, I'm Mr. So and so and I'M gonna teach you weather today. You know, it's just so laid back. So we're so excited about the new weather section that'll be coming and along with everything else, man, everything's changing so fast and just gotta thank everybody, man. This is freaking incredible. I freaking love it. I just freaking love coming to work every day. And that is an amazing feeling. I don't know what else to tell you. Guess I'm gonna wrap that up because my daughter just got out of school and she'll be heading home. Got her driver's license, so she'll be heading home shortly. So I wanted to come in and just show everybody where we're at as of right now. So freaking excited, man. I'm just so excited. It's so cool and it's so much fun, you know? Still love helicopters, but I like geeking out on all the gear and I love making videos, regardless of whether they're very good or not. Doesn't matter because I love doing it and, I don't know, just frigging love it. So, hey, go down below. You can check out our training courses. Helicopterground.com private commercial instrument, CFI, they all have monthly options. You can keep the training as long as you like. You can cancel anytime. You can do that yourself. Or we can do it for you. You know, it's a great deal. And the more and more we think about it for the kind of money. Do you realize the kind of money that you spend on helicopter training, the cost per hour for an aircraft, all the books you gotta buy, the checkrides you gotta do, paying your instructors anywhere between, you know, 30 to $100 an hour, which is fine, because no matter what you do, you have to do some ground with your instructor, right? I mean, even if you do a lot of studying on your own or you use hogs or whatever you're doing in a part 61 school anyway, and an instructor still has to at least test your knowledge, so you gotta do some with them. But you can save money in the long run by learning a lot on your own at a part 61 school. Part 141 school, they're still going to make you do the required number of ground hours because they have to. That's the way a part 141 school works. And we have members that attend 141 and still use our training as a supplement to their 141 training. But for the part 61, you know, it can be kind of like the wild, wild west, right? You can go to Flight school. And the guys might love teaching ground school and might really want to dig in and sit down and help you and work with you. And a lot of flight schools, they just, you know, here, here's the book. Read it and they throw it at you. Oh, it's the self study program. You know, I've heard that many times. One school I worked for even told their customers, remembers that customers like, oh, well, you know, the ground. That's all a self study program. No, it's not. I mean, it can be if you want to make it hard for yourself. But anyway, what I'm getting at is with the kind of money that you spend, think about the private pilot. It's $49 a month. If you pay your instructor one hour for 50 bucks, that's one hour of the time you had to get in your car, drive to the airport, schedule that time, go there, sit down. So with the private pilot membership, you have 18 hours of training, 120 videos that you can watch over and over again. And you can just use it for one month. And if you've got it and you're good, you're golden. You can unsubscribe before the end of the 30 days and you're done. And then you're always welcome to come back if you need it for more than a month, you can keep it as long as you want. And that's the beauty of it. That is such the beauty of the monthly memberships. Because you can do the private for a little bit, you can take a break, you can come back and do instrument, take a break, come back, use the commercial stuff. It's a wonderful thing. And when you think about it, the money you spend to become a member of ground school, it's not that much money in the big scheme of things. And if you think about it, what if you're dedicated and you're applying yourself and you gotta use the videos, you can't just buy the course and the information magically gonna get into your head, right? You have to spend the time and effort studying, watching our videos, studying on your own, reading the helicopter flying handbook, going through the far, aim, whatever it is you're doing. But think about this, the harder you apply yourself and the more you study, the better things are going to go in the aircraft and the more progress you're going to make. So I've been talking about this lately. You know, helicopters are explained plain expensive. I don't want to hear the whining anymore. They're just expensive. And a helicopter private pilot rating is expensive but you can save money if you're serious and motivated and you can save money by studying hard, applying yourself, learning the ground and not wait until your instructor kicks your ass and goes dude you got 80 hours and you ain't soloed and you ain't done your written, you know because you won't study, you have to study. That's part of it. So bottom line I've never really pushed this topic that I could think about so I'm pushing it right now. Our training is cheap, it's cheap, hand down cheap and again the fact that you can use as much or as little as you like, you can cancel anytime, you can come back anytime, it's a great deal, you know, hands down. All right, I'm going to check out day 256. See you in day 257. Subscribe and leave us a comment below. When you subscribe click the bell. See you in day 257. Peace out.