#273 - Helicopter Landing (set downs) For Those That Struggle

And I'm going to leave with a little clip of Heather putting up two pictures from one of our ground school members. This is for Aaron Young. He said, hello Heather. Thanks for the follow up. I did get my ppl and have transitioned into the instrument training here at Sevier County Choppers. I give a special thanks to you guys for the hard work and dedication to making the program. These video lessons have helped me make this journey of completing the professional pilot program much easier. Thanks Hogs. That was from the first picture he sent us. And then just over the weekend he sent us another one passed my CFI checkride. Just want to say thank you again for all the hard work you guys put into creating hogs. Aaron Young, we absolutely love that feedback. That's why we added him to the HOGS Wall of Fame. We're so excited. As a member. You pass your checkride, send us your picture and we put you up on the hogs wall of fame. It's just freaking cool. No two ways about it. Day 273 Coffee with Kenny and I have a kind of, I think a cool video for you today. And this is inspired by a ground school member who over the weekend text me and said he was having trouble with the last two feet of his set downs and I sent him a few videos and I put those videos along with a couple others in a playlist because I sent them to him and he responded right away and said I had a Zenith moment. Now these videos are inside Helicopter Land Ground School. But I'm assuming he just hadn't got that far through the videos yet. But a lot of people struggle with that set down that last one or two feet. And over the years I've made numerous videos on this topic because a lot of people struggle with this. So it's very common. I struggled with it in the beginning. So I know many of you struggle because we all struggle with different things, right? But this is one that comes up quite a bit. So I thought let's roll some of these videos and I'll leave the playlist up. It's called Helicopter Landing Set downs for those struggling. So we're going to roll through some of these videos so you can all have a laugh at the ten year younger Kenny. But this is one of the first ones I did and I'm talking about the air cushion that happens about 6 to 8 inches above the ground. And if nobody has showed you this, this will help you and make sense because when you're struggling it's always that last couple inches or 6 to 8 inches when you get down near the ground due to this air cushion. And an examiner showed me this at my private pilot level. And I talk about him a lot. He's a stellar examiner and a legend in the industry. And so he's the first one to show me this. And out of several instructors, nobody had talked to me about this. So coming from this legendary examiner, I knew it was pretty good stuff. Right, Said Kenny. You gotta understand that when you're coming down, you're getting close to the ground. There's this air cushion, and you gotta push through that real nice and gentle. And if you don't, that's where the problems start, and you start kind of wobbling all over the place. So in this video, I filmed a student out on the ramp that didn't know he was being filmed. And he was a guy who struggled, you know, a lot in the beginning, like many not making fun of him. But I show you what he does. There's a couple really good illustrations here. And again, I like this one because he's out by himself, not knowing that I go upstairs and roll the camera while he's going to go out and do some hover square practice. And something else I want to mention, you know, we use these squares on the ramp as a place to pick up and set down, so you've got a focal point, which also works out really well as a pretend dolly landing. So you've already seen one there. Now watch when he. Every time he goes to sit down, not every time, but you're going to see where he goes to set down. The hover looks good. He gets down there, and then, boom, there he is at that air cushion. If you don't push through it, this is what happens. And there he goes. He's searching. When you get there, you just have to gently push down and get the thing onto the ground. That was. That was better. But look at him. He still. Still kind of messing around. Here's another view. We'll see how he does on this one. Coming down, coming down, searching again. And I can tell you what he's doing. He's going up and down with that collective. And that's what people do. They get there and they think, I know the ground is there. And he gets it on the ground. Okay, good one. Next video out, I'm training a gentleman, a jet Ranger. And in this video, we have the audio along with it. So if you want to check it out, it'll be below in the playlist. But you can hear us in the helicopter and this gentleman struggled a lot with pickups and set downs, too. So I had someone else run the camera that day. And you can hear us talking through the air cushion. And he did end up getting his rating, and he did fine. But he struggled a lot with the pickups and set down. So let's just look at a little footage and a little tip here. The student can really benefit on a calm day after hover practice in a high wind day. So you should be doing both. You should be doing it when it's calm and doing it when it's windy. And you'll struggle when it's windy. But then when you go back to a calm day, it makes it so much easier when you're working on this, hovering in pickups and set downs. And right here, I'm sure I'm explaining to him the forward movement. As I'm talking, a little bit of forward movement will help you when you struggle. Coming straight down is always the hardest. If you use a little bit of forward movement, it's always. It just seems to help for whatever reason. Okay, this one was pretty good. So remember, small collective downward pressure at that 6 to 8 inches from the ground. And you have to understand this to get a nice set down. And a lot of you, maybe someone has showed you this. If they have, please let us know that down below. But if you're new to flying and you're struggling and no one's explained this to you, this is so freaking important. Just like the ground school member that had a zenith moment over the weekend. All right, and then here's one of my older ones. And this one I'm going to demonstrate. And it's an older video and it's hard to see, but I'm explaining how when you take your hand off the collective, there's a certain point where the helicopter will just keep going up and down. And what I mean is, let's say you got a nice set down going. You're coming down, you're coming down, you're coming down. If you don't do anything, it'll stop and it'll get there. Just kind of like it's doing there and it'll kind of mess around. That's where it takes that small push down. So I actually take my hand off the collective during this video and explain that I'm doing it for demonstration purposes only, because rarely do we take our hand off. So my hand's off, I keep it close. And in this video, what you'll see is it'll go down, it'll go Down. It'll go down. It'll almost touch or not touch, and then it'll come back up again, and then it'll go down again, and then it'll go up again. And that's where people struggle. So you can have that really nice set down, starting about 3ft or 5ft, and you're coming down nice and slow. But if you don't give it that push, you'll start wobbling around. And if you come down kind of quickly, you'll go right through that air cushion. So some days you. You may not experience it if you're coming down fast. But ultimately we wanna come down and set down really nice and light. So people, you know, think about that and they're like, man, that was so nice till I almost got the ground. The ground is there. You have to understand. The ground is there. You'll find it. Don't be looking at the ground ahead of you, looking forward 50 to 75ft. A fence post, a tree. Find something out ahead of you to be focusing on. You can see the ground in the peripheral vision. And if you're keeping the nose straight and you're coming down, it looks good. Just know I'm ready for that air cushion. When I'm almost to the ground and it's going to stop and kind of hang there, it takes that gentle little push down on the collective. This is fun. I added this to the playlist. This is one of my very first videos. Very first. It's before I launched online. Ground school was wanting to build it and making a lot of videos. You can even see the pirate flag here on my rough old table. But in this one, we're talking about dolly landings, and I'm gonna do a brand new one because just over the actual last few days, somebody said, hey, how about a video of you doing dolly landings and talking about the procedure? And I need to go out, make a brand new one because again, this one is really old. Still a good video. Just I did it in my old shop years ago. Not much for microphones, not much for cameras. It was early on. But in the video, I talk about how approaching the dolly, I talk about the same way as setting it on the ground. Whether you're just doing a square spot on the ground or landing on a dolly, the idea is kind of the same. Using a little bit of forward movement will help you set down the dolly, just like your normal landings. Not on a dolly. A little forward movement is good. Now, of course, I have had in that examiner that taught me a lot of stuff he's like, well, how come you go down every time? How come you're always going forward? And I said, because I struggled to go straight down. Well, he said, that's okay, but show me that you can do a straight down as well. And I did. But then I was working as a cfi, the Vietnam era pilot, the one that taught me this technique on coming forward and coming down to a dolly real nice and slow, using that forward momentum works out really well. And if you get nervous and start flopping around, take a break, do a little hover square pattern and go all the way around and come back to the dolly. And that's what I talk about in this video too. So they're all in the playlist that's down below the video. If you want to go check out my older videos, I've mentioned the last several days. I've been doing videos for 10 years now. We're approaching eight years with online ground school. And it is fun going back and seeing some of my early videos. It's fun, I'm happy, I'm proud of them. I'm not embarrassed by any means, right? We all progress over time. And this is still a good video. It's just older with. Not that great of cameras and not that great of audio, but it works. And this is what I'm talking about. And it can be a dolly or just a landing on the ground. A person comes in and when they try to go straight down, they'll start wobbling if they use a little bit of forward movement. And remember that air cushion, it works the same. It just can really help you with those dolly landings and help perfect it. And your regular landings on the ramp or the ground or the pavement. Same theory. And then here's one more from this past winter when I first started out, coffee with Kenny. I don't even know what day this was, but I'm home in my pajamas and I sit and talk about the theory. Just using a helicopter. Cold winter's day, and I was just at home doing videos. So this is one I put in, I threw in there too, that you can look at as well. And we go through and I talk about it. And then there's another one in coffee with Kenny, I did on another day when somebody had talked about dolly landings. Actually, there it is, helicopter nirvana, I believe. Let's skip to that one. Ah, I changed my mind. That's enough of me watching myself on the screen. So again, remember air cushion. And if you're struggling on those set downs, remember 6 to 8 inches inches. There's a little cushion. Be ready to push through that thing. Let's make a little mini dolly here. You can find yourself a place to practice anywhere on the ground and have a pretend dolly and a pretend landing spot. Little tiny bit of forward movement. Remembering that air cushion and push through it with a gentle slight pressure down. And remember, you don't do anything. It'll go up, it'll go down, it'll go up, it'll go down. If you go down fast, you'll push right through it. It's for that what you think is almost a perfect set down and then you get there and you start searching for the ground. That is exactly what happens. I'm telling you. 20 years of teaching has taught me that. So hope that helps for day 273 going to bring up top 10 checkride tips again today. If you're getting ready for a checkride and you're worried and you're struggling and you're not one of our online ground school members, I highly recommend this book. We ship them for just shipping and handling. We bought the books for you. We have a whole pile of them. These are our tips if you're getting close. We go through this as myself and 2018 flight instructor of the Year Dan Taz Chrisman. We wrote this together and not only do we put together the things that we thought were things that people mess up before a checkride, the things that we see firsthand as instructors preparing people for checkrides. Dan also went out and interviewed examiners in the Las Vegas area where he teaches and lives and got the latest and greatest from examiners firsthand what they see as problems for people showing up for checkrides. HOGS members are welcome to buy the book as well. I know many of our HOGS members do have this book. We ship it to you for just shipping handling. I'm going to put that link down below as well. It's below the link for the playlist of those videos. Just Shipping and Handling. And then remember we can help you through Private, Commercial, CFI and instrument. Pushing eight years online, we have four courses Private, Commercial, CFI and Instrument. We highly recommend you jump on the on the bandwagon and become a member. You can always check it out for 24 hours with our free test flight. Decide whether it's right for you. You can keep the training, stay inside or you can remove your credit card and not be billed a dime and we part as friends and you're welcome back anytime. Alright, that's going to wrap it up for today. Subscribe to the channel and click the bell if you haven't yet so you can be notified of our daily video. Leave us a comment down below. Go to helicopterground.com below to check out our online ground school memberships. Go down to get your free your free paperback where we ship it to you for just shipping and handling. We already bought the books, so thanks again. We'll see you in day 274. Peace out. Ra.