#290 Building CFI Time, Turbine Time - Coffee With Kenny
Kenny Keller explains how to build flight time toward EMS and turbine helicopter jobs. He recommends getting your CFI, notes there's no separate turbine rating, and lists ways to get turbine hours: military, ride-alongs, mixed schools, ferry flights. He was hired into EMS with about 350 turbine hours, though some employers want more.
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Day 290. Copy with Kenny. Got a couple of great questions here. And it's from the same young man that's going through training right now. And it's a pretty long email. It's actually a comment on YouTube from day 235. Coffee with Kenny. When we're talking about EMS pilot requirements and becoming an EMS pilot and experience you'd have to have. And in this question, just to break it down real quick, he's going through training and he asked after he gets through private instrument commercial. He said, I've been told CFI is the best route, but I'm not a great teacher. At least I don't think so, which I think is baloney. You can be anything you want to be. And if you're passionate about helicopters, you can teach. Talks about his end goal is EMS flying or search and rescue or firefighting, which those are all great jobs and things people are interested in. I know I need turbine experience and certain license to go with it. There is no license for turbine. There is. There's not an additional rating in fixed wing aircraft. There are times when a special rating may be needed, but for helicopters, there is no actual turbine rating. How would I gain turbine flight hours? Can that be done as a cfi? I went that route. Okay, so first I'm going to swing the camera up here to Chris Hauser. This is the Hogs Wall of Fame. This is one of our guest instructors, Chris Hauser, who is now an instrument instructor. Let me tell you about that. When Chris started going through his ratings, he said, I don't want to be a cfi. Well, later on, once he got to commercial and realized there's very few jobs out there available for a new commercial pilot. If you don't have any flight time, it's very hard to get a job. So Chris came back and did his instructor rating and now years later, he is a really good instructor. So even though he wasn't interested and didn't think he'd be good at it, he became really good at it. So CFI is going to be most likely your best bet to get time. I know it seems backwards, but most instructors are brand new. They just got their ratings. That's the best start. Now, I'm going to give you a couple other examples. We're going to go over to Jed Hughes. He's one of my star students from way back and now he's a commercial helicopter saw pilot. Now, Jed is not a CFI and he did get his start in the industry, but he had a Couple hundred hours at least. And when he got this job, he had to be like the road guy for a while, like, you know, drive the truck, help load the helicopter, hook things up. And that company said, if you do a good job for us, eventually we'll put you in the helicopter. So he was a commercial pilot with two or 300 hours that he'd scrounged up wherever, and then he got an opportunity, but he had to pay his dues. And that company has since raised their hour requirement. So there are occasionally times where you hear somebody got a commercial job after getting their commercial rating, but it's very hard to do. So if you want to be competitive in the industry, I say get the CFI and start building the time. So the next part of his question, how do I get the turbine time? This is a tough one. Of course, if you have unlimited funds, which most people don't, you could go buy turbine time. But turbine time is very expensive, so most likely that's probably not going to be the option for you. You could go into the military because a lot of the training they do is in turbine helicopters. So there's one route. There are opportunities, like in California, where you can go, like along on news flights where the news pilots the CFI and they'll let you fly and you can log time. There are some opportunities like that, but again, those aren't cheap. The way I did it, one of the first flight schools I went to work for had both piston training aircraft and then they had a turbine jet Ranger, and they did news reporting and 135 charter. And because I worked there full time, I would occasionally get to go along in the turbine aircraft with a CFI in log time. And over about, I say, a year or two, I got about 80 hours of turbine time. And then a position came up flying the Jet Ranger, and I got to be the Jet Ranger pilot and build my turbine time from there. But those opportunities, they're out there, but you got to research them. And I was lucky that I got a job at a school that had both piston and turbine. I was lucky they gave me the opportunity to go along on flights in log time. And it's very hard to get insured with low time in turbine aircraft. So, again, I was very lucky with that opportunity. So I wish I had an easy answer for you on how to get turbine time. And if anybody's got any ideas out there, sure, put them down below. We'd love to hear about them. You know, find somebody who has a turbine aircraft where you can ride along. Look for ferry flights that are advertised where somebody's moving a turbine aircraft, aircraft across the country where you could go along for a reduced rate. These are the types of things you have to seek out. And it's a tough one. I mean, finding that almighty turbine time is tough. And when I got hired into EMS, I had around 350 turbine hours. And the company said, well, we like hiring guys with a thousand turbine. And I was like, well man, this is all I got. And then I struggled over quite a few years to get that 350. That's all I got. And he's like, well, it's what we like to have. They still hired me and I got the job. So I got hired with around 350 hours of turbine time. Different places are going to have different requirements and whether they'll waive requirements. The turbine time is not an easy answer. It's just not. And that is the industry, that is the way it is. So there are some options. I say you're getting a little bit too worried yet because you're going to have to have 2000 hours to do EMS and any of the search and rescue or any of those jobs are all going to require you to have some pretty good time under your belt. So I still think CFI is the best way to go. And I think you can become a good teacher if you're passionate about it and you're passionate about your career and flying, I think that is the best route. I'd love to hear it down below if you all have any other ideas on what this young man could do. So now I'm going to take this opportunity to talk a little about our courses in the Halloween cell. Are you working on a helicopter rating and overwhelmed with all the information there is to know. I feel your pain. I failed my first private pilot checkride and that was tough. That was years ago. And even though it was rough, it was probably one of the best things that happened to me. And I ended up creating helicopter land ground school. I've been teaching for 20 years. March 1, 2012, we launched this. We have four courses. We have private, commercial, we have CFI and instrument. Each one of these courses is online, been online almost eight years. And these are our HOGS members. They're happy when they get through their checkrides, they send us in a picture. So we want to offer you a special Halloween sale off the yearly or professional pilot memberships. Now, the monthly is so cheap that we just don't feel like we can discount that. But we're making a special offer. Halloween ends Halloween night on the private commercial, CFI or instrument courses. We are offering 33% off through midnight Halloween night. That's off the yearly and also the big professional pilot package. You can enter the code HALLOWEEN33OFF during the checkout process to see the discounted price. And what's really cool is we have a 30 day money back, no hassle guarantee. So there's no risk on your part. We've had that in place the whole entire eight years we've been online. And we want to prove to you that the burden is on us to provide you the value, it's not the other way around. So you have a full 30 day money back, no hassle guarantee on any course, any one discount or not, no matter which membership it is. And we stand behind that 100% because we want to give you an opportunity to go in, check out the training, see what it's all about and see if we can help you. So there'll be a link on this page for the monthly or yearly memberships. Again, the discounts on the monthly it is on the yearly. And then the professional pilot page. There's just one sign up, but again 33% off any of the yearly or the big professional pilot. So I encourage you to go ahead and take a test flight. You found your way here because you probably heard about us, may have found us through a Google search. Most of our members now come in through word of mouth from their flight school or an instructor that says hey, you want some supplemental learning? Go check out helicopter on land ground school. We've had huge success the past eight years and we are so absolutely proud of what we've been able to do and we're so proud of our members and all the people we've been help been able to help. These pictures plastered all over the wall. So it's the real deal. So click one of those links, sign up. Remember you got a 30 day no hustle money back guarantee and you don't even need to give us an explanation if it doesn't work out for you, if it's not right for you, you just ask for a simple refund and that's it. We refund. Your money part is friends and you're always welcome back. So grab one of those links, take advantage of the holiday or the Halloween sale and we will see you on the inside. Helicopter and ground school. Peace out. It.
