Kenny Keller runs the Final Approach Course, an intensive in-person program that gets helicopter pilots ready for their checkride in four days. Two flights a day, one-on-one instruction, and a private hangar. Three spots left for spring.
Questions this video answers
January 9, 2025.
HOGS member Jamie Clear in 2017.
19 completions (18 finished previously, 19th upcoming in about a week).
About three spots available.
Three days of training, with the checkride on day four (minimum).
Chapters
We get asked often, what is the final approach course? And so I want to give you a super short story, and we're going to tell you what's all involved in it and where the name came from, because it's actually kind of cool. This originated with a HOGS member named Jamie Clear back in, like, 2017. He had an R44. He had 200 hours. He had eight instructors over a period of time and still didn't have a private pilot license. He'd been through all the HOGS courses or for the private, all the videos. He finally calls us in disgust. Can I just come up there and finish my rating, please? So we send a pilot down to get him and his helicopter, bring him in nine days, we finish him up, send him back home. All Jamie needed was the finishing touches, somebody to help him just put it all together and forget all the frustrations he had from eight different instructors and all kinds of hiccups and trying to find an examiner. So. So once we were completed, Jamie's like, man, you should be doing this for people. This is an absolute wonderful service. So that's where the idea originated from. And then we started this last summer, and a local examiner came up with the name. I started telling him about what we were going to do, bring people in that just needed the finishing touches to get a checkride so they can move on with their lives. And he said, you know what? You should sell a VIP package and call it the Final approach course. He goes, think about somebody who's. They've already been all the way around the pattern and they're getting ready to turn on to final. It's like them getting their checkride done. They've done all the prep work now it's just to come in on that final approach and finish that checkride. And I loved it when that examiner gave us that idea. So we named it the Final Approach Course. To get to the meat of what we do, people have all their requirements done. They have their written done. All these things are done prior to arrival. And we also jump on a zoom call with you, however many. We need one or two or three, and I evaluate your knowledge, see where you're at. We go through the list of things you're going to need when you get here, so that as soon as you arrive and you walk in the door, we start flying and doing ground and doing paperwork. We base that on a full day because here's what I found. Goes on a lot of time in the industry. You go to a school and maybe they have at 8 o' clock spot and a 10 o' clock and at noon and a 2 and you're trying to jam people through there all day long. You can't, in my opinion, you can't give a good lesson in two hours. Not with coming in pre flight discussions, looking at logbooks, talking about what you're going to do for the day, pre flighting, getting fuel, climbing in the helicopter, start up, go fly an hour, come back, sign logbooks, debrief the flight that easily turns into three hours. So what we do is we've broken this down so we have a morning flight and an afternoon flight. So when you come in the door, there's no rush. We talk about what we're going to do, we go do it, we come back, do the paperwork, debrief what was done, talk about what we're going to do next, take a break, have lunch, which is included. We take care of you while you're here and then we go out in the afternoon, do the second flight that very quickly turns into a full day. That is something that's turned out to be super beneficial for us and for the members that have come in. So we've narrowed this down to two flights a day and this has proven to make the best progress. You can go back to the hotel, study, take a break, take a nap, do whatever, and come back in the next day refreshed and start again. Private hangar. Many of you have seen our hangar. We have a beautiful facility here. And while you're here, you have access to the hangar 24 hours a day. We give you a key. So if you want to come in at night and study, maybe the hotel's noisy. We've had that one time where a guy, it was late and they had a wedding party there in the hotel making a bunch of noise. He came back and studied at the airport because it's nice and quiet. It's our private, own private hangar. So you have access if you want to come in and study in the evening, you want to come in and practice, startup, shut down, whatever the case is. So that's really nice. It's all one on one instruction with me. You're not going to get bounced around between three different instructors. You're coming in to do it the Kenny Keller way. My method of what I've been using for going on 23 years now. And right here's where the magic happens. We do all our ground right here. The helicopter's right here. It's nice. While you're doing the pre flight and while we're doing our ground and getting ready and you take the checkride sometimes right here. Sometimes we have to go the examiner. It just depends. So there's 19 of you previous. Oh, sorry, 18. We have our 19th coming in just about a week that we're going to finish up. So we have a few spots left for the spring of 20, 25. So you got to get in now if you want one of these. Because of course as we're moving into spring, people are talking, they're calling. So we've got like three spots left for the spring if you want to get in. We're going to put a link down below this video. We've got a short questionnaire to see if you qualify for the final approach course. Go through that at the link below. Answer the question, we'll get back to you if you look like you're a good fit or we're a good fit to get you finished up. We got three spots basically for the spring so we can make you number 20, number 21 and number 22 on the hogs Wall of Fame. And these are limited because I'm just saying I'm not sure exactly how long I'm going to continue this. I got some other things I got cooking. So I don't know if you want to get finished. You need to go below, fill out that form, answer the questions and we'll get back to you right away and we'll look and see if we can get you set up to get your rating finished. So you have two choices, R22 or R44. And the way this works, we do a minimum of three days. So we're going to work together doing the flying and ground for three days. Day number four, take a checkride. So three hours of flight prep, one hour for the checkride. Again, this is minimum. And we'll have you finished and send you home. So you have two choices, as we said, R22 and R44. So the minimum for the R44 is 6800 for the minimum package to get you finished again, if you need more time, we can always work something out. Or if you want a VIP package, then on the minimum for the R22 it's 5300. Again, that is the minimum. But if we didn't tell you, we've been working with this Same examiner for 24 years. We've completed 19 of these. You could be 20, 21 or 22. Get finished up for the spring, get on the schedule now. So go to go down below, fill out that questionnaire and we'll get back to you, see if we can get you finished up. That's all I got. Peace out.
When you feel the pressure to fly but know the right decision is to stay on the ground. Hit the hog, no go and live to fly another day. Helicopterground.
