30 Check-Rides, 30 Lessons: Final Approach Course Real-World Wins & Fails

Welcome to 30 Checkrides. 30 Lessons Final Approach Course Real World wins and fails. Over the next 30 days, we're going to share with you bits and pieces things that have happened over the last 30 checkrides we've done over the last 30 months. We love the number three here at Hogs that comes up all the time in training. So it's been 30 months since we got the R44 started doing these. We've averaged one a month over the last 30 months. So we're going to go through from each one and share some things that we've seen in those 30 check rides just to help you out for those of you getting ready. Because most of the problems that we see usually are very common between people. Whether you're coming from Florida or New Mexico or you're coming from Maine or you're coming from Oregon, it doesn't matter. We see the same things over and over. And the first one we're going to talk about is Todd Ketterman. Todd Ketterman was our first in the R44 30 months ago. And with Todd, he was a pro pilot member and previous to traveling up here. I first met Todd when he became a pro member. We were running a special at one point where with a pro member you could get six Zoom sessions with me. And Todd took advantage of that pro membership and I worked with him with six Zoom sessions when he was working on his private in Florida and he was just running into some different training struggles that are common that people run into. And so I helped Todd over Zoom prepare to take his test down in Florida for the private add on because he's a fixed wing pilot. And during that six Zoom sessions you can imagine we became friends, which happens with a lot of our ground school members. We get to know each other and end up having lifelong friends come out of the out of the training. So with Todd, he came up here to do his commercial first, it went extremely well and he came back later and actually did his CFI with us and then he came back and Did SFAR sign off in the R44 and came back and did SFAR sign off in the R22? I believe. I think he did both. So Todd is a perfect example of how if you use the HOGS training, that will help you get through the checkride and not just get through the checkride, but ace the checkride. We just had another member come forward that said it was a examiner in a local area, not one that I use, but I know of and I've communicated with him through email, he told his. His applicant, he said, I consistently see he. I can't recommend anything. But what I can tell you is the students that come in in ace checkrides, when I say, what did you use? Prepare? And they'll say hogs. So it's a reputation. It's 14 years that we've been doing this, and the people that do the best on these final approach checkrides use our training. We've had some other success stories, too, and we'll get to those. One of them will be for another day on a gentleman who did seven months of ground but couldn't get on the flight schedule out in Oregon. And I did a zoom with him, and I'm like, get on a plane and get out here because you're ready. Like his. His ground was phenomenal from doing 7 months of ground school for his CFI but not getting any flight time. So, anyway, we'll get to that in another story and where this goes back to for those that are new to this, we've been doing this for 14 years, the online ground school. I've been teaching for 25. So I've done hundreds of check rides in 25 years. But about eight years ago, we had a gentleman named Jamie, another one that became a super friend of mine. Jamie had an orange R44. He had 200 hours in helicopters. He'd had eight different instructors, and he'd been communicating with me on his struggles. And one day he called me and goes, kenny, can I just please come up there? And I'm like, you want to come up and bring your R44? And he was like, can you do that? And I said, sure, I'll send one of my pilots down. We went down, picked him up, brought him back nine days, got him fixed up, got his rating, and he went home. And it was a phenomenal experience. And Jamie's like, dude, you should be doing this for people all over the country. And we kind of laughed about it. And now, eight years later, we are doing them from people around the country. And Jamie was a fellow businessman. And he's the one that said, kenny, you know, the hogs videos were totally instrumental because he. When he arrived, of course, 200 hours, eight instructors, he was a little rattled. And we started doing ground the first day he got here. And we're outside in the evening sitting at a table, and he's answering 100% of the questions I'm asking him. And I'm like, jamie, what did you do to prepare before coming up here? And he goes, Kenny, you know, I've been through the HOGS videos over and over until I knew this stuff. And I said, well, tomorrow we'll go out and fly and we'll see how your flying is doing. Because I thought, okay, the flying must be bad. That must be why he doesn't have a license, because his ground is great. We go out and fly the next day, and I'm like, we fly the maneuvers. I'm like, jamie, why the hell don't you have a license? And he's like, what? I go, you're ground and flying. You're there. You were ready for a private pilot. He's like, none of those eight instructors ever told me I was anywhere near ready. I'm like, well, it's because they were enjoying just sucking the money out of your wallet by going out there and flying around in your beautiful new orange R44. They didn't give a rat's ass about you getting a rating. And he's the one that said, kenny, you should start something up on this and you should, hands down, make them go through 100% of the Hogs videos. That's where it started. So then when we kicked this off 30 months ago, a little over 30 months ago, we were telling one of our local examiners what it was we were getting ready to do, and he goes, hey, that's a great idea. And you know what you should call it? The final approach course, Meaning they've done their ground, they've got the requirements done, and they've turned on a final, and they're coming in for a landing, and they just need those finishing touches. And that's where the final approach course name came from. You know, we've been doing it for a long time, but with an actual name. Final Approach course. That's where it came from. One of our local examiners. So again, over the next 30 days, I'm going to come up with things that we've seen that have gone well, and we're going to bring up things that people have struggled with. And again, I'm going to reiterate, a lot of these things are very common. These are things that I talk about in videos all the time. I've been talking about these things for 15 years. But they keep rearing their ugly head when people come from around the country, and we're going to cover a bunch of them. So one other thing. We got a new member who's inside hogs, and we now have our clone inside there. The Kenny's clone is in there. It's our AI, basically. And every single video has access to the clone. And he said, kenny, this is phenomenal. I'm going through the courses, I'm watching the videos, but I'm using the clone for things that I want to expand on. He said, it's been pretty remarkable the answers I've been getting. So, you know, we do have AI now. It's been in the course for over a year, but we just haven't really bragged on it that much. But now when you have members going, look, I'm going through the videos, I'm watching the videos. But then when I have questions, doesn't matter what they're doing. They're studying at 2am in the Bahamas, doesn't matter. You can get an answer right away, 24 hours a day, seven days a week with the AI inside there with the courses. So that's pretty exciting. And that AI is free to all of you. Ask Hogs.com if you're interested in getting a question answered about helicopter training. And it can be anything. 14 years of our content's piped into our AI. So you're not just getting general AI info from the Internet, you're getting the content from all of the content of our videos over the last 14 years. Videos, blog posts, podcast, everything we've done has been piped into this thing and every video, every new piece of content goes in it so that we're trying to keep that clone update as possible. That's free to any of you@ask hogs.com and members come here from around the country. And I'll go, have you used ask hogs.com yet? Maybe half of them haven't even heard of it. And when we show them what it can do and ask a question, they sit there with a mouth open going, oh my God, that's freaking phenomenal. A lot of times when we're sitting here doing ground, getting ready, like we'll be searching for the answer and we go, let's just ask hogs. And the speed that we can get an answer usually is way faster than even trying to look anything up. So that has worked out really, really well. So remember Helicopter island ground school? We have monthly memberships for private pilot, commercial pilot, instrument pilot and certified flight instructor. You can go on a monthly basis, you can do a yearly, or you can do the pro membership and get all the courses and it doesn't expire. The training will be there as long as you need it. And every membership comes with a 30 day money back guarantee. So I'm going to put the link down below for helicopterground.com simple link. You can go there and look at the different courses. And if you're interested in a final approach course, we're still doing them in both the R22 and R44 R44s right now in a 100 hour, 500 hour inspection. Hopefully be back soon. So we've got fairly open schedule right now. If you want to get a checkride done, you don't have to wait for months and battle getting an examiner and battle getting the instructor lined up or the instructor just left and they're trying to hire a new instructor. We got an email from a guy today, wants to finish his R44 rating and they have three R44s and they're all broke. They're all down at the same time, which that seems a little bit odd. That's just a weird coincidence because the Robinsons are very reliable when you take care of them. And we've had really, really good luck with the several Robinsons we've had here. So go down below helicopterground.com or if you want to know about getting a rating finished up, reach out to Heather 574-767-1797 and you can text that number or you can call that number seven days a week and she's going to shoot you a form, a simple form that we'll send you that helps us see where you're at. You know, are you a rated pilot? Do you have medical? Have you been to the Robinson factory? Or do you have a current sbar? Sign off, all those simple things that we need to check off. If you're ready to come and do a checkride and we'll get you through the process and see if we're a good fit. So come back tomorrow. I'm not sure who's number two, but we're going to go right down the list and I'll add a picture each day of these former members and we'll take something away, maybe hopefully even something good and something bad. Not necessarily bad, but just again, I'll wrap it up. The common errors that people make, common errors instructors make and things that we end up like needing to pull a miracle. We think somebody's coming, we think they're ready, and then they come in the door and we find something and go, oh, this is a problem. Somehow we always figure it out and we always pull it off and we do whatever it takes. So come back tomorrow. Subscribe to the channel, click that little bell. That way you'll get a notification of the next 29 videos and we'll see in the next video. Peace out.