#64 Is your HELICOPTER FLIGHT INSTRUCTOR hogging the CONTROLS???

When you're doing auto rotations, my hands are going to be right there and they're going to always be. So I'd love to hear your feedback on this subject. It's a great topic. Oh for fox sake. Haha. I love this cup. That might be what you're saying if your instructor is hogging the controls. You know, this is a good one that came up at Heli Expo this year. So I'm going to talk about a little bit. I'm Kenny Keller, the creator Helicopter Line ground school. There's a link down below for all of our training memberships. Private, commercial, certified flight instructor instrument. You can take a test drive for the yearly or monthly membership down below. A lot of you or some of you may be experiencing an instructor that hugs the controls. And the first thing that comes to my mind is one of the guys that I flew with early on who was a Vietnam guy, super nice guy, and one of the guys I talk about a lot, that I learned a lot of really good stuff from. This guy was also the one instructor that everybody complained about because nobody ever knew if they were on the controls or not or if they had full control. I only flew with him a little bit when I first got started when, when he was checking me out because I was basically replacing him because he was going to go do some other flying and he was leaving the company on good terms. So it was not, wasn't a problem there. I don't really remember noticing it as a new cfi when flew with him, I'm sure he was there on the controls, but it wasn't, I guess because I was already a CFI and I'd already been flying a little bit. I wasn't that concerned about it. But I knew or I know that after the fact everybody would complain about he never took his hands off the controls. You know, why did he do that? I don't know, probably because of his many years of experience. Maybe he had some, some bad things happen, I don't know. But I understand it from both sides now. An instructor needs to be always, of course, ready, ready to take control at any time if something bad happens. I'll tell you about my experience. What I do first is of course when you're brand new, I'm going to be pretty much there with you all the time. And as you progress and you learn, I'm going to take my hands off more and more in flight, at altitude. In the first lesson I'll take my hands completely off and go, hey look, you're flying. You know, so you can see that you actually have the controls. But takeoff and landing and hovering in the beginning, I'm gonna be right there with you. I'm gonna try to be real light so that you can get the feel for it. But I'm also gonna be careful as time goes on. I'm gonna be less on the controls, and I'll even take my hands off more as time goes on and as you get more experienced. The one thing that I do, though, is I ride around my hand pretty much on the collective about all the time in the instrument. I don't do it so much. I still do it, but, you know, that comes from my Robinson days, right, when I did my private and commercial and cfi. And the way you're training the Robinson, you really do have to always be there, and you got to be ready, and you gotta be ready to get that collective down. If the engine quits, you know, something bad happens. You know, there's two sides of this. Let's go to the student side. You also need to be able to feel that you are in control. So if an instructor is on the controls too much, yes. It can become an issue as you as the student, because you want to know that you're flying the helicopter. So I guess my recommendation would be if you're out there and a student and you feel like this person is just on the controls too much, maybe talk to them and say, hey, you know, I understand you're being careful as an instructor, but I don't feel like I'm really flying the aircraft or I don't really know. So I'd love to hear your opinion down below and what you've experienced, good and bad, both sides of it. Because this is one that I've never talked about, never made a video on it, and it came up at Heli Expo, and I thought, this is a good one. So I typed it in my phone so I would remember, and Taz and I were talking about it, and we were talking about it with one of our ground school members. So I said, you know, this is one I've never covered in 10 years of making videos. Think I've ever talked about this? And that's the fun of Coffee with Kenny in these videos, which I highly recommend you subscribe, is there are so many things in training that pop up that you just don't get in a normal course of training. And as instructors, there's so many things that we learn. Even Tannen was on this that you see in our instrument videos. So me, Taz, and Tannen were taking a break, sitting down the hallway, and we were just talking about all the things that you learn as an instructor that you see they're not really talked about until it comes up, you know, like this. Like this moment. So anyway, if your instructor is never getting off the controls, I guess you would need to talk to them about it first and say, hey, I understand, but I don't feel like I'm flying and try to work something out. Or if that doesn't work, you might want to fly with a different instructor. You might want to request another one. Then on the flip side of that, as an instructor, I get it if you're really heavy duty on the controls. I know what I do. I will let a student have more and more control over time. I'll get more relaxed over time, but I'm still ready. I still have my hand right there on my leg, ready to grab the cyclic. My hand is always near the collective, if not just on the collective. Honestly, majority of the time, it's just kind of I'm just resting my hand, like right there so I can feel what's going on and. And my hand is there ready to go. We did talk with another HOGS member who's now an instructor that had a bad scare and hasn't now flown in like six or seven months. And I get it. I had one of those scares that almost made me quit in the beginning. And this instructor, R22, they had a low RPM, high RPM situation. Instructor fixed it near the ground, but they almost crashed. And I said, hey, we. We've all been there. We've all had that scare. So I get it. If you're an instructor and you're hesitant to get your hands too far away, I get it. So there's a lot of variables here. How long has the instructor been flying? What aircraft are you flying? How forgiving is it? This could go a lot of directions. So if you're really struggling with feeling like you never get to fly, talk to your instructor about it and say, hey, you know, what can we do here? Can you release a little bit more or maybe move your hands a little farther away at times so that I know you're there. Auto rotation is the one time that my hands are going to be there always. Whether. I don't care whether you're working on private CFI commercial. My hands are going to be there, and they're going to be lightly on the controls during auto rotation practice. I'm probably going to never take my hands completely off during an auto Rotation just because we know in training auto rotation practice. Auto rotations is the number one reason helicopters get wrecked during training. So when it comes to an auto rotation, I'm not moving them, but my hands are pretty much on there. And I'll tell you in the cockpit, I'll say, okay, we're doing auto rotations now. My hands, I'm going to be right with you on the controls. You're moving them. And I'll have students ask me and say, well, did I do that? And I'll say, yes, you do that. So, you know, even I experience that sometimes with a student who they, they don't like how close I am on the controls during an auto rotation. But, you know, where's my I do not care cup? I do not care. When you're doing auto rotations, my hands are going to be right there and they're going to always be. So I'd love to hear your feedback on this subject. It's a great topic. Depends on instructor experience, depend on style of aircraft. There's a lot of reasons why this could go either way for the instructor or student, but it's a great conversation and I'm glad that somebody brought that up at Expo and something that we could talk about. So I'm Kenny Keller, creator Helicopter Line. So I'm Kenny Keller. So I'm Kenny Keller, creator of Helicopter Line, ground school, celebrating seven years online. Amazing, amazing time at Heli Expo last week. Still a lot of good conversations coming. So coffeewithkenny.com if you'd like to just go straight to the playlist from the Internet. Day 64. Having a blast. Love doing these, but it's Saturday, my favorite day of the week, so I want to get on with my day. It's going to take me a little bit to get this edited and uploaded for you. So do us a favor, subscribe like put your comments down below and we will see you tomorrow.