Kenny Keller tells the story of Johan van der Waalt, who earned his private pilot helicopter rating in three weeks by studying online ground school videos from his tractor while farming, then passing all written, oral, and flight tests. A flight instructor explains how it happened and why the student stayed calm through it.
March 10, 2019
Johan van der Waalt
crazy40
helicopterground.com
March 15
Well, I'm waiting on a train as I'm going to get coffee. I ran out, I forgot to get coffee last night. So I'm going to the gas station to get coffee. Private pilot rating in three weeks. Can you really do it? I've been talking about Johan quite a bit in the last 65 days of coffee with Kenny. I'm gonna let you hear from Johan's inst.
I recently taught a student of mine at our school. He was doing a private pilot and three week course that we offered, which is an extenuous course. It's super fast. I have to do a lot of training with the students and get them up to par within the three weeks because most of them have come on visas so they don't have much time to spend. Particular student of ours, his name was Johan van der Waalt. He came to our school and I set him down with ground school with another instructor of ours. And the first day I looked in his folder and it said review. Well, I figured that the instructor wasn't doing their job, so I looked in and I scheduled my own ground school with him. And sure enough, it was a review. I was appalled by all the knowledge that he had and I asked him, hey man, what did you do? Well, he said, well, this helicopter online ground school thing, he's like, it's awesome. You get on there and he's like, it takes you everything that you even need to know. And I said, wow. So we quizzed for a little while and I figured, hey, he's pretty content. I would leave it at that. He can go on for his checkride, I'll give him the sign off for his oral part. So a couple days later I told him, hey, get your written knocked out. He got his written knocked out. We flew for the whole entire three weeks and he finished it up. The easiest student that I had. It was an honor for me to work with him because he already knew everything that he was talking about. Super easy gentleman to get along with. He passes oral perfectly. Passes flight test perfectly. He had no stress throughout the whole entire three weeks because all he had to focus on was the flying because like I said, he got his written test done within the first three or four days that he was there. So that was awesome job on his part. An awesome job on Kenny's part. Great job, fellas.
Ah, the world is right again. Coffee. I hate getting up and having coffee. That just drives me crazy. So Johan, I've mentioned this before in videos. I met Johan, him and his wife in California with Me and my daughter, when we were out there visiting and had a nice supper, Johan told me, I said, how did you do it? What did you do, Johan? And he said, you know, Kenny, I farmed 10 months out of the year. And he said, so when I came to the US to do the private, I had to get it done. I couldn't, you know, I need to get through it the first time around and get through as quickly as possible. He said, so I'm a farmer. And he goes, I'm in a tractor all day. So he set up his iPad mount and he just driving up and down the field all day long watching helicopter online ground school videos. And that's how he did it. And what a cool story. And that's kind of back when we realized that people were taking hogs and taking it beyond what we designed it for, right? We designed it for people to go through and watch the videos while they're at flight school to help cement, you know, the ground that they're getting with their instructors. Supplemental training to do at home. And Johan was the first, because this video is a couple. A few years old now. This was the first time that somebody used hogs that I know of and showed up prepared for a rating, you know, And Travis is now a friend of mine. I didn't know Travis at the time. When he first emailed me about Johan, he's just like. He emailed money. He's like, kenny, this kid showed up with all the knowledge. It was amazing. And I emailed Johan and said, johan, what the heck? You know? And he goes, yeah, Kenny, I did it. And blah, blah, blah. So again, I've met Johan since. But proof in the pudding right there on how you can do it. Put your mind to it. You know what? We've been getting a lot of really wonderful, wonderful comments on YouTube, and I appreciate all those. And of course, we get a lot of yahoos and yin yangs and people that want to make crappy comments. You know, oh, that's baloney, and that can't happen and blah, blah, blah. You know, you get all that. But that's YouTube, right? You're always going to have morons in the comment, just making stupid statements. So leave us a good statement about Johan about accelerated flight training. I've had some recent emails where people said, hey, Kenny, can you guys do that? And I'm like, yeah, I can. But like, Johan, you got to show up and you got to have the knowledge down, or at least a really good knowledge base. Could you do it three weeks off the street without any prior knowledge. I suppose it's possible. Anything's possible, right? But man, that would be a God, that would be a buttload of studying and a buttload of flying in a very short time span if you didn't already have your knowledge down. But I'm sure it's possible. I'm sure. I mean, because I am a dreamer and anything is possible. So, hey Sunday, gonna head back home, hang out my daughter. Subscribe the channel, click the bell so you can be notified of the daily video covering lots of good topics, lots of good stuff. And in particular, I need to mention before we go, there's only a few days left on our 40% off sale. My birthday is coming up March 15th. So if you want to get on the big 40% off yearly or professional pilot memberships, go to helicopterground.com below. The code is crazy40 for Crazy Kenny. And also below this video, I'm going to put the direct links for those that take you right to the individual private commercial CFI instrument where the discounts already applied. So when you click on it, you'll see you know the discount. And that's a big discount. Well, even on the yearly it's a big discount. But the professional pilot, that's a big discount. That is some huge savings. We've got a lot of monthly people that have upgraded to the professional and we've had some monthly that have upgraded to the yearly too. So that's always an option. If you want to upgrade, go ahead and upgrade. Remove your credit card information or end your monthly in the settings or in PayPal. If you have trouble with that, just email me and I can do it for you. Kenny at helicopterground. Com. So like subscribe, give us a like, put a comment down below and we will see you tomorrow.
