#69 HELICOPTER FLIGHT | hours of PILOT PREPARATION for just an hour flight

Hey, day 69, coffee with Kenny. Helicopter Lane Ground School online seven years. My birthday's tomorrow. The end of the 15 days of the biggest discounts ever. I had a member who said, hey Kenny, could you do a video on just what you go through on a daily basis just to go out and fly for fun? So I've documented that for you. I ran into several stumbling blocks. I'll talk about the video. This one hour or this short flight took me two and a half days. Go below for the discounts. Sailing is tomorrow night, Friday night. So let's go. Enjoy the video. Me just going out for a fun flight. See, see what it takes. All the things you got to think about just for fun flight. So let's roll that now. Member asked me to do a video on everything you do before you go fly. Kind of the whole process. So this one's easy. Today on the weather decision. This starts before leaving home. And what do we got? Beautiful blue skies. So first thing is weather and hey, today not an issue. And then next I'm gonna stop with the mailbox because I'm waiting on a new registration to show up for the helicopter I'm flying today. Should be in the mailbox and on the way to the airport. I'll be thinking about my license and my medical, which are both actually at the airport because I made my wallet light while I traveled this last go around to heli Expo. So registration when I hit the mailbox, my documents, I know the insurance is good because I have the policy in my name under helicopter land, ground school. So it should be all good to go with paperwork. Airworthiness certificate. I'll need to check and make sure that's still in the aircraft. I haven't flown this aircraft in a while, so I want to take a look. When I put the new registration in, I want to check for the airworthiness certificate as well. Just got to the airport. This is actually day two. Yesterday the registration didn't show up. So just to give you an example of a very simple flight on a very simple day, I was going to go fly. Registration didn't show up. Had to go into two different post offices. Made phone calls to find out it was lost for the day. So this is day two. But wait, there's more. I got a new business card for buying fuel. So I'm going to go into the FBO to update those cards because we get a discount. So I dug my license out of the Jeep and this is my commercial license. I have another one for certified flight instructor. I Don't need that on this flight because I'm going out for fun, just to fly around and enjoy the black instrument. So this is going to go in my wallet right here and then here's my medical. Now I'm going to cut this, there's a dotted line to cut this then I'm going to fold it. Some people laminate these things. I was told by an FAA examiner you cannot laminate them so in turn I don't laminate them so I'm going to cut that. Get my wallet before I walk downstairs. My license in there. Put both of those in together. Here's the registration. Take that with me. I'm going to check flight service real quick. The only way to make sure there's not a some kind of restriction, some kind of TFR is to call flight service. That's the only way you can't say oh well I checked some apps. The only way to save yourself is to say I called flight service. I'm going to do that and as I go downstairs I'm going to be looking at the aircraft. What's changed? Are the blades moved? Is it sitting funny? So as I approach I'm going to be looking at everything prior to starting the pre flight so I'll get these together and head downstairs. Okay as I mentioned down there is the aircraft so I'm going to take a look at it from here and as I walk down and as I approach it looking for anything that looks funny. Okay so we got a handy downy, handy pouch right over here. I cleaned it out, took the old registration out. I have the new registration going in and I have the standard airliness certificate. It was just recently annualed but I am going to pre flight so I believe that there that the aircraft is airworthy. I'll know for sure after I complete the pre flight. I have a pre flight already on the instrument in helicopter land ground school in case you want to check that out. I'm not going to give you the whole pre flight because that takes a while. Okay so I'm going to do the pre flight with the manufacturer's checklist, check everything. And the cool thing I want to add real quick what I love about instruments, the instruments stick to check the fuel and know exactly how much fuel I got. I'm gonna do that first I'll pre flight pull the aircraft out and then I'll check it again once I put the fuel in it. And then next before I start pre flighting I'm gonna go get some new batteries for this dude Right here. I've mentioned before, I don't really like headsets with batteries, but that's a better headset and hopefully will be better audio. I'm gonna shoot some video while I'm out flying, see how it comes out. So I'm gonna go back upstairs before I even start the pre flight and get a fresh set of batteries and put in here. There's nothing more annoying than halfway through the flight, your battery's gone dead. And another thing, on my way upstairs to get new batteries, I'm checking the book right here to make sure the last person that flew it filled out the time. And I'll walk over there and check on the aircraft to make sure the time in the book is what's shown on the Hobbs meter. Trust me, if you don't do this every time, it makes a mess later. Okay? Next thing, we're getting ready to pull it out. People say, well, how do you pull them out? What do you do? Use one of those kind of handy tools. So I'm parked right beside another helicopter. So I had to be careful. You know, I moved the blades around to make sure the blades aren't going to hit each other. And I caution you, if you're moving a helicopter by yourself, you have to be very careful. I actually put a tail rotor through that window over there once. Thought I knew where I was at. So it's best to have two people when you're moving them in and out. If you have to do it alone, take your time and be very careful. So I'm going to complete the pre flight, then head out to the fuel pumps. Things around takes more time than what a person would think. Okay, so I got my fuel and what I want to show you is I checked it before coming out here in the hangar and it showed just over 20 gallons. This has two 20 gallon tanks, holds 40 total. So as soon as I had it filled up. 18.7, 18.8 or the. Of course, the hand stick tells you exactly how much fuel is in there. I know now that I have 39 gallons in there. I don't normally fill it up that far. Normally only go about 20 gallons. I can go with heavier tanks. In the summertime. I never take off with full tanks unless we're going on a cross country. Otherwise, no. Okay. And next positioning the helicopter. I just looked over there at the flag. Winds coming out of the east. I also walked out and checked the windsock by Runway because there's currents coming around the building. Those flags could be lying to me. So I Walked up and checked the windsock and it's indeed coming out of the, out of the east. So when I move the helicopter over there, I'm going to position it so my nose is right into the east. I'll block the wheels on the dolly, back this thing up a little bit for safety reasons, and then I'll do my walk around and get ready to go. Okay, a little recap for you. All my documents in my wallet, documents in the aircraft. Weather check. Weather looks good. Got a little bit of clouds, but plenty of visibility ceiling. No danger here of any kind unless I went flying real high, which I'm not doing. I'm 500ft in the pattern. Just going to go have some fun. Going to do a walk around, you know, because I did it inside the hangar. One thing I like about doing it again when you're outside is you're in different lighting, right? So you might see something that you didn't see on the inside and you're looking for. Did I leave a panel open? I think I've got everything covered. But as I climb back in, I'm going to be thinking about everything. This isn't instruction. It's not taking up passengers. It's not doing commercial work. This is Kenny Keller going to have fun. There would be a lot more to it if I had a student here or I was going to try to go do some kind of commercial work. As pilots, we spend the majority of our time talking about flying. So much time talking in compared to the amount of actual flying time. Sometimes you wonder, you go, oh, my God. There's so many things that go on behind the scenes. There's a lot more to it than shiny paint and navigation lights. People not saying it's a bad thing, but knowledge. Knowing your ground. Oh, yeah. Well, I got you on here. Hey, hog special, 40% ending my birthday, March 15th. Better get in on that. All right, I'm gonna go set up some cameras, get ready to go fly. See you in the next scene. Blades are slowing down. I just went for a flight. I got all tuned up and ready to go to do a video for you. And I forgot the SD cards. Two GoPros. That is why we use checklists, people. South Dakota cards aren't on the checklist. If they would have been, I'd have caught it.

Okay, this has been an all day affair trying to go out and make you guys a video. So I've been out twice. The last time the GoPro went dead, I was halfway through the flight and the stupid GoPro went dead man. I just charged that thing recently. So that battery means that it's not worth nothing. But that's okay. I want to give it about a half an hour charge. I'm gonna do this quick, get through it. Engine's still warm. Disturbed my timer so I can time my fuel. Still have plenty of fuel because I filled this thing up today. So I know I'm good. I dipped it with the tank, so we're all good. Right now is my favorite time to go out. Sunset. So everything happens for a reason, right? I guess the first two times I tried making videos and it didn't work out because it was supposed to go right now. The point is, I said it earlier before I went flying standing up by the helicopter. It takes four hours of getting ready to go fly for an hour. It can, you know, at times. And the amount of work that goes behind flying, there's a lot of stuff involved, right? There's a lot of stuff. There was a smooth instrument pickup with basically almost no bounce. So it just depends on the helicopter. Depends on the day. This is the cream puff. 8626 Papa. Our favorite. Our little gem. It's an oldie, but it's a goodie. Runs so good. Runs so smooth. What a beautiful night. So what did I learn when I went out earlier? Just to make a video for fun, I went out and did all the maneuvers. I did absolutely everything. I did hovering square patterns to start off to brush up my hovering skills. Pick it up. Setting down, I did 90 degree turns, 180 degree turns, hovering turns, 360 turns. Went out, did normal takeoff, normal landing, Steep approach, shallow approach, running landing straight in autos. 180 autos and 90 degree autos. And I did quick stops. One thing I didn't do was a hoverado. We'll do one of those. You know what? Let's do one right now. How about it? Alright. I haven't done one on this aircraft for a while. But it doesn't matter because it's the same no matter what aircraft you're flying. Well, most generally anyway. So. Okay. Reposition my hand on the throttle. Look outside. Want to get nice and stable. Want to count it off? 1, 2, 3 and Earth off. Right pedal. Let her settle. Pull up. Oh yeah, I'll take that. This is a copy with Kenny Video. I'm looking left and right. I'm airing this tomorrow morning. I'll do a little intro, a little outro. Talk about the big cell ending Friday night on my birthday. Gonna make a quick radio Call from.

The traffic helicopter 8626 Papa departing Runway.

10 for left traffic. So let's go around, do a 180 auto, right? Because y' all love autos. There was a hover auto. Let's go do a 180. So anyway, we're out today. Brushed up all my stuff. I got people coming in from out of state to go fly with me in the instrument for the march birthday special. So I figured I better go out, you know, as an instructor first here. Hang on. Warning, caution lights are out. Gauge is green. I got it. Lean boost pumps on, fuel's still good. Everything's looking nice. So before I go out with these students, I should brush up my skills, right? Because as instructors, we ride around telling people what to do all day, but we rarely do it. We're just over there talking all the time. Once in a while we'll say, hey, can you have the controls? Can I show you something? But as an instructor, most of the time we're not flying. And I'm going to be 100% honest. I was amazed at how much I needed to brush up my skills. It was big. It was a lot. So this is day 69. Should be day 69. Copy with Kenny. Thank you, everybody. This has been amazing. We're at the end of a 15 day run of the biggest discounts ever on our training. You've all been awesome. The comments, the likes, the people that have joined the membership, seven years online. It's all due to you. It's all due to our friends, followers, members, people that comment, like, share. That's what keeps us going. You know, I get down on certain days like everybody else and, you know, I always get cheered up. Ground school members always bring me back, always cheer me up with an email, a text, a phone call, a video, whatever it is they send in. I never dreamed this was going to be so absolutely, 100% flipping cool. Awesome. So we're out for a fun flight in the instrument. I've talked about this in the past. Copy of Kenny videos belongs to my good buddy Nick. He flies it and plays in the summer and then I use it in the winter for flight training. Beautiful deal for both of us. He likes it when I'm flying, right? Because he knows I'm gonna take care of it. 15 years to 20 years. I can't remember for sure how many years he's had it now, but same mechanics maintain the majority of its life. We've had it for the last 15 years. I fly it every year with him. Check him out. And I fly to every winter. Okay, so you know what? I haven't told you much about that auto that almost killed me. Brand new CFI is getting ready to do 180 auto with the owner of the flight school. And I'm telling him, you know, take your time to get set up and you know, don't do this and don't do that. He wasn't paying a lick attention to me. Nothing enters it. RPM goes all over the place. He turns the governor off, I don't know why. And just everything goes to rpm, goes way high and it goes way low. Past the point where they say you can go where you'll die from blade stall. We went below that. Somehow I pulled it out before we hit the ground and cleaned it up and saved us. And he even said it afterwards, we went to eat, sit down. He goes, you just saved us today. I go, yeah, I know. That's the time. I was so scared anyway. But it set the pace right. It needed to happen. So I'm going to climb up here about 700 AGL. I'm cheating, right? Give me a little more time for this 180 auto. I'm going to count 1, 2, 3, and enter about when I'm going to beam my spot. Where people mess up on these is turning too quick or delaying the turn. I think delaying the turn happens more than anything. If you delay too long, you're going to be short. I want to get my speed up my 700 AGL. I'm going to go about 75 because I want to pull it back to 70 when I enter. When I go 1, 2, 3, enter small aft, pull right, Tuttle aft cyclic and then start your turn. The first one did today. Idolated, even. So here we go. I'm coming up on the numbers. 1, 2, 3, enter down collective right pedal, aft cyclic, roll back a little bit of throttle, start my turn. See, I delayed there even just a second. So I'm going to be a little more aggressive in the turn here. Raise my collective because I have to do that every time. And I'm gonna keep a low RPM on the low side. That'll stretch the glide. It's a beautiful thing. Beautiful, beautiful, beautiful thing that you can do to make your spot. Okay, still got my airspeed. I'm gonna start a flare, make a bigger flare, Bigger flare, lower some power. A little short of my spot. Oh, well, this still maneuver was still safe. Thank you everybody. Been absolutely amazing. There's a little taste of the instrum 8626 Papa. Lots more to come from this wonderful little machine. Gonna do some more videos for you. And I'm definitely gonna go fly to on Friday on my birthday I have to do something special from the helicopter. I don't know what, maybe a 360 auto degree auto rotation. How's that sound? That'd be fun. Well, hey, I'm gonna see if I can turn the camera around, give you a little shot of the sunset going into our turn now. Big open fields right now. But the beauty of that is if I have an engine failure, I got somewhere to go. I like that. Early on in my career I flew over a busy downtown area. And it's cool. I mean but it's also nice to have nice big open areas too. Oh man. Somewhere behind the clouds.

That's alright.

Still better bring it around, give you a little shot. Not the prettiest sunset of all time. But hey, not bad. I'll take it. Right.

Okay. And here you go. Here we are after sunset and I'm ready to put her away. Day and a half of messing around to get a one hour flight. My day's not done. I'm just gonna do reverse of what I did. Gotta hook it up it back inside. I know what else I want to tell you. See how long it takes this stupid door to get down. This is why instructors, a lot of time like us want to charge you for the time all the moving the helicopter in and out and feeling and all that. Because look at how much time of our day or just think about it, think about it. Instructor has to pull the helicopter in and out, get them ready to go, fuel them especially in the beginning. And we went round and round about it. I was actually using one of his R44s and I got frustrated, said you know what, take your R44 and go somewhere else. He was complaining when I was charging him to do all this stuff that we do. Fair to us as instructors that we're going to do all this work yanking helicopters in and out of the building for our health, why we're doing it, this is the way I feel about it. And to lock everything up. Now I got to fill all the paperwork, grab my gear and we are back. We do our best. Hey, we're gonna get out of here pretty shortly. So I gotta wrap this up. Two and a half days on this video. The cell ends tomorrow night, March 15th. Like Comment? Put your comments down below about flying ground careers, anything helicopter related related. Put those comments below, make sure you subscribe. And we're gonna go get ready for the big birthday celebration tomorrow. So see you. Day 70 Coffee with Kenny. I'll have something cool for you tomorrow, too. Not sure what. See you then. Here we go. Day 69. We're going to do some video footage of video. Ah, this will go on the end. All right, so this will be your end. Blooper. We're starting over.