7 Habits That Help Helicopter Pilots Succeed

What we're doing, our event starts at 4 today. We thought we'd go live a little bit ahead of time because occasionally we have trouble going live. So we're going to go, we started about 3:30, and I'm going to cover some of the things that you need for private pilot and/or commercial pilot and/or CFI. Because the thing we were just talking about is now that we're doing these final approach courses and people come from all over the country to fly with us here, Still have a problem with people not showing up with what they need. Does that make sense? Showing up and not having everything they need. So we're just going to talk here for a little bit, get ready to go at 4, and give you some tidbits of information that might be helpful. And these, again, these are for anybody because we're doing private, commercial, and CFI checkrides. We've been doing them as the final approach course the last 3 years. We don't really do initial training anymore. We just help people finish up. And I see the same things when people show up, whether they're going for any one of the 3 ratings. So this is a good time to talk about what you need for the test and what you need prior to the test, the tools of the trade, I call them. And we're just gonna— what we're gonna do is I'm gonna harp on the ACS today, right? Because I'm continually seeing this. The people show up, either they don't have one Or they go, oh yeah, I got one, and they pull it out and they have never used the damn thing. Okay, I know what goes on. Your instructor tells you to get it, or they— flight school sends you a bundle, sells you a bundle of stuff when you start, and then half of it doesn't get used. All right, so when I first met the examiner I've been using for 25 years, I was a brand new CFI, and I said, as a brand new CFI, What's some, you know, give me some tips, right? I just met the guy and the people I worked for sent me out to fly with the examiner. They said, why don't you guys go and go for a flight together, just get to kind of know each other. So as we're walking to the aircraft, I posed that question. Give me a tip as a new CFI, what can you tell me? And he said, are you familiar with the PTS? Which of course is now the ACS. I'm like, yep. And he goes, make sure you use it with your students. Make sure they have a copy and make sure that they go through it as well. And with that being said, go through the list, and the list is called Practical Test Checklist Applicant. This is every single thing that you have to have with you the day of the test. So you're going to spend years or months or weeks preparing for this rating, whatever you're going for, And when you show up and one of these items is not there or not current, the examiner cannot give the test. The examiner's not happy, you're not happy, instructor's not happy, it blows everybody's schedule. And if you have to wind up rescheduling, it's just a major big pain in the ass. And that was all he said. And he goes, okay, let's go fly. So the gentleman I met, 25 years ago and we're still using him. 25 years we've been doing checkrides together. All right? So, when that's what the examiner tells you, pretty good hint to, that's the one that you probably better focus on. So I got all 3 of them right here. I got a private, a commercial, and a CFI. Let's just go through the list while we're getting ready for 4 o'clock. So number 1 is aircraft documents starts with airworthiness certificate and registration certificate. I can tell you how it works now. When our examiner walks in the door, we have 2 people prepared for a test. And over there at the entrance door, when he walks in, I have the airworthiness certificate and registration certificate laying on the table right by the entrance door. Because one of the first things that he has to do is check in the aircraft. Okay? So you have to have the aircraft documents. He wants to see them. He checks the aircraft in. And then he'll hand it to me and I walk over and I put it back in the R44. And R44 is not here today. I dropped it off yesterday for 100-hour, getting ready for checkrides the second half of this month. So anyway, airworthiness and registration. So that's the first thing that he's going to look at. And then he looks at their pilot's license. Well, we'll get to that here in a minute. We'll just go through the step-by-step. So airworthiness and registration, and then your operating limitations. Which has the operating limitations will be in the weight and balance section of your POH. And if you're new, this is what we call the Pilot's Operating Handbook or Rotorcraft Flight Manual. Every aircraft has one of these in it. Has to be in there for you to be legal. It has to be where you can get a hold of it. We had a problem on a checkride recently because the examiner said, where does that have to be? And the applicant said, It's got to be visible. And the examiner said, is that it? And he went— the kid was nervous. He was like, yeah. No, it has to be visible. It has to be accessible by the pilot. So you have to have that. Next, aircraft maintenance records. I don't have them on the table because they are down with the mechanic. I took the R44 to the mechanic. So the mechanic will, when he gets done with the 100-hour, he'll put the proper logs in there. Or his proper entries in the logbooks, and they'll come back with the aircraft. So our next 2 checkrides will have the aircraft logbooks laying right there. Half the time he doesn't really look at them because he keeps coming and doing the same checkride or same test over and over. So he knows that we keep our aircraft in A-1 condition. Everything's fixed. We don't cheat on maintenance. We don't fix— cheat on anything. I do— well, what's the term for it? I do more maintenance than required. Like the 100-hour, I just did it early because we have a guy coming who's got to do a bunch of flying and we got 2 checkrides to finish. And the 100-hour would have came due right in the middle of trying to get all this flying ready and these checkrides done. So I went ahead this week getting the 100-hour done. So when we start flying like crazy on Monday, the 100-hour's done, is not going to interfere. And I don't generally like to do maintenance early. However, it needs an annual in April. So what my plan is, and the mechanic thought it was cool, just take it down there now, get 100-hour done. Just a few months ago we did the 500-hour. He goes, so we know we're in pretty good shape, but he'll do the 100-hour, we'll do a whole ton of flying, then I'll take it back the end of— I'll take it clear at the very end of April. I'll drop it off for him to do the annual so it gets signed off in in May, and they'll have till May of 2027. And I'm going to do a video soon on the R44. It's almost 3 years we've been operating it. We've put 500 hours on that aircraft. And I got to tell you, I'm pretty darn impressed with the Robinson. And I've used— I've flown Robinsons. I've done my ratings in Robinsons. I've had ratings— I've had Robinsons I've used to teach in, but never owned and maintained by me. This helicopter we picked up from overhaul, so it had 4 hours on it, and that was all testing after the overhaul was completed. So I picked it right up at the overhaul shop. So the 530 hours we have on it has all been us. So I know the history of this aircraft since overhaul, and I got to tell you, I've been really, really, really happy with it. Let's knock on wood. Hopefully that keeps going. But I will tell you real quick, Just to throw this in, operating this aircraft from the beginning, I approached with a different mindset. My mindset was I'm going to have mechanics inspect it more than required. You know, in the past I've done like everybody else. Oh, you just wait till you need an oil change or you wait till you need 100 hours or you wait until you have an annual. I don't do that. I try to get the mechanic to occasionally come in even when there's nothing wrong with it and take a look at it. And just like doing the 100-hour early, I'd rather do more maintenance than I need than not enough. I took the approach with this one that I'm not going to let anything slide. The moment that I can't afford it, the moment that I can't afford to maintain it, I'll have to let the aircraft go because it's a lease aircraft. And at this point, I can turn it in at any time with 30 days notice. But I've— well, many of you know I ran a— I had an Instrument for 4 years and I liked the Instrument. It was a great helicopter. But man, I was always working on it and I couldn't keep it flying enough. And the thing basically pretty much almost bankrupted me. I didn't file bankruptcy, but it hurt me in 4 years of running that aircraft. And anyway, so the point is I know what it's like when a flight school gets behind. And that's why you're out there and they're trying to make those blades spin. And they're not always worried about your ground knowledge because they're more— they're worried about their insurance payment, their helicopter payment, their hangar payment, the maintenance bill that they've got done at their local maintenance shop. There's very hard to make money with a helicopter flight school. You got to have a bunch of them out there flying, you got to have a bunch of instructors, and you got to have a good maintenance guy on staff. I think is the only way to really do it and really make money. So a lot of operators, they're cutting corners. And unfortunately, that's the way it is. So anyway, with the R44, we want that thing 100% all the time. We're not flying it. We're not deferring maintenance. You find that when you're low on cash, you'll go, well, we'll finish. We'll fix that next inspection or we'll fix that next oil change. And then pretty soon something else happens. You go, oh, well, we can get by with that. And then pretty soon you got a rattletrap aircraft because you're behind and you have too many things to fix and the expenses are just getting too high and it turns into a big, big mess. All right. So aircraft maintenance records, you got to have those visible and right there for the checkride. We have a gentleman coming in his own R44 in April. And he asked Heather today, hey, can I bring if I bring my helicopter. He's a student, but he's going to get a sign-off to fly here from the East Coast from his instructor out there. And he said, can I bring my helicopter and take it? I'll train in yours, but I want to take the checkride in my own helicopter. Can I do that? And I told Heather, just tell him, as long as your maintenance is up, everything's complied with, all of your ADs, service bulletins, all your inspections, and bring the logbooks with you because the examiner is going to want you to demonstrate to him that your aircraft is legal because you're going to bring in an aircraft that we don't know, we've never seen. And before he climbs in that thing, I'm sure he's going to say, okay, show me your last 100 hours, show me your last annual. And on my private pilot checkride, one of the reasons I failed is because I'd never seen the aircraft maintenance records. So we pull them out the day of my test and I'm taking it with the FAA and he says, show me the last 100 hours. And it was an old Schweitzer, and I'm sitting there flipping through the pages. I don't know what 100-hour looks like. I've never seen the log, the aircraft logbooks. One of the reasons that I failed. So you have to have an acceptable aircraft, and you need to have your aircraft maintenance record, records there with you. Pilot's Operating Handbook, which we mentioned already, under operating limitations, those are in here in the Pilot's Operating Handbook. And I'm using the private pilot ACS, by the way. Next, it says view-limiting device. People say, well, I don't think I need it for the private. I'm like, you're right, but guess what? It's on the list. So every single checkride, I have two pairs of these now. Every single checkride, we have a set sitting there. Why? Because it's on the list. It doesn't say just bring them if you want to. It doesn't say you're not going to need it. Says view-limiting device. So we have one of those. Current aeronautical charts. The beauty from going from the PTS to the ACS, the PTS said current aeronautical charts, didn't say printed or electronic, so you had to have a paper chart. Now, printed or electronic, it's acceptable to have either. You can have the good old chart and you can have your iPad there with ForeFlight on it, but make sure if you're going to use ForeFlight, you have updated everything before the test. So that if you're going to use ForeFlight for navigation, make sure your iPad is updated before the test. And this is a topic I love talking about. I highly, highly recommend if you want to use ForeFlight, that's great. I understand it's a wonderful tool. Order a paper chart for a backup so that if this thing quits, you got your chart right there. And people, I get a lot of static from that, and people, ow, I don't want to use a damn chart. Well, you can't even get them anymore. Well, that's bullshit. You can go on Sportys and order it and have it in 3 days. I would show up with a— if you want to use ForeFlight, great, but have a paper backup, and that's going to keep you from getting into trouble. We had one problem on a checkride. iPad froze as soon as they took off on a private pilot checkride. Private initial, you got to demonstrate navigation. And he even had the chart. I made sure that he had the chart underneath of his leg. So iPad on the kneeboard, Piper chart tucked underneath, and I made him draw a course on it. He had like 160 hours and nobody had ever taught him charts. So they take off, iPad freezes, examiner sees it, and I don't know if the dude even pulled the paper chart out or not. IPAS froze. So the examiner simply says, are you on the right course? And he thought the examiner was trying to trick him. He turned 180 degrees and started flying the other direction. Well, guess what? That didn't pass. Okay. So also Jerry Ventrella, I mentioned him all the time, 77 years old and he's still doing checkrides. He spoke, We spoke to him at Heli Expo at one of the classes we taught, and we had him speak during the event with about 60 pilots. And he said the number one reason pilots are failing checkrides today is problems with the iPad. So locking up, freezing, whatever the case is. He said they have a lot of trouble on diversion. They'll plan everything out nice, but then when he starts diverting them, they start going screen in and out, screen in and out, and then they lose track of direction and they lose track of distance once they start spreading that screen. So let's throw this in. This isn't required, but if you're not using a kneeboard, I highly, highly, highly recommend kneeboard. So let's move on. Got any questions in there? Anybody in there? Any people there? 5? 4? Okay, that's cool. Again, we wanted to just Is anybody made any comments? Hey, let us know if you're in there. Just type something. Hi, hello, happy 14 years online, or something so we know that you're seeing us and the audio is working. And again, that's why we started half an hour early, just to make sure that we're live, make sure we can communicate with people, and we'll just give you some free training as we're getting ready to start at 4 PM. All right, next, computer and plotter. This does not say printed or electronic. All right, so you still need— I didn't carry those over here today— standard plotter and a standard E6B computer. And people want to complain about that. I'm like, oh, I don't, you know, I haven't looked at that in years, or I got to use that damn thing. Well, guess what? It's on the list. It's on the list. You need to have it there. So you got to have the good old school plotter and computer for private pilot, I would have them. Even if you're using everything on ForeFlight, still have them and know the basics of how to use them. Flight plan form and flight logs, printed or electronic. So what we do is, we're going to use private pilot for example, that prior to the checkride, we do a VFR flight plan. We file the flight plan. He'll assign a cross-country for private pilot. We do all of that. Either some people still do it old school with paper. Some people do it on the iPad, which is fine because again, it does say printed or electronic. But if they do electronic, we at least have them print the cross-country planning so that they have it available there on the table. They can present to the examiner during the oral portion. And they can fold that up and take it with them along with the iPad. So if the iPad would fail, they still have their cross-country planning with their waypoints from some, uh, a sheet that we've downloaded from ForeFlight. 10 people? No, 10 minutes. Oh, 10 minutes. Okay, wow, it goes by fast. All right, so we'll get started at 4. If you're just— if you just rolled in here, we just went live a little bit early. Just to make sure the video feed's live. And there's a lot of stress when last minute you go live and the stupid thing isn't working for whatever reason, and then people are waiting. And so we went live today half an hour early just to shoot the breeze a little bit. And what we're covering at the moment is everything you need for a checkride. So chart supplements. If you don't know what it is, here's the little handy-dandy green book. That is your chart supplement. If you don't want to get one of these books, they're like $8 or $10, whatever the case is. You have a chart supplement along with ForeFlight. So this does say printed or electronic. So it would be acceptable to have chart supplement either on your iPad or the handy-dandy green book. Airport diagrams that will be in your ForeFlight. You'll have the airport diagrams and they'll also be in the chart supplements. And appropriate publications, printed or electronic. So the one that they don't list here that I say you need regardless, even though it's not on the list, the FAA says that student pilots, private pilots, commercial pilots, certified flight instructors, and pilot examiners, all of those people should be referencing the helicopter flying handbook. That is directly from the FAA. So if you don't have a copy of this, you can go online and you can get a free copy, or you could jump on Amazon or Sporty's or wherever, and you can order one for around $18. This is the helicopter Bible. I require everybody to have this, either a paper copy or for them to have it on their iPad or their electronic device. You need a copy of this when you're answering questions to the examiner. If you give him the answer out of here, you're golden. And I'm going to give you the perfect example. Here's a fun one. Loss of tail rotor effectiveness, stuck pedals, tail rotor failures. Our examiner will tell you people are screwing these up on checkrides. They're getting confused. Instructors aren't doing a good enough job at times making sure people understand. An example I want to use where there's a lot of confusion and we've had trouble on checkrides, when somebody is asked about stuck pedals. So here's, for example, with R44, there's nothing in the book. Robinson doesn't tell us what to do with a stuck pedal. And there's a lot of people out there making content, making videos on all kinds of Well, you should do this, you should do that. Well, you need a trusted resource. So if you give the examiner the answer out of this book right here on what to do with a stuck pedal, you're going to pass and it's not going to be a problem. Problem is, well, when you say, well, Billy Bob told me that this is how I deal with that. No, you need a good reference to answer that question. So everybody needs a copy of the Helicopter Flying Handbook. Everybody needs the FAR/AIM manual. Again, whether you do copy or whether you do the electronic version, fine either way. But you need to have FAR/AIM and not just have a FAR/AIM, know how to use it, know how to look stuff up. I'm continually amazed at people that have it and they have trouble navigating. And I got some simple tricks I can show you on how to quickly look up anything for a private pilot checkride. And I have it inside Hogs in the courses, and I've done plenty of videos on it. The examiner says you can't know the entire book, but you need to know how to navigate it, how to quickly find it, find an answer, not flip page to page to page. You got to be able to look things up quickly. So underneath that, where were we? Appropriate publications. And the next one is current AIM. So I just held that up. That's FAR AIM. Then your government-issued photo ID. So you got to take it with you to the checkride. It can't be at home on the desk drawer. Has to be there. Your pilot certificate. Even if you're a student, you're going to have a student pilot certificate. You have to have that with you. Current medical certificate. And I can tell you for a fact, you can't show up with a copy. Been there, done that. 10 minutes before the checkride, examiner's about to walk through the door and I'm getting the guy to lay everything out and he pulls out a copy. I'm like, well, that ain't going to work. He's like, well, it has to because that's all I got. Well, guess what? He said, I can't give the checkride. You need to find it. And luckily we had another guy there for a test. So the other guy got started and this guy had to call his office and they had to find his original medical and they had to run it down to the airport. You have to have your medical certificate and do not laminate them. People are laminating them at times. Not legal. And some examiners may not even give you the checkride. Do not laminate the medical certificate. Completed Form 8710, we do that online now with IACRA. That's something you should do 3 or 4 days in advance, because I could tell you when you're trying to do that at 8 PM the night before and you're frustrated and it just doesn't come out well. We do them about 3 days in advance and send them to the examiner early so he can check them, and if he finds a problem, then he contacts us and we've got a couple of days if there's any kind of an issue we can take, we've got time to work through it and correct that. So 8710, you want to start on that thing several days early and a good instructor is going to do that with you ahead of time. And I've done this in the past. It's not fun the night before screwing around with your 8710. Airman Knowledge Test Report. We used to have to have the Airman Knowledge Test Report with us had to have the seal on it, the stamp. They changed that. Now that your written test scores are in IACRA, so when your instructor signs you off, he'll go and view your 8710. He'll need the number from your written test. He'll verify it's in IACRA, and then he can approve, approve your 8710. But here's another note. You can't wait till the night before or the day before to go take the written because it takes time for that to populate in the FAA website. So this written test, I harp on this all the time, get that written test done months in advance. Get that thing out of the way and done. How much time we got, Lindsay? 4 minutes. 4 minutes. All right, perfect. Airman's logbook with inappropriate instructor endorsements. Let me tell you, in 25 years of doing this and people showing up here from all over the country, I'd say 25 to 50% of the time we have a problem with a past endorsement. And so here we are in a few days' time trying to get a hold of instructor and fax us or send us or email us an endorsement we can copy because something wasn't endorsed correctly. So for all of you, private, commercial, CFI, doesn't matter, any of you can go online. This is free. It's called AC 6165. You can double-check your instructor. Everything is listed in here. Every single endorsement is in AC 6165, and it's now K. You've got to go through there and you got to make sure you have the right endorsements because again, the wrong endorsement can stop the checkride and it's just a headache and it can, you know, blow the whole day for you. So anybody can check that. Your instructor, it's his job to give you the right endorsement, but if I was you, I would check his endorsements. Again, it's free. You don't even have to download it. You can just pull it up on the internet, look at it, and make sure the endorsements he gives you matches what's in here. That's a problem. There's a lot of instructors. First, let's say we know there's tons of good flight schools out there. Great flight schools. And there's a lot of great instructors out there. With that being said, there's a lot of freaking yahoos out there just trying to spin the helicopter, build time in their logbook, and they don't give a rat's ass if you get the right endorsements. If they don't really care how ground your ground school is, they don't even care if you'll pass the test or not. They'll just sign you up because they don't give a shit. So endorsements, a big one. If you have notice of disapproval, you need that. If you failed the test prior, you need to have a copy of that with you. Anything from a prior test I would bring with you. Letter of discontinuance, if you have one of those, I would bring it. And then approved school graduation certificate, if applicable. You may or may not have that. Example, we have, if you complete all the videos in HOGS, you can generate a certificate that says you've completed all the videos in private pilot. And our courses are FAA approved for FAA WINGS credit, by the way. So If you go to the end, use all of our private pilot, go through all the videos, you can download a certificate showing you have went through all the videos. Any questions? How many minutes we got?

Uh, 2 minutes, and we had a couple of questions answered in chat. Um, someone was asking what page in the ACS you were referencing.

Good question. Thank you for asking. That means somebody cares. It's clear at the back. I believe it's page— yep, page 19. So Private Pilot ACS, if you go clear to the rear, because you know there's a couple different sections, it's page 19 and it says Practical Test Checklist Applicant. That is the page you want. Most important page in the ACS. Thanks for asking. That's a great question. I'm glad somebody actually wanted to know where that page was at. That means somebody is actually trying. I know a lot of you are trying.

Are we about ready? Last question was they were wondering why you can't laminate your medical.

I can tell you that the examiners don't like it. I don't know specifically if that's written somewhere in a regulation. It is.

It's a security— I looked it up. It's a security Document, and it has specific markings.

Okay, so security doc— document has specific markings. So don't laminate it. Just take my word for it because I've been there, done that. Examiners do not like that. They could reject the test. 4 o'clock. All right, we're gonna give a little salute here to our final approach course members, and we're going to go through the content then that we have prepared for you for today. Alright, we're going to start off with Final Approach Course members. We started this in 2003. We're now in 2006. So we're just going to give you a view here of everybody that's been here in the last 3 years to finish up a rating. It started out as an idea of, hey, let's put together this course called Final Approach Course where we're going to take people who have been somewhere else working on a rating, and they can't get finished up. Either their instructor just left, or the helicopter's down for maintenance, or the examiner's booked for 6 months. We hear so many stories, and a lot of it is problems with getting examiners scheduled. So we just wanted to roll through here just to pay tribute to everybody that's taken a chance on us and spent the time to travel here. People have been coming from all around the country. We've even had 3 foreign students at this point. Now we're going into everybody from 2004. We did 9 of these in 2003, 9 in 2004. Last year, I think we did 12 or 14. And now this year, we've done like 10 already. We're getting ready to do number— we've completed 37 of these. So we had 2 that canceled, or we had to cancel yesterday due to weather. So they'll be coming back to finish both of them up. And we got 2 more coming at the end of this month, 2 more coming the middle of next month, and then another one hanging in the balance trying to get started. So just rolling through everybody that's been here for a final approach course, either R44 or R22. Um, the R22 we had recently left, just too much downtime with that aircraft. It's been about half its time here. It was down for different reasons and the R44 has been a superstar for us. Now we're into 2025 and I'm gonna do a video soon on the R44. We're approaching— it's in for 100-hour right now. So I've been operating it almost 3 years and I want to talk about— I'm going to show the math, what it's taken for me to operate it, what my legitimate costs are on operating the R44. We're going to do that soon and just talk about the R44. It's 530 hours we've put on that thing in 3 years. And I got to say, other than an AED and some simple stuff like a starter, we had to do mags, a few things here and there, but it's been pretty phenomenal. We are just so thrilled with that aircraft. So we're almost into— these are finishing up 2025. We're going to get to 2026 here in a minute. So it's 14 years celebration this month. We went live. That's right. Live March 1st, 2012. So March 1st, 2026 celebrates 14 years online. So this month, that's what we're celebrating. It's cool to be here still doing it 14 years later. Um, if you're on YouTube, do us a favor. We're trying to get to 50,000 subscribers. We're, as of today, we're like 49,723, so we're about 250 away. So do me a favor, subscribe to the channel if you've ever enjoyed our content or enjoy our content or just stopping by. Do me a personal favor, hit the subscribe button. I'm not gonna I'm getting a YouTube button. I get nothing for it that I know of other than the fact that I've been on YouTube 15 years. It's just always been kind of a goal. Man, I want to hit 50,000. After that, I guess I don't really care anymore. So there you go on catching up everybody that's been through. 37, I think, total people that have been through for a final approach course where we've helped you just finish up a rating because you're tired of getting screwed around by a flight school or an instructor or an examiner or whatever the case is.. And just to kind of celebrate, we're going to take a look here. The rest of these pictures are people that have used either our private pilot course. I'll get a little closer. Our private pilot course, that's of course your beginning as private pilot. That's where you start with. And then if you're going the professional pilot route, which is kind of what this series of live events about, it's about people going I mean, it's for anybody, but also gearing more towards people that want to go all the way. So you want to start with private pilot first, of course, and then you want to move to instrument pilot. And we'll talk about that a little bit more in a little bit. I did my instrument after I was a CFI. I should have done it in between private and commercial. So we have the private course, the instrument course, and then of course we have commercial pilot course. And also a CFI course. So with the ProPilot that we're going to talk about after a bit, that includes all courses. It's a one-time fee, and we got a special right now, limited time. You can get ProPilot lifetime access, and if you grab it while this special's on, you get a Hogsball cap, and I'm going to do 6 Zooms with you on anything that you need help with, whether it's ground school, You want to do mock checkrides, career advice, trying to get that first job, whatever it is you struggle or struggling with, I'm going to help you with that. So we're going to move over here and we'll get started with the content. We've had so many, we had a ton of great comments last week and we got more comments that came in for today. So let's get started on all that. All right, appreciate all the comments that are in there so far. People are in there watching. We had a good one Sunday night when we did this, and we have this one planned as well. So to recap, we're celebrating this month 14 years online. Started as a vision, and the fact that we're here 14 years later is pretty amazing. And we got to thank everybody that's here right now, everybody that's commented, bought a course, bought a book, made a comment on Facebook. It takes all of you. It takes everybody watching and shows up to events and uses our content is why we're here. And I want to ask a favor. Do me a favor and subscribe to the channel. As of this morning, we're like 49,732 subscribers or something, and Since I started YouTube 15 years ago, I was like— 16 years ago, actually. I started YouTube before I started the actual helicopter line ground school. And always, all along, I've been like shooting for 50,000. Doesn't mean anything. I don't get a button. I don't get money. I don't get an award. I get nothing. It's just the whole time I've been on YouTube, I've always been like, man, I want to get to 50,000. Just a personal thing. All it is. And after 50, don't know that I care anymore. I mean, I'll care, but it's just, just something I've always wanted to do. So do us a favor and subscribe to the channel. Did you flag at me like you had a question or something? No. All right. Teaching points. Train with a plan. This we've seen. We have seen from the first session we did Sunday. We had 140 people send in questions. That is flippin' amazing. And we got through as many as we could on Sunday, and we had another 25 or 30 that came in for today. So Lindsay went through before I got here. She did me a favor because actually I had a student here, long days all day, all week. So she prepared all this for me and put together kind of a summary of what the latest questions are. And For some of you, let's help out the beginners first. And this is free, so I'm not selling anything. If you're a beginner, right here, this is for you. It's called Private Pilot 101: Helicopter Training Blueprint. It's an Amazon number one bestseller. We put it out about 2 years ago, and we geared this for beginners. Now, past beginner can use it too, because there's training tips, but we've geared this for somebody just starting out. So we have a free PDF down below, and I'll just give you an idea. So in the top 10 facts is: learning how to fly a helicopter difficult? How long does it take to become a private pilot? How much will it cost to be a private pilot? What's the best approach to selecting a flight school? What are the key differences between helicopters and fixed-wing? What are some common challenges faced during helicopter training? Which helicopter is best for training? Which is a good question. People ask that all the time. How many tests will I have to take? How many hours for solo and the license? And Kenny Keller's recommended training supplies. That's just, that's the first chapter. And then we got Need to Know, Getting Started with Flight Training, Flight Training Tips, Dual Training, Preparing for Solo, After First Solo, Advanced Maneuvers, Preparing for the Practical Test, Practical Test Day, Additional need to know, and then we've got some other bonuses at the end. So it's free, it's free PDF down below, doesn't cost a dime. It costs you your email. You can get that. And so for newbies and people working on your rating, good tips in here. It could even be commercial and CFI if you're just looking for tips for training. Those are in here as well, but again, geared towards the newbies. So the other common theme in the questions from prior to Sunday and the questions that have come in this week deal with what we have under number 1: train with a plan. Pilots make better progress when they stop guessing and start following a structure. Random training creates random results. I will use myself as the story. I had 88 hours when I got my private, and I I failed my first private pilot checkride. And that's why Hogs is here. That's why I'm here doing what I'm doing. As bad as that failure hurt, I was flying the Schweitzer down in Indianapolis. I was flying R22 up in Lansing, Illinois. And I think I had a couple other places I went, bebopped around, because I also got some Schweitzer time in there as well, or some Enstrom time. But here's the thing. Everywhere I went, everybody wanted to fly. Fly, fly, fly. And yes, back then, 1997 is when I started, 30 years ago. It's the same today. Here's the books. Here's the book, read it. The first guy I went to, at the time we were using what they called the Basic Helicopter Handbook. I go to Indianapolis. I've never even ridden in a helicopter. I really just kind of wanted to really just go for a ride and experience it. The guy throws me in the helicopter, starts trying to teach me, starts yelling at me when I don't understand what he's trying to tell me, and then he has me buy the Basic Helicopter Handbook. He says, take this home and read it. Well, I can remember going home and reading it and going, what in the hell are they talking about in here, right? So this is your number one resource, the Helicopter Flying Handbook. Everybody and everybody should be using it. The FAA says student pilots, private pilots, commercial pilots, certified flight instructors, and pilot examiners, both FAA and designated examiners, should be using this book. So the gentleman that sent me home with it, I wish he'd have said, hey, just get it and open it up and just kind of start reading through like the basics of what the controls do. What basic aerodynamics are. But don't let it overwhelm you because when you— if you're brand new to flying and you haven't studied for a while, maybe you're not even the best at bookwork. I wasn't, you know, I barely got through high school because I didn't care. I wanted to just get out and go do something else. And so you got to be motivated. But take this book and just start working through it. And as you're doing your lessons, you should be working through the Helicopter Flying Handbook, number one, the first book. You can go online and you can get it for free, download it for free. But in the money that you're going to be spending, I would highly, highly, highly recommend just getting a copy and start working through it. But again, don't let it overwhelm you. As you start flying, some of the things that you're going to read will start making sense. You'll read it in the book and you go, I don't really know what the hell they're talking about. But then you're doing ground with your instructor at the flight school and you get in the helicopter and you go out. Then these things start making sense. And it's kind of neat that I can remember back how overwhelming it was to me in the beginning, how this guy just yelling at me in the helicopter and throws the book and says, go home and read this. And yesterday I was prepping a guy that was here. He was here Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday. And we were supposed to take a checkride yesterday, but the weather, we just couldn't do it. And he had to go home because he has to be at Heli Expo on Monday. But anyway, I went through this cover to cover with him, and 30 years later it all seems easy, right? Well, it seems easy because I've been through it over and over and over and over and over, and eventually it all makes sense to you. So again, for anybody, whether you're brand new or you're going the professional pilot route, which is kind of the gear we wanted to go today, You need to have a copy of this. If you don't have it yet, get it. Just go online, bite the bullet, spend $20 and get your copy. So number one way to train with a plan, start out with this and you should sign up for Helicopter Line Ground School. We are online. We've been online for 14 years and quite honestly, now the private pilot we laid out to follow this. Okay, so that's why I brought it up. Not only does the FAA see you need to be using it. Our course basically loosely follows it. So as you're going through the videos, it's going to be covering the topics that are in here. So you can read it and look at it. It might not make total sense to you, but then you watch the video or vice versa and then you start going, okay, that makes sense to me. And we also have my AI inside all of our courses now. Has 14 years of my content piped into it. So as you're watching the videos, my AI is below the video. So you can just go down below it. You can type it or you can talk to it with voice. And it's my voice. It's my clone. Sounds like me. And it's reading not just from the internet like normal AI, it's reading from all of my content, 14 years of everything we've done, paid courses,, free courses, YouTube videos, blogs, podcasts, everything is piped into it. So if you want a plan, Helicopter Flying Handbook, start now and then continue to use it all the way through your ratings and sign up for HOGS. Otherwise, you need a structured plan. If you're going to a flight school where they're willing to sit down and do the— spend the time with you and give you the proper training. Do you need HOGS? No, you don't. If you've got a legitimate school who they have, they say, okay, we have a ground school curriculum and this is what we're going to do day 1. This is what we're going to do day 2. This is what we're going to do day 3. That's how you train with a plan. And many schools will use a syllabus, especially if you're going to like a 141 school. They have a syllabus that you have to follow and they're going to guide you through it. But they are governed— the FAA watches over them a lot heavier, and there's a whole lot to a Part 141. A lot of flight schools out there operate under what we call Part 61, which is what we do here. We don't have direct oversight of the FAA watching how we teach and what we do. We just basically— I'll be honest, I kind of wing it because I've been doing it for almost 30 years. I don't have an actual syllabus here. Because I don't feel like I need it. But I work alone or I work with Hauser, and I trained Hauser 15 years ago, and he comes in to help me just with checkrides. So we're not doing, you know, we're not doing student training anymore. We're just doing final approach courses. So we're just finishing courses. But in the beginning, when I was brand new, I used the Robinson syllabus because I went to the Robinson factory school, and they, at that time, they sent you home with the instructor book. Or whatever you want to call it from Robinson at that time. And it had a syllabus in it. So when I was brand new teaching, I had a syllabus from Robinson that I could use page to page, step by step, flight by flight, and ground subjects. So for training with a plan, have a plan, not a, I'm just going to the flight school. Well, let's go back to me. I'm jumping around flying these different places. And I can remember, example, I'd walk into the one and the young guy there actually helped me finish my rating after I failed. But I can remember going in and he'd go, well, we should do some ground, but what do you want to do? You want to fly or you want to do ground? And what am I going to say? Let's go fly, right? Every single time he asked that question, I'd say, let's go fly. And That's how it went. So I gained a bunch of hours. I'm getting pretty good in the aircraft. And a dude calls me up from the first place I went to. A new instructor was there. And I went down there to fly the Schweitzer. And we go out for a flight. And we go out and do all the maneuvers. He's like, man, you're ready for your private pilot checkride. Nice job. He goes, what'd you score on your written? And I'm like, what written? And he's like, oh my God. Your written's not done? I'm like, no. And he goes, you can fly this good and your written's not done? I'm like, yeah. I didn't even really realize I had to do one, I guess, or whatever I said. He goes, all right, let's go back to the office. Let's sit down and do some ground. And I remember the first question he asked me, the door was open to the outside. And he's like, what kind of clouds are out there? And I'm like, oh, big puffy white ones. And his name was Eddie. He was just like, oh my God, do we have work to do. So Eddie at the time was a brand new instructor, you know, living off ramen noodles. And so he's like, well, hey, I'll— and I can tell the story because 30 years ago, he's like, I can— I'll do, I'll do ground school for you outside the airport for $10 an hour. And I'm like, oh wow, $10 an hour, right? So we always go for what's cheapest, right? You're struggling with the money, you're trying to find the money. Oh, who's got a cheap rate? Oh, this instructor will do $10 do ground for $10 an hour. So he helps me out with the ground knowledge. I was his very first student. He prepares me and I fail the checkride, right? So in my training, I'm going to the typical small Part 61 flight schools. The instructors that I had, they're all still my friends to this day. However, did any of them want to teach ground? No, they just want to go fly. Because they were all building their hours so they could move on to the next job. We've all been there. We've all done that. But that's the problem, is having a plan. So you could do it with a 141 school. You could do it. You could sign up for helicopter only and ground school, go through HOGS. You could find a syllabus of your own somewhere. I'm sure there's all kinds of syllabuses online if you want to do it all by hand or just by yourself. Or go to a good reputable school with an instructor who's going to sit down. And honestly, this fly, fly, fly every lesson and maybe one every 10, 20 lessons you get a ground session, they're screwing you, right? It ought to be do some ground, do some flying, do some ground, do some flying, do some ground, do some flying. It needs to go together because that's how you learn. You learn through repetition and you learn by going through the information and then getting with your instructor and going flying in the helicopter and doing ground lessons. That's how you make progress. You learn when you're putting it all together and things make sense. Sometimes people will say, well, can I just do all the ground school first? Can I just do all the ground and then I'll do the flying? And in the beginning I said, no, you need to do both. But we actually had a guy named Johan. He's up, up on the Hogs Wall of Fame back here. Johan's a phenomenal story. I love talking about Johan. Because he told me he was going to do that. He wanted to sign up for HOGS, and he said, Kenny, I'm going to come to the US to do my rating, and I want to use your videos to get ready. And so I'm like, sure, right? I had him sign up for HOGS, and down the road at some point, 6 months or whatever later, I get an email from this young instructor down in Florida, and he's like, Kenny, I'm letting you know about— I got to email you and tell you about One of your online customers or online students named Johan, he said he came in the door and somebody else evaluated him. And they came to me and said, his ground's done. He can just start flying. And this kid said, I thought it was a bunch of bullshit. There's no way this guy's ground was that good. So he goes, I tested him and the other instructor was right. He said, We didn't have to do any ground with him. We started flying day 1, and 3 weeks from the day he walked in the door, he was a private pilot. And we did a video on this. It's called Private Pilot in 3 Weeks. Johan did it by using Hogg's videos. I ended up meeting Johan because I emailed him. I'm like, Johan, you know, your instructor just emailed me and told me about what you did and how you used Hogg's. And I ended up meeting him in California. My daughter and I were out there for a trip once and Johan emailed me and said, hey man, I'm in LA too. And so we went to supper, me and my daughter and Johan and his wife. And I'm like, dude, how the hell did you do it? And he said, well, for 10 months a year, I'm in a tractor going up and down the field. And so he said, I had hogs in there with me and I just let it roll over and over and over. And he goes, I just went through this stuff and I just kept going through it and going through it and going through it. And that's how he learned all the knowledge. So even though I say you need to do the flying, you need to do the ground together for it to make sense, here's a case where Johan got hogs, drove his tractor all day up and down the field, and listened to hogs videos, had them playing all the time over and over and over. So there we've proved that it can be— you can do the ground first. I personally think it's harder that way, but he did it for a time factor because he was coming to the US and he had a lot of time that he wanted to get that private done before he had to go back home. And so it makes sense after the fact how he did it. So there's another plan. We've had people, I had a gentleman who said, well, I want to do all the flying first and then I'll do the ground school. And I'm like, ain't going to happen because there's a list in the FAR/AIM of everything that we have to do with you before we solo you. So if you never do ground school, we can never legally solo you because you don't have the ground knowledge, or we have to at least evaluate your knowledge if you learned it somewhere else. So for a guy who— the guy had a lot of money, and I was working for an Enstrom service center and dealer, and he was looking at buying a brand new helicopter they had for sale. And I'm flying with him and I said, look, this ain't working. If you won't do ground, then we can't continue. And the owner came to me and said, Kenny, you're jeopardizing the sale of this new aircraft. And I said, yeah, I don't care. I'm not going to solo him. He won't do ground. He wants to wait till all of the flying's done and do the ground. You know I can't do that. And so they actually brought another instructor in to work with him because I refused. And he ended up getting a rating somehow later. I don't know how they pulled it off, but anyway, that's why you have to have the ground school. And there, you have to have the listed knowledge. Again, everything that you have to know before you solo is in here. So we have to cover all of that stuff before you start soloing. And then before you go to the checkride, we have to go through the ACS and make sure that we've covered every single thing with you, or you've studied on your own, or you did a ground school somewhere else, or you studied with your buddy. Doesn't matter how you learn the information, but we got to go through here step by step. And I can tell you in the last 3 days, I've been through every— this is— I'm holding up the certified flight instructor one. But in the last 4 days, the guy that was here, he came up here going, it's an add-on. He goes, but I want, I want the full treatment, man. I want, I want to be rock solid. I went through this entire ACS with him line by line. And we did what— I want to tell you about marathon ground school. It came back to mind. Like, I never say this anymore, but marathon ground school started— or that term for me was Jed, who has, uh, one of our superstars. I trained him years ago, long before Hogs, and he now flies Tree Saw. And I have a video with him that has over 6 million views on our YouTube channel. Biggest video we've ever done. But anyway, he was working on one of his ratings. I think it was commercial. And he came out to Indiana because I'd met him in Cleveland when I worked there. And then I came back to Indiana to work and he traveled out here sleeping in his truck in the parking lot at the airport or sleeping at the FBO. Sometimes he'd sleep at my house, but he said, I want to come there and I just want to get done. And so we would sit in the classroom and do ground all day long. He could fly just fine. He was lacking in ground school. And so we did what we called marathon ground school. We did it 8 hours a day, all day, or maybe more. We might have done 10, 12 hours, but we just sat there and we just— and I just hammered him over and over and over all day long until we got it done. And I wanted to throw that term out there, marathon ground school. That's how we prepare you when you come here for final approach course. It's not just fly. We got to fly the 3 hours with you, and that's all we want to do. We don't want to fly any more than 3 if we don't have to because we're not about time building. We're about the ground and getting you through the oral first. So we're over there on the couches. And the way we're operating it now, Houser— we usually schedule these when Houser's on his days off. So Houser will come down. I'm on the couches, and we got 2 people. One guy's out in the helicopter with Houser. The other guy's sitting there with me at the couch and we go 10:00 AM to 6:00 PM and I just start asking questions. And when they get done flying, they switch. Other guy comes in, other guy jumps in the helicopter. And then I do this. I cover the same things with the next guy. So I'm covering this chunk of information with guy 1. Then when guy 2 comes in, I cover the same stuff so that I'm keeping them together as we go through. We try to do these Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday. And then take the checkride Friday when it works out. So Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, we're just hammering the ground. And yesterday made me think marathon ground school is what we called it back in the day, 20 years ago. So we've— again, that's how we operate. And the difference between where you go to your flight school for a 2-hour block and you're there for your 2-hour block and then you go home and then you don't go back until 4 days later. And then you go back for another hour. 2 days later, and then you miss a week. That's what drags training out. And that's not what we do here. We do hardcore all day, go through it, and we make sure that you have all the knowledge for the checkride. I'm going to grab a drink of water. Any questions to throw in there while we're— that's kind of my sum up on the first one. We do this every time. We got all this stuff to cover. And then I just get on a roll. What?

There are 7 points and we are at 430.

Holy shit. Yeah. I guess we'll have to do more of these then because it's so hard. I'm passionate about what I'm passionate about, this stuff, right? And I'm telling you people, I'm just telling you how it works. 25 years of doing this, I've figured out some shit, okay? I figured out how the fuck to do this and not turn into a monstrous 3, 6, 8, 9 months, 2-year order deal to get a damn rating done.

Um, somebody, Tackleberry, is working on their license and they are struggling to like the Robinson 22 T-bar.

That's a good comment. The comment with— I don't know if you can hear it or not— that— and, well, you guys, if you're there, you can see it in chat. Struggling with the R22 T-bar. I love that comment. 'Cause I can give you my input on it. My first lesson ever, I think, was the Schweitzer, but I went twice with that guy and he was yelling at me, so I didn't want to go back there. I tried out the Bell 47, so I did this, got the standard cyclic. I did some Enstrom stuff, but did most of my initial training in the Schweitzer, so with a real cyclic. And at a certain point, I thought I wanted to go try the R22. And the instructor I was flying with, again, still my friend to this day, he's like, well, it's good to fly different aircraft, different people. And that's a good thing. So go try out the R22. So I went to another school to try out the R22. And I remember what you said, I said. I can remember being in the R22 and going, flipping it up and down. And I'm with my instructor and I'm like, What the hell, you know, this is kind of janky, ain't it? And this kid said to me, Kenny, a helicopter is a helicopter. Just give it a few hours, you'll get used to it. He said helicopters all fly the same. He goes, yeah, I get it that you don't really like it, but just stick with it and it will get better. And I can tell you that it does get better. And I could tell you now, and this will be fun in the comments because some people will hate me on it, but Honestly, 100% honest, now that we have the R44, that T-bar is damn comfortable. And I like it because I can sit it, get in there in the R44, get myself all situated, and I can have my arm on my leg nice and comfortable, and I can just— a light little tight grip on that thing. Honestly, over the years I decided I like it, believe it or not. So I get it. In the beginning, you get in one, you go, oh man, this kind of sucks. But after a while, you realize it ain't really no big deal. And the fact that you can adjust it and get your arm comfortable, where some other aircraft, to have your hand properly on the cyclic, you might not be like in a position where you really got a good relaxed status with your arm. So argue that out in the comments, but that's my take on it. Just keep flying it, you'll get used to it. And here's another statement for all the Robinson haters. My examiner's been doing this for 37 years, and his statement I heard many years ago, I've stuck with and I repeat to people all the time. He says people that are bashing the Robinsons have 10 hours or less, or they've never flown one. And since he made that statement probably 20 years ago, I know now that he's right in general, right? You might have another reason why you hate Robinson, but in general, the people bashing them— and I can tell you from our social media presence over the last 15 years, I'm not going to mention the crowd where the hate comes from, but I know one of the big crowds, and I can tell you they have no Robinson experience whatsoever. So my plug for the Robinson. I like Enstrom, I like Schweitzer, I like Jet Ranger, I love BK117, I like EC135. All helicopters have pros and cons, all of them. You got to find what's like, what you like, and what is comfortable for you. And you'll get used to the T-bar. I'm telling you, it's comfortable. And all these years later, I'd rather fly that. I'd rather fly that R44 than anything else. That's my opinion on that one. I had another train of thought there on that. But, oh, I know where I wanted to go with this. We all got surprised, and this, this is part of today coming from our list of questions. I'm going to throw this in now because I know it's in the list, so we're covering things people have asked. Which helicopter should I fly? We were all shocked at Heli Expo, I don't know, 4 or 5 years ago. We were going around and talking to the different manufacturers, and I was just personally going up and interviewing. Why should somebody fly your Schweitzer? Why should they fly your Enstrom? Why should they fly this? We went to Robinson and I asked Tim Tucker, many of you all know who Tim Tucker is. If not, Tim Tucker was with Robinson for decades, decades, and decades. And I asked him at the show, I think the first night we were there at the Robinson party, and I'm like, hey, would you be willing to go on video with us and explain why somebody should fly the Robinson for training? And he said, you know what, I don't know that I really like that question, Kenny. He goes, let me think about it. And he gave me his phone number. He said, get a hold of me tonight. And so I text him that night and he goes, meet me tomorrow at the Robinson booth at whatever time. So he surprised us when I said, you know, turn the camera on. We went live because it was March, right? So we're celebrating whatever year that was of Hogs being in business. And I went live and said, all right, Tim, why should somebody pick the Robinson to train in? And he said, you know, Kenny, I thought about this question and this video is on YouTube, by the way, if you want to go view it. He said, I thought about your question since last night. And he said, you know what? I don't think it makes any difference. And, you know, I kind of was, I had to kind of like step, step back, right? I'm like, oh really? Well, do tell, right? Tell us some more. And so he proceeded to tell us how, you know, he was a military, ex-military pilot, I believe. And he said they in the military, They did a study and they took the people flying the small trainers, which we know a lot of them was the old Hughes, which turned into Schweitzer. And then they had people training in like a Jet Ranger, you know, a turbine model. And they had people training in other things. And so they did a study over— and I don't remember the numbers he gave us exactly, but they did a study over time. And he said the military made the conclusion that it really It didn't matter which helicopter the person trained in. Really didn't make any difference on what kind of a pilot they turned out to be. What mattered was quality of training, instructor. So we were all shocked by that. I went away from that going, you know what? I got to agree with Tim on that one. And so that's now why I'll say I think he's right. And I've flown all of them, pretty much all the trainers. They all have pros and cons. Me personally, I like the R44. And I think if you're going to be a— do training and you're going to do commercial operations as well, like you want to do rides at fairs or you want to try to do some 135, as far as pistons, I'm not talking per— turbin helicopter. If you're in the piston market and you want an aircraft that you can do all around, you can fly for fun, you can take up passengers with you because you want to go for supper. Like, we'll fly up to Chicago and land at the airport and go eat. I can take 3 people with me. We could do commercial operations if we want here. We don't, just because we're so busy with the training. I don't feel like messing with commercial stuff, so we don't do any commercial stuff, but we could. So for me, hands down, for training, commercial work, comfort, taking up people for fun, taking people with you, the R44, hands down the answer. So for all of you training, find the aircraft that works for you, but look heavier at the school. Look at the reputation of the school, the reputation of your instructors, the kind of quality of instruction that you get. And I know in the beginning you're not going to really know, but you'll get a feel for it. Your gut's going to tell you when you walk in the door. How do they act when you call them, number one? Do they even call you back? Flight schools are notorious about not returning phone calls, or they're notorious for the person you talk to on the phone being kind of snobby, or— and I ran into this when I was brand new— the helicopter pilot on the phone acts like God's gift to helicopter pilots. Oh, how much time do you have? 2 hours? Oh, you know, well, they'll give you a real fricking attitude at times. And I don't understand that when you want customers and you want people to come in and spend money at your establishment, why you don't return calls, why you treat them shitty, why you don't have the whole operation right. Like, it's amazing what you see out there and an interesting thing that I've noticed over the years is you can look at somebody's website and you'll go, oh wow, look at that helicopter and look at that and look at their offices. And, and you see a place. And then when you arrive in real life and you pull in the parking lot and you go, oh wow, this is not kind of what I thought it was going to be. And then you find the entrance and you walk in the door and the place is dirty or people have attitudes, or just many, many times you'll show up. And that's why I'm saying gut feeling when you walk in the door, even if you're new to this, go visit these places, go in and see them, talk to them. Just look at the facility. How well is it kept? How do people treat you? I think there's a lot to that. And going with your gut, ask to see their maintenance facility. Who does their maintenance? There's a lot to all that, so I should probably move on. Anything else you want to answer while we're there? Because it still might be pertinent to the things we got coming up anyway. Is that it? Any Robinson Taters in there bashing the Robinson? Nope. Nice.

The person that did ask the question about comfortability, um, did admit that they have less than 10 hours.

There you go. So keep it up. Less than 10 hours, keep it up and you may, once you get used to it, you'll be fine. Here's a good one. Number 2, study to understand, understand, study to understand, not memorize. I like that, you know, and we learn through repetition and I sit here with people and I go over and over stuff, but To that, study to understand, not to memorize. At the private pilot, let's break down private pilot and commercial pilot. What's important between those two checkrides is at the private level, it's understanding the, the, the theory behind whatever it is the examiner is asking you about. So I like this study to understand, not memorize. Because here's how, here's how I've heard two different examiners explain it, and they use their own words, but it comes out kind of the same. Your private checkride and your commercial checkride, they're damn near the same checkride. The big difference between private and commercial is your privileges and limitations, of course, are going to be different because at private level you're doing it for fun. Take up your friends and your family, go fly, go eat, fly around, have a good time. Commercial, you're actually going to be paid to go do it. So you're going to be flying more often. You're going to be flying higher performance equipment. You're going to be asked to do a lot more than you would do as a private pilot. So when it comes to the checkride itself, on the private, they expect that you might mess up terminology. But you got to understand the concept. And the concept is the word I was trying to pull out of my brain 60 seconds ago. You have to understand the concept. If you understand the concept, you can get through the private rating even if you fumble the words a little bit. At the commercial level, they're going to ask you all the same stuff, but at the commercial level, they need to be smooth, concise, answer more quickly, answer with more confidence, and not only understand the concept but really be a lot more smooth, answer more quickly, and, and having the terminology correct. When you get into, like, say, aerodynamics on the helicopter, we have retreating blade stall, we have gyroscopic precession, we have low G, we have dissymmetry of lift, We have tail rotor failures and we have all a lot of things that go on. And it is common at the private level where examiner's asking questions and someone will get confused for a second and they might say the wrong term. That's not an immediate failure. He'll go, "Okay, well tell me more about that." And he's going to evaluate you and then you end up going, "Oh, I meant to say this." If you understand the concept behind that term, whichever term that it is and how those things play with each other and how they relate. That's the key to getting through it. So we do, I don't know, it's kind of a, it's a 50/50 on this. Study to understand, not memorize. You do have to do a certain amount of repetition and you do have to have a certain amount of memorization. Example, camo foot. The things we need to have to go in the daytime: compass, airspeed, manifold pressure, altimeter, fuel gauge, oil pressure, oil temperature, tachometer. That you got to memorize, right? You just have to be able to say that. You got to be able to pop that off. At the private level, you could be like, oh gee, let's see, that's compass, let's see, airspeed. Commercial, you want to be boom, boom, boom. That you got to memorize, okay? That's memorization. But again, going back to aerodynamics, retreating blade stall, gyroscopic precession, translating tendency, effective translational lift, transverse flow effect. It's understanding the concepts between these different things and again how they play together. Because example, effective translational lift and transverse flow effect, when you read the helicopter flying handbook, they're both happening about the same time. One starts first, and then the other one kind of starts happening before the other one is completely finished. So it's understanding what those two things are. We talk about the three T's. People get confused all the time between effective translational lift, transverse flow effect, and translating tenancy. And let me throw another good tip in here for all of you, anybody on here. I don't care what rating you're going for. Especially for pro pilot. Oh, actually, let me go back to anybody. The examiner has been telling me for over 10 years instructors aren't doing a good enough job explaining and making sure applicants understand the difference between a tail rotor failure or a loss of thrust, meaning driveshaft breaks, tail rotor breaks, tail rotor flies off, gearbox snaps, That is loss of thrust. Not to be confused with LTE, loss of tail rotor effectiveness. Nothing is broken. The pilots put the helicopter in a bad position. And then stuck pedal. All three of those are separate from the other two. And my examiner continually tells me, People are still screwing this up. And so I harp on these big time during these checkrides. And we had a dude last week who messed up on stuck pedals when I told him exactly what to say. And here's what's in the book, but here's what everybody says out there that's not according to the book. And this is Helicopter Flying Handbook anyway, on stuck pedals. Robinson doesn't tell us, but the Helicopter Flying Handbook clearly lays out what to do, and people are, in part, are being taught this wrong, and the examiner knows that, and the kid went back to the standard, what everybody says, he didn't give the textbook answer, and that was a problem along with some other problems he had. So study to understand, not to memorize. Some of it does have to be memorization, but understanding, if you just spout off all the terms, but you don't know how they work together on the aerodynamics, that won't fly. I'll guarantee you, because you're going to get stumped and you're going to fail on the checkride if you don't understand the theory behind all of those. Next, number 3, again, for anyone, stay current between lessons. Teaching points: the best pilots do not only learn during, during flight time, they stay current between lessons by reviewing chair flying and keeping the material fresh. You have to find the time in between your flights to study. And it's very simple for any of us. And going back, I'm not going to repeat the story, but I told my story at the beginning of this when we went live, how I screwed up and how I just wanted to fly like most people. So going in, doing your flight, and then you go back home, you go back to work, you take care of your business or your job, and then you got your family life. And then you wait 3 days or a week and you go back to fly again. You didn't study anything in between. This has to be a consistent thing each week, whether you're finding yourself 15 minutes a day, half an hour a day, an hour every other day. You have to be consistent to get through these ratings. And I can tell you this, in the big picture, in the time I've been doing it, that's why we're here. That's why we created Helicopter Online ground school. Everybody wants to fly. Nobody wants to do ground. They all want to say, here's the books, read it. And I just had a gentleman here said that exact thing, exact thing to me. He goes, well, flight schools, they just say, here are the books, read them, right? That's common. So staying current in between lessons by, again, study on your own, sign up for HOGS, watch YouTube videos. I don't care what you do. Go to the FAA website and look for free training content, but go through the ACS. You have to be doing something to continually get that knowledge fresh. And in the professional environment— and then Lindsay's got something— what? Hog study guide. Um, this is one you can use, and we'll talk about more in a minute, but this private pilot study guide has over 400 questions you can use to test yourself. This is great for a refresher. I've used it as a refresher And we go through this when people are here for checkrides. Let me tell you, in the professional environment, we just had this discussion. And I'm going to tell you, I'll tell you from not stories I've heard, what I know firsthand. I spent 5 years in EMS. So we're in professional mode here now, right? While I was an EMS pilot, on my days off, I still continued to teach. During that time is when I bought my Enstrom helicopter. Had my own little flight school on the side. So that was how I kept current, was by if I'm teaching on my days off, I'm sitting down with people, I'm going through the helicopter flying handbook or the ACS or whatever the case is. I'm actively teaching. So that helps keeps me fresh. Most of your EMS pilots, I'd say a good majority of them, aren't instructing anymore because everybody starts instructing, they say they hate it, they can't wait to get done with it, They move on, they get the hours, and they go to EMS, and they go, oh, life's gonna be grand now. I'm making big bucks, and I'm gonna go be a hero flying EMS. Well, some bases you fly a lot, some bases you sit there on your ass and you don't do anything and fly it once or twice a week. So here's what goes on in the professional world, and I've heard this in law enforcement as well. In EMS, the pilot You get the original training, you go— like for me, it was 10 days of training down in Texas at the main company headquarters. You go back to your job and then you fly a full year, and then at a certain point they come in, you do what you call a 135 checkride. And once a year they come in, do a 135 checkride, expect you to be proficient in flying the aircraft and all the things about being an EMS pilot. Well, a good friend of mine who taught, not only taught, he was a Czech Airman. He flew the line for a long time. He flew the line when I was there flying the line. He later became a Czech Airman and we've remained friends ever since. And he flat out told me, and he's since retired, but he said, honestly, Kenny, if I was doing my job correctly, I would shut down half the EMS bases that I visit and give checkrides. And this discussion was with another one of our— well, it was Brian Rutledge, our— that's helped us with a lot of videos over time. He was head of aviation unit. And he said, law enforcement pilots are the same way. They study all year— I'm sorry, they don't study. They go on their shift, they fly around, then they go back and take a nap or watch TV, eat, goof off, then they go back out and fly their other shift. Nobody opens up cracks open a POH or studies. So this guy says, if I shut down half the bases, of course they'd fire me and I wouldn't keep my job very long. And he said he would harp on all these guys. You sit here for a year watching TV, taking naps, you know, teasing the flight nurses and whatever. And all of you are waiting until the day before I show up to open a POH. It's obvious. And they even told us that at our original training. They're like, guys, throughout the year you need to be refreshing. You know, once a month pull out the POH or something. Be, do, do something to keep your knowledge fresh. And they said, how do we know when you're waiting the night before? We can tell by the way you're, by that, we can tell by your knowledge when we show up in give 135 checkrides. So in the professional environment, it's very common that a pilot will just go fly, do the job. I saw another video. I saw a video from Bell where they were asking people, professional pilots, what is LTE? Or what is retreating blade stall? Or whatever the case is. And these professional pilots were all like, start trying to answer, and then they stumble and they laugh and they giggle. So very common in the professional environment for people to let their knowledge slide. And I'll be honest, it's quite interesting whenever we would like change a different aircraft or we did night vision goggles or whatever the case is, or even doing the 135 checkrides, you'd have one guy on duty, they'd bring in two guys that are off duty to do their 135 orals and check and their flights because they usually had a backup aircraft there for that. And when they would ask the The guys I worked with, when they would ask him a question and they couldn't answer, they'd look over at me and ask me, and half the time I would answer it. Not because I'm so much smarter than them, that's not what I'm saying. Because I was actively teaching, it was keeping aerodynamics, regulations, and different things, it was keeping those things fresh in my mind only because I'm an instructor on my days off. These guys were all Fly EMS and then for 7 days they're off doing whatever, and they're not flying, teaching, doing anything helicopter-related. So for the professional environment, knowledge is key. Knowledge is key at the beginning as a student. Knowledge is the key all the way through from day 1, all the way through. We consistently see a lack of knowledge on a weekly basis. We hear the stories on a weekly basis. So stay current between lessons. Here's another big one. Here's what happens at flight school. You check the weather. Oh, the weather's bad. You call up, hey, the weather's bad, I'm not coming in today. If you have a scheduled time, go in and do ground school with your instructor. They still need to make money. Don't cancel just because the weather's bad. Take every opportunity that you can go in to sit down with your instructor and do ground. Take every opportunity and always carry your bag with you. Have a bag with your logbook and your different pieces and parts that we talked about before we started this presentation at 4:00. Have all that stuff with you every time because people will go to the airport and then they'll go, oh, maybe on the preflight you find something and the mechanic has to do maintenance and you can't fly till tomorrow. And the instructor will say, let's do some ground. Oh, I don't have my books. Take your books with you every time you go. Go in, try to always be prepared to do ground, always take your stuff with you. Don't cancel because the weather is bad or it looks iffy. Go take your books, sit down, and work with your instructor. I better get moving. I got more I want to tell. Any questions? All right, treat mistakes like feedback. Teaching pro pilots do not hide from mistakes, they use to improve. I can tell you that I've made every single mistake, every single headache, and every single heartache. I feel like I've had them, and most all of you do as well. This training, going through from the beginning as a student all all the way to professional pilot, you're going to have your hurdles, you're going to have your bumps in the road. You know, I've been through a helicopter accident. I have, you know, half bankrupt myself going through the lessons and getting all the way through to CFI. And I can go down the list over and over and over of the things that I've done wrong. And, or maybe I didn't do something wrong, I just approached in the wrong way. So, Know that it's a learning process. Every single time you go in to fly, you're going to learn something. Every time you go to fly to a different place, you're going to learn something. You fly with a new instructor, you're going to learn something. You switch aircraft, you're going to learn something. You go to another flight school, you're going to learn something new. I tell these guys when they come in here, every single person that comes here to fly with us, I learn something new every time. And it's basically every single day. These guys will come up with maybe a memory aid or instructor explains something to them and we'll be out in the helicopter and they'll explain it the way somebody else explained it. I'll go, oh, I've never heard that explained that way. I really like that. And then I'll adopt it. All of my good stuff that I have, I stole from somebody else and I say stole, but I learned from someone else. I got lucky in the beginning to fly with some really good people that taught me some good stuff, and the different experiences that maybe drug my training out actually helped me. So don't shy away from different instructors, different schools, different aircraft. Every single one of those experiences helps you learn, and the mistakes Let's talk about weather and the no-go decision. I'm gonna plug the no-go button real quick. Live to fly another day. HelicopterGround.com. That is created because of a couple mistakes that I know that I've made where I took off, luckily I didn't crash, I didn't kill anybody, but I've had a couple times that I a weather decision scared me to freaking death. And I don't want to say that I recommend you go out and scare yourself. However, when the shit hits the fan and you wonder whether you're going to survive and get back on the ground again and ever go home and, you know, see your family again, when that happens, it has a way of changing your way of thinking. So mistakes are what happens. We're human beings, but by being as prepared as we can be, as knowledgeable as we can be, studying harder than everybody else, knowing the POH, knowing the helicopter flying handbook, I'll tell you, it's not really that hard to be better than the average pilot. It's not that hard. All you got to do is apply yourself, and you got to do more than the average person. Not study just to pass. Study for— go for that 100% on that written test. Go for answering every question on the checkride. Nobody's ever going to hardly do it. He's going to stump you somewhere. But the more you study, the more you know, the easier life's going to be. And know that along the way, we're going to do dumb things and we're going to learn from them. Prepare like a professional before every flight. Professionalism starts before the engine starts. Preparation reduces stress and sharpens decision-making before the lesson even begins. This works two ways, for the applicants and for us as instructors. Let me use, I'll use myself for an example. There's been plenty of times throughout my career where I'm just like, oh, somebody's coming in for ground and I'll just wing it today, you know, we'll sit down, do the ground or do the flying or whatever. There's been many times that somebody's come in and then I want to show them something where I want to demonstrate something and I'll go, oh shit, I don't have that. Oh, I left that at home. On our end, it's our job to be prepared when you get here and make sure we have the information that we want to present for the day so that you can have a good lesson so that you can make, make progress. So same thing for you guys and girls going for Professional pilot means you're going to go the extra mile. And it all starts before you ever leave the house. How do you feel in the morning when you get up? The I'm safe checklist. Do you feel good? Did you get enough rest? Are you having the proper nutrition? Getting to the airport on time, taking the time to properly pre-flight. Many times that gets overlooked or you hurry up and, well, we'll just do a quick pre-flight because we got to get in the helicopter because Joe Blow's coming in at 2 PM, or whatever the case is. Everything should be slow, smooth, and methodical, starting with showing up at the airport, properly doing a pre-flight, checking the weather, looking at all the things pertinent to that flight, taking your time moving the aircraft out. We make mistakes. We've— we ran over Heather's foot and fractured it with a helicopter dolly. I've stuck a tail rotor through a window on a hangar. We've ran rotor blades into doors, among many other bad things that have happened. Even moving the helicopter in and out of the hangar is a big deal. Everything slow, smooth, and methodical. Here's a big one that I see as a problem, and I see this from people coming here the last 3 years. Everything you want to do with a helicopter should be slow, smooth, methodical. Our training should be slow, smooth, and methodical. And someone will come here from some flight school, East Coast or wherever, West Coast, doesn't matter. And we'll get in the aircraft and they're rushing in the helicopter, switch, switch, do, and they're all hurrying and they're all getting all out of whack. And I'm like, whoa, whoa, whoa, slow down. Why are you going so fast? And they go, well, that's what they want. And I'm like, who's they? Well, my flight school or my instructor. And I'm like, are you seriously, are you, are you seriously being pushed like that at your flight school? And they're like, yeah. And I'm like, well, what's their idea? Well, they just, they got to go. They want to go and they want to get in the pattern and they want to fly. And that's the way the whole lesson is. And I'm like, so I tell everybody the same thing. When I went into EMS, I had a background in fire department, police department, towing service, heavy-duty towing service where we responded quickly all the time to different things. And at my first EMS base, the pilot says, the base manager when I go there, he says, so I see you have a background in emergency services, police department, fire department. I'm like, yep. He goes, so you're probably used to running to the fire truck or running to the police car. And I'm like, yeah, absolutely. And he said, well, I want to be clear, we don't run to the helicopter, we walk. And he said, as we walk to the helicopter, we do a walk around. And as we walk around, we touch every single panel on the aircraft as we go around. We climb in, we put our seatbelt on, we pull out our checklist, and then we go through that checklist step by step by step. Some people will say, well, that's a medical emergency. It's a medical emergency for the people in the back. The pilot, or I'm sorry, the nurse, the medic, the people at the scene where you're going to land, or the hospital where you're going to land, they're all in gear mode. Oh, go, go, go, hurry, hurry, hurry. This is an emergency. As a helicopter pilot in EMS, you can't think of it as an emergency. It's like every time I hear a helicopter pilot or I'll see it like on Facebook, yeah, I'm out saving lives today. You know, that's not how they want you to look at it. You are transporting people from point A to point B. And some people go, well, that's, you know, some people think that's unfeeling or that offends them. Well, it comes right from— it came right from our company and they show you plenty of instances and show you accident history. Of what happens. You have to walk to the helicopter, you have to use the checklist, you got to put your seat belts on, you got to do everything step by step. The moment that you start rushing, the moment you start trying to do a hurt— doing things in a hurry is when you make mistakes on the ground before you ever take off. And these mistakes here can end up costing you life, your life later, and everybody in the aircraft with you and all the homes and businesses of people that you're flying over. And they said, we don't make this real clear to the general public, but your job is like you're hauling cargo, like you're hauling boxes of nails. And that's the way that has to be because you have to be calm. You have to be able to get everybody safely from here to there and not kill everybody. You know, I'm a Star Trek geek and I love the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few or the one, right? Yes, you have a patient that you're transporting, but that's not your job. That's the medical crew's job to take care of that patient while they're in there. Your job is get everyone safely point A to point B. That's it. So if that's the way in EMS, where you're responding to emergency medical situations, the pilots all have 2,000 hours or more, we're flying a $6 million aircraft, responding to emergencies, and they wanted every single thing that we do to be slow, smooth, and methodical, then why is your flight school go, go, go, hurry, hurry, hurry, come on, come on, come on, come on? That's one of the biggest problems I see. And if your flight school's doing that, I would question it. I would question the instructor. I would question the higher-ups. And if that's the way it's going to continue, I would find another flight school. That is not the way you want to train. That's not the way it should be. And I do have people come here who have been trained slow, smooth, and methodical, and are along with that school of thought. So I'm not saying everybody that comes here, hurry, hurry, hurry. I'm saying a lot of them. And that's always the same question and always the same answer. It's because of what my flight school wants. It's what my instructor wants me to do. That should not be the case. Number 6, focus on standards, not perfection. This is a good one. And I can simply explain this one. Our examiner, each time he comes in here, and let's just say it's a private pilot, it doesn't matter, private, commercial, CFI, same speech before they get started. He'll ask them, are you familiar with the ACS? And they'll go, yeah, sure. Airman Certification Standards, right? And he'll ask them like, okay, today on downwind, what's our plus or minus our altitude within 100 feet. Okay, good. Or whatever the case is. And he'll say, are we going for perfection today? And usually the applicant will say, yeah, right? Everybody wants perfection and strives for perfection. However, he said, perfection is not the standard today. The standard today is the ACS. He said, you've been most likely been trained to a higher level because you're here. Kenny Keller and his guys do a really good job of preparing people and they have a very high standard here. It's okay to go beyond the standard, but the test that we're doing today is to the standard in ACS. I'm not looking for perfection. I'm looking for the standard. We want to get as close to perfect as we can, but nobody is perfect on a checkride. Nobody answers everything on a checkride. He even says, when I do my yearly checkouts with the FAA, I don't get everything right. So today is about a standard. So in your training, A standard is slow, smooth, and methodical. Taking your time, doing things right, and getting home at the end of the day. You know, when I was in law enforcement, they had a saying, better be carried by 6 than tried by 12. You know, meaning what mattered at the end of the day is we go home. You make the best decisions that you can for everything that you're doing. And be careful of outside influences because that's where you get into trouble. All right, let's hit one more and we'll see any questions and then we should wrap it up because, oh my gosh, it's 5 o'clock. Lindsay goes, let's be done by like 5:30 today. And I'm like, oh, it's gonna be no problem. I'll whip right through this stuff. And as always, but that's okay. We've covered a ton of good stuff today and we're gonna do some more of these. So let's, get on to the next one. Think beyond the next checkride. Strong pilots do not stop at the next rating. They build a path from private to instrument to commercial to CFI with long-term efficiency in mind. So this would be a good time to talk about professional pilot. That's what we're pimping today during our 14-year celebration, is that we have private pilot, we have instrument pilot, we have commercial pilot, and we have CFI. So there's monthly and yearly options, but those that are going for the professional pilot route, we have an option for professional pilot. And during the special in March for the 14-year celebration with Pro Pilot, we got the fancy Hogs ball cap that you get along with Pro Pilot, and I'm offering 6 one-on-one Zooms along with Pro Pilot. So the beauty is The training is going to be there for you whether you're right now at just starting out, but you know you're going to professional pilot, or you're partway through, you're working on the ratings. The private, instrument, commercial, CFI courses are all going to be in there. All courses have quizzes for each section of training. There's a practice written test for every course at the end of every test. We have That written test practice is available as FAA Wings credit. We have progress, progress tracking in every single course so that as you're going through, it's tracking the videos that you've watched so you know exactly what content you've been through, what you still need to watch, and you can still of course go back and view them at any time. We have our AI in there to help you as you go through the courses. Of course, everything these days is mobile-friendly. You can be on any device. We have also a mobile app that goes along with the course after sign-up. So the professional pilot is lifetime Hogs ball cap and then the 6 Zooms. And the 6 Zooms you can use for whatever you want. Let's just say you need some help with the basic ground school and then you want a muck check ride, or you want me to get on and ask you questions as though I'm the examiner and just prep you. You want a little bit of advice in there on your career. I've had guys I've helped— we've done this special before, Pro Pilot with Zooms, and I've only done a few of them, but the people end up becoming good friends. And I help them mainly not just prepare for ratings but help them get through stumbling blocks. And what we say is What we've learned, if you're struggling somewhere through part of the training, it doesn't matter what it is, whether it's ground school or a certain maneuver or whatever it is that feels like a mountain in front of you and you just can't get over it, you just can't get past it. What we've found is we can turn a mountain usually into a molehill, right? Just because we've been there, we've seen that, we've seen it before, or in my case, I've made that same stupid mistake or I've had that same stumbling block and I figured out a way to get past it. Not because I'm so smart, just because I got good at, you know, battling stumbling blocks, finding a way, somehow finding a way to get to that goal, get to the dream and get accomplished what I am trying to do. So those Zooms can be used for anything. Any of that. So super powerful for anybody that wants to have all the training available for them all the way through their ratings. We have CFIs, we had a Hog Superfan here recently. He's on a monthly option, but he's keeping it. He goes, I continue to keep it because I go in as a CFI every once in a while, I'll go in and rewatch a video in a certain area because I want to refresh my memory before I have to teach it in the classroom. So it'll be there for you in the ProPILOT as long as you need it. Any questions before we get out of here, Lindsey?

Still quiet in chat? Still kind of quiet.

No questions in chat. Well, remember, do me a favor. Maybe you just came in and didn't hear my plea earlier. Do me a favor and subscribe to the channel. We're a couple hundred away from 50,000, and normally I get about 60 to maybe 80 subscribers per month. So you can see why it takes forever to get to where you wanna be, and 50,000 is my mark. My birthday's coming up the 15th. Man, it's almost here. I'd love to hit that by my birthday. I don't know if it's possible, but do us a favor, subscribe to the channel for me. Help me hit that 50,000 just because. I'm not getting a play button, I'm not winning anything, I don't get any money. It's just something that I've been striving for now for— I got on YouTube in 2010, so 16 years. And I'll thank everybody that came in today and people that have been with us for the last 14 years. Keep coming back, keep reaching out when you need something, and let us know how we can help. And we'll see you in the next video. Peace out. You feel the pressure to fly but know the right decision is to stay on the ground. Hit the hogs, no-go, and live