Airspace Review Part 1 Helicopter Online Ground School

Hello, I'm Kenny Culler, creator of Helicopter Online Ground School. Welcome to our first new live event with our new software that we have. We've done live events in the past, but always struggled with Internet connection and all the normal problems that people have. Well, now we have a really fast Internet connection, so hopefully this is going to go a little bit better than a lot of the ones we've done in the past. As I already stated, we all struggle learning airspace. Very common problem. Most all of us struggled learning airspace in the beginning. And then you get out in the real world and you start flying, and let's say you fly for a year or so and then you go back for another rating, then you're back studying the airspace again, or you're just going to get ready for a flight review. You got to go back and review airspace. So it is kind of hard to learn in the beginning, and it's something that takes review so that you can keep up on it. But it's very important to stay up and stay good with your airspace knowledge, because airspace violations, they tell us, is the number one reason people get in trouble with their ratings is by busting airspace. And then they get some type of enforcement action taken, sometimes against their license. We all spend too much time and money to make some stupid move and end up losing our license over, you know, busting through the airspace, or I should say busting through airspace that we don't have permission to bust through, or something along that lines. So first I want to talk about what is airspace, and then we want to break down between controlled and uncontrolled. Airspace means the portion of the atmosphere controlled by a country above its territory. Controlled airspace exists where it is deemed necessary that air traffic control has some form of positive executive control over aircraft flying in that airspace. Uncontrolled airspace is airspace in which air traffic control does not exert any executive authority, although it may act in an advisory manner. So we have Class A, B, C, D, E and G. There is no F. So let's start off with Class A. All operations must be conducted under IFR or special vfr. All aircraft are subject to ATC clearance, which is air traffic control. All flights are separated from each other by atc. Here you can see the US Airspaces at a glance. You have Class A at the top, marked in red, 18,000 MSL up to flight level 60,000. Then you can see Class B, Class C and Class D, kind of in their order and size. From left to right, Class B is blue, Class C, magenta, and Class D is blue. Again, the pinkish areas down along the bottom is Class G. And then everything else you see in the green is class Echo, class E. So the Class A you see at the top. Most of us as helicopter pilots are never going to be in Class A. Could happen if you're instrument raid, instrument rated in IFR aircraft on IFR flight plan, you might. But for most of us, we're probably never going to be there. So next, let's talk about Class B. Operations may be conducted under ifr, Special VFR or vfr. All aircraft are subject to ATC clearance. All flights are separated from each other by atc. So some memory aids for the Class Bravo are big, blue, busy, and I use an example, o' Hare in Chicago and LAX in Los Angeles. The Class Bravos are the big airports around the country. In the major cities, whenever I'm teaching airspace, whenever I'm sitting with somebody doing airspace, I always bring out a chart and I show the Chicago area because most people are familiar with Chicago. So a good example between the Bravo, Charlie and Delta for the airspace classes for towered airports, o' Hare is Bravo, Midway, pretty good sized airport. Not as big as o', Hare, that's a Class Charlie. And then a smaller airport, Gary, which is in northern Indiana, but close to Chicago, that's a Class Delta. Most people have heard of Gary, Indiana. So you've got the big ones like o' Hare for Bravo, medium sized airport or not quite as big as the Bravo, like a Midway as a Class Charlie and then Class D for a smaller towered airport, Class Delta as in Gary. So again, you can think of those examples as, there's the big one, Class B, Bravo, o', Hare, Class C Charlie, Midway, Class D Delta, Gary, and Class Charlie operations may be conducted under ifr, Special VFR or vfr. All aircraft are subject to ATC clearance. Aircraft operating under IFR and Special VFR are separated from each other and from flights up or operating under vfr. But VFR flights are not separated from each other. Flights operating under VFR are given traffic information in respect of other VFR flights. So memory aids for the Class Charlie are magenta, not as big as a Class B airport, Midway again in Chicago. And then another example would be Akron Canton in Ohio. If you're familiar with the Ohio area, there's a Class Bravo in Cleveland. Akron's not quite as big as what Cleveland is. They have a slightly smaller airport that is a Class Charlie. And you can see there again, Class Charlie in the middle, middle sized airport as far as the Three towered airports goes. Next we'll talk about Class D operations may be conducted under ifr, Special VFR or vfr. All flights are subject to ATC clearance. Aircraft operating under IFR and special VFR are separated from each other and are given traffic information in respect to VFR flights. Flights up operating under VFR are given traffic information in respect of all other flights. Memory age, it's not as big as a class Charlie. It's a little smaller again. Gary in Chicago for an example, Burke Lakefront in Cleveland, which is a smaller towered airport right along the lake. And then there you can see the class D again there in respect to the three sizes of towered airports. Class D being smaller of the three Class E. Airspace operations may be conducted under ifr, Special VFR or vfr. In class C, aircraft operating under IFR and special VFR are separated from each other and are subject to ATC clearance. Flights under VFR are not subject to ATC clearance. As far as is practical, traffic information is given to all flights in respect of VFR flights. So another way to think about class E is everywhere else. Anywhere that is not A, B, C, D or G is class E Echo. So again you can see the green areas there are all class E. I put these silly little blue dots all over the green trying to highlight the green. Everywhere that's not A, B, C or D or G is class E. Next we'll talk about Class G. Operations may be conducted under IFR or VFR in class G. Air traffic control separation is not provided in class G. Traffic information may be given as far as practical in respect of other flights. So class G are the small uncontrolled airports. Those little small magenta dots, circles you see scattered all over a sectional chart. So in this diagram you can see the class G all along the bottom there underlying the other classes of airspaces, the towered airports plus the class E. So that's a review of the different airspace classes. Now I want to talk about basic VFR and I want to hit this next because I've seen a lot of people have trouble with this.

Even add on pilots when they come.

Back later, they struggle remembering this. And then also people on checkrides struggle a lot with basic VFR and I think it's because it is very easy. But in the heat of the moment when you get talking about airspace classes and requirements for each different class, it can be kind of confusing. So for basic VFR you have to have a minimum of three miles visibility and a ceiling of at least a Thousand feet. It doesn't sound that tough, but trust me, I've seen people have this mistake on checkrides and it's happened more than once. And again, maybe a guy walks in, he's an airplane pilot and he wants to do his add on and we'll start doing some ground. I'll say, hey, what's basic vfr? And you'd be surprised at some of the things you hear. But, you know, not anything against an airplane pilot because it's just the way our people are and it. Helicopter pilots are the same way. Coming back for a flight review, I've just seen people struggle a lot with basic vfr and you have to know what it is. So you got to commit this to memory. So some other important things on airspace that you need to be fresh on, things that we have to, you know, keep fresh in our minds. Special vfr. If you want to get into a controlled airspace and it's under IFR conditions, you have to ask for a special vfr. Interesting fact here is you have to request the special vfr. Air traffic control will not offer it to you. And I can tell you, working as the new commercial pilot, my first CFI job, I studied this and I knew this, but I'd never asked for a special vfr. And I went to go flying into Class Delta Airport. And so along the lake and there was a little bit of a cloud layer, but I could see the airport. So I didn't think it was a big deal. I didn't check the ADAs. I just thought, oh, the weather looks okay other than that little area of clouds. So I call up the tower and the tower comes back and says, helicopter such and such field's ifr. State your intentions. So I kind of paused for a moment and I'm thinking, oh, okay, it's IFR now what am I going to do? So real timidly I go, well, can I have a special vfr? And he's like, clear, special vfr, proceed as requested. Da, da, da, da. It was that easy. They cannot offer it to you. If you need the special VFR, you have to ask for it. So IFRs, Instrument Flight Rules. If the field's IFR and you want to get in there, you have to get a special vfr, or at least request a special vfr. If you see no svfr, that is for fixed wing aircraft. If it says no svfr, fixed wings can't get it. Helicopters can still request it. They don't have to give it to you. But even though airplanes can't get the special, we as helicopter pilots can still request a special vfr. Then we have special use airspace and we're going to break some of these down in the next live event. I'm going to go through and do some more airspace and do it more in detail and we are going to review alert areas, military operations areas, warning areas, restricted areas, prohibited areas, controlled firing areas, national security areas. Then we have some other airspace areas, airport advisory areas, military training routes, temporary flight restrictions, flight limitations and restrictions, parachute jump aircraft areas, emergency traffic rules and adas, air defense identification zones. So that gives you kind of a clue while we why we all struggle learning airspace. So that's a review of some of the basic airspace information that you need to be familiar with and have to.

Have fresh in your mind.

So I see a couple of questions from some of our members inside our site where we're transmitting this live and it was live on YouTube as well. So I see some questions there about our membership. So I'm going to roll a video now on our different membership levels and what we are offering as of right now. So we're going to roll that video now and we'll be back to wrap up in just a little bit. Trust me, I feel your pain. I failed my first checkride way back in the late 90s and man that hurt.

I didn't go back for six months after failing my checkride and when I.

Went to go after it again I.

Failed the oral the first time. When I went to go back I sat down, started putting all my notes together in one place and I created my own study notebook and I ended up getting through my private the second time around after studying through my notebook and putting it all together and got into the helicopter world as a cfi.

Started working, started teaching out of my.

Book and then later in my career about five years ago I was working as a full time EMS pilot and we had a new pilot come into.

The base where I was working and and I was working full time as.

An EMS pilot and I was also operating a helicopter company on the side, had my own helicopter and I was struggling along as a one man operation, one helicopter and trying to maintain between that and my full time job. And this young pilot comes in and turns out he was an Internet marketer.

And we started talking about marketing and.

He said you know, you should be online with your helicopter company blogging and doing videos.

So that's what I did. I kind of got hooked on the.

Videos and started blogging and promoting my helicopter company and pretty soon he Says, you know, you should start an online ground school. Because he same as me, he struggled through the years to get his ratings and understood the problem with studying. So I started a online ground school launched at March 1, 2012 and I based it on my original notebook and built this original 10 modules of training. It was just kind of random checkride preparation and it was a little slow getting started but I had people join and, and started helping them out. But along the way people would say, well you know, your modules 1 through 10 are pretty cool but you know.

I want something more structured.

So we then built what we call the practical test standards.

It's basically the same information as the.

Modules 1 through 10. But we took and aligned all that information and set it up with the practical test standards.

So you go through the practical test.

Standards step by step to learn the.

Information that you have to know.

And since we released that about a year and a half ago, we've had record success. People are still using our original modules 1 through 10. Some people like that random checkride preparation.

Especially if say they are a VFR.

Fixed wing guy or girl working on.

An add on rating.

They kind of like how I'm just throwing random things at them, making sure that they need, that they know what they need to know for the checkride. Then other people like the practical test standards. They like that step by step 10.

Section of the PTS laid out one after another.

So we have lots of testimonials from our members, members from all over the world that have taken our training and had huge success with it. And if you haven't seen any of that, you can take our test drive and read through our member testimonials.

They're all real, they're not solicited by me.

Our members, when they get to their.

Checkrides, they're just so excited.

They want to share with me their experience, tell me how they breeze through the checkrides. And some of these people have good instructors, but they just use my training as supplemental help. Other people didn't have hardly any training at all and basically said if it wasn't for you, I would have never got through the rating.

So those testimonials were real and if you want to take a look at.

Them, you can take our test drive down below this video, click the Test drive or test flight, the 24 hour test flight link. You can go in and take a look at our training and see if it's something that you're interested in.

So we've had so much success and I'm really excited.

And I next want to tell you.

About the several memberships that we have.

We have the online membership that includes all the training. We have the original modules 1 through 10, the practical test standards. We have two videos on private pilot versus commercial pilot where I talk about the differences between the two checkrides. They're similar in some ways, but then.

There'S some distinct differences.

And we also have a certified flight instructor section we've been working on as well. So again, you can always go in and take the test drive, take a look around and see if it's right for you, see if it's something you're interested in. If you want to then pursue our membership, you can do that. If it's not something you're looking for, then, you know, we part as friends. No harm, no, no foul. We have people that take the test drive and I've had people come back two years and two late two years, two months later and join the membership. So they come back a week later, a month later, year later.

So it's.

I really like the test drive because it gives you a chance to go in, look around, see our training firsthand and make an informed decision. So we now have the Practical Test Standards on dvd. And I originally built this training just to be online. And I had a young gentleman who called me up one day and said, hey, you know, my Internet access isn't so good. Could I get your training on DVD? And that's why I created the DVDs. And there are still people out there that want a DVD for those reasons, like when they're going to be somewhere and they're going to have a laptop, but they don't have Internet access, they're in some remote place or on a plane or whatever the case is.

So that's why we created the DVDs.

And a lot of people really like the DVD as well. And what we currently have on the DVD is we have the practical test standards on DVD. All 10 sections of the practical test standards are on eight separate DVDs.

So if you're interested in our membership.

You can go down below this video and, and we have a three payment option where you can make the first payment to get started and then two more payments in 30 days and another 30 days after that. Or you can go with the online membership that's there and pay the cost and just have access to our site, to the helicopter online ground school site.

And then we have a couple other memberships.

We have the online with dvd, we have the online with my two Books.

We have Helicopter Check Ride, that is.

Amazon best seller and this thing is really cool. I'm really proud of it. I released it last fall and again I made the book as something to get people interested in learning to fly. Some idea what it's all about and also put a lot of things in there for current pilots that want to refresh their memory on different things. And I have information on check rides and turns out I've been inspired by the people that read my book. In the first chapter I just kind of talk about how I got started and the struggles along the way and.

A lot of people really identify with.

That and I've had incredible feedback with that. So there's the option of that book along with my notebook and we now have several versions. I originally trained in the R22, so.

This has some R22 specific information in.

It which we put kind of all into one chapter. We are working on a Robinson version and then we also have an Enstrom version. So you can get our online package, you can get my DVDs, DVDs and books or just the online and the books. So if you're ready to get started, you can go down below, click the appropriate link. We have a 30 day money back.

Guarantee and we've had that in place.

The whole three and a half years we've been online. We have very few refunds. And the way I feel about it is I need to have that in place so that you can have the confidence to try out our training. And if you decide that it's something that's not right for you, you must contact me within 30 days prior to the 30 days being up to get your refund. But the refunds we've had, they're no hassle, no money back, no hassle guarantee. You just email me and say, hey man, thank you, but the training just wasn't for me. I refund your money, there's no hassle.

I don't ask you why, I don't.

Hound you with questions and the burden is on me to provide you with the value. I'm that proud of my training and again that's why I'm willing to take.

The risk that I'm going to be.

Able to help you and it's going to be able to help you learn the knowledge and get through the checkride preparation you need to get through to have the confidence to take that test. So if you want to get started today, you could go down click the appropriate link below. Again, you can take the test drive as well. Go in take a look at our training. And then I also have my email down below. You can email me with your questions. I also have my phone number down there. You can text me. Text is best because I'm recording on a daily basis and when I'm recording.

My ringer is off and I do.

Not answer the phone. So text is best and. Or email. That's down below. Take the test drive, click the appropriate link and if you have any questions, let me know and I'll be happy to answer them. I can always work up a special package. For example, I had a gentleman who bought my book helicopter checkride on ebay. And then a week after he bought the book and got it and read it and couldn't put it down, he bought my full package and he emailed me and said, kenny, I've already got your checkride book. Can I substitute your checkride book for a pilot logbook?

And I said sure, why not?

You know, approximately the same value. And for that gentleman, that's what I did. He didn't want two copies of the.

Book, he needed a logbook. So I substituted the log book. So I can always take special requests.

Too in those situations. So go down to the appropriate link below, click the membership button, send me a message, ask me a question, Take our test drive.

If you do decide to join our membership and you're a past test drive.

Customer, you can log in with your old email the system. I won't send you a new email. You can go back and log in with your old email. If for some reason you've deleted it or you can't find it, just send me a quick message and as soon as I get it, I'll go in and reset your account and send you a new login. Most of the time the system works really well. If you decide to join our membership, once you click the Buy now button and you fill out your form of payment, you should get immediate access to the site. Give it about 10 or 15 minutes. If the email doesn't arrive, check your.

Inbox or I'm sorry, check your spam.

Filter and if you still don't find your login again, send me a message.

Let me know that you didn't receive.

The login and I will get to.

It as soon as possible.

So any questions, let me know. Ready to join the membership? Go down below, click the appropriate button and we'll see you on the inside.

Of our members area. So hopefully that helped you.

This has been a pretty good event.

For our first one, that is our first one in a while. First one, with the some new equipment and a faster Internet speed, the momentum just keeps growing.

I'm having a blast.

I love coming to work every day. So if you have any comments or.

Feedback, just put the put those in the box below.

And there's also a link for our test drive or our test flight, our 24 hour test flight where you can go and look at our training and also a link for our membership information video. So go below, click one of those links and we'll see in the next video.