Kenny Keller (speaker) delivers a short advisory monologue for helicopter student pilots, emphasizing three main recommendations: commit to self-study, obtain your medical certificate and complete the written test early, and keep dual instructional flights short (about an hour) to maximize learning and minimize cost. He cites an anecdote of a student with 44 hours who had not soloed to illustrate inefficient training practices and closes by previewing Day 27.
Questions this video answers
1) Commit to regular self-study; 2) Get your medical certificate and complete the written test early; 3) Keep early dual flight lessons to about one hour each.
About one hour (speaker mentions 52–53 minutes as typical before shutting down).
Chapters
Fact that if you're going to do this and you're going to pursue the rating, you're going to have to commit yourself to study. You could have your instructor hand feed you all of the ground that you need, but most likely he doesn't have the time to do that or doesn't want to do that. So you're going to have a lot of studying involved. So just make up your mind that right from the beginning you're going to study and you're going to do what your instructor tells you and what he shows you and you're going to follow a good course of action because that's the biggest part of it. It takes a lot of self study and you just have to make up your mind that that's what you're going to do. Then the next thing I want to mention is get your medical in the beginning and get your written test out of the way. So many times students get close to solo and we harp along the way. Get your medical, get your written done, and if we don't force you to do it, half the time they won't do it or you won't do it. Make up your mind that you're going to get the test prep book, whatever you want to use for the written test study and get that thing out of the way. The sooner you can put that to sleep and forget about that, the better off you're going to be. And same thing with the medical. A lot of guys, they wait and they wait and they wait and you end up holding up your solo, which in time ends up costing you more money if you don't get that done and get it out of the way. So that's number two. And number three, this is another one that, that I've mentioned before. And if your instructor is flying you more than an hour in the beginning, he's stealing your money. Now I'm not talking about cross countries, I'm not talking about if you have the money and after an hour of training you want to go somewhere and go grab lunch and you're willing to pay for it, that's one thing. But I just had another guy call the other day and he's got 44 hours and hasn't soloed. And, and I said, well, he doesn't give me much of the background. I just said, well, one thing, make sure that you know, your instructor's not flying you more than an hour at a time in the beginning. And he said, well, funny you say that because my log book has 1.6, 1.7. 1.8. And the guy's never soloed. And this is stuff in the pattern. So I've been teaching over 10 years, and the human brain, the average guy, well, I'll say 99% of everybody, about an hour is all you're going to be able to handle. You can fly longer, but your learning curve is going to go down after that hour. The guys I'm flying with now, about 52 minutes, 53 minutes, something like that. We're back on the dolly, shutting down because you want to end on a good note. If you go any longer than that, your performance is just going to go downhill. And if you're trying to clean up some kind of an issue at the end, it's just going to get worse. So there's three things, important messages for you guys getting into this, and I just wanted to hit that today with some of the things that have come up here in the recent past. And I'm even guilty, too, of not pushing my students as hard as maybe I should to study. So I'm turning over a new leaf today and gonna kind of come down on them just a little bit, or not come down on them. But that's one thing that I need to do is kind of kick my students in the rear, just a little button and really harp the, you know, let's get the ground done, or let's hit the ground hard. Let's get the medicals, let's get these other things done out of the way that need to be done. So anyway, hopefully that helps. They are very important messages, and you just got to make your mind up. If you're going to do this, you got to do it. And if you have the money to just drag it out and it take however long, that's great. But the majority of us don't have that kind of money to just drag the training out. So those are some things to help you get through it and save a little bit of money along the way and get the rating and get on with your career. So thanks for stopping by and we will see you on day 27. Thanks.
