Kenny Keller shows how to land a helicopter on a dolly. Approach from a hover, move forward slowly while descending, use small hover patterns, and abort if it gets unstable. Practice makes it less scary.
With a decent hover going. And then move the helicopter forward slowly, bringing it down and ease it onto the dolly.
Live to fly another day. Helicopterground.com.
What I do with my coffee. Are you recording?
Yeah.
Day 301, Coffee with Kenny. Mm. I know you dig the cup. Of course you do. Luckily we got the easy wheels, but we want to talk about landing on a dolly. These are superb. I move this thing in up on myself. No big deal. No problem at all. But way back when I got started, I was laying on a dolly and again, one of them Vietnam era pilots that taught me a lot of really, really good stuff. I went to work at a place and he's like, hey, don't let the dolly, the helicopter platform intimidate you. He said, let me show you something and we're going to show you a clip. We just went out and shot and we're going to show you the clip of it. We're going to show you what he taught me about landing on the dolly. Here's the thing, if this is the dolly, if you come up and try to come straight down, you'll go like this. He taught me something about come up, stop, come in nice and slow, do a little hover square pattern. If you screw it up, come back, try it again. But we'll show you now. We'll roll the clip. All right.
Going out to remake a video I did 12 years ago. Yes, Lindsey, back before I had any gray hair.
Today anyway.
Okay, go right ahead, be my guest.
I'm gonna showcase your tan lines off of your shorts though.
Okay, Nice.
At least I've got them.
All right.
I first started doing this an old timer taught me, instead of going over top of the dolly and then trying to come straight down, just start back away from the dolly with a decent hover going. And then move the helicopter forward slowly bringing it down and ease it onto the dolly. And if it gets too squirrely on you and you're uncomfortable, just pick it up and go. Do a hovering square turn. Take a big deep breath, come back in and try it again. So here we go for my first time on. And I'm going forward, coming down, going forward, coming down, going forward, coming down. And there we are. Okay, so the thinking is that set down was okay, but let's say I wanted to practice. So go forward to get away from the dolly.
Clear the tail left.
I'm going to make a right hand turn and I'm going to do a little hovering square pattern and go around, set it up again. So this is the Whole idea. And if somebody goes, well, but yeah, you're wasting a lot of time to go back and try again. Well, you know what, you're getting a little hover practice in. And we can always use a refresher from time to time, no matter what stage we're at in our career. So let's do a little hover square pattern, come around and set it up again. And the beauty is if you're struggling and you're a little bit nervous, we all get nervous on any given day. Especially let's say you're going, maybe you've been landing on a dolly for a while, but it's always calm. And now you're trying to do on a windy day and you're a little bit nervous. Everybody's skill depends on how much sleep have you had the night before. How do you feel for the day? How are things going? So this gives you a chance. If you got a little nervous trying to set it down gives you a little bit of a moment, Take a big deep breather, do a little hovering tail, clear left, come around and try it again.
So there you go. It's food for thought. And I've over the years watched people and when I see at another airport and I see something going on and I see somebody come in, they do that nice little angle to the dial. I'm like, yeah, this is going to be good. Watch. Or if I see him going straight down, I go, hey, watch how much you want to bet that this guy will get wobbly. And it's pretty common. So just a little trick. We did that video 12 years ago. It was one of the first videos ever made. We thought we got the shiny yellow 44. Let's just shoot it again. Go below for, for this, the private pilot study guide. Over 400 questions, 80 pages. People are digging it. We have a member coming up this month for another final approach course. Member coming from Florida. I zoomed with him today. He's been through this twice. His knowledge is superb. This thing is badass. It's thick, heavy duty link down below. So stay tuned. More coffee with Kenny's coming. And I can't tell you what tomorrow's gonna be because I'll know when I get him. Start drinking coffee tomorrow. See you tomorrow. Peace out. Hell yeah, peace. Oh, yeah.
Live to fly another day. Helicopterground. Com.
