Kenny Keller walks through the hover-square pattern, a drill where you set down and pick up at 10-15 feet around a square to practice all wind directions. He uses it with checkride-prep students and as a refresher for himself, and points to free resources including his Private Pilot Study Guide.
Coffee time.
Live to fly another day. Helicopterground.com.
All right, are you recording? Yeah, I know. It's kind of the trademark thing now, right? It's always like, are you recording? Are you recording? Day 304. Is that it? Three or four? Yeah. Day three or four. Three or four. And it's legitimate coffee. And yes, this is the afternoon. Just did a flight with my CFI applicant here from Houston, Texas, CheckRide Thursday. And anybody comes in from out of town, of course, your first day, you are flying in a different place. You're flying in an aircraft you've never been with before, probably flying with me for the first time. So it's a lot of new stuff. And we did two flights today. He's doing well. In the second flight, we went right over here to the big open grass area. And even though he's a commercial pilot, we're going to see if I, I had him go do the standard old square pattern. I like to talk about where you just go, pick a nice open area, set it down, pick it up, go 10, 15ft, set it down, pick it up. Same thing. Keep going all the way around the square back to where you started, and then do it the other way. And the point is, you're getting practice in all the different wind directions, even though we like to pick up and set down the wind. But this exercise is to help students hone their skills and see their own progress, because when you show them this early, they can see their progression as they get better. And in my case, since I've been flying this, we've done four ratings. I'm always in the left instructing. I'm not really flying most of the time, so it's easy for me to sit over there and critique someone. But when it's time for me to do my skills, I was out the other day and I'm like, you know what? I could use some all my own refresher here. And I went right over there to the big field, and I spent about a half an hour doing nothing but sitting down, picking up, go over, sit down, pick up, and again all the way around, all the way around, the other way. And I did some hovering around a point, hadn't done that in a while, and some other hovering stuff. And I went, you know what? For my own personal benefit, going out and doing that hovering square pattern, I realized how helpful that is and why I encourage students to do it. But for those of us that are commercial guys that maybe even flown in a while, or a CFI where you're Always teaching on one side, telling people, that's easy. It's easy to sit there and critique someone all day long on how the auto should look into a really beautiful auto. And then I go do it myself. I'll be like, oh hell, I haven't done this in a while. Guess maybe I should practice these myself. So anyway, hovering square pattern. If you've never done it, I think it's something you should incorporate. Ask your instructor to do if you've never done it. But again, it's really nice for just honing your own skills no matter what level you're at. Private Pilot Study Guide. We'll put a link down below for that. And since we're flying, we'll put the maneuver guide that's free, we'll put that down below. And you know what? The Private Pilot Study Guide, we have a free first chapter that we'll put down below so you can see what the study guide looks like for the first chapter. And I'm going to have CFR CFI applicants wants to take that home to the hotel tonight because even though he's going for cfi, the Private Pilot Study guide would be good for him to refresh for the next two days for his checkride. That's it. Peace out. See you tomorrow.
Live to fly another day. Helicopterground. Com.
