Day 6 H.O.G.S. Exclusive Instrument Handbook Giveaway- Send in Your Helicopter Questions

All right, we're going to cover some questions from yesterday's live event. One of them is about taking the left door off and why. There's a notice about the taking off the left door on a Robinson and a question about category and class and a question about deviating from ATC clearances for emergencies. And then there's one other one. So we're going to answer those in a minute. And then we're going to take some questions from you guys tuning in. And we just wanted to highlight a few of the members from the HOGS Wall of Fame. So we just turned it on today and we just picked. As we started rolling through the different pictures, we just picked some different ones to tell you about. This is Jamie Cobb, who you've heard me mention many times, he was the inspiration for the final approach course. He's the one that had 200 hours in helicopters, eight different instructors. Still wasn't done. He was sick of it. About to sell his beautiful orange R44 and he used HOGS videos to prepare. Came up here and we finished him in nine days. I sent a pilot down to get him and we brought him up here and finished. He started the final approach course idea. Then we got Caleb. Wanted to mention Caleb. He popped up. Let's stop there. Caleb used HOGS for private commercial instrument and CFI has been here to visit with us. Fun to fly with. Super neat guy. Wanted to mention him. Over here is Caleb. Caleb was up this year to do his commercial checkride. We did him in a week. He was really good in the aircraft. Need a little extra help with the ground. We went all day every day for like seven days to finish up his commercial. And now he's out there in the world, traveling all over the place and flying a bunch of different aircraft and having the time of his life. And then we got Holly Gardell. Harley was one of our customers that came and did her CFI in the instrument. And Holly was exceptional in the fact that we did her in two weeks even though she had no instrument time and didn't have a chip on her shoulder. And some of her stuff was so good that I'm like, can I record that when she was practicing for her cfi. So we have some of our online course videos are from Holly and people love them and that's why we've kept them in there, even though her CFI was like eight years ago. So another look at the HOGS Wall of Fame. A little more of the sharing the floor. Fun of the stories because a lot of these People, you know, it's more than just somebody getting a rating. They come here, we get to meet them, sometimes they fly with us. So pretty darn cool. Once you get your rating, if you become a HOGS member, get your rating, send us a picture and we send you the no go button and we get you up on the HOGS wall of fame. And then the first question from yesterday, Good question. One of our viewers yesterday said, why is it that there's a safety notice that says never take the left door off, but then there's in the PoH where it talks about flight with both doors removed? And I can help with that one really quick and easy. Basically what they're saying, it's legal to take both doors off, right? That's why there's an approved speed for flight with doors off. The safety notice is not law. It's not a reg, it's a notice. So the reason they put that safety notice out, and I learned this, I believe when I was at the Robinson factory, there was a helicopter accident where there was a female cfi, had a knee board on her leg and the left door was removed on the helicopter. The knee board came loose and the knee board, of course, came back and ended up into the tail rotor, destroying the tail rotor. And they didn't survive the procedure after the event. So I don't know the specifics of it. I haven't read that specific accident, but an accident was reported because something flew out the window. So basically the safety notice, the way I think of it is if you're gonna take one door off, which is something we do occasionally, take off the right hand door and leave the left door on, because the tail rotor's on this side. So there's a bigger chance if something flies out the side of the helicopter of it going into the tail road. If it flew out the right hand side, less of a chance of it going into the tail rotor. So cockpit organization is key. Working hard to never have anything that can fly out the window. But accidents happen. So that's the reason why there's a safety notice that says never remove the left door. And there's a lot of times where, like we want some extra airflow. So if we decide, well, let's just take one door off, we'll take off the right door and leave the left door on. That way you've got some extra airflow coming in, but you have the safety of having the door on. So that's the reason why he sees that in the poh. And that was a phenomenal Question. All right, next question from yesterday. A gentleman asked, is there a specific type rating to move from the piston to a turbine helicopter? And there is no type rating. There is no additional rating to fly a jet powered helicopter. The only thing in helicopters you have to worry about is once you get up to 12,500 as the weight of the aircraft and above, then you need a type rating for that. But you could ultimately legally get out of the R22, go jump in a jet Ranger and go fly it, and it would be legal. There is no rating for turbine and the same thing for twin engine helicopters. There is no rating for twin engine. The only relevance is 12,500 and above. All right, then we got two questions from yesterday. Well, actually this is, these are questions that have come in from our clone the last 24 hours. And as you may or may not know, we're training our clone all the time and it's really good at answering questions. So here's one that came in that apparently the clone didn't have an answer for. So the clone will now have an answer because we're going to upload this video after we're done. With respect to the certification Airmen, what is a category of aircraft? This, I'm sure this is in hogs. So why the clone had trouble with that I don't know. But we're going to clear this up for you because when you go to take a checkride, they're going to ask you about category and class of aircraft. You have to know this. So if you don't and you're getting ready for a checkride, look this up, review it. My reference is the private panel, private panel, private pilot manual that I really, really like using as a reference point. And your categories are airplane, rotorcraft, powered lift, glider and lighter than air. So under the airplane section you have single engine land, multi engine C, multi engine land, single engine C. So those are all classes of aircraft under airplane, under rotorcraft you have gyroplane and helicopter. Under powered lift you can see they are showing like what looks like kind of an Osprey or whatever. That's the one that lifts up like a helicopter, then flies like an airplane glider. Pretty self explanatory what a glider is. And then lighter than air is either an airship or a balloon. You have to understand which the aircraft you're flying or you want a rating for which category is it, which classes is it. So that's a good resource right there. The private pilot manual or any other resource that you want to use. But you have to understand category and class. And I know on a recent checkride somebody struggled somewhere and the examiner made the comment, well, if you don't understand category and class, you won't understand right away rules, and that's dangerous. Therefore you don't deserve a license. Right? So category in class, super important categories, airplane, single engine, land, multi engine C. Multi engine, land, single engine C. Those are the classes under the category airplane, rotorcraft, gyroplane, helicopter. You got your powered lift, your glider and lighter than air. And then the other question that came into our clone that the clone didn't have an answer for, when would a pilot be required to submit a detailed report of an emergency which caused the pilot to deviate from ATC clearance? We're almost in 2025. I'm still going to use my 2025 or 2024 FAR AIM because I haven't got the new one yet. Obtaining deviation authority to perform an emergency operation. The certificate holder shall provide documentation describing the nature of the emergency to the responsible flight standards office within 24 hours after completing the operation. So another one tip I want to give you, you must understand emergencies, incidents and accidents, when to report them and how to report them. So that's 49 CFR, NTSC B830, I can't talk today. NTSB830, accident reporting. Right. There's the page in the Farium that helps you quickly go navigate to any of this stuff. So anytime you're going to look something up, it's either part 43 maintenance. Part 61 is how you get your license. Part 91 is how you lose your license. Part 67 is medical certificates. And then NTSB 830 is this one down here. I make people highlight those because if you ask, if you get asked a question during a checkride, most likely it's going to come from one of those sections. And I learned this little trick from Tim Tucker way back when I did my cfi. And Tim told two of us. He goes, guys, instructors aren't always showing their students the far aim and explaining to them how to look things up. Make sure you point out those literally, take your marker and do this. And if they go to look something up, it's probably going to be underneath one of those. Could be somewhere else, but more than likely going to come from one of those sections. All right, so that clears up questions from Christmas Day. Today's Christmas Day after. It's the day after Christmas. All right, we're going to cover some questions from yesterday. All right, we're going to cover Some questions from yesterday.

We're live. There it is. Okay.

Yeah, that's confusing. Turn off that audio.

There it is.

Okay. All right, so Lindsey's got some questions for us already in chat. And the first one, I believe was Paul. And one of the types of rotor systems, rigid, semi rigid and fully articulated. And as far as what we fly the smaller training helicopters, I'd say the fully articulated is more stable again, across the board of like all the training aircraft. And we'll, we'll talk about, you know, Robinson, Enstrom, Schweitzer, Cabri. In my experience, the fully articulated is way more stable than like the semi rigid here. We don't usually have rigid in the small training helicopters. You know, some of the larger, more advanced aircraft are ones with rigid. So those could be stable, pretty stable as well. So I couldn't really tell you which is more between rigid or fully articulated. Again, the rigid or more advanced aircraft generally. And what was the next one, Lindsey.

From Bill asking if you can explain the Vouchard method and is it preferred?

Yeah, and we actually, we'll just cover that real quick. We have a good video that Hauser did, and we'll put that down below here that you can watch after the fact. I'll have Lindsay look up the link for it and we'll put that in there. I still pretty much most time just do the standard old method where you just get airspeed and fly away. The traditional recovery is accomplished by increasing airspeed and or partially lowering collective to exit the vortex, which is what we've done for years. In most helicopters, lateral cyclic thrust combined with an increase in power and lateral anti torque thrust will produce the quickest exit from the hazard. So that has become popular. And you know, the typical one that we do just that most of the time is selling with recovering is just you have air speed and altitude, or you have altitude, not airspeed. You have altitude, you can fly any direction. You can go this way, you can go that way. But the whole key is to get moving forward and fly out of it. The Richard method is good for people who are flying in that environment, let's say maybe power lines right where they're working in an environment where they're obviously in the high velocity diagram. They're not real high above the ground. And if they get a sling of power, they would need a quicker way to exit that. They may not have enough altitude to increase speed to fly out of it. And that's why the Bouchard method that they mentioned there was developed, is to help you get out of that by just making those inputs versus flying out of it, taking away that descent. So we'll put that link down below for that video because Hauser really loves teaching that. We have a good video on that. So we'll throw that down below for you to take a look at. And then what was the next one? Oh, go ahead and read it so we get the question right.

Okay, so this is coming back from Howard. He is currently a commercial single engine land and wants to know is it possible to go from commercial single engine land to rotorcraft commercial?

Yes. And I think the other day the mistake was I thought you were trying to go from private to commercial add on. So yeah, you can just do a commercial add on directly. Your commercial airplane or commercial fixed wing. You can just do the add on for the rotorcraft commercial. However, the thing still, the point still plays in that I mentioned the other day, you have to have 35 hours of pic in the helicopter before you can take that track ride. That's where most people what I mentioned the other day, most of the time when they want to do a commercial, initial commercial, they're still gonna have to have 35 pic in helicopters. So you could see why somebody might want to do like you could be a commercial fixed wing, do your add on, private add on first if you chose to, because you get the 20 dual 10 solo, get the rating, then build pic time while you're having front fun. Take up your friends, take up your family. You could be building that 35p.ic because most people don't want to fly around in 35 hours by themselves. But yes, you can absolutely go from airplane commercial, do the 20 hours dual. You'd need the 35 pic outs on around by yourself. So you'd have to get all the requirements finished, get your knowledge up to snuff and take the commercial checkride. And there is no written for the add on. So hopefully that clears that up. I think I know where that mistake came from the other day.

Next one comes from G Bluesman asking you to explain the fadec.

The what?

Fadec.

F, A, D, E, C Fadec.

Yeah.

I'm gonna look like a dummy on this one. I don't know much about the fadec other than I used it and the fadec took care of the whole start process for us. In the EC135, I went from a BK where you did all manual startup. The FADEC in the EC135 was pretty much click, click. You sit there and watch the engine start and take it up to the operating temperature and you sit there back and watch the Fadec. I can't give you a real good off the cuff explanation of Fadec, but I could, we could certainly look into that and do maybe that, maybe we'll do that tomorrow. But off the top of my head, flip the switches and let it start.

Next one is from Leon Journey. He is a military pilot and wanted and he wants to tour as an option. Should he go for an SFR 73 minimums on 50 hours on an R44 for a stronger resume. And what would be the cheapest way to get that?

I get the question. We had one like this the other day, very similar. Commercial or military pilot, right. Going out into the civilian world. Well, you gotta ask yourself the question, of course, what do you want to do? And without a CFI just getting a commercial start flying. Most tours are going to be in an R44, right? There are going to be some other helicopters, but as far as smaller tour helicopters, it's either going to be an R44 or you're probably going to be up into a turbine helicopter. So R44 in my opinion would be the smartest because with your first civilian job, obviously with military time, you probably got a bunch of time, but you're working over to civilians. So most jobs that are going to be out there are probably going to be in R44. Now you've come from the military, I assume you probably have a bunch of turbotime or all turbotime. So you could also be qualified for the other aircraft. So I can't tell you what to do. But as far as the availability of jobs, the R44 is going to be is obviously used by tour. I shouldn't say obviously it's not obvious to everybody. But as far as tour operators, if they're in a gas powered, they're in an R44. I mean if you're trying to do tours in R22, that's almost worthless. That's one person at a time, which you could do, but not very profitable for the people using it. I used to do give helicopter rides in an instrument. It was technically a three Steeder three seater but you could do like an adult and a child. Works good putting two big people in with the pilot and instrument kind of sucky. So as far as the piston versions, the only really good option is the R44. So I would recommend getting the 50 hours you'd need in the R44. Get the SFAR, do all the qualifications due to the fact that that's going to be the most prevalent job for you. For you. You certainly wouldn't have to. With your experience, you may be able to move into one of those tour jobs that fly a turbine aircraft. But because of the availability and the popularity of the R44, I would highly recommend it. And then as far as how can you do that cheaply? Well, it's helicopter, right? So how you could do it cheaply, I don't know, right? Other than do your own research and see who out there has the best rate on R44 and best rates of training. But the problem you have with looking for the cheapest rates is the quality, right? If you're going for the cheapest and you find the absolute cheapest price out there, they could be the best. But what do we know? In general, you get what you pay for. So going the cheap route, the only thing you could do is once you got some time in it, you look, look for some ferry flights. I think there might even be some websites out there that post ferry flights, but I can't tell you what any of them are because I don't search for that kind of thing. But you might want to search around the web for something, any type of websites where they share ferry flights that are available, you know, networking with people. There are some places that you can go along for. Like say in California, they used to have news reporting where you could pay so much per hour, go along with the news pilot. And the news pilot's basically letting you fly. He's a cfi. He's reporting the news or, you know, telling you which way to turn. Turn this way, turn that way, let you fly, and sells at a discounted rate. So I'm not the guy to answer the question on how to get something done the cheapest because I just don't think cheapest is the best way to go. Looking at the quality of training and what you need to get done is more important than cost. And again, no matter how you slice in the R44, it's going to be expensive. Fun little note. We just did the math for our R44 that we operate and my cost per hour at this point in time of making this video is $803.17 an hour. And I did a video video on this a few months ago and somebody got in the chat or the comments after, oh, that's baloney. You could fly more hours and you could get that rate down. Well, yeah, you could. The more it flies, the more you could get a rate down. I just given somebody we've flown the R44 150 or 200 hours maybe. I can't think this year. And of course this is including the problems we had like the overspeed. Insurance paid part of it, I paid for it. But when we figured it out, cost per hour, that aircraft cost me $803.17 an hour to operate. So if anybody out there operating an R44, they've got to be up there close to six, seven, eight an hour or they're losing money. So the R44 is not your cheapest choice but is a good choice if you're wanting to move into the market and try to fly tours. It's the most prevalent thing out there.

The next question is coming from Ronan Gaming and he wants to know your opinion on the secure eight helicopters being introduced to the US market for sale.

Which kind of helicopter?

I might be saying it wrong. Sekir Secure C I C A R E with a little swish. I want to say oh yeah, right here.

I don't know what that is, to be honest, I've never heard of it.

All right, so I'll look it up to see if I can't find anything on it.

I don't know. I haven't heard of the helicopter, to be honest. And you know, we're taught to see if I's. If we, if we don't know, we gotta say I don't know. Right. You don't bullshit people when you don't know the answer. So I am not familiar.

It's a single seat Argentinian design from the late 80s that developed into a tandem two seater and later into a side by side. It's just explaining what it is.

Interesting. I don't know. I wish I could answer your question but in all honestly I don't know anything about it so it wouldn't be for. Wouldn't be fair for me to comment. I do want to comment that Lindsay has her book giveaway already from the first person that asked a question. This is Private Pilot 101. That's the book. We'll sign it for you. Email heatherelicopterground.com Send her your shipping address and we'll sign this for you and ship it off. So I want to mention that before I answer any more questions we got to pay the bills. Questions come in. That's perfect. HOGS pays me dot com. We have affiliate program and this is geared for anybody that you want to make some money on sharing and getting somebody to sign up for HOGS with your own personal link. But this is really geared for instructors. Sign up hogspaysme.com the link is down below this video. You'll have your own access to the admin side of our site, showing anybody that you refer. You'll have a link in there and Heather can help you out with making sure you have the right link. You share your link with your students when they purchase. We pay you 50%. It's a great deal. Our ProPilot sells for $2,800. So if you're a CFI and you get your students sign up for propilot, that means you get 1400 bucks sent to your PayPal after the person makes it past the 30 day, no refund policy. So we're going to pay a little bills there. Any other questions popping up?

How would you go buy your first helicopter from dreaded Nova?

How would you buy your first helicopter? Oh, this is a big topic I have made. I've done this video or this topic on YouTube many, many, many times over the years. And it's a good, it's a great question, right? So I'm not complaining. It's just I answer this a lot. You want to think very long and hard before you go out and purchase an aircraft, right? They're going to be more expensive than what you think. You know, you see a helicopter for sale somewhere. Like the other day I saw one pop up, an R44, $88,000. Wow. And you go, oh, wow, $88,000 for, for a pretty R44. Like wow, that's not that bad. And then when you find out that the things are almost timed out and the money that you're going to spend to have to do the rebuild on it or the, the overhaul on it, you go, oh, that's why it's only for sale for 88,000. Or any helicopter out there, maybe you're looking at an Enstrom and you see an instrument for sale for 120,000. Hey, wow, that was a great price. Well, the engine's probably close to being needing overhaul or a gearbox, whatever the case is. So helicopters hands down are super expensive. So if you want to get past that, right, like just be prepared that this thing is going to cost you no matter what somebody tells you. And what you figure on paper, it's going to cost you more. The manufacturer says it costs $165 an hour to operate that helicopter. Figure it's going to be double. Because you can figure insurance, you can figure, you can guess on maintenance, you'll know you have annuals and 100 hours and all those inspections. But it's the breakdowns throughout the year or it's you run the rotor blade into the side of the hangar going out the door and you got to replace a rotor blade for 40 grand. It's the things that pop up that you're not prepared for that really kills operators. So get past the money part. Money for, let's say for any individual, the money is no problem. You should start in a smaller aircraft like the typical training helicopters. R22, R44, a Switzer, a Cadbury, an Enstrom. All good helicopters, right? So if you're going to fly by one for yourself, you would need to go fly them, right? Like if you're going to put that kind of investment into it, I would go sample them, you know, go get some intro flights. Go actually get in them, right? And see how they fly. How do you fit in them? For example, the R22 doesn't work for a larger frame person or a really tall person. They just may not fit well in the R22 and they may be overweight by what the limitation is. And that doesn't mean you're fat. It means the R22 is built to haul like two, let's say medium sized people. You know, like the training that we do, we always have to ask the question first. Well, what do you weigh? Right? Because depending on who's going to fly with you, the person that can get in, because I'm not about a small guy and Hauser's kind of a brute, he's weighs a little less than me. But we, there's a limit to how much a person can weigh and get in and be legal in the aircraft. And then you have options like say if you're going to be a, you're going to be flying for as a private individual, you're just going to be flying for fun. An instrument is a great choice because of that fully articulated rotor system. Nice and stable. It has a nice baggage compartment on it where you could put in a small suitcase. You could almost fit golf clubs in there. But it might not be quite deep enough. But an instrument has, it's a little more fancy, it's a little more comfortable. Looks a little more like a real helicopter. I mean they're all real, but you know, there would be advantages to an instrument. Schweitzers are cool little helicopters, great trainers, but there's no baggage on those either. And they're slow, right? Cadbury is pretty popular. Getting popular now. Another good choice, fully articulated system. They're cool Little helicopters has a small baggage area, but very, very, very handy. So to give you advice on what you should buy, if I was going to say pick one, I'd pick an R44. And the reason I say that is if you just wanted my opinion, for the smaller piston powered helicopters, with an R44, you can take three people with you when you go to fly somewhere. If you're limited to only one person, that's kind of bummer. If you want to take up a couple people and you want to go fly somewhere for lunch or whatever the case is. And then the R44 also opens up that ability of using it for commercial operations. Maybe you want to buy a helicopter and lease it to a flight school they might want to use to do flight rides on the weekends to make extra money. Not that I would advise somebody else taking a helicopter and using it, but it's an option. So there are many, many choices for you. If you're wanting to buy one private privately, or just one for your personal use, I would just caution you to understand that it's going to cost you a lot more money than what they tell you it is. When you read about it and start talking to people, they're super expensive. So I would spend the time to really take a look at them and figure out what's right for you. You know, a lot of people will tell you, don't fly this helicopter, don't fly that helicopter, don't fly that one. But this is the one, this is the one that you need, right? Eh, baloney. Right. It's, it's what rights for you, what's right for you? What do you, how do you like the look of them? How do you like the comfort level of it? If you're gonna spend that kind of money, get something that you're going to be comfortable in. And the biggest thing about buying one is what is the maintenance history on it? Who did that maintenance? Maintenance is such a big deal. That's why if money's no object, buy a new one. Because then you're getting a brand new aircraft and you can pick the people that you want to maintain it. You know, you're not getting something that's been wrecked, been beat up, been used in training, has log books that maybe may or may not be on the up and up because there's a lot of shady stuff that goes on in our industry, unfortunately, but it's the world we live in. So I would just take the time to research, pick what's best for you. But my number one choice would be R44 will be the way to go.

Somebody asked in chat. Ms. Known wants to know what's the price range for helicopters as brand new, such as the R22 or R44.

You'd have to look, I, I don't know, I don't want to say quote it and then quote it too low. I can give you an average of like say the 2016 R44 that we operate, the value of it is like 425,000. And that's just, I only know that through insurance. And when we first got it and got everything set up, that was what they said the value should be. So an R44, it's a 2016, it's had one fresh out of overhaul, there's 425,000. So a brand new one, I don't know, half a million six hundred thousand, seven hundred thousand. And then it depends on how much you load them up. And on R44, I'm sure if you get all the fancy options and autopilot and you know, glass dash, they might push closer to 100,000. Our 422s, I'd be taking a wild guess, but you know, I'm thinking quarter million dollars in that range, probably a little more maybe for a brand new one.

You can go on to the Robinson website because I know I kind of messed around with, with building. You can technically build your own brand new helicopter and right there at the end gives you the price.

Yeah, yeah, it'd be, it'd be interesting though. I just, I haven't, I haven't looked at buying one for a long, long time. And the one that we operate to lease. So if the other gentleman that they're still watching, I picked a lease for my purposes and I like the lease because it was a one year lease. I could get out of the lease, however, with 30 days notice. And then since my one year is complete now, I, I still have to operate within the limits of the lease, but I can just use it for as long as I need it. And at the point I decide I'm don't need that aircraft anymore with 30 days notice, I just turn it back in. So for me, you know, lease is structured completely different. Right. And it's not your helicopter. But I like the fact that at any time I want to move on, upgrade, downgrade, whatever, I can go 30 days notice, I can send the aircraft back, I have to maintain it, I got to pay for the insurance. Standard maintenance I have to pay for. But I know what it's Going to cost me. And I know I have a way out. I owned one for four years. For the gentleman that asked me, you know, that's why I immediately have a little bit of an attitude about buying. I owned my own for four years and it was an Enstrom and I was trying to use the Toronto flight school and do training but at the end of the four years I'd zapped all my savings, I'd zapped my retirement, I'd zapped everything I had and I had a mess, a financial mess at the end of four years and rebuilt my life with helicopter on ground school. Have used helicopters off and on over the years. But after my ownership and finding out how much they really cost you, that's where I pull from. When I say they tell you 165 an hour, double it. It's only from me owning one for four years and I didn't file bankruptcy, but I certainly could have. I chose to clean up my debt on my own and rebuild my life. So I know firsthand from ownership how expensive they are. And that's why I caution people is because I lived through it. That's the only reason. Before I check in on any more questions, ask hogs.com I don't think I mentioned that. Well, we mentioned it earlier. So when I told you there was two questions from our clone, that link is below@askhogs.com you can go there 24 hours a day, 7 days a week and ask helicopter training, flight and ground questions. And it's pretty freaking amazing. It's about, I'm gonna guess, but I'm gonna say 99 accurate and 99% of the time it can answer the question. Once in a while a question might be asked that they can't, that it can't quite answer, but what it can answer for you and the fact that it's available 24 hours a day, seven days a week is really, really nice. You're sitting around studying, you just have a random question. Type in askhogs.com and you either type in your answer or you can click the call button and just talk to your phone or talk to your iPad or your laptop, have an actual conversation with it and it answers in my voice and in my basically tone because it's reading from 14 years of my digital content that's been piped into it. And tomorrow we're going to do a commercial pilot 12 month giveaway online course. Want to mention that real quick? Oh yeah, and I wanted to mention earlier, do us a favor, subscribe to the channel, if you enjoy our content and us answering questions for you, helping you with different things, flight and ground training related, do us a favor and why I'm trying to get to 50,000 subscribers. Does it mean anything? No. Do I get a YouTube button? No. Do I make more money? No. It means nothing. It means nothing other than just a personal goal for me. I'm at 40, approaching 47,000, I think, or 48,000. And for quite a long time I thought, man, if I get to 50, that would sound pretty cool. So do me a favor, click the subscribe and click the notification bell and you'll get notified when we bring out new videos or we go live. So we're always doing giveaways and giving out free content. So do us a favor and subscribe. And then we do have an instrument book giveaway is the time for that. We got a bunch more questions.

I have a lot of questions. Do you, do you like to talk and talk and talk and they like to come in.

Well, this has been fun. You know, we used to do a lot of this and then we got away from it for a long time. And then this year we thought, hey, before Christmas, let's go live every day for 14 days. And this hadn't been a long time. And once we got into it, I'm like, I actually enjoy this. I think it's fun. And as long as you guys and girls keep coming back, we'll do some more of it. We can continue after the first of the year, do more live events with people showing up and being active. That helps motivate us to do it. So I am enjoying it. So thanks for everybody that comes. Asks a question, waits to ask your question, waits for your answer. I appreciate that. It's fun. We're enjoying doing it. Yeah.

So our next question is coming back from Ronan Gaming and he wants to know or they want to know why don't helicopters have rear view cameras? And they want to know if it's due to FAA regulations and if. And I know you can't handle more than one question at a time, but it's a three for. They also want to know if that's the case, then why are iPads acceptable without passing regulations for gps? You can usage. So first, why helicopters don't have rear. Rear rear view cameras.

Well, what a little bit. I know on this topic and I can find out by the way, I could find out. I have a connection to Robinson that I can get answered about anything answered with a phone call. But I do know that Robinson has helicopters now coming with camera systems installed like that are recording the cockpit. I'm not sure how many options are available, so I don't know if there's any type of rear facing camera that's, that's something that's available. It. Mary, it may very well be. I think we've, I mean we, we film in the Robinsons that we operate. And I put, I have a cool camera that I secure on the skid and I can turn forward, I can turn backwards and I have. So I've mounted a camera on the outside facing backwards. So I don't know that there's any kind of regulation for a camera pointing to the rear. People are filming with airplanes and helicopters and all kinds of aircraft from all kinds of wild positions these days. So I could be wrong, but I don't know of any regulation on camera specifically. I can't say that I've read anything on restricting camera wise. And there might be something out there that I'm not familiar with. But look around YouTube, people are recording all kinds of directions and so then.

Why is it that iPads don't have GPS regulations?

Well, I guess, you know, again, electronic part of all this isn't kind of my expertise. But number one, an iPad may not be have any kind of a signal at all. You may not even be a wireless iPad. So if you have an iPad in there and it's on your leg and you're just using it for information or charts or anything you've downloaded, I don't know that's any different than using a map. Right. Like, I can't see any reason for that. And then there are units like we've got one sitting over there. Somebody gave me. There are units that are designed to operate the GPS portion of an. You can run your iPad off of it, but it's also part of the oh ads B tracking and all that. So there are units that actually you can attach to the aircraft that will. Will take care of the wireless for your iPad and also help with the GPS signals. And again, I don't dig into all that and there's so many people that could go into this for you and go 10 different directions with it. But yeah, I don't see it really being, you know, don't really seeing it being a problem as far as like we have iPads that are wireless that have a wireless signal, but obviously doesn't, you know, interfere with an aircraft. So I wish I had a better answer, but there's not. I'm not that heavy into the techy electronic end of things.

Fair enough, Me neither. Mikey wants to know what's your opinion on the R22 and 44bl delay? It's being increased to a 15 year service life.

I saw that and all I like, I saw a post that popped up. So I haven't read anything official. I haven't asked anybody about that. Sounds great to me. I just question immediately. It's like, okay, well there's a 12 year overhaul. So you have a 12 year or 2200 hour. So what happens if you, what happens at your 12 year old? I don't know. I need to read up on that. I know that it came out and again, I wish I had a better answer for you. All I know is I saw something pop up that said, hey, you can now extend to 15 years. So I know I need to like read an article and see kind of what the thinking is behind that. But I know that I'm sure it was probably Facebook. I think it was the Robinson Facebook page where I saw the post. So there's got to be something beneficial to it and hopefully it helps owners out. But I can't have an intelligent conversation with you because I haven't read the article about what exactly it entails and why they did it. So again, I like having an answer for everything, but I just, I don't know enough yet on that one. I'll do, I'll read the article on that. Somebody sent me one. I just haven't taken the time to read it. I will, I'll dig into that actually and we'll cover that maybe tomorrow if I can remember. If you remind, if you remind me, Lindsay. Yeah, we'll look that up tomorrow before we go live. Okay, let's get more the details behind that.

Next question is coming in from Leon and he understands that most job postings want 50 hours of R44 time. But he's not sure with his military experience if they'll hire him because he has 25 hours R22 and 25 hours R44.

Again, that's going to fall on. Here's what most of the jobs fall back to when you're trying to get on somebody's insurance policy. A lot of times it's dictated by insurance. Right. So my best example is that we talk about often I train and I know we're talking sfar, but just to give you an idea of how insurance can throw a wrench in things, Chris Hauser, one of our online CFIs, and Chris Hauser that comes here helps me fly the R22 and R44 helps me with our final approach courses. I did Hauser's private commercial and cfi and I went to put him on my insurance policy that I had at the time, this is clear, back when I owned the instrument. And the insurance company said, oh, have him go get 350 hours make and model and you can put him on the insurance. And I had a fit, right? I had a conniption, shouldn't fit. I'm like, are you serious? I trained him in my helicopter at my home base. Private commercial, cfi. I now need him as an instructor and you want me to send him off somewhere else to get all the way up to 350 hours. And they're like, yeah, that's what we need, that's our requirement. And I'm like, are you? What are you? It was mind boggling to me. So I asked around, found another insurance agent, called them up. I got a better deal. And with that, with that agent, the company he put me with, I still have the same one. They're like, Kenny, you put on who you want. If you want them on your insurance, put them on. You can send us their in pilot info, but it's, it's not us telling you who's qualified to fly your aircraft. You want an instructor, put them on. And I still have that. God, that's been over 12 years ago. I still have that option today. If I want to put a pilot on, I put them on. If I want to rent to somebody, I rent them. I want to solo to them, I can, but I have a really good policy with a good company and they're, they're working on, honestly, my reputation and my time in the industry and what I've done, they allow me to do that. There are companies that say, oh, you can't. And yeah, the reg is 20 hours to solo, but we want them to have 25 or 30. So when you go to these places to look for a job, a lot of times the flight school that you're trying to get a job at, they're going to be tied by what's required for their insurance. So different insurance companies have different requirements. So when you go to get that job, a lot of times it's really depending on insurance, it's not the flight school itself. And you know, the SFAR is kind of hard to read. And yeah, I mean, you got a great start. If you got 25 and R22 and you got 25 and R44, you're doing good, right? You're, you're doing well, I would keep moving forward. And the jobs you apply apply for are going to just be what they could of course have their own, they could have their own requirement, right? Like as a flight school we want you to have this many hours in the R44. But more than likely they're going to be restricted by what their insurance wants them to have. And those requirements can be weird, right? Like I'm telling you. And this goes when you're talking about when can you fly a turbine aircraft, right? We had yesterday, somebody said, well hey, I want to get my own turbine, I want to get my license and get a turbine. And asked me about an insurance question. I said, well just be prepared. You could get a brand new private pilot license. Here's an example. I trained a gentleman in the Enstrom, got his private for him. He had let's say 70 or 80 hours. He bought a brand new Enstrom for $1.15 million. And when he called up the insurance company, they said oh, okay, private pilot 70 hours to ensure you that policy would be $70,000 per year. And he's like, well if I toast a million dollar aircraft, would that hurt? And he goes yeah, it'd sting a little bit. So I just decided to self insure, right. So just to give you an idea, right. Like insurance regulates everything. So I hopefully that that's helpful. But without knowing the job you're going for and specific for insurance for the place you're applying, I, I can't really say. But that's just so, you know, ahead of time. That's where the holdup's going to be a lot of the time. So maybe research the places that you're thinking you want to work and just flat out ask them, hey, can you put me on to flight tours? You know, what is it going to take? What? How much Robinson time must I have? Because places are good at or flight schools are good at going, oh yeah, get your ratings, we'll give you a job and then you get the job or get ready. They go, oh well, you don't have 200 hours yet and so you need to go get some more time or well, we need you to get this. They're good at pulling that on people at times. So I would say reach out to the. If you got maybe a couple of different places you're looking at somewhere you think you want to go work, call them up and talk to them, ask them what is their minimum for you to get hired and be able to fly their R44 R22, that's really the best I can do on that because insurance just, I'm lucky, I'm so lucky that they let me do what I need to do to run my business and not hold me back on that type of requirement. But like I said, another company did and it seems ridiculous, but that's the way it works.

Mr. Vinyl wants to know. So we'll do a couple more questions and then the giveaway.

Okay.

Mr. Vinyl wanted to know if you want to fly, what are the number, what is the number of hours it will take for it to be better to rent a hell or to buy a helicopter instead of renting it?

So like it's, it's a lot like the, what we just talked about, right? It's going to. You want to buy your own, you're going to want to do a piston first, obviously. Again, I hate the term obviously because if you're brand new to this, you don't know. So I don't like saying obviously and make it easier anybody feel bad if you're new to this. The most popular training helicopters are piston helicopters, turbine helicopters, you usually get to fly once you have more time on your belt. I can give you an example. Like one gentleman's a friend of mine, he bought a Jet Ranger. He got his ratings in an instrom and the insurance company said, we need you to have example might have been 200 hours in the Jet Ranger before we can insure you. So he hired a pilot because he was a wealthy individual and had the money to do it. He hired a pilot to come and work with him for, let's say two to three months or however long it took. And that was this pilot's job was to fly with him pretty much on a daily basis. And they went out, flew around and did cross countries and flew to eat and went here and went there. And he paid an instructor to fly along with him until he had the 200 hours to be qualified for the insurance and then started flying it on his own without an instructor in there. So that was the question, right? Going from piston to turbine. Yeah. So you're going to have to look into it. If you were wanting a turbine aircraft, you have to look, you're going to have to research it and you have to talk to the insurance companies because again, everybody's going to do something, be doing something different. And I've had times where sometimes I can help people because they train with me and I can kind of get them a deal. But I've even been disappointed before where I'm like, hey, you know, John Doe wants to get this aircraft and I'm going to train him and, you know, what kind of a deal can you make for him? And they might come out with a hard number. Sometimes they go tell the guy's got a thousand hours, nothing we can do. And I'm like, really? Seriously? So depends on the person, depends on the aircraft, depends on the insurance company. I would plan on minimum a couple hundred hours in a piston before you move to a turbine. And let me tell you this, if you're wanting to fly and get your own aircraft and you're wanting to fly for fun, yeah, turbine's cool. Yeah, it sounds cool. Starts up, starting up, but really you get in the helicopter and you fly and you do the same thing. Well, there's a piston or turbine. They're still fun to fly. I mean, it's amazing thing, you know, I've been flying them forever and I'm still amazed at them, and I still enjoy going out and flying them. They're fun, they're addictive. So don't put so much weight on the whole turbine thing. Get a piston fly that. Talk to insurance companies, look at what type of aircraft you're going to want to get, and then find out, what am I going to have to. What kind of experience am I going to have to have before I can get insured? If anybody wants to know my insurance company, it's Southwest Aviation Insurance. Just in case you want to know, they insure more R44s than anybody in the country. This is not a paid advertisement. The head man, Dave Monaco, is a personal friend of mine, and they've taken phenomenal care of me over the years. So if you're wanting to look for insurance company to talk to about buying your own aircraft and what you're going to need, I think they'll at least give you a straight answer. If nothing else, you'll get a straight answer on what are you going to need? Okay, what else you got?

We'll move on to this question from Bill and then the giveaway.

Do we talk about Santa 40? We still got us. We still got a sale going on till New Year's Day. Santa 40. Is the discount code go down below. I think Lindsay has all the membership levels down there. You can go to, like, right to private pilot and you'll see like a monthly option or a yearly option or a lifetime. You can get 40% off any of those. Santa 40. You type in Santa 40 in the checkout and click, click the button and it'll show you the discounted price. All right, what you got next?

Okay, so this next one is coming back from Bill and he wants to know what is the difference between metal blades and composite blades and how does it affect the performance of a helicopter?

Good question. A question for the designers. You know, I'm guilty sometimes of not really digging into a lot of things that interest people, and I really couldn't tell you. I don't really, other than being built from different materials for different. Different rhymes or reasons. You know, I'm concerned about how that thing slices through the air, you know, as we're out there flying, and whether they're symmetrical and asymmetrical. But one versus the other. Great question. And I could make up an answer, but Wish I had Hogs.com up here. I'd ask Hogs.com, see if it has an answer, but off top of my head, I don't know. Sorry, I can't give you more than that. I'm sure there's some advantages, one over another, in why a manufacturer picks one over another, but I just can't tell you what else you got, Lindsay.

This last one just came in from Rayn and. And they are working on their IR for fixed wing. And why is it that helicopters are so much more to train in than an airplane?

Yeah, well, good question. Right. Like if you imagine a fixed wing airplane sitting back here alongside the helicopter, you know it's a fixed wing, right? So you got two wings out here and you do have, what do you call them, your ailerons or whatever, or flaps, whatever. Here on your wings that operate up and down, same thing at the rear, you've got some things moving up and down, side to side, but you've got one engine in the front with a. What do you call the. It's not a rotor blade on an airplane. Your propeller. Right. So you got one engine and a propeller. So now let's take the helicopter, for example. So because we have to have the rotor system up on top lifting the aircraft in a different way than a fixed wing, we have to have an engine in there. Like you have an engine in a fixed wing, obviously, but you have to have an engine and then you gotta have a gearbox on top of that. And then the gearbox has a drive shaft going up to run the rotor system, and then that transmission has a drive shaft coming out going all the way to the tail. And then you got a tail rotor gearbox and then you got tail rotor rotor blades. So that in itself, the fact of a whole bunch of more. Whole bunch of More. A whole lot more moving parts, rotor blades themselves would be way more expensive than an airplane propeller, I can guarantee you. So you've got an engine that could. On the front of a fixed wing, that could have a propeller hooked right to it. So you could have direct drive engine propeller again in a helicopter, engines base behind the pilots, usually. So you got the engine, this great big gearbox on top that's expensive and will need replaced at some point. And then the mechanics going up to the rotor system, and then you got all these controls. So you got control arms going up to the rotor system and you got control arch rods for the rotor pedals. So in essence, you have a whole lot more moving parts. And parts on an aircraft, whether they're fixed wing or helicopter or any aircraft, parts are expensive for aircraft in general. They just. They're just freaking expensive. That's just the way they work. So a helicopter is. There are a lot more moving parts, which in turn, not only is it not only more expensive to build the aircraft, but then it's going to be more maintenance heavy with having more parts, more bearings, more drive shafts, more control rods. You have a lot more pieces that are going to wear out over time. Sure, fixed wing has things that, that wear out, but they're not going to be as prevalent. So just the nature of the beast, how it's designed, is why a helicopter is so much more expensive than a fixed wing. I know at first, you know, when somebody comes along, starts looking at training and you look at what an airplane costs to operate and you look at a helicopter or take lessons, you go, oh, my God, you know helicopters four times or five times what the airplane is, man, why would they be so expensive? So great question. And that's my. I'm not an aircraft designer, but that would be my take on it, on why the helicopter is so much more expensive. Okay, so that. Guess that means we're giving away the instrument pilot book, right?

Yep. Instrument handbook.

So we just kind of picked around on things. That's why we've been doing different stuff. We had some packages for a while where we were selling, like with a pro pilot, we send you a, you know, this and that and all kinds of different gear and different things. So this was some new materials that we bought that this was. This was left from when we were selling this package. So this is the instrument flying handbook. So any of you looking for an instrument rating, working on instrument rating, this will be a great book for you to use to complement the training that you're going through to get Your instrument rating. So we have a very simple question that anybody could answer. I shouldn't say anybody. If you. If you're brand new to hogs, you may not know this, but most everybody knows it. We have a slogan and it's right now. It's on the top of my. It's on my logo here, it's on the logo there. We put this everywhere and it's our end of our videos. You hear about it, it's in the. Well, should I hit the button?

Yeah.

Live to fly another day helicopter crown. There you go. Anybody has the chance to win. That's our slogan. So please use proper spelling and type the slogan into the chat and you win the instrument flying handbook. I see her patiently waiting, looking at the chat. We know that the chat falls a little behind. You may be already typing. And we know that chat only takes a while for it to show up. Sometimes it doesn't come in order. So before she announces is the winner, listen to this. What you might see on your device may look different than us. So Lindsay has no choice other than to pick the first person that pops up in our chat and sometimes after the fact. What? People arguing in chat. I was first. I was first. We. Because. Is this. Because it's showing up differently in your chat? We have to declaim, claim it by what it shows in our chat. So you have your winner.

I do. Sam S. Unfortunately, Brett was so close, but I can't accept a two part answer. So Sam S Came in with live to fly another day.

Awesome. So, Sam, reach out to heatherelicopterground.com let her know your shipping address. Thanks everybody for tuning in the day after Christmas. Recap. Santa 40. 40% off till New Year's Day. Our clone. You want to ask a question? The middle of the night, you wake up thinking of some helicopter question. Ask hogs.com you can type in or you can click the button and have a conversation with it if you want to. Hogs pays me. You want to be affiliate, earn 50%. That link's down below hogspaysme.com Tomorrow we're going to do a commercial pilot giveaway. Do us a favor, subscribe to the channel and click that little bell. Do me a favor, just help me hit 50,000. I just. It's just a personal goal. Just something that once I hit that, I can go, okay, I did that. Now I'm gonna move on to what else do I want to accomplish with the old HOGS helicopter? Online ground school. All right, you ready to go, Lindsey?

I'M ready to go.

All right, peace out. See you tomorrow. Commercial pilot giveaway. Peace out.

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 to fly another day. Helicopterground. Com.