Day 8 H.O.G.S. Exclusive Jacket Giveaway- Send in Your Helicopter Questions

It's Christmas Eve. We're going to do a couple giveaways here shortly with a book and a Hogs nice Hogs dress jacket. But we wanted to highlight a few people here on the Hogs Wall of Fame and there's so many that we could talk about. We just pulled the wall up and just start clicking through and like just immediately like stop on that one. Stop on that one. Because these are some great stories we want to share right here. Private Pilot, this is Lorenzo. Lorenzo became a hugs member like 8 or 10 years ago and he was learning the English language and working on his Private. And he was. We actually edited up or transcribed that and put it in my notebook. It was just a super neat individual. And the fun story. He started out with us with this Private, did all of his ratings and then when he wanted to get started in the commercial world, commercial environment, he bugged a tuna boat operator that had an MD500 once he had some time under his belt and he bugged the guy every single day until the guy finally, after like two months, gave him a job because he was tired of Lorenzo calling him every single day, asking for a job. Proof that if you want it and you go after it, you can do it. And then we wanted to highlight Gabriel Hernandez. Gabriel came over and visited us, oh, probably six, seven years ago when we were at our other hangar at our original Hog studio. Spent the afternoon with us. And Gabriel's another one that didn't mind sharing his story of he'd struggled with some drug and alcohol issues or one or the other. And he talked about it openly and the struggles he went through to get a medical and get a start in the business and. And he's out there working and has a super success story, proving that you can do this no matter what obstacles are ahead of you, you go for it. And then we'll move over here to Todd Ketterman. Todd has been here for not only he started out as a Pro Pilot member, he bought a pro pilot member package with six zooms and we got. We became friends. I was helping him get through his private. He was down in Florida. Then he came up here and did his commercial with us, did his CFI with us. Now he's coming back to plan to do some guest instructing. And Todd is also behind our corporate event that we had. And I should mention that the corporate event we had was a two day event where the executives came in and we fixed food and they did some of their own corporate activities and then we gave them all intros in the R44. So that's something that we offer. That's a blast. Then over here, Kyle Parrish. Kyle. Another fun frickin story. I met Kyle at Heli Expo. We'll say, I don't know, five, six, seven years ago. And we were all eating and he came up and he said hey Kenny, can I bother you for a minute? How can I get a start in the industry? And he had his private. He was, I think it is private, was ready to start working on commercial. He's like I don't want to take forever to get working in the industry. What can I do? And I'm like you just got to study hard, be the best you can be network, give him all these tips. And a few minutes later I walked outside and I ran into the guys from Sevier county choppers and they go hey, right now we don't have anybody for our program. You know of anybody? And I'm like I know the kid, I know Kyle. So I called Kyle right away. He ran over and met the guys from Sevier county and in less than six months he went through instrument commercial, CFI and CFI 2 and he got his start in the industry and he's checked in with us over the years. He's out flying in the industry now and he sent us in several videos after passing checkrides a fun story. So again we just picked four right off the bat. There's tons and tons of stories we could share so we didn't favor anybody. We just pulled up the PowerPoint, started rolling through and go who do we want to talk about today on Christmas Eve? So there you go, super success stories. Everybody had their struggles. So you got Lorenzo that came over and was learning the English language as he starts working on his ratings and now he's out there flying Powerline. Everybody wants to do the power line jobs in MD 500. Here's one of the guys doing it, Gabriel, who had overcome all those issues from his past and has excelled and is out there working in the world. Amazing frickin story, Todd. Just a lot of fun and you know he has had his own struggles along the way. That's why he first became a pro pilot member so I could help him through some of the struggles he had trying to get to that private. And I helped him through those. And again he came up and did his commercial and CFI and then Kyle, what a fun story. Just a neat kid and he's super full of energy and sends us videos and and just couldn't be more proud of Kyle along with everybody else. So that should lead us back to heading over here. Gabriel's now a captain, right? That was another guy, I think. I'm not sure what Gabriel's doing, but I know he's flying. So Lindsay's got our stuff ready to go over here. 1. All right, we're gonna give a couple things away here real quick. Not real quick. We're gonna give a few things away. But do us a favor before we do the giveaways, give us a subscribe on the channel if you haven't yet. Just because now you get sick of hearing that. I get sick of hearing everybody say it, but it really does help us out if you give us a subscribe. Trying to inch our way up to 50,000 subscribers doesn't mean anything. I won't get any awards. Nothing's gonna happen. It's just 50,000 has been kind of my goal for a few years. And once I hit 50, I'll feel like, cool, I got 50,000 subscribers on YouTube. And after that, whatever happens, happens. So what we're going to give away shortly is first signed copy of Private Pilot 101 helicopter training blueprint. And then we'll make you listen to some questions and answers a little bit longer. And then we're going to give away this. These are nice. I only ordered these one time. It's a hogs dress jacket. These were a little pricey, and everybody that wanted one got one. And we have a large left. That's the only size we have, is just a large. So that's what you'll be competing for. And it'll be a simple question that anybody can answer. Anybody whether you've ever flown or not. So that's going to be the second giveaway. All right, so the premises, flight training questions. Do you have any questions as of yet, Lindsay?

Not yet.

Not yet. Okay, so ask a question in chat. Anything flight or ground related. Hopefully I can answer it. 95% of the questions I can usually answer. And while we're waiting for a question, there's a free PDF link down below. So doesn't matter whether you're brand new and you're just getting started. That's what this is geared for. However, there's tons of tips and tricks and information in here, and just things are going to help you throughout your training. Even if you're past private, it's still a good read. There's tons of information in here. You know, we learned that the people that we help every day, usually when they call us up or text us or email us. They've got a struggle. And usually whatever it is they're struggling with usually has a pretty simple answer to it. And this has been a common theme that what seems like a mountain to you can be a molehill after we kind of just give you a little bit of guidance. And usually it doesn't take much to help you get past those struggles. So, Lindsay, let me know when somebody asks a question.

Bell 429 wants to know what are the flight night flying requirements?

Night flying requirements. Ooh, you know what? That's a freaking great one. Night flying requirements. All right. If you want to take up passengers at night, you have to have three takeoffs and landings. The make and model of aircraft in the preceding 90 days. So the. The part of that question that always gets asked, like on trek rides, you could do those during the daytime. Those are qualified only for you to only take up passengers in the day. If you want to take passengers at night, you have to do those takeoffs and landings at night. However, if you do night, that does qualify you for day. So that'd be one of them. Another one is aircraft lights. When should your aircraft lights be on? They should be on sunset to sunrise. What is the definition of night? Definition of night is. One hour after the beginning. Now, damn it. One hour after the end of the evening civil twilight to one hour before the morning civil twilight as published in the people are going to say Farmer's Almanac in the air Almanac. Damn it. I need the written test book in front of me. I should find that because this is. I always say that the night stuff is super, super tough. And. And where's the study guide? Real quick, Can I find a study guide? I know it's in the beginning because this one trips everybody up. And I don't want to tell you wrong. It's got to be a study guide laying around here somewhere. Right here. Got open one. All right, so we'll talk about this while I flip through it. This is our private pilot study guide. We haven't mentioned this in a while. We need to go and update it and change the verbiage because it says there still says PTS in there. So that needs to be updated to acs. But Brian Rutledge put this thing together, and this has over 400 questions that you could be asked on a checkride. And in the first section, of course, night comes up. Aha. Memory aid. Right. We're taught in CFI training. If you don't know or you're not sure, you look it up. And these are hard to spout off. And this definitely will get you on a checkride. So let's go back to the definition. Tonight I was close. The time between the end of evening civil twilight and the beginning of morning civil twilight, as published in the Air Almanac, converted to local time. We covered when must the aircraft position lights beyond during the period of sunset to sunrise. When can you log nighttime flight? The time between the end of evening civil twilight and the beginning of morning civil twilight, as published in the Air Almanac, converted to local time. When can you count your takeoff and landings as nighttime? This answer is beginning one hour after sunset and ending one hour before sunrise. That is the nutshell of the questions that you might be asked on a checkride. And I will tell you that they always ask private commercial cfi, doesn't matter. You're always going to get asked that night stuff because you can see, you ask me on the fly and I start stroke and I struggle to kind of try to spit it out. So what I do, I grabbed a quick reforce, a reforce resource that I knew could help me out because those, those are kind of tricky. And why do they word those the way they do? I don't know. It's kind of weird. And some, sometimes somebody might want to argue why they. Why does that say that way? Why does it say that way? I don't know. That's how the FAA wants you to respond. And then I guess the other thing I can think of at night, this comes up a lot, right? Like I was doing a zoom yesterday with one of our we have two FAC members coming, one for a CFI add on and a initial commercial coming the end of January. So I did a zoom with one of them yesterday and we covered what do you have to have? Day vfr, any helicopter. Then what do you have to have, Dave VFR in a Robinson R22 specifically, because that's what his check ride is going to be. And then I said, what do you have to have at night? And this comes up every time I'm prepping somebody, right? And what we've been telling people lately is since we do our all of our training and our check rides here at the Hogs hangar, we have the R22 or R44, either one right with us as we're doing the ground school. And over there by the Hogs Wall of Fame, we have two couches and a table, and that's where we sit and do our ground. So people struggle with night. When you say what do you have to have on the aircraft at night. And if you just sit there and try to think through it, it's a little tougher to repeat. But I tell them just think about it. Think about the aircraft sitting there. Start at the very nose and then just work your way down. The aircraft, I think is probably one of the best ways to memorize what do you have to have. So if you just think about the aircraft, I have the luxury of it sitting here. So start at the very nose. You got to have your landing lights working, of course. So you got landing lights. Then you go into the cockpit of the cockpit of the aircraft. You want to have your instrument panel lights working. Whether you're eliminated through the dash itself or you have a light that shines down. You want to make sure your instrument gauges and lights are lit up, are illuminated for nighttime. You should have a flashlight in there with you. Because night flying is very, very challenging. So a flashlight with you in the cockpit super, super handy. On the side you got your anti collision left and right. And then for Robinson flyers, remember underneath the panel right there where you check your illumination of your lights, your warning test, your test lights, there are spare fuses in there. So spare fuses is another thing that needs to be in there. So spare fuses. And then before we move further back, alternate source of power, which easiest explains is you must have an operating battery and an operating alternator. Sometimes people go, well, that's kind of dumb, right? Those always have to be on right and working well for day flight. There are aircraft out there that don't have electrical systems or maybe have just a battery for running things or maybe just an alternator. They don't have both. So if you want to fly at night in a helicopter, you must have a functioning alternator and battery also. Meaning if you know the battery's bad, you can't just jump start it and go fly and run off your alternator. Because if you lose your alternator, then you got no reserve battery power. So the alternate source of power, you must have an operating alternator and a good battery. And then if you move back a little bit further back on the rabbit, so we have an anti collision light on the tail that's got to be working. And then you got your navigation light on the back. So I think that's kind of the easiest way to just think through nightstand stuff when what do you have to have on you at night? And then the other thing that pops to my mind would be my favorite question on check or prepa people is how do you fly your approaches at night in a helicopter versus the way you fly your approaches night and day? What's the difference? My answer is you fly them the same. However, you need to be afraid, not afraid. You need to be aware. Don't be afraid. Be aware of your night illusions that the ground comes at you. How's that work? You can approach the ground faster than it appears. Right. You could be closer to the ground than what you think and essentially hit the ground because your sense of how far away is off. So be careful of that going at night. Okay, so probably already typed in there. Email heathercopterground.com and we'll sign that book for you and get it shipped off.

Yeah, and that was for Bell 429. And I have a twofer question from Anderson Rose.

Okay.

They first want to know, would six to eight months be a reasonable time for a high school student to get their private pilot's license?

Okay, let me answer that first because I'm a simple assignment. I can only handle, you know, one thing at a time. Six to eight months, absolutely. That could be done. I would say a good average is probably a year. We've had people that have done it in three weeks. We have Johan, one of our superstars who did went through hogs and did all the ground first and got his ground knowledge solid before arriving at the flight school. Did his checkride in three weeks for private pilot. We have another gentleman who failed a private pilot, used HOGS to refresh his memory and then went back and retested and he had a Pink slip from 27 years prior. So we've seen it done in three weeks. We know it's taken 27 years and you could be anywhere in between there. But six to eight months I would say is a very, very doable. Especially if he gets started on the ground school and excels in the ground. Because here's what happens. People get good at the flying. They're ready to go, take the test, but their written test isn't done. Their ground knowledge isn't there yet. So then the training gets delayed and you got to spend more time and money to kind of keep flying in the helicopter as you catch your ground school up. So the key to getting done in six to eight months, sign up for helicopter online ground school in Hampstar going through that private pilot right away. Okay. The faster you know the knowledge, the better you will be. Okay. And then second part of the question.

You might have actually accidentally answered it, but I'll go ahead and read it out Loud.

Okay.

They also want to tack on how can they maintain their flight experience in hours for 12 months between getting their private pilot license while also going for commercial.

Without making you read it again. To go from private privates minimum is 40 hours, commercial is 150 hours total. So there's not going to be shouldn't be a big lag in flight time there or skills because it's going to take longer to probably get the flight time than it is to do the studying part of it. So it's 40 hours for private, 150 hours for commercial. So proficiency should be kept during that time that you're flying to get to that 150 hours. And as we always say, if you're going to go commercial, doing that instrument rating in between private and commercial is super smart. Instrument rating you'll need. If you go as a professional pilot for a lot of the jobs, instrument training makes you a better pilot. And while you're doing that instrument training, yes, you're paying for an instructor, but you're also flying that those PI pilot and command hours towards the commercial that you need. And as you're receiving training, so best thing to do, keep flying, do the instrument training in between private and commercial and save the duel you'll need for the commercial toward the ends of end of that 150 hours. And before I go to the next question, I skipped over one thing here. I wanted to thank everybody that tunes in and it's Christmas Eve. You know, we appreciate people coming in on Christmas Eve because everybody's busy. We're all getting ready to blow out of here and get ready for dinner with our family. So I just want to take a minute to say thank you to everybody that's been following along with for almost 14 years with us or whether you're brand new, first time you've come along to one of our videos or you've been there since the beginning. We have people that have been watching for 14 years have been Hogsmember for 14 years. So this on this Christmas Eve, I wanted to express that to you and I wanted to mention something else I was watching. I started watching another YouTuber last night, a guy that does airplane fixed wing stuff. He's an airline pilot. And I was just watching a whole bunch of really super interesting stuff. And the thing that I wanted to mention is, you know, he was talking about how flying is a privilege. Right. So once you get to the point that you're flying, whether you're doing dual training or you're soloing or you get your private. Remember that this is a privilege, right? And this is a privilege that can be taken away at any time if you don't follow the rules and use good smart technique and apply yourself and study and be careful in everything that we do. And I also want to mention that the medical is the same thing and I'm not going to go into it, but I haven't mentioned this. Last March, I wound up in the hospital with high blood pressure and high heart rate and I've lived a life of, I've never really been sick, I've never been on medication, I haven't had the best diet and you know, I've lived the wild lifestyle a good majority of my life, never sick. So, you know, none of that stuff applies to me. And so I'm not going to preach to you. But the things that we learn about diet and the things that we know that's good for us and the things that we know are bad for us can eventually catch up to you. And I'm doing really, really well. But I'm now on medication and change my diet and change a lot of things. And that was all for the good, right? So coming up to the Flying is a privilege. That medical is also a privilege too. And we're going to talk about this here in the near future too. I'm not going to talk about today because it's a lengthy subject, but we need some reform. You know, everybody talks about reform this, reform that. The FAA needs to do some reform on this medical, medical certificate thing. This is a, the FAA has been pretty good to work with over the years in all avenues. But this is one area where this whole medical certificate thing is a problem. And this is one area we should start kind of screaming and yelling and throwing a 10 per tantrum if we want to. On the way they handle medicals, it's a problem and something needs to be handled in that area. So remember, flying's a privilege, medical's a privilege. That's all I really want to say on that right now. I just want to tell you that, you know, my accident that I had in 2005 changed my life, changed the way I look at flying, pre flighting, maintenance. And now my little trip to the ER made me take a look a little bit different look at life too. And in turn this Christmas I'm a little less stressed and I'm a little more about just kind of enjoying the holiday and thinking about family and what's important to us in life. You know, we all get wrapped up in Social media and got all politics in the world and all the crazy shit that's going on. But you know what? How much of it really does it even matter and how much time do we waste? I just saw a statistic. 85% of what we worry about will never ever, ever happen. So 85% of the things we're sitting around worrying about are never going to happen. So why worry about it? Alright, so there you go. And I'll mention Santa 40, we have a. Since we're talking about gratitude and being grateful we've had a sale going on. It's going on till New Year's Day. Santa 40. So 40% off any private commercial, CFI instrument or Pro Pilot membership. 40% off with the code Santa 40 up until New Year's Day. And then I'd real quick, Hogs pays me. We have affiliate program and we know flight instructors. I live the life and I know how hard it is in the beginning. You don't have hardly any money to eat. You can hardly pay rent. You're driving a car that's a, you know, a Honda that was built 30 years ago and you don't have any money. Hogs. Lindsay's over laughing. You laugh because I didn't say piece of shit like I normally say.

I'm laughing because I don't know very many cars that are older than 10 years old on the road anymore.

Oh, trust me, flight Instructors are driving 30 year old Hondas, you know, or Nissan's or whatever. It's a fact. Well, think about our crew car out here that we use. It's 1996, right? So there's one that you know that's over 10 years old, still on the road. Well, part of the time anyway. So yeah, so Hogs pays me. That's a link down below if you'd like to earn 50%. We're giving back by letting anybody. You don't have to be an instructor. We gear this towards instructors and flight schools because flight schools we know are struggling. Hell, you're trying to make the helicopter payment and trying to make your insurance payment, trying to pay your instructors, trying to pay the hang the office rent, hangar rent, phone line, taxes, blah blah, blah. So Hogs pays me. There's a link down below, you can sign up for it. If you have any trouble, you can reach out to Hogsmember support 574-767-1797 and Heather will help you out with that. So hogspaysme.com earn 50% of ourselves as long as somebody keeps a Membership that links down below. All right, a couple more questions before we do the jacket giveaway.

Yep. This is coming from Ronald Gilson, and I think you briefly touched on it when you were talking about privileges. But he wants to know what is the best way to reinstate a helicopter CFI that is expired.

Aha. There's only one way, and this is a great question, actually, because I have to get mine done for the end of the month. I have enough activity in the last two years, 24 months, that I can easily go to the FSDO and renew my CFI. However, I got to go clear to Chicago and I don't know, I want to deal with it or not. So I'm debating here last minute, am I going to do a 16 hour online course or am I going to go to the fisdo? And I have an answer for you. Twice in my 24 years of teaching, I have let my CFI lapse. And the only way to reinstate your CFI is to go take a checkride. And the way I've done it, both times that I let it lapse, I had to schedule with our local examiner, the one I've been using for 24 years. You schedule the date with the examiner, you go over with the aircraft, you meet the examiner, and you have to sit down and do an oral test, and you have to go out and do a flight test. So it's called a reinstatement checkride. There's no other way to do it. There's no way. There's no other way, you know, shortcut or hey, call somebody or get a favor, you can't do it. And once it's expired, the only thing you can do is take a checkride. And I give you a little tip on that. The reinstatement check, right. For me, the first one he did years ago I thought was fairly easy, but the one he did for me four years ago, I'll be honest, transparency here, right? Like, I'm like, you know, heck, we've been doing checkrides together for 20 years. It's going to be piece of cake. I'm just going to go in, answer a couple questions, go fly a maneuver or two. Ah, he'll sign me off. I'll tell you what, even though we're friends and been doing checkrides forever, I think my, my oral was about two hours, like way more than I expected. And then we went out, did a full one hour flight together for my reinstatement checkride. So for your reinstatement checkride, don't Overlook going back and studying all the private pilot stuff, everything that we learned, and then, you know, you have to teach as a private pilot. Go back and review it. Brian Rutledge had put this together for us. He made this shortly after I went and did my CFI renewal. And once he made this and I went through it, I was like, holy cow, I wish I would have had this before I went to my CFI check or reinstatement, because I would have went through this thing. Because Brian has found 400 phenomenal questions. Even though this is a private pilot study guide, it's what a private pilot's got to know. Right. And that's the stuff that we got to teach. So a little plug there for the study guide. We'll make sure, after the videos below are done, we'll make sure we put that link down below. But refresh your knowledge before you go for that reinstatement check ride. Lindsay has her hand up. I do.

It's a question about what you're talking about with reinstatement. Is that kind of like your driver's license where every seven years it's expires or is it every four, 24 months, every two years?

Yep. We have one license is my commercial pilot's license. So that license doesn't expire. I got to do flight reviews to keep that stay current with my certified flight instructor rating. That's another license. With every 24 months. Before the 24 months is up, I have to either I can go to the FISDO and show that I've had at least a minimum of four or five students have passed on their first attempt in the previous, previous 24 months. I can go online and do a 16 hour online course. There are places that put on instructor refresher courses. Like a 16 hour course over a weekend. You can go do that. If you are in a position where you regularly evaluate pilots like you're working. Example would be your 135 Czech airmen in an EMS operation. And you continue you on a continual basis. You go evaluate pilots, you can off that activity, you can go reinstate your cfi. So those are the main ways right off the top of my head, of how you can renew it. But you have to renew it before the end of that 24th month. If you miss it, you're out.

Jay just added in chat, he said, new Rule as of December 1st this year, we have pilots have an additional three months after expires.

Really? See, I knew he put out some stuff on the CFI stuff and I guess I should have Watched Jay's video. Jay, are you serious? Are you telling me I got three more months? Is that what he just said? Yeah.

New rule. As of December 1, 2024, you have an additional three months after expires.

Well, hell, I didn't know that. Jay, you need to keep checking in on these videos, man, so you can keep me abreast. I know you're the guy who is always on top of the latest, the newest stuff that comes out. And I appreciate you joining our chat today. And let me tell you who Jay is. Jay is from. I'll plug his channel for him. Jay is from helicopter training videos. And over the years I've been on YouTube 14 years. Jay's been on there as long as me or longer approximately the same time. He's right around 50,000 subscribers. And for years I've known helicopter training videos and I know they're on YouTube. I've watched a lot of them. I always knew that he was a knowledgeable guy and made some good content. And this past summer, he was in the area to visit some family and he called up or emailed us and said, hey, I want to swing by. And we made it happen. And he came by and spent an afternoon with us here with me and Lindsey and we had great conversations, talking about helicopter training and all kinds of stuff. Right. And so Jay, you know, fellow helicopter video maker in the chat. So go. You can go. If you haven't checked out Jay's videos, you should. Helicopter training videos on YouTube.

He's very worth the watch.

Absolutely. So thanks, Jay. Thanks for tuning in and keep somebody's got to watch over me and keep me in line. So glad you're there.

Okay, so we're moving on. This is a time and true. Always, every day we get the same question. This is coming from Martin Lewis. He is 50 years old, going on to 51. He recently purchased our propilot course and is in the HIMSS program and is wondering is it too late to get his commercial rating?

Absolutely not too late. And it's a great question. Glad you asked. And we'll cover it again. One thing that we've seen here in the last, I'd say five years or so is a lot of people getting their ratings in their 60s and even 70s. And I think that that's absolutely phenomenal. And I think part of it is, you know, one of them, I guess we could say Covid would be part of it as much as Covid was, you know, a bunch of crap. And frustrating as it was, a lot of people Went after Covid, went, you know what? After that, world going nuts and things getting shut down changes people's way of thinking. They go, I've always wanted to do this helicopter thing. And after going through that, I decided, you know what, I want to do it. So hands down, no, it's not too late. Absolutely not. I would hire an instructor. Let's say, you know, you're just in your early 50s. You get your CFI, I'd hire you in a freaking heartbeat. Nothing against a young person. Younger person or younger CFI. I would hire a newer CFI. But would I hire a guy in his 50s with a new CFI? Absolutely, I would. Absolutely. Hands down. I don't think it's too late at all. And I don't even know why. I guess that's what society does to us. And that's what, you know, some instructors will do to people. I heard we have an instructor 30 minutes down the road who some guy in his 40s called him up and he said, ah, you're too old, and hung up the phone on him. Right. Like, I get that attitude comes sometimes for people. But I also think that now that I'm in my 50s, I. You realize how much society really looks down and it's like, oh, my God, once you hit 60, your life is over. Right? That's the way we're made to feel and that's the way society operates. And it's just like, oh, God, the big 60, oh God, your life's over. And it's such a pile of shit. And the way that society, you know, looks towards somebody who's older, now that I'm getting there, I just don't appreciate it at all. And I want to think that I can keep doing what I do for the next 20 fricking years. Whether I do or I don't, we'll see. But I sure hope I can. So absolutely not too late. Absolutely not.

I mean, we're coming back down to bell 429 and he wants to know what medical is required for. What medical class is required for commercial? And if you're ATP rated, is it a classic one or two that is required?

Well, first question, if you're going to do commercial work, you have to have a Class 2. And I just had this question through email. It might be the same person. I think it's somebody different. A gentleman that has a. Owns his own helicopter and he wants to know if he can do commercial work with a Class 3. And I'm like, unfortunately not that I know of. No, to do. To go out and do commercial operations and be paid, you need a second class medical. And as far as the ATP goes, I don't have my ATP. I think ATP you have to have. I think, I think it would be the position what you're going to go do. If you read the second part of.

The question again, if you're ATP rated, is it a classic one or second that is required?

I think it's one if you're going to do a job where you're operating as an ATP. God. Phenomenal question that. I'll have to actually. I'm not going to make everybody wait while I dig out the farrain. But I'm assuming the. Well, the now ATP would just depend on what you're doing, what your job is. You could be an ATP, but you're going to fly just a normal tour job. You would need class two. So if you were holding an actual ATP position like flying for the airlines, I believe those are first class. So that's the best of my ability on that one. Not big on the ATP thing. I don't have one. ATP in the helicopter world isn't real prevalent. There are guys that get the ATP, but what is it? Many, not many jobs require ATP in helicopters. I see Lindsay looking at me. ATP is airline transport pilot. Okay. So like if you're flying for American Airlines, you have to be an ATP.

Okay.

In the helicopter world, usually a commercial is enough. I mean there might be some jobs that require an ATP, but pretty uncommon. I don't know that many people that even actually get their ATP in a helicopter. You can get it and great if you do, but for most jobs that we know of, not required.

Okay, before I move on to this next question by Howard Jay just entered in on the chat.

I figured he would.

It's going to burst your little bubble, Kenny.

That's all right. Burst my bubble.

On the extra three months of the reinstatement period, you will not have CFI privileges until you get reinstated.

That's fine. I don't have a problem with that. Okay, so back to on that note, right? If you're not active, if you're not currently signing somebody off, and that gives you an extra three months and I don't have to worry about it until, you know, I can let a kind of drag into January, that's fine because I got Hauser coming in here to help me and so not a big deal. So didn't really burst my bubble.

Doesn't affect you.

Oh, that's nice though. I'm glad they did that. We like to. As I mentioned earlier, we like to complain about the faa, Right. And it's the federal government, so we know treatment. Let me rephrase this. People that work for the faa, I've always had good luck with. I don't have a problem. The. The men and women that I've dealt with for different reasons with the faa. I think they've always been great to work with the faa as an ex. As an organization, being a federal. A lot of stuff they do. A lot of times we just go and be. Will always. That's the saying is in the infinite wisdom of the faa, right? They did this or they did that. I like what they did with the acs. I gave a plug on that. And if they gave us an extra three months to get that thing renewed, I think that's a good thing. So thank you, faa. I think that's a smart move. And if. Sure. It's. It's. And I say this because I let my. I let it lapse one time. At that time, we didn't have a helicopter, so I didn't really have to worry about it because I was only doing ground stuff, just making videos. So while I jacked around getting that aircraft made available to me where I could go get freshened up and go take a check ride, it wasn't a problem. And in my case, right now, if I can drag this out for a couple more weeks, that's no big deal because we got a couple check rides, but Hauser's doing them and signing them off, so that's nice. I'm glad that there's that opportunity. You got an extra little time there to get in and because people procrastinate, right? Like me. You wait till like, oh, shit, someone's Christmas. I gotta get this renewal done before the end of the month. Damn it. Thinking it was gonna be, oh, I gotta go take another freaking check ride. Which I can do. I have the aircraft. But that's a half a day of screwing around, bothering my examiner buddy. And then I gotta refresh my knowledge and go sit there and answer answer questions like a student, which that's what I help people do. But I don't like being there on the other side of the table any more than any of you. I like to be here helping prep you. I don't want to go sit with the examiner unless I absolutely have to.

Howard J. Graber, he's newbie to the helicopter world, and he wants to know, can I get a fixed CSEL and go directly to Rotor Commercial or how would that work?

Can I get. I'm a simple Simon. Read it to me. Getting a little slower. So I think fixed sel, like single engine land. Can I get a fixed single engine land and then move to rotorcraft direct.

And directly go to rotor commercial or how would that work? How you could.

If he's going to do. You could. You could do. You're going to do private fixed wing. Are you going to do commercial fixed wing? You could do. You can do this. I believe you could get a private fixed wing and then you could train in the helicopter. As long as you do all the commercial requirements, all the required stuff, you get the amount of time in the aircraft that you need, the PIC time. You could go take an initial commercial, I believe. I think that's allowed. I have personally never done that. I've never signed anybody off that way, but I think that's legal. And if Jay's in the chat, maybe he could tell us. But I think you can do that. I think you can get the private fixed wing and then you could go do a commercial helicopter. But I don't know why you would. I mean, why not just go get the private helicopter and then build your time and get the commercial helicopter? And I don't understand the sense of why would you need to do one and do the other. Because if you want commercial helicopter time when you go to apply for jobs, they only care about how much helicopter time you have. So the fixed wing time isn't really going to be any benefit to you other than maybe you just want to learn to fly airplanes. That's great, but it's not going to help you in the commercial environment. It's actually going to hurt you because I'm telling you that first job is going to be hardest to get. Insurance companies look at how much helicopter time do you have? So I'm not saying don't do it. And you might have a valid reason for doing it, but I would recommend private helicopter, commercial helicopter. That's the way I do it. But. But I think you could. I think you can do private airplane and then do initial commercial. I think it's possible.

Okay, moving on to Christian Bach. He's a new cfi. And how do you balance giving ground instruction with flight instruction versus assigning hogs and just doing review after flights?

Ooh, that's a great question. Did he say he's new cfi? Just. Okay, this great conversation. This is good for students and instructors. Here's the problem I see with the industry, you have Your flight schedule 8am let's just pick some numbers. 8am, 10 noon, 2, 4, 6. Let's say you got a couple helicopters and a couple instructors. So you're running people in one person at a time, but you're running them in from 8 to 10, 10 to 12, 12 to 2. I don't think there's any way to do a valid one hour flight lesson. If you're going to include, you come in the door, sit down with your student. Hey, how you doing? How you feeling today? Did you get anything to eat? Some morning feel good. What have you been doing? What are we going to do when we get in the helicopter? Go do a proper pre flight, get fuel, fly one hour, come back sign log books, debrief the flight. Hey, how was that flight? Okay. I like what you did here. I like this, I like this next flight. We need to work on this and maybe we'll add something new. But we know when to do a little review on that, see if we can clean that up. That's three hours. That's three hours minimum. So number one, if you're working at a typical flight school and they're making you do two hour blocks, I think you're already kind of set up for failure. Not meaning you can't do it, but it's not leaving you, it's not beneficial to the students and instructor. You're rushed all day, you barely get time to eat. So regardless of whether they're studying on their own or you're doing the ground, if they're using hogs, they can go through hogs 24 hours a day, seven days a week, iPad, iPhone, mobile app, desktop, laptop, they can go through hogs on their own and that's what they should be doing. They should simply explain to them, look, this is you're going to get through the training much faster by the more knowledge you learn in the beginning, right? We, I can tell you after 24 years of this, the problem is always the ground they're flying will excel and their ground school would fall behind. You could have them going through hogs, tell them do 10 minutes a day, 15 minutes a day, a half an hour a day, do something every day and work through that. HOGS course example, private pilot, be going through that as they're doing the training. But I think you as a cfi, you know, trying to do a little bit of ground each time you fly with somebody because instructors are very apt to just somebody walks in the door and we've had people complain about this just this year, they walk in the Door and they're right to the helicopter. There's no pre flight discussion. They, they either, they go, oh, I already pre flighted, let's just go like hurry, hurry, hurry. Instructors trying to put time in their logbooks. And I get it. Instructors are trying to move on to their next job. I get it. But if that's all you care about, I don't know how far you're going to get and how fast you're going to get in this industry. You're going to get farther by really helping people and doing a, doing a good job and doing it right. Ask him if this is helping at all. If I'm going the direction. But I think there should be a little bit of ground every time you fly with somebody at minimum, what are we going to do today? And then coming back and debriefing that when you get back and you can be teaching these subjects like as you're, you're teaching them like, hey, before we go out today, I want to talk about quick stop and let's talk about it. And whether you draw on the board or you use the aircraft, sit there and discuss it with them to where they fully understand what is a quick stop, why do we do it, how's it going to look, what am I going to feel and what are going to be those inputs. You can be covering a lot of ground each day by covering these topics with them as they come in on a day to day basis. And again, instructors are guilty. Fly, fly, fly. No ground rush student through by taking the time each one. If you have the opportunity to work at a school that will let you do three hours, so or three and a half hours for a flight lesson that would be super, super, super beneficial for you.

He said it was thumbs up. Yes.

Good, good.

Okay, so I have a suggested question from Paul G. And then we'll roll into the giveaway.

All right.

Paul G. Would like you to explain full landings. Oh, I gotta find it. Full landings or landings to a full.

Stop landing To a full stop. I can do that. Key to a nice approach. And we're gonna say normal landing. He said normal landing to a full stop. Okay, here's the key to every single approach, every single hover auto, every single straight in auto, every quick stop, every maneuver you're ever going to do. The key is a good setup. So I'm going to use what I would do in the R44. I'm going to start an approach at 300 AGL because that's textbook. That's what they tell us. Start your approach at 300 AGL. Before I get to my point that intersects with my landings point, I'm going to be zero. I'm going to be zero rated ascent. I want, I want to be at 300 AGL. I don't want to be climbing, I don't want to be descending, I don't want to be fixing my speed. I want to get all this ready so that, let's say here's where I have to enter my normal 10 degree approach angle down to the numbers. I'm going to be 300 AGL, zero ready descent. I like 70. For the, to start the approach, I'm going to be at 72 or 73 because when I get to the point that I'm going to start flying that down, I'm going to go a little bit of aft cyclic, a little bit down collective, a little bit of right pedal to initiate that approach. And if you don't pull that little bit of half cyclic, the nose does this. So that starts the game of playing with the rpm, screwing with the collective, screwing with the cyclic. And that's why people do this all the way down to the ground. So the whole key is you get that nice setup 300 AGL, have your air speed you want, and then you start flying that approach down to your spot. And we want to remember that collective controls the angle, cyclic controls the speed. It should always look like you're approaching those numbers at the same speed. So if we start at 70, then we're going to go to 65 and then we're going to go to 60, then 50, then 40, then 30, then 20, and then 10. And we're going to be down at our spot. We want to come in nice and slow, control an angle with the collective, cyclic with the speed. It's. Somebody recently said it's the never ending approach. And I went, I like that. I'm going to steal that. It's the never ending approach because it feels like it's taking freaking forever and ever and ever to get down there. I remember I watched a sporty's video way back, way back. I remember. So you want to fly helicopters. I watched the copy from, you know, 30 years ago and they're like, oh, you keep 60 until you get 50ft above the ground. You should be at 50, 40ft, 40, 30ft, 30, 20ft, 10ft. I'm like, who in the hell can do that? That's ridiculous. You start slowing this thing down at the very beginning. You gradually slow it down the whole time. You want to keep the helicopter nice and level. The high velocity diagram does not apply. People, people go, oh, but you're in the height velocity diagram. Height velocity diagram is built for takeoffs. It's not built for approaches. There in a nutshell, there's my normal approach that was kind of quick, but, you know, a normal approach, there's a little, little bit of art to it. And I anybody comes here, we go out to fly, just, hey, go, show me. Let's just show me a normal approach. And they're like, that's it. Like, yeah, just show me a normal take off a normal approach. Because that sets the tone for how they're going to fly. And I make that evaluation pretty quick. And some of the key people that I've been lucky to fly with, I've got to fly with some really, really good people who had really good reputations and I looked up to. And when they said, just show me your normal take off your normal landing, and then I did it, and they go, that's exactly how I would teach it. Don't change a thing. And lucky. That was early in my career and I had good people that said, people are going to tell you how you're doing that wrong, but this is how we want it done. Don't let any. Don't listen to anybody and just keep doing what you're doing. So that's the key to a nice, normal approach. Easier said than done, but there is an art form to it. And the key is setting it up nice. Setting it up. If you set it up nice, it's going to be nice. If you set it up sloppy, it's going to be sloppy, okay? So this is so going to be so easy to win. And I made it so easy to win. The nice jacket disclaimer. If you want a product already, give a chance for others, okay? And let's, you know, we can go within reason here, right? We know there's some people that have won everything, right? Like there are people out there that have won everything. And then after the fact, they go, hey, you know what? I do have that already. Go ahead and give it to the next guy. Well, this is Christmas Eve. If you're somebody who wins a lot of our stuff. Stuff, we ask you to do us a favor and let somebody, somebody else win. We had a guy the other day that won a yearly membership, and the next day he won another yearly membership. It's like, okay, come on, let somebody else win that. And he did say in chat, that's fine, give it to somebody else. It's Kind of like, you know, fair is fair. So if you have all of our products already or you've just won everything that we've had to giveaway in the last week, maybe let some other people win. Okay, so for the super nice large hogs jacket, I have one of these. I was wearing them in videos for a long time and then I just kind of slowly creep back to my good old sloppy hoodie. Just because I'm more comfortable in this nice jacket.

Jack has one of those. He wears it all the time. It's super comfortable. It's warm. Keeps you insulated from the wind. It's a nice jacket.

Oh, my God, it is. It is warm. It's amazing. This is one of them jackets that you can't put on inside and keep wearing it because you'll sweat like crazy. And it's not very thick. I probably shouldn't even be giving it away, but it's Christmas Eve, we decided, so we will. So here's the deal. All you have to do is spell correctly two words. Please capitalize the first word, capitalize the second word. Please put a proper space in between and spell correctly. Merry Christmas. That's it. That's all. That's it. A space. Merry Christmas. Capitalize. Merry, capitalize Christmas. First one gets the jacket. So enjoy your Christmas. We'll wrap things up here. If there's any other questions, I could answer another one or two, but we know we want to get out of here. Come back tomorrow. There'll be a video. I think we got it set for 5pm and I'll be in chat to do some giveaways.

Ronald Gilson.

Ronald's the winner.

Ronald Gilson is the winner.

Awesome. So you Want to email heatherelicopterground.com and give her your shipping address. Tell her you won the Hogs dress large jacket. And tomorrow we're going to give tips for somebody getting in to the CFI world and trying to get their first job. We know that this can be difficult, but I think it's like any other job out there. Whether you're going to anything in the world you want to do, there's going to be other people competing for that job. Right. Helicopters are no different. So we're going to cover tomorrow. Just some tips. Just simple tips, but things to think about when you're moving forward that can help maybe set you apart from the other pile of resumes that's laying on somebody's desk. Got to find a way to make yourself stick out. So some tips on getting your first job and we're going to give away in chat, we'll give away a book and we're going to give away another yearly private, sorry, private pilot, 12 month membership. No drinking as of yet. Sorry, that's just a, I don't know what that was. No drinking. All right, what else I got to do? Any other questions?

You want to plug any leaks?

Yeah. Before we go, the link is down below for Private Pilot 101 free PDF. There's also a free PDF for the study guide. You can check out the very first chapter in the study guide at a free PDF link down below. If it's not there, give us a few minutes. Lindsay will put it in as soon as the video is done. Pogspaysme.com become an affiliate. We'll pay you 50%. Only really trick to it is we wait until a person makes it past the 30 day refund mark. And I think that's totally fair, right? We, we have a 24 hour test flight for free. Then you can sign up for 30 days with 100% money back guarantee. So after that person makes it for their past their first month, we'll issue you a payment. After that 30 days is complete. If they buy a yearly, we just pay you again after the 30 days. If they buy a pro pilot again after they come, make it 30 days and don't refund, we send you a payment. It goes right to your PayPal. You must have a PayPal in order to sign up for it. But it as a affiliate, you get your own, you get your own administrative back office to our site, right? So you'll be able to log into that. And if John Doe bought a private pilot membership, you'll see how many months he stays. You'll see what came in and you'll see your 50% commission for as long as that person keeps the course. Same way as the yearly and the pros, you, you'll know what we owe you. So there isn't any, there isn't any, you know, hinky, anything going behind the scenes, it's right there. And you have to take the link that's assigned to you and have your. If you're a flight instructor and you're having your students sign up, they have to use your link. By using your link when they go to our site to purchase, that's how we track and give you credit for that commission. So that's down below. Ask Hogs.com a lot of people have been using it every day I get a report. So I know like yesterday there's 25 questions went to the clone. And if, if the clone can answer, we'll get a notice. Hey, the clone couldn't answer this question. Can you elaborate? So what we do is we'll work that into our content, like our YouTube videos or our paid site. We'll work that comment in, we'll do a video on it, and then we upload that to the clone. So then the clone now has that information, and it's amazing how much it can answer. Has 14 years of my digital content loaded in it. Over 6 million words that I've spoken in either a video, a podcast, a blog, paid site, YouTube, whatever. It's all in there. And as we make create new content, it all goes in. And that's what that clone's pulling from. And it talks in my tone of voice. Talks a little more clearer than I do, talks better than I do. But of course it's AI but that's pretty cool. It's ask hogs.com that's down below 24 hours a day, seven days a week. You can get your questions. So we'll sign out. Thanks, everybody. We appreciate coming in on a Christmas Eve. I'm thrilled we had the people came in that did and come back tomorrow to win more. And we'll be live every day until New Year's Day. So Merry Christmas.

See you soon, Christmas. 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. Sat.