"Do YOU have a personal WEATHER MINIMUM for your Go / No Go Decision?"

All right, Heather's laughing behind the camera. Kenny with helicopter on ground school Hogs Wall of Fame. We're going to give away a $25Amazon gift card along with a no go button to the next member that sends in their picture. And we're going to show you what we got as of right now, 223 pictures on the Hogs Wall of Fame. Just the other day, Dr. Jason Cutter said, how many pictures are up there? And I'm like, you know what? We got to count them. Last I knew it was like 170. So we got 223 up. Heather just put up 224, right? And 225. Those are going up. We're going to show you here in a minute. And there's going to be one left in the corner. So we're going to give away not only the Hogs no go button to the next member that passes a checkride, sends us the picture. Whether it comes to me or Heather, we're gonna send you the no go button plus a $25Amazon gift card for Christmas in a nice little Amazon box. We're gonna have them ship it right to you. So we're super proud of this. Heather had four ready today, and she started putting them up. And I go, wait, hey, this is a cool deal. Look, we're clear to the corner. Let's make a video. So we'll move the camera over here so you can see. So just before we hit record, she put up David Craig, commercial pilot. Sabrina Filmozer, commercial pilot, add on. So go ahead, Heather. And she's putting up Jason Cutter. Dr. Jason Cutter, that is the owner of Venture Helicopters, who we have a cooperation with and have his second helicopter, 269, sitting behind the Hogs Wall of Fame. So she's putting up Jason Cutter, that makes his fourth or fifth. Fourth one. And now she's putting up Jared McKay, private pilot, which leaves us one spot left right here. So as the making of this video, the next HOGS member that sends a checkride picture to either Heather or myself will ship you the no go button and an Amazon gift card. And right there is where your camera's gonna go. I mean, your picture's gonna go. All right, so Heather, come over here real quick to wrap up. Heather is your member concierge. You can text or call Heather at 574-767-1797 for your any questions about Hoggs membership, upgrades, downgrades, anything pretty much you need, she can handle answering for you. So we just wanted to share this moment today, we are so proud of this thing. And yeah, we talk about all the time because you know what, it's really freaking cool. Again, the picture down there in the corner. Next $125Amazon gift card, Christmas card and the hogs no go button. Let's grab the no go button real quick. Live to fly another day. So our one on one today with our member I've been working with doing the one on ones today we talked about weather minimums and this is a great time to talk about it. December, lot of people getting into bad weather now and today we talked about personal minimums. What are your personal minimums? Do you have a personal minimum set? I can't sit here and tell you what you any one individual what your weather minimum should be. I will tell you, it should be conservative and what I want to relay to you to relay to our member today. And he was kind of surprised at this. I said, you know, as an EMS pilot, every one of us had 2,000 hours or more that worked for the company that we worked for. Okay. Our weather minimum minimum was 802 for the five years that I worked for them. And with that 802, they said 802 isn't where you take off, guys and girls. 802 is you should be taking off when it's better than 802-800ft, 2 miles, if it starts getting close to that, it's time to turn around and go home or land wherever at an airport or in a field or wherever when you get down close to minimums mean you should be calling it off. So to give you an example, as a new private pilot, should you be going out when it's 802? Probably not the best call. You know, being conservative, especially when you're going for your check ride, I would have a very, very conservative personal minimum when the examiner asks you. So for you, depending on, you know, if you're in the flat areas of wherever you're living might be one thing. If you're, you know, in an urban area or if you're in an area with a lot of tall buildings or you got mountains, it could vary for anyone. But be conservative. The examiners are going to ask you this on your checkride because he's going to want to evaluate your knowledge. He's going to be checking to make sure you understand how to read weather and look at charts and metars and TAFs. But he's also going to probably, I'd say 99% chance he's going to ask you about your Own personal weather minimums. So if that's not something that you have talked about yet with your instructor, if you're still new to this, especially if you're getting close to checkride, you should be developing an idea of what your personal weather minimum should be. And again, whatever you do, I would say be conservative. You know, that's a problem in our industry is helicopter pilots flying into bad weather and losing their lives. And not only their lives, but crews of passengers, crew members, ems, whatever the case is. People lose their lives flying into bad weather. Which is why we have the no go button. That again, we're going to. That we send these members. We've been doing this for how long we've been sending these now, at least probably couple years since we developed the no go button. And if you don't know yet, I kind of copied this idea from a Vietnam veteran who I flew EMS with. And he had the staples, easy button. And it just lightened the mood. After you had to turn down a flight, EMS flight comes in, you check the weather kind of iffy. You know, the right things to do is stay on the ground. And you know, there's those external pressures from crew or the hospital or whoever, or your own personal pressures. When you make the decision to not go, to be on the ground, stay safe. He would, boom, Hit the staples, easy button. And, you know, hit it. That was easy. It was just. It was kind of a fun little reward for making the right decision, which is where the idea came from. And then we just adopted the idea. We got the HOGS logo on there. No go. It is the no go button. So when you make that proper decision to stay on the ground, live to fly another day. Helicopterground.com all right, that's your public service and public service announcement for today. Again, we are so proud of all of our members. And the other day, Jason Cutter was here along with the mechanic who's gonna be putting the 269 together. And I think was Jason, like, how many pictures, how many people are on the wall right now? And I'm like, I don't know. So Heather just counted them before we hit record. And so it's now 225. And that one in the corner will be 226. So people have been saying, what are you gonna do when you fill it up? We have one more panel back behind this wall. So. And it's already painted. Heather painted these back when we got these panels. And now that we have the H269 here, as soon as the Engines in it, blades are on it and we get it. All the maintenance done and it's. And it's ready to start flying. We're going to move it back over here because right now we got boats and cars and stuff over here. So toys will have to go back over there. Helicopter is going to come over here. So once we have it on the dolly, we're probably going to add that seventh panel. 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6. Add the seventh panel. Maybe do some adjusting to fit with the H269 because the. This was set up for the instrument. It has longer rotor blades. So we can do some adjusting once we have the H269 up and running and over here. So. And then one other thought. Not only do we have a whole other panel, we could start cheating and using some of this area here too. So that may be our next step. But people have been asking, what are you going to do? Well, we have a couple alternatives. We can start filling up that area. We just kind of hate to. I don't mind taking down the HOGS logo, but we like our black board for teaching and showing subjects, so we'll probably do away with the sign. By this point, most of you know who we are when you watch the videos, so you don't really even need to see the logo. All right, so next HOGS member to send us the checkride picture, short sentence or two or however long you want to write about your experience and how HOGS helped you, email either kennyelicopterground.com or heatherecopterground.com we'll put you up in the corner and we'll send you the hogs no go and 25Amazon gift card live to fly another day helicopterground.com all right, so yeah, we teased that wasn't live, but now we're live. So hey, we got a few people here. We just want to give you a quick update. Got everything organized behind us here. Jason, if you're still here, that cabinet I used to present with, it's all full of the 269 log book. So we got a nice place for the mechanic who is going to be here tomorrow to start putting the helicopter in. And yes, Paul, there's a zero time engine sitting over there against the wall ready to go in. And the mechanic stops tomorrow. Stops tomorrow. Starts tomorrow. So we got everything arranged. Been working on just getting that nice and neat for the mechanic when he shows up. So we're going to give away. Not a lot of people here, but anybody doesn't have a top 10 checkride tips book. If you want one. Heather's right over here in the corner. Type it in the chat. Very simple. Just type in your personal weather minimum. First person to type in what their personal weather minimum is, first one in chat. I'll have Heather send you top 10 checkride tips. You'll need to email heatherelicopterground.com whoever is first and she will ship you the book. So we thought, we just want to come on, elaborate on the whole no go situation. We thought there'd be some more people in here today. I'm always kind of amazed, you know, if it's not a flashy, cool, oh, we're going to be doing autos, you know, then a lot of people show up. But you want to talk about something like personal weather minimums and you get a whole whopping 11 people. So anyway, I see one is there. What's that say? All right, that's the winner. Who is it? Josh Todin. All right, Josh, you win the book. I'd say that's a good one, Josh. I mean, I think being conservative, I was telling my member today when I was telling him about the 802 I flew with that company for 5 years and short, even though their minimum was 802, within a year or two of flying EMS, I decided to make my minimum the VFR minimum. I went with 3 miles and 1000ft. If it was below that, I didn't go. Not one crew member ever complained. Nobody at the hospital ever complained. Of course my company was happy with that and they flat out told us, we will always back your no go decisions. We will always, always, always back you on a no go. Be as conservative as you want. Because, you know, I was in the one year and the five years I was doing it, we had the record number of EMS helicopter deaths and crashes, fatalities. The one year I was doing it was horrendous that year. So we just want to reiterate how important it is to not only do a good pre flight, do your weather briefing, but then it's, then it's sitting down and taking all that information and making the decision. And with the member I was talking to today, I was honing in the point that, you know, I wish there was a way we could take new pilots out. If you're already a rated pilot and you're working on an add on, maybe you've been doing fixed wing for a while or if you're a helicopter guy or girl, you may have been put in a situation where you got the Shit scared out of you, right? And I was telling him how I wish we could take newer students out until you go scud running one time and get yourself in a bad situation and really get yourself scared. We can talk about it and we can harp about it and tell you how bad it is and how you can get yourself killed. But you know, and I admitted to him, I said I did some really stupid stuff earlier in my career. Flying in weather that I shouldn't have been flying in. And after doing that a couple times and really seriously wondering if I was going to make makes you wake up and change your mind. What ever that important that it's worth losing your life on. You know, it's a person usually in my. My problem was personal pressure. Me trying to get home from Ohio to Indiana because I wanted to get home for the weekend because I went all the way to Ohio, worked all week and I wanted to get home on the weekend. And a couple times I pushed it. Not a couple. One time I pushed it in an airplane flying low and then. Well, let me take that back one time in a helicopter. I wound up in some low level stuff and had to find a place to land and. And I ended up being okay. But until you get there. I don't know where Heather went. She just took off running to the other side of the hangar. I can't. She's. Let me check comments here real quick. Anyway, I know what I wanted. One other thing I wanted to add. Well, you went running away and I'm like, I can't read from here. I can't see what's in the comments. I lost my train of thought. What was it? Talking to my member today 101. God damn it. I forgot what I was going to say. Oh well, It's horrible. It's scary. All right. Well hey thanks for everybody that's tuning in 269 helicopters. Jason Cutter, he's in chat. He is flying right now out of the Fremont municipal airport. His 269has been up and running for now well over a week. So ventureheli.com to get ahold of Jason. If you're interested in flying the 269 tomorrow, our mechanic's showing up to start putting this thing back together. He thought originally it said a couple weekends it ought to be ready. So I don't want to make any big promises but we're all ready here. Aircraft's here, log books arranged nice and neat. Went out and got him a trash can. We've just been cleaning and getting things organized. So when he can come in, start working, he can just go to work, start finding the pieces and parts he needs, and it's gonna be fun. So we will get it up on our. On the Hogs page when it's ready. I'm not gonna put anything up yet because I want to make sure it's not gonna take longer than a week or two. But soon we'll get rates up on the page. And for us here, we're gonna schedule helicopter online ground school members only. We want you to get the course, go through the videos before you come up because we're gonna save a lot of. You're going to save time and money along with us. Saving time and money. If you go through the courses before you get here, it's going to make the training go so much smoother for you and it'll be much more valuable if you've already got kind of a grass on the ground school before you come up. So we'll get those rates up. That's a helicopterground.com site. So I'm running out of steam here. I can. I can't think of what else to say. So anything we need to answer while they're in there? No, no question. All right, so the next person, as we said earlier in the video, we'll go check our email and we'll check times. Next. Next member, send us the checkride picture. You'll be number 226 down in the corner. We'll send you the no go button and the Amazon $25 gift card. So be careful, be conservative, make good decisions, and if you know you shouldn't go, live to fly another day. Helicopterground. Com. Peace out.