"don't fall in LOVE with your HELICOPTER" Seriously!!!

All right, we are live, and Heather's over there putting up the latest ground school member on the Hogs wall of fame. There it goes. This is Jeffrey from last week or earlier this week. Anyway, we introduced him in a video and he was excited that he passed as private. Now he's moved on to the instrument training. We actually hooked him up, upgraded him to professional pilot members. So there's Heather putting another one on the Hogs wall of fame. So she's gonna head back over to answer anybody in chat and say hi to everybody and I'll go back over here to another camera. And the title of the video today is don't fall in love with your helicopter. And I wanted to do this today just because it was my idea this morning, right? That's how it usually comes when I'm home drinking coffee is when I usually get my ideas. And, you know, I preach in these videos all the time. Don't buy a helicopter. Don't buy a helicopter unless you have money to burn. Don't do it. Okay? I've talked about it in videos over and over and over again. And the one that I owned for four years, this is part of the story I've never told you, right? When I first got it, I had a big shindig at the airport, and we had food and we invited people over and, you know, hey, come check out the helicopter. You know, come take lessons and all that kind of thing. And there was a gentleman there at the time, started talking to me. He was a real nice guy. And we got talking about what I was going to do with this helicopter, flight training, blah, blah, blah. And this gentleman says, I want to tell you something, Kenny. Don't fall in love with your helicopter. And I was like, what? What are you talking about, right? He's like, I'm just telling you, whatever you do, you know, you buy an aircraft because you think, you know, it's right for you and you want to do whatever you're going to do with it. The minute that it becomes a financial burden, get rid of it. And you could tell, right, he'd been around the aviation for a while, and he just said, whatever you do, don't fall in love with your helicopter. Okay, Well, I didn't listen. And turns out this gentleman was from the faa. Actually, not that that makes any difference, but it does because he was experienced aviator, right? Worked for the faa. And over the next four years, as I ran my business, as things went downhill, you know, I. Two years into it, I can remember one of the guys at the airport. Good friend of mine, still a friend of mine to this day, retired school teacher. And he comes up to my office one day because he wanted to see what I was doing, what was going on, and struggling, right? Struggling financially to make the payments to keep the helicopter going. And he's like, what's going on? I'm telling him where I'm at, what I'm doing, and he says, kenny, sell that son of a bitch. And I was like, sell my helicopter? Are you kidding me? Oh, my God. Right? So I gave it two more years, total of four years. Make a payment every month for, you know, $2,000 a month. And I go through all that and it drains my savings and retirement and the whole ball wax, right? End up letting it go four years later, totally broke. So on to the story. I've rebuilt my life with helicopter all in ground school. It's a beautiful thing. Beautiful thing. Love it. Love coming to work every day. And as many of you know, if you don't know, well, if you first time on this video, I am Kenny Keller, creator, Helicopter Line Ground School. By the way, we've been online for eight years. I use what we call cream puff, this beautiful Nstrom in the background, right? Turns out the owner of this helicopter is my very close personal friend. He was one of my students from when I got started 20 years ago teaching, right? And around 17 years ago, we got this helicopter for him. And it's been a great aircraft, right? And one reason he bought it, because we went to look at it in another state, and once we got look at the log books, we realized, hey, you know, we know the mechanic that maintained this aircraft, right? So we call up the mechanic friend of ours, he's like, yep, that helicopter is exactly what it says it is. Yep, it's low time. Only problem is it didn't fly enough, right? So my buddy goes ahead and buys the aircraft, has had it 17 years, and he loves it, right? And I love it too. And we have this great deal where I use it half the year instead of it sitting in a hangar all winter doing nothing, I use it, take good care of it, fly it, use it for videos, do some student training with, you know, our HOGS members, and then I take it back to him when the weather gets nice, right? And he always, you know, there's never been. There's never been an expense that's been spared. And aircraft owners will understand this. You have people that will just take care of it no matter what, right? And. Or companies, whether that's a company owned or privately owned or whatever the case is. But then you have people that will skimp, right? Well, can we put off fixing that right now? Well, can I fix that later? You know, where you're, they're always kind of with, you know, trying to get the mechanic to go, well, let's hold off, let's not spend the money on that right now. Right. I had a conversation with a aircraft EMS pilot, 40 year pilot that also owns his own aircraft. We were discussing this on the phone this morning because he's looking at buying an instrument and turns out might be a good deal because same kind of deal where he wants to buy this one, fly and play with a little bit, but he doesn't want to sit all year long. So I'm like, cool. Well, it's good timing because as much as it hurts, my buddy's decided that it's time. And he's been hitting for a few years like, man, you know, I sure love this helicopter. But one of these days I know it's going to be time to, you know, moving on down the road just because. And so, you know, we're like, he's my friend, right? Close personal friend. So I support that. And this week he called me somber Kenny, it's time. And I'm like, oh yeah. And he's like, yep. He goes, I'm thinking about it. I got, you know, girls getting ready to go to college in the near future. And God, it's been such a great aircraft. But the money he spent on it just this year in upgrades to the rotor system and the navigation and it was all things that it needed. But you know, the cost, it was really, really high, right? And so he says, unless you want it, right? If you want it. And of course I do, I'd love to have it. And for years we've said, well, someday maybe. For years I've said, no, I will never buy another one. Never buy another one. Never buy another one. And when this came up at first I'm like, well, you know, oh God, I'm not going to risk my financial future and you know, okay, you know, I'll help you. And he's like, you know, it doesn't have to be right now, but before the annual and before another whole $10,000 a year in insurance this year, I want to go ahead and let it go. And I slipped it the other night, said it in a video at the end of an hour long video just because I just felt like getting it off my mind. And right away one of my members who's flown in this and did a rating in it. Immediately started emailing me, Kenny, what's he want for the hacker aircraft? You know, and if that works out, that would be great because he's actually from Indiana, and if he ended up owning it, I'd still probably have access to it, right? And so I was at home two nights ago, not thinking about it, and I'm like, well, if I did this and maybe if I did that, and if I had this many students per month, I fall into the same old thing that I preach about, right? And I talked to Brian about it, and Brian's like, dude, listen to your own advice. You tell everybody to not buy one. Don't do it. Don't freaking do it. So I text my buddy and say, hey man, give me a month or two. I'm thinking about how I could. What I could do, right, to pull this off. And he texted me back yesterday morning and he's like, dude, I don't want to be. I don't want to be responsible for you doing something that may not be the best for your financial future, you know? And we're friends, right? And I'm like, yeah, I know. Haha. Brian said, listen to your own advice. And my buddy, my friend, who does not really want to sell it, but knows it's probably that time. It's just time. And after 17 years, it's just. It's just that time, right? Time for everything. And he said, and I'm like, excuse me? I'm like, yeah, yeah, I know. I don't want to, you know, I don't want to do anything that would end up hurting me. And it's a bad time with what's going on in the world, right? And my buddy says, this is all. This is through text messages. But he says the helicopter is a seductress. And I'm like. I respond, yeah, I know. And then he texts me and says, she has her eye on you. And I said, yeah, I know, I know, I know it does. And his text to me, my buddy, was run away. Run away. So here's even my longtime friend, one of my closest friends of all time, one of the coolest people, one of the smartest people I've ever met, and just a wonderful guy, right? I swear to God, one of my very first students of all time has remained one of my best friends of all time. And our deal has been great. And you know, it is kind of like a breakup, right? It's like, oh my God, I don't want to see go oh, man, I don't. But I'm not going to stand in the way of what my buddy needs to do financially. Not even financially. It's not even really an issue of money. It's really not. He's just like, it's just time. I've been threatening it this year. It's got to happen. So of course I'm going to support my friend. I'm not going to try to talk him out of it, right? I thought for a moment, but I got sucked in, right? So this morning I'm thinking about it. I'm like, don't fall in love with your helicopter. Don't fall in love with your helicopter. Don't fall in love with your helicopter. So I fell in love with this one, and I don't even own it, but because I went with him 17 years ago to pick it up. And we call the mechanic from three states away, dude, I maintained that aircraft almost all its life. Great helicopter. My buddy buys it, brings a home, and I have flown it every year since, whether it was with him. I went there at least once a year to fly with him, you know, get him checked out and freshened up for the insurance. And. And then for five years I've been using it, and it's a great deal. Great deal for him, great deal for me. So I'm just. I wanted to make this video today to say, don't fall in love with your helicopter. And I understood what this guy told me years ago. I understand my buddy who said, kenny, sell that son of a bitch. And that's how he said it, right? And he is an airplane instructor who has owned airplanes. And, you know, he's a retired guy and he's okay financially, but he said, they just. They eat you alive, right? Airplanes eat you alive. Hell, a helicopter is just 10 times worse or 50 times worse. I don't know. So people that have owned aircraft understand and know this. And I was telling Heather about today. She didn't know this yet because I haven't seen Heather. We've been kind of keeping each other apart. You know, she works or I work. And we'll talk about that here more in a minute. We're also going to be here for you, but we'll give you the latest development on that. But anyway, Heather says, well, but starts asking me questions about ownership and what it cost. And I just said, heather, the. What he spent just this year. When I say disposable income, it really means disposable income. I did in the last couple of days, the same Thing that people, when they email me and go, kenny, I'm looking at buying this R22, and I've got my private. I want to work on my commercial. I can build my time and I can. And I can lease it to the local flight school. And they said they could fly at this many per hours per month. And if I do this and I do that, and then I can make the payment, I think I can, you know, get my rating and not. And it won't really cost me much. I always say, don't do it unless you have literal disposable income. And I mean, you can write the check. When you lose an engine for whatever reason, Rod goes through the side of the block. You got 35 grand just sitting in a bank in an account where you can just tell the mechanic, get a new engine, put it in there, and you're ready to write the check in the end, and it's not going to hurt you go for it. So I'm just telling the story because as people, you know, my daughter said last night, you know, history repeats itself and people have to learn and relearn and relearn as well. Right. So of all people, I'm the guy that preaches, don't fall in love with your helicopter. Don't buy one unless you have disposable, truly disposable income. And if you're trying to come up with your scheme or your plan, your business model. Yeah, right. I can tell you all about that. The guys that convinced me to buy one years ago, wealthy people, right? Oh, you can do this. This is how it works. Write a business plan and you write it all up and you present to the bank and it looks great. And then the economy tanks. And then what happens to all these people? Oh, I'll buy it. I'll come fly with you. Yeah. Oh, you make so much money. I'm just telling you, that's how it works. I know Heather's been here taking care of you in the comments. What we're going to do for the next month, other than Heather might come in to ship a book or two, but we're like, we've downed, you know, we haven't been pushing anything that we have to even ship. I don't even want to really have to send Heather to the post office. Why have any interaction in the world right now than what we need to, Right? So Brian's working from home. I told Heather, you know what, for the next month, you can work from home, monitor your email every day, take the hogs Home phone with you when you go home and just work two or three hours a day and make sure that we answer members, we answer text messages on the business line, we answer those phone calls. And if you can answer Heather, go ahead. Or if it's more of a technical question, something deep into flight training or something, you know, move it on to me or Brian. And I think it's a good plan. And after I told Heather how did, how we were going to work it, she's like, you know what? I really like that idea because that way I'm not even exposing her to anything more than what she has to. You know, she can be home with her son, she's got to go out and got to get groceries or something, or something mandatory. But I'm not responsible for making her drive to the airport and stops for gas and, you know, or has a problem along the highway and a bystander comes by and, you know, I want her to be able to be home and be safe. And this is the best way to do it. So we're really happy. What's. When bad things go on in the world, good things go on too, right? So what Heather and I discussed was we have the best customer service of all time now. We truly do. Brian has been logging in. Well, Brian starts early morning. He's an early riser, and I am not right. I'm a guy that'll work late. I might work till midnight, who knows? Brian likes to get up in the morning and he starts at 6am so that 6am his time would be 9am our time. First thing Brian does when he goes in the morning, he goes right into the hog site. Helicopter land ground school. Inside the comments. If you make a comment on a video, he's in there going, typing away and he's answering those members, right? Just like a little bit ago, he called me, says, hey, dude, there's on this video, a member pointed out this was said I went and checked the reg and that needs change or that part just needs cut out. I'm like, okay, cool. Email me what, what video number, what time in the video. I'll have it fixed in five minutes. I can download it, fix it, upload it, right? So the beauty of Brian out there doing his thing, Boom. Shoots it to me. I can effectively pop in there, fix that video. Boom. Uploaded, problem solved. So we continue to do the same thing we've always done. Heather's still going to do what she does. She's going to do it from home on the computer. And Brian will be where he's at. And I'll be still floating back and forth between the airport and home. As long as I can travel between the airport and here, I'm inside my vehicle safe, right? Drive to the gated airport, drive to my private hangar. So I feel pretty good coming and going from the hangar. So all three of us will still be here for you. So in turn, the crisis has turned our customer service into the best it's ever been, right? The team we have is friggin awesome. And so we're gonna be on it and we'll be on it there for you every day. We'll get your questions answered. And I don't know, it's like Heather said, you know, bad times, it can be bad for some people, but it can be good for others, right? You have to have something to keep us going every single day. And we're doing our best to stay positive. You can curl up in the corner or you can just charge forward every day, right? And people have been telling me, hey, thanks for going live every day and just finding something to talk about, you know. And so it motivates me to keep doing it. Right? It's nice to be able to be a part of keeping people moving forward. I said it yesterday. We got. Seems like the hogs business has picked up as far as current members getting in there and going through stuff and having questions. And so we love that activity and that the fact that people are logging into ground school and at home, working on ratings, working on written tests and all these things that you can be doing to be productive while we fight this virus and get through it. And I've discussed this at length with Heather and my daughter and my other friends and Brian. And we're just all going to do. You know, we're all just limited in our. I take it seriously, right? I mean, I'm just like. I go back and forth to the airport. I don't really want to go to the store unless I have to. Got to go get food. Okay, maybe. But you know, I'm to the point where I'm wearing plastic gloves and I'm washing hands because it's about, you know, looking out for number one, right? We all need to look for ourselves and our friends and our family and do the best we can, right? So, Heather, I see you over there typing away anything, anything I needed to talk about from all the people. Any specific questions or anything. I told everybody, you know, we'd still be there for them every day and to let us know if they have any ideas about what, what kind of videos? What do they want to hear about every day? Yeah, let's talk about that for just a minute. What I want to do over the next month. We know that, you know, we got another month of being home for a lot of people, whether you're quarantined or whether you're self quarantining. We want to come up with several training events per week. I'm still gonna go live every day. At least talk about something like today, don't fall in love with your helicopter because I come up with fun things I just want to talk about. Right. But we're gonna do like my idea is to do three training events a week and one of them we already picked is using the basics of using the iPad, making a flight plan and doing the basic things, essential things that people would use an iPad for with foreflight. And I know Brian loves that deal. Right? That's a, that's a Brian thing. I don't, honestly, I'm a fair weather sun, shiny. I go out in the pattern, teach, do autos, make videos. That's what I do. I don't go anywhere anymore. Rarely do I leave the pattern. Brian coming from an aviation unit where he's out there checking weathering on top of stuff, you know, he's. That stuff's right up his alley. So he's gonna put together something on the iPad and there's a couple other things. Something that came through yesterday was, you know, depending on where you're flying in the world, you need to check your state or local. Is it. Are you legal to fly where you are living anywhere in the world? And there's a couple other things that's popped up that people have been sending in to us. Latest developments in aviation. There's something that just came out about medicals that if you're medical expires before this craps over, that you can technically get your medical as soon as possible. So there's a lot of things popping up we can talk about, but we're going to do at least three teaching events per week so that you got something to look forward to and we'll plan those out. So let's say it's just random. Let's pick. We're going to pick a time where even though Brian and Heather are at home, we're going to pick a time where we can all be logged in, where I, I can just be doing it here because I still have access to the computers and all of our files and our presentations and everything's here. Heather can still Be in chat like she is. Almost every time she's here, I do a video. Heather is there saying hi to everybody. And I do it sometimes alone, but it's tough when I'm trying to talk to the camera and look through every single question or comment and do my presentation. So I said, here's what we're going to do. Brian and Heather, let's do this. We'll go live every week, like at least three teaching events. We'll plan them out, we'll let you know ahead of the time what the date and time is. And we'll set a time that works where Heather can be in chat as normal, saying hi to everybody and answering basic questions. And then Brian can be there to answer like, you know, something that Heather can't answer about the, you know, rotor system on a Eurocopter or whatever. Right. Some technical deep helicopter stuff. Brian can take those and also help me with the presentations and we might bring Brian in live on some of those or play a presentation that I have Brian build at home or whatever the case is. But we'll have him there in chat too. So at least we can have some interactive sessions where we're teaching and we can get the material ready. I can present it and then Heather and Brian will both be there and chat to say hi, shoot the breeze. Brian will be there to answer specific training related questions and I can, you know, present the material. So that's what we're going to do for April is going to let Heather work from home. We're going to try to limit book shipping and shirt shipping just because I don't even want to send her to the post office if I don't have to. Right. And that's why I've been harping on like the free giveaways, which I'll mention down below. Free download of helicopter Checkride, Amazon, everyone. Bestseller. I did top 10 checkride tips. That's down below too. Free PDF. I'm pushing the free resources, right? They're free. The free radio course is down below. You can consume that. So in this time, people are stuck at home. I've been pushing the free resources. You can still order the books, but I'd rather people wait till let's get past this virus because I don't even want to really have to ship Heather to the post office at this point. Want to keep us all safe. So we are getting ready to go fly. Beautiful sun shining. We have to fly. We got to. I have her here today. She might come back to fly tomorrow. I don't know, we'll see. But we're going to. We're going to make use of this beautiful day right now. And what I'm going to shoot right now, as soon as we're done, we're going to going to push it out and we're going to shoot hover auto. The last time I did a hover auto video, I shot by myself nine years ago or eight years ago. So the video you see inside helicopter online ground school is probably from 2008 or 9 or 10 before online ground school, when I was just shooting that stuff for YouTube. So my current hover auto video is in the aircraft that I owned. That's been gone since 2012. That's how old that video is. So what we're going to do today is I'll shoot a little intro for it and talk about, like, recently somebody said, well, what. When you say reposition your hand, what do you mean? I'll include that in the video and talk about what the inputs are. When I say reposition my hand, this is what I'm talking about and do talk about the control inputs. I like teaching hoverados. That's one of my specialties. Slope landings. I hate teaching those, but hoverados I can do. Hoverados are all about timing 100%. What you have to do is actually pretty easy if you understand the timing. You do the timing right. So we're gonna pull out the helicopter, and I'll have her shoot from the outside. And I can still run a camera on the inside with a microphone so we can give you an inside and outside view and just try to really come up with a really nice hoverado video. Much better than the one I did from all those years ago. I remember it was a cold night. I'm out on the ramp by myself, and I'm trying to figure out where to have a camera and start the camera and run over and start the helicopter. And having Heather here to do the filming will be really, really nice because she can kind of follow me around, zoom in and out, and I'll do three or four or five of them, right? And just kind of talk through the maneuver and we'll end up replacing that video. So if you don't know, we've been uploading brand new videos to the maneuver section inside helicopter on ground school. And we're gonna put in a brand new video and every single. Every single post in the basic maneuvers and advanced maneuvers, we're probably half done. So, like, the hoverado is one I picked that I want to get done so we can replace that old video. And Brian has been putting together downloads. A lot of you know this if you don't. Brian's preparing a download for every maneuver. And we're talking the phone a little bit ago. And he's like, yeah, I just uploaded that download. Is that right? Uploaded the download. And I'm like, yep, that's it. We call him Brian download Rutledge. He likes this, right? And he's working on. He's actually started working on CFI lesson plans right now that some people are gonna love, I'm sure. So as we're replacing the older helicopter maneuver videos with brand new videos, Brian is putting together a download. He's uploading this as a download. So you. Let's say hover. Hover auto. He just did that one yesterday. I'm like, okay, great. I'll go shoot a video for it. So you can go to the hover auto video inside helicopter land ground school. Watch the hover auto video, click on the download, and just open it up and read it on your computer, if you like, or download it, make notations on it, whatever. Keep it, whatever you want to do. But at least it's a resource there for you where you can quickly go to it and refresh your memory on a maneuver. And I'll tell you that what we're doing is. And what Brian is doing is he's trying to keep the maneuvers based mainly on the helicopter flying handbook. Okay? And we discussed on the phone how I said, you know, sometimes what you might put in there might be different than what they hear me say in the video, right? So, like, for example, eyes outside. Pick a reference 30 to 50ft in front of front, or use your horizon. I've always said 50 to 75ft. So you might see little differences like that between what I say in the video, what the download says. But we agree that the essence of these maneuvers is the same. Numbers might change a little bit, Technique changes just a little bit. The way instructor teaches a quick stop. You know, an instructor may teach really aggressive quick stop. They might teach shallow. Same thing in an auto or whatever, right? So keep in mind, with these downloads, we're building them to be a general guide that pretty closely follows the helicopter flying handbook. Again, by the way. And I will tell you that I know from back when I was studying the helicopter flying handbook doesn't veer a lot from the Robinson instructor's manual or the Robinson maneuvers, which is kind of cool, right? Again, numbers might change a little bit here or there, but in general, we're keeping these. We're using the helicopter flying handbook. If we have a question of how it should be stated. Well, what's the helicopter flying handbook say? So. And we're also trying to adopt the same terminology as the helicopter flying handbook. Because I might call the pickup. Somebody else might call it a lift to hover flying handbook. I think says vertical lift to hover. Right. So everybody has their own terminology that they use on things. So I told Brian, I go, as we update the maneuver section, let's pick whatever the helicopter flying handbook. If it calls it vertical lift to hover, let's name it vertical lift to hover. And then somebody's calling the hook's phone. But you can wait till we're done. Heather will have that phone home. She'll be checking that seven days a week. Just so you know. So. Lost my train of thought. That's why this is why I don't like the phone. This is why I don't like the phone. This is why I don't answer the phone. I hate talking on the phone. And I hate a phone ringing in the middle of a damn presentation. There's nothing worse than the phone ringing in the middle of a presentation. Or you're working, you're editing, you're doing something cool, and your mind's where it's at. And then the phone starts ringing. Oh, I hate it. I cannot stand a ringing phone. And I hate talking on the phone, too, which is the beauty of why Brian is here. Brian loves talking to people, and he doesn't mind talking on the phone. So that's another reason that your gr. Your hogs member service just went up a great big notch because Brian is happy to talk on the phone where I do it when I'm forced to. So I was on terminology. Right? Yeah. Everybody. Yeah. So. Okay, I got it. So we're gonna name the maneuver. If it's vertical lift to hover, there goes an airplane. I see mine's not flying. We'll name the title, and the title in the download should end up when we're done. They won't match. Right. So if you're going to look up the maneuver. Well, my instructor calls it a pickup. My instructor calls it lift the hover. My instructor calls it this. Well, we always try to. Anything that I do, I always try to refer back to the helicopter flying handbook. In case you don't know, that's kind of the layout of the private pilot section inside helicopter land ground school, is we? Not we. I did this when I was Working alone when I was trying to organize the site, there's lots of different, you know. Oh. Ways anybody could lay out training. So I thought, why not lay out training to kind of follow the Helicopter Flying Handbook? And some people have picked up on that. So when you're studying through this, which you should be, this is our bible. Everybody should be looking at it. I think it's a chapter off, like, chapter two. And here's lesson three in helicopter ground School. But we basically are following the Helicopter Flying Handbook. So when you are at home studying, you can kind of know what we're doing. You know, there are flight schools that have syllabuses, and a syllabus is great, if you have one. Perfect. They're great for training. But for our intents and purposes with helicopter online ground school, I thought, you know what? Let's lay this out this way, and maybe sometime in the future that will change. But as of now, the private pilot section follows the way or follows the information that's in the Helicopter Flying Handbook. All right, we need to go fly, so I better wrap it up. Kenny's gonna throw the phone. All right, so anything you need answer before we go? No. All right, good. Thanks, everybody, for tuning in. I see 24 people here. Cool. Make sure you subscribe to the channel and click the bell so you can be notified when we do a video over the next month through April 2020, while we get through this stupid virus. And I don't mean to say stupid, because you know what? It's not stupid. It's a horrible thing. Of course my heart goes out to anybody in the world afflicted. It's devastating, and we all know it, right? And I've had several days where I've got myself down worrying about it and watching too much news and too much social media, and I've just. I've had to put it down, right? And I'm like. Like Facebook. I'm not even scrolling Facebook. I'm just staying the hell off of it, because I can't. It's too easy to get sucked into, you all. Know what I'm saying? So we're doing our best to stay upbeat, be here every day for you. We're here for you in helicopter line ground school. The links down below again, don't Forget the free PDFs, helicopter checkride and top 10 checkride tips, and our radio communications course. So many cool things coming, trust me. And we're gonna do our best to keep you entertained through April. Well, we're gonna do our best to keep you entertained all the time. The best we can. All right? Like, subscribe. Peace out.