Episode 424: Flying Inadvertent in the Clouds: Make the No-Go Decision

Our next question is from Running Gaming. What's your best tip for flighting VFR into an ad? I don't even. Advertent IMC condition. Inadvertent.

What is my. Read the question again.

What's your best tip for flooding VFR into an advertent IMC condition?

Okay, it's 100 at all cost. Never ever do it. He's asking how to go into it.

Sounds like it.

That's the way it reads. I would never inadvertently fly into the clouds. Right. You know the only time you should ever fly into the clouds is if you are via instrument rated in an instrument rated aircraft, you're current instruments, you're qualified, you're comfortable and collegally go do it. You know, avoiding inadvertent IMC or inadvertent. Yeah, inadvertent ifc. Going into the clouds when you're not prepared for is a problem.

It kills people.

It kills average everyday pilots. It kills, kills professional pilots, kills EMS pilots. I was in that environment for five years flying EMS and the five years that I was in it, we had the worst year in EMS helicopter crashes in history. And that was around 2008, sometime around there. And I believe the numbers have down.

Went down hopefully since and hopefully it's.

Never been as bad as it was that year. But at that time flying in advertly in the clouds was killing multitudes of EMS pilots and crews. They have like the top 10 most dangerous jobs that year. We were above it.

It wasn't even on the scale, it.

Was above the scale and people didn't know about it, people didn't talk about it, but that's a fact. So learning to number one, make good no go decisions, right? You never ever want to advertently go into the clouds unless again you are prepared, qualified and legal to do it. Now can it happen accidentally? It can happen accidentally. I've done it. I made a bad weather decision one night I was in Cleveland, I wanted to come back to Indiana. Boss would let me fly an airplane home. I'm a VFR pilot in a VFR airplane and the clouds were a little low. But I'm a helicopter guy so I'm.

Like, well I'm comfortable flying a little lower.

First mistake. I should have never gotten the airplane. And on my trip home I got into a low layer of clouds and somehow I was able to keep the aircraft under control, get back out of the clouds. And when I landed at an airport, I was an Airport like 40 miles away from where I thought I was landing. Like I Was so disoriented after it happened and got myself in a mess. Luckily, I lived through it and it. That one event is the one that made me go, okay, this is nothing to play with. I'll tell you another something stupid I did that day. I wanted to get home and I even called flight service and they were like, well, you know, here's the weather along your route. And he said, vfr not recommended. If you ever get that from flight service, if they say those words, I would say, thank you very much. I'd hang up the phone and call it off. I had a airline pilot who was a CFI helicopter as well, worked at the same place. He's like, he was looking at the weather that I was looking at flying and he's like, dude, don't do it. Just stay here the weekend. It's not worth it. And I'm the idiot that made the choice because I had get homitis. So being prepared for it. You know, if you're not flying in really good conditions, the only way you should even be attempting to fly where you might run into a weather problem is if you are fully 100 prepared, you've flown instruments, you're qualified and. And then if you go in inadvertent, you have to claim an emergency and ask for help. You have to. I haven't talked a lot about Kobe in the past few years just because so many people made videos on it right off the bat. And I know another pilot that was there that day that said he should have never. His pilot should have never taken off. But I recently watched a really well put together documentary and it sounds like, you know, that the pilot was qualified, he had a good reputation, was the chief pilot, I believe of the company, or had a high position. He had the opportunity to claim for emergency and call for help and he didn't. As far as we know, it kills a lot of people. And you think, well, just call. You know, why wouldn't a person just call for help? Pilots don't want to screw that. They don't want to admit they made a mistake or they're worried about getting fired when they get home. The only thing you can do if you go inadvertent is get on your instruments. Hopefully you have the instruments you need to keep the thing level. Hopefully you've had enough training that you can survive it. And you got to squawk an emergency, call for help and say, I want to inadvertent imc. I'm in the clouds, I need help. I need to get somewhere And I need, you know, I need help and they will talk you through it. And another important note on that, this is why on the commercial rating helicopter you have to have five hours minimum instrument time in a helicopter. I know for a fact where that comes from, right. Direct from our examiner, he said that 5 hours can be done by a CFI. Doesn't even have to be a double eye. You need the basic minimum training on what to do if you go inadvertent. And so what we do is we practice with the person. We'll say, okay, let's say you went inadvertent imc, you know, flip on the Foggles or use the fancy Icarus device. Like we have a, have one of those units over here and then give the student or the pilot that you're training, you give them vectors to certain altitudes, turn directions and you kind of like play like you're the tower and you're going to help this person talking through them through communications on which way to turn, what altitude to go to and help you get diverted to an airport and get you down and out of the clouds. That's what that five hours is for. And we know that, that five hours is the bare minimum. Like is it enough that it could keep you from killing yourself? Maybe, maybe in some instances, no, that five hours isn't going to be enough. So this is a big topic. It's why we created the Hogs no go button. And we've been talking about this basically like last few days we've been hitting it pretty hard because we've been giving them away live to fly another day. Helicopterground.com and that's the point. You decide the weather, zippy. You're not sure you can do it. Vfr, hit the button, make the choice, I'm not going and forget about it. Move on with your day. And that's, I won't go into the whole story how we made the button because I tell it all the time. But that's where we initiated the no go button. And that's why we send them out to our members after they pass their checkride. Send us in a picture for the Hogs Wall of fame. We send you a no go button. And I know for a fact that they talk about them at flight schools. We had one guy, I think he got his private, then he got his commercial and he said, hey, you gave me a no go for the private. Can I get another no go for the commercial? And he said, I asked because I left it at the flight school and the kids there Having fun hitting the button. And we've been discussing the no go decision and I'm like, that's perfect.

Right?

That's the idea. It's a conversation piece and it's also something to give yourself a little pat on the back or a little break after you've made the decision to just stay on the ground. So making good pilot decisions, understanding weather, having good conservative weather minimums so that you don't ever fly into the clouds unprepared because it, it'll kill you. This is PD Private Pilot 101 helicopter trading blueprint. The link is down below to get a free PDF. So you sign up with your email and you'll immediately be able to download the free PDF. You'll also have an opportunity to purchase the paperback if you would like. So that link is down below along with a link for ask hogs.com if you're new to us, we have a clone 14 years of my digital contents piped into it. You can ask it questions 24 hours a day, seven days a week. Here's a tip on the clone though. It's got a lot of content in it, but we've had some people asking specific questions like with a, you know, can I fly into this specific airport? Can I do this right? Like we haven't fed the clone actual supplement charts. So asking it things like how many miles from this airport to that airport is not going to have that information. We haven't loaded it with that kind of information. We've loaded it with all my videos, podcasts, you know, blogs, paid content, free content. It's all in there. But you know, we don't teach, you know, that that whole sectional chart part of aviation isn't loaded into the clone. So it has its limits on what you can ask. But you can ask anything helicopter flight and ground related, related directly to learning.

So there's 19 of you previous, sorry, 18. We have our 19th coming in just about a week that we're going to finish up. So we have a few spots left for the spring of 2025. So you got to get in now if you want one of these. Because of course as we're moving into spring, people are talking, they're calling. So we've got like three spots left for the spring. So if you want to get in, we're going to put a link down below this video.

We've got a short questionnaire to see.

If you qualify for the final approach course.

Go through that, the link below, answer.

The question, we'll get back to you.

If you look like you're a good.

Fit or we're a good fit to get you finished up. We got three spots basically for the spring so we can make you number 20, number 21 and number 22 on the hogs wall of fame. And these are limited because I'm just saying I'm not sure exactly how long I'm going to continue this. I got some other things I got cooking. So I don't know if you wanted, if you want to get finished, you need to go below, fill out that form, answer the questions and we'll get back to you right away and we'll look and see if we can get you set up to get your rating finished. So you have two choices, R22 or R44. And the way this works, we do.

A minimum of three days.

So we're going to work together doing the flying and ground for three days. Day number four, take a checkride. So three hours of flight prep, one hour for the checkride. Again this is minimum. And we'll have you finished and send you home. So you have two choices as we said, R22 and R44. So the minimum for the R44 is 6800. For the minimum package the get you finished again. If you need more time, we can always work something out. Or if you want a VIP package, then on the minimum for the R22 it's 5300. Again that is the minimum. But if we didn't tell you, we've been working with this Same examiner for 24 years.

We've completed 19 of these.

You could be 20, 21 or 22, get finished up for this spring, get on the schedule now. So go down below, fill out that questionnaire and we'll get back to you, see if we can get you finished up. That's all I got. Peace out.

When 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.