Episode 425: "Have You Tried the Icarus Device? Is it Useful?"

From Dreadnova. She wants to know or they want to know. Have you tried the Icarus device and is it useful? Yeah, as a matter of fact, we have one right here. Right here. It's a fun story. At Heli Expo last year, I was walking down the. Walking through the expo with my daughter and this kid runs out in the middle, right? Here's one. This young man, the guy that or the kid, I shouldn't call him a kid. The gentleman that invented this come running out and grab me. He goes, hey, Kenny, I'd like to show you my device. So I went over to the booth and he was at a. At a helicopter booth and started showing me his thing. I go, well, we don't have an instrument trainer. You know, we don't really do that much instrument training. And he, he kind of looked deflated when I said that. And I go, well, go ahead and. But go ahead and show me your product, right? And so he showed me how it worked and I was like, that's pretty cool. That's pretty interesting. I said, or he asked me, he told me he was going to be coming to Indiana for something. He goes, if I come to Indiana, could I stop by? And I said, yeah, we have an R44. It's not necessarily an instrument trainer, but we could go try it out anyway. He followed through and he did, and he came here. We did a video on it. We've done a couple videos on the Icarus, actually. I was totally impressed not only with this young man for his going forward attitude to come over and grab me, walking down the aisle and kind of show me his product and then to show up here and do a video. And we went out and I flew with it. I've used it. Hauser's been out with it in another flight with an R22 and used it. And I think it's pretty amazing. And we've talked about it before again, you know, Foggles, they've been around forever, right? That's the standard old thing you just put on your head. That Icarus device. That's a game changer as far as I'm concerned. Because for anybody that doesn't know, I guess I could, you know what? Heck, let's get out and show it to people that don't know. So what's neat about this and really, really cool is it gives you a much more. A much better idea of what's going to happen if you went inadvertent and had to try to get yourself out of the clouds. And this is. That's a great question. I'm glad you brought it up because the next video we're going to roll here shortly is called Fatal Trap. Continued Flight and Reduced Visibility. And we're going to talk about that because this is that time of year again. But it's this device right here. So once it's turned on, this goes completely clear and you put it on a hat and you put it on your head. And this one's specifically built for the R44 panel that we have in the R44. So it works perfect. So the instructor can take the app and change the visibility from, you know, unlimited visibility to 5 miles to 3 miles, down to a mile or whatever he wants to do. So much more realistic than using a pair of foggles. The foggles are a lot easier to cheat. And again, it's just either on or it's off. That's it. With this, that the fact that the instructor can simulate even going in and out of clouds, which was much more realistic, that's what could really happen to you. You went into a lower layer of clouds by accidentally, you weren't on an IFR flight plan. You're not instrument rated or you might be instrument ready, but let's say you just go inadvertent and then you're popping in and out of the clouds. The instructor can actually do that. So the device itself, this young man, he filled a niche for sure. And I've been excited to see how well he's done with it. I see his marketing, he does a great job with his marketing and he's online all the time and reaches out to us occasionally for stuff. And so, yeah, I have heard of it. I've used it. Firm believer in it. And for the price at this time, when he was here, I guess it was last spring, I think it was. I think it was around 1250 bucks. But that general price range, considering we spend hundreds of thousands of dollars on aircraft and as pilots and students, we spend thousands and thousands of dollars for our training, I think is super duper reasonably priced. 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 askhogs.com if you're new to us, we have a clone. 14 years of my digital content's 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. Oh, 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 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 at 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. 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 to 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 the 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 hog no go and live to fly another day helicopterground com.