Episode 443: Three Pilots, One Lesson: Always Triple-Check Your Instructor

As we don't fall as we walk out to check out the MD out here, this is Chris Nelson. He's. You've seen him pop up. He did his commercial final approach course with us. And we got a couple of lessons from this one. We did three different people within two days, which isn't what we normally do. We keep it one on one, but for whatever reason, we end up with three people wanting to do facs. And so I brought another instructor in, HOGS member, longtime Hogs member, super fan, that became a cfi. We had him come out to help us. The cool thing that. One of the cool things that happened was since we had three guys here at once, the three guys helped each other. So we kept. We were flying just R44, but with having two instructors, we would have one person flying and the other two would be in with the other instructor doing ground. And then the two people that were in there doing ground while the other one's flying, they were helping each out quite a bit because somebody. Each person was strong in maybe a different area. So one person's helping with foreflight and another person's helping with something else. So it was a really neat deal how it kind of worked out that the students helped each other. And again, we. What we do with the FAC is one on one, but sometimes we combine a couple people, but we make sure there's another instructor going. So that worked out really well. And then another note on this one. And we harp on this all the time. Yeah. When you go through the requirements, you have to open up. And here's how I say to people, I say, sit down. Okay. Get your logbook out. Okay. And then they'll go, well, I got all my requirements done. I go, I know. Well, I went over with my instructor. I go, I know, but let's do it again. And we open up the far aim. We go down that list. You got 40 hours right there. Yep. You got this. Yep. You got this. And we're consistently having people showing up that they say they've checked the requirements. They tell us that their instructors check their requirements, and then we find they don't have all the requirements. And so what I say is that we're going to act like we're in kindergarten, okay? So as simple as it seems, you got to open up the far aim at the beginning of the training and go, all right, let's go through it step by step and check every single line and make sure that all the endorsements are in the logbook matching what those requirements are. That's another problem we keep continually seeing. They might have the flight but their instructor never endorsed it. So here we are, last minute. Well, my instructor moved to Hawaii. Well get on the phone, text them, do whatever, but get a hold of that instructor and they're going to have to get us that endorsement or we're going to have to go on flight again. And here's one that we've seen during those three checkrides. I had just made a video about how somebody was going for a commercial. They needed 2.0 flight and it was 1.8. This happened to me years ago and so I was telling that story in a video and then these guys showed up and one of the other applicants that was here with you, same exact thing. It was a 2.0 flight. We opened up and it's 1.8. And I'm like 1.8 is not going to work. We have to go fly this requirement now that you thought was done. So the point of the story is instructors and applicants, you need to do this too. It is your instructor's job to make sure that you have these requirements. But you know what, you need to double check your instructor and you need to know this. This is another thing that comes up all the time. Somebody goes, there may be a rated pilot and they go what do I need for the add on? You're a rated pilot. You know how to look in the far aim under part 61 and look and see it's laid out. It's really simple to see. So applicants.

Check those requirements and double check your instructor. I can't preach enough of how much we've seen in the last 30 checkrides. In 30 months how many people had missing endorsements requirements that weren't long enough. We've been talking about the commercial in the last few videos. Problems with the requirements for the commercial. You got to spend a lot of time in going through this stuff.

Well, and the biggest thing too is, is not when you're trying to fill out your 8710 at the last minute. That was when we actually caught the problem was when he was doing his 8710. Luckily he was came in a few days early and so you guys were able to go out there and fly it, get it done and it wasn't a big deal.

Right.

But it just too many things are going on at that time to have to worry about going out and flying more.

Yep. And that's one thing that we started doing in the last few checkrides was we're we're doing the 87 10th on Monday and then if we need to add to it, we're going to go, okay, we know we're going to do the three hours prep, we can add that to the time. Let's go through and have a draft. And then at the before Friday, then all we got to do is go in and go, okay, we need to add here, we need to add here whatever the case is. But you're not spending that time the day before the night before. You've got all week to figure out, oh, we missed a requirement, let's get that done. And you can catch that stuff while you're doing that. 8710. So 8710 early. The earlier the better. So there's your tips. But you're probably wondering about this in the background. Chris has a really good story so we'll see how however much he wants to share about this aircraft. But he's owner of the R22 that we use and has been pretty become a big part of hogs and supporting us with aircraft and information. And I call Chris all the time, I have a question about something because he's on the phone talking to everybody and has really big network of people. What do you want to share with us about this interesting helicopter?

Well, I purchased this back in May. Unfortunately, the gentleman that had owned it passed away and his wife was, you know, trying to sell it and it was sitting in a barn. It was basically a barn find MD 500. And so I went down there, made her an offer, she accepted a couple weeks later, picked it up, brought it back up to Lansing. I hired a gentleman out of Texas A&PIA that, you know, was well known in the industry for MD 500s and he came up, we spent a week, we went through and did 100 hour inspection, went through and redid the tail rotors and then also removed the main rotor and greased everything, just went through everything that needed to be addressed with a fine tooth comb and got it airworthy and and we're flying her today. This helicopter came off the assembly line number 53 in 1965 and it was issued to the US army, but it actually didn't go to the army. It went to Langley Research center in Langley, Virginia and was assigned to the CIA. And the CIA spent some time flying it along with some communication with Hughes and they developed, they were working on a program to try and make these aircraft quieter. And so it went back to Hughes. Hughes, along with a bunch of other people well known in the industry, developed a Four bladed tail rotor system, the five bladed main rotor system and, and a special exhaust system on this aircraft. So this aircraft is the quiet one. There was one other one that was manufactured identical to it. Both of these aircraft were sent over to Vietnam in 1972 ish. And were specifically sent over there for this top secret mission. And I believe in fall, winter of 72 they are actually successful with the mission. They flew this aircraft into enemy territory, wiretapped some telephone lines to be able to gather intelligence. So that way, when there was peace treaty talks In Paris that 19, spring of 1973, basically the, the U.S. you know, was like, look, we know what you're trying to do. We've already done this, just give it up, let's sign this peace treaty, let's end the war in Vietnam. And so shortly after that they ended the war, signed the peace treaty and this helicopter did that mission.

So it's, it's an amazing aircraft, got a lot of history. It was also shot down after its secret mission. It's got about 20 bullet holes in the bottom of it that have been patched. It went back to Hughes, they rebuilt it.

And then it sat in a warehouse for a period of time, kind of ready and waiting if they needed an aircraft. And then it went to the U.S. border Patrol from I believe 1973 to the early 80s. And then once the border patrol is done with it, they sent it back to the government. It sat in a warehouse again for several years. And then in 1995.

The government was tired of housing all these old government military aircraft and they were giving them to a lot of your local sheriff, sheriff departments, county sheriff departments, you know, lapd, you know, every, every big police department had one or two of them. And this aircraft along with one other one got picked up. And.

A gentleman by the name of Gary Helton put it together.

He had all the documentation of this aircraft, specifically knew its history. So he took the parts from another aircraft and made this one operational. And so this is what it is. He flew it for about 18 years. He only put about 190 hours on it. And then he actually came across a bell 206. He was getting older, he couldn't get in and out of this aircraft very easily. And the 206 was better for him. So this sat for a couple years and I was able, you know, and God blessed me with the ability to be able to purchase it and get it back and flying. And it's amazing. So this helicopter originally, again 1965 Hughes OH6, 369A and then it went back in 1969 when it got all of the fancy parts put on it to become the quiet one. And then they put it back to standard configuration for the U.S. border Patrol back in 1960, 70, early 70s.

Awesome. Well, let's, let's talk about the pretty yellow helicopter over here real quick. We just got back from the 100 hour, 500 hour inspection. Paint on the blades up front and it's ready to go. So we got the R22 sitting inside ready to go. The R44 is ready to go. We've had, we had four check rides and like in the last month got those all taken care of. And now believe it or not, our schedule is wide open. So if you are sitting around and you can't get a checkride done for all the reasons we keep talking about, reach out to Heather at 574-767-1797. You can call or text her at that number. We can get you on the schedule and get you finished. That is if you have the requirements. Now could you come early and we help you finish a requirement? Yes, that's, that could be the case. We'll do a zoom with you, figure out what extra time you're going to need and could have you come out and finish a requirement. And we had a recent thought too. Night's hard to get sometimes. If you want to come out and jam out your night. I'm a night flyer, I'm a night owl. I love being out at night. Hunter is the same way. If you want to come out here and get some night done, we'll blast that out in a couple of days. If it's the night you need for private or a night you need for commercial or whatever the case is, maybe you need some night for a job you're applying for.

It's sitting that time of the year where it gets dark fairly early now we can go out and get two or three or four hours in a night. So if you're looking for some night, call us up, call tech Heather. And other than that other thing we're.

Trying to do is we're gonna get the R22 in this winter and get the instruments put in it so that we have a full instrument R22 here at Hogs as well. So if you're interested in that reach out. You know, we can get you on the schedule. But that's, that's going to happen this winter.

So and that's, that's big news is we've been talking about this for a while trying to get an instrument ship. We got Hauser, who's been, you know, working with us forever, and he's gung ho for us to get an instrument ship. So we've been trying to work this out for quite a while, and we do get a lot of calls. And we know how hard it is. People are having a hard time lining up a instructor with a helicopter who has an examiner available. It's just not real super common. So we're trying to help build that. That void as well. And I'm glad you brought that up because that's a good. Because people sometimes want to plan stuff out two or three months in advance. So that's something else we'll have coming up here in the future. I think we should go play in R44. What do you think?

Let's do it.

All right, well, subscribe and hit the bell so you can be notified of the rest of the checkride tips that we've got going for the rest of the however many days we got left. What day are we on now? 10, 11? I don't know, something like that. All right, peace out. See you next video. Peace. 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.