Episode 454: Cut the Unnecessary Flying Before Your Helicopter Check-Ride

One of two videos left of our 30 Days of Videos on the things we've seen for the last 30 checkrides over the last 30 months. And today's on a positive note. One thing that we have found that works really, really well as you're preparing for the checkride day, flying two times a day, we have people that will call up and say, okay, well when I get out there, can I fly? Like what am I gonna fly? Like three times a day, four times a day? Way too much. And just to explain that real quick, the way we feel about it, we've done this for three summers now. The first summer we scheduled three flights a day. If you do three flights a day and if you have proper ground time, like come in the morning, sit down, how you feeling? How's it going? What have you been doing or what are we going to work on today? Pre flight, get fuel, do a flight, proper debrief, sign log books. If you do that and you're doing the proper pre and post flight briefings, plus doing ground as you're preparing for the checkride that's coming up that week that turns into like a 10, 11, 12 hour day usually and everybody leaves tired and wore out. So the last two summers I decided, you know what, we're going to try two times a day. And we found out very quickly that that made a lot of sense for us. That turns into an eight hour day faster than what you would think. Come in in the morning, sit down, how are we feeling? What are we going to do? Look at the weather, do a little bit of ground, and again, proper briefing before going out to fly a good pre flight, push it out, get fuel, go fly, come back, do a proper debrief. That doesn't happen a lot of time at a lot of flight schools and sign logbooks. It's pretty much time for lunch, have a nice lunch. We cater our lunches in here or we just pick something here so we don't have to go out and waste time eating. Afternoon, same thing. Okay, a little bit of ground pre discussion before going out to fly. Go do a quick pre flight, fly again, come back, debrief, sign the log books, do a little bit of ground and boom, it's in an eight hour day. So I'm not saying you can't fly more than two times a day. That's not what I'm saying. What I'm saying is when you're down to the wire and you're trying to make the most progress, I have, I have found for us here that flying two times a day as we're getting ready is really the key that just seems to make things go really, really well. And a couple other just little tips that we've that I've seen over the years if at all possible. I don't like to fly the day before because here's what happens the closer you get to checkride day, that last two or three days a person's flying will just start going. Their performance will start going down the closer you get. So I like to try to be finished with the flying at least a day in advance. So the last day could be finishing up paperwork last minute ground. Try to have more of a relaxing day and not be all stressed out the day before the checkride. I know that sounds easier, you know it's easier said than done. But that is our goal. If we have to fly the day before, we will another benefit in these last 30 checkrides by being ready early. Twice we had bad weather scheduled on a Friday, which is when we normally do these checkrides. And the examiner called on Wednesday said hey, weather looks bad Friday. And by on those two times I said well do you want to go tomorrow? And he's like, are you guys ready? And I'm like, yep. So twice we went a day early so we could avoid the checkride being canceled over weather. Again, I'm just telling you what works. I know this isn't always possible, but if you can, if you can really work on these couple things on that one last little tip on that too. You're stressed out as you get close. Know that that last couple days before the checkride you're flying usually is going down and then somehow that little bit of stress a day to checkride. Most people end up having a really good flight or at least a decent flight during their test. And I know that sounds a little bit awkward, but having stress actually helps you perform in the helicopter many, many times. So the normal is as you get closer to that checkride within the last few days, the more you fly and the harder you hit it, your performance is going to go down the aircraft know that that's normal and that usually boom the day of a person gets in there with a little, with a little bit of stress or some stress and they usually do really, really well. Now if you're overstressed, of course that can can really screw the check right up for you. But a certain amount of stress is okay. Are you feeling the overwhelm of all you have to know to get through the private commercial instrument or Certified flight instructor ratings go to helicopterground.com just below this video. We have courses for private pilot, commercial pilot, instrument pilot, and cfi. You have monthly options, yearly options, and then we have a pro pilot option. Keep all the courses, they're there as long as you need it, it doesn't expire. Also, about a year and a half ago, we introduced askhogs.com and we've been building on this for the last year and a half. 14 years of my content is loaded into my clone. It's free to anyone@askhogz.com we'll put that link down below. And it's becoming more and more popular as time goes by. We've added it to our courses. So private pilot, for example, every single video as you go through the course, the AI is just below the video. So you can view the video if you have a question, 24 hours a day, seven days a week, you'll get a response from my clone. And with 14 years of content, private or content, paid content, YouTube content, blogs, podcast documents, our courses, everything digital and video is loaded into this thing. And it's different than, say, chat. GPT is great for getting a lot of information for a lot of things. This is different because it's all from our content. So it's teaching in the form and style that we do and the way we do things here. So that's down below, free to anyone and also in our courses. And we have a free Resource, Private Pilot 101 Helicopter Training Blueprint. We put this together about two years ago. We built this for the beginner. For the beginner. For people early in their training or somebody who hasn't even started yet. We answer all the most frequently asked questions right in the beginning of the book. And then we go through and cover a lot of training tips like how many times a week should I fly? And how much is it going to cost? And what's it going to take to get through the written test? 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