Helicopter Emergency Procedures: Are you really prepared?

All right, we are live today. We are going to talk about helicopter emergency procedures and going to let Brian take the lead again today. Brian is our operations manager for helicopter land ground school now with us full time. Brian spent 25 years with the sheriff's department. 30 year aviator, flew in the aviation unit for what, 15 years. I think Brian can lead in just a little bit with his experience. But we wanted to talk today about emergency procedures. So I'm Kenny Keller, creator, helicopter. God, I can't talk helicopter online ground school been online eight years and I can see we got like 20 people watching. Awesome. Heather is in the chat today and she's gonna be saying hi to everybody. And at the end of this presentation, we'll take some of your questions. So go ahead and chat away, leave your questions, but we will just keep the presentation flowing. I want Brian to cover what he wants to cover and then we'll take some of your questions at the end. So, Brian, why don't you go ahead and get started on emergency procedures. What we were talking about this morning on the phone.

Sounds good. That's good. All right. This particular thing we're going to go over today regarding emergency procedures, we're not going to get into the specifics of all the different emergency procedures and how to handle them. Obviously, that's something that you're going to need to do with an instructor going through the PoH for the type of aircraft that you're flying. But my question for everybody is, are you really prepared? And I mean truly, truly ready? I'm not going to get into the most recent crash that just occurred with Houston Police Department. There's a big investigation going on with that. We'll find out details later and maybe we can have a discussion. I don't have any of the specifics. What I do have is a couple things that have happened in my career to really test me to find out if I'm really ready. And so, you know, this is really the big thing, is, you know, how often do all of you that are pilots that are watching, how often do you actually review your emergency procedures? When I mean review them, do you have those critical items cemented in your mind, what you're going to do for a given situation? Because if you read your POH or your flight manual, all of them have things in there that you must instinctively be able to do. The moment a particular thing happens, an event occurs, such as tail rotor failure in flight or an engine failure in flight. I'm not talking about your alternator stops working and you're Running on just your battery and your battery dies, and now you have no battery, your engine is going to keep running. Or if you're flying a turbine and the generator quits working, there's some steps that you can take, but you can still fly the helicopter. We're talking about situations that if you don't do the right thing immediately, typically it ends up with a very bad outcome, typically fatal for all occupants of the. So, you know, those are the things that I want to emphasize to people that are watching this is you have got to take it very, very serious as far as knowing the immediate actions that you need to take in the event of some type of a failure. Will you really be ready? I mean, truly, after the Houston crash, I was talking to actually the CFI who taught me in the sheriff's office, and we were just texting back and forth about it, and he had made a comment. He said, you know, are we all. Are we really ready when something really bad happens in flight? Are we truly ready? And we're talking. This guy's been flying for, man, he's been flying for a long time. And I sat back and I thought about it over the weekend. You know, that's a good question. Are we really ready? It's one thing to be able to sit here and spit out what you would do, what the procedure says, but will you actually do the right thing when you're in flight? And here's the biggest takeaway. Fly the helicopter. It doesn't matter what the problem is. Fly the helicopter. You know, if you're not sure what to do and you auto rotate, fly the best auto rotation that you can, but fly it. The helicopter will fly without engine power. It will fly. But there's, there are some various things that occur flight that if you do the wrong thing, you can just aggravate it and make it worse. So I really want to impress upon everybody, make sure you sit down and you go through the emergency procedures for the aircraft you fly and you know them, cement them in knowledge. And one way to do that is maybe take once a week, pick a particular emergency procedure and just get that cemented down where you can spit out every bit of information about it. And think about that when you're flying. What am I going to do if this happens? And do that every week? Or you could do a couple of them a week, make flashcards, study these things and practice them. You know, we all talk about risk management in aviation, and that all begins before you ever get in the helicopter. So for the CFIs, that are watching. I challenge you to make your work with your students to really hammer out the emergency procedures that are necessary to keep them alive. It's one thing to set yourself up for a checkride and there's things that you have to do in order to meet the practical test standards. I understand that. But really take the opportunity to instill in all of your students how important it is once they get their certificate and they move on to not only continue to review emergency procedures, but at least at a minimum, once a year, if twice a year as possible, go out with the CFI and practice the emergency procedures that if you don't get them right, it could. It could end on a bad day for you. So I really want to challenge everybody to do that. Kenny, do you have anything to add on that?

Yeah, the first thing that popped to my mind with, in relation to what you were talking about is I've talked about this many times and I think about even talk about it inside helicopter link ground school, but I want to talk about it now is one of my close friends has been a helicopter pilot for 40 years. So started out in the military, he was an army aviator, moved to helicopter ems, and he was flying the line when I met him. I went to work at a base where he was filling in part time. So he flew the line for many years and then he was a transition pilot, went to different bases to fill in, and then he became a Czech airman and he just recently retired. Okay, so many, many, many years in helicopter ems. So I want to use this as in the professional environment. And our conversations were over and over again. He said, kenny, when I go out to these bases to do 135 checkrides, ultimately I should probably be shutting half these bases down. And this, and this sounds horrible, right? And it sounds bad, but I'm telling you straight from a Czech airman in that field for many, many years. And he said his pet peeve was, guys, I can tell, I know you're not cracking the book until the day before I get there. And he said, you know, you have a full year that, you know I'm coming. You know when your 135Checkride is going to come up. So I can tell when I show up and I can tell when you started cramming the night before. And he said, so then in turn he goes, what would I do when these guys are behind their knowledge? What happens if I shut down half the bases? I go to number one, the company's gonna. They're gonna fire me, right? Because if he went in and did his job the way it was supposed to be done, he'd be shutting bases down due to lack of knowledge. Now, I know I just said that. And that's gonna ruffle feathers then. There are plenty of guys who keep their knowledge sharp, right? So not taking away from the people who do study and stay on top of things, and they know their stuff and they know their aircraft because those pilots are out there in EMS like every other field. The law enforcement you flew in, I'm sure you can tell me the same thing, Brian. CFIS news reporting across the board. No matter what you're doing, we know there are pilots that are guilty of getting the ratings and then they just don't study. Oh, I don't. I have my license and I've heard this many times for 20 years. Well, I have my ratings. I don't need to study anymore. That's the worst statement anybody ever says to me, well, I don't need to crack the books anymore. I've already got my ratings. Well, how can you keep your knowledge fresh? How many people can really, you know, study a manual, take a checkride, get a job, pass your 135 check, ride for that 135 operation you're flying for? You study one time, then you never study again. That makes no sense at all. So we know in the real world there are a lot of people that let their knowledge fall behind and there's no reason for it. And especially like in his case, he was like, they got 12 hours a day. They could spend an hour a week and have their knowledge really good by spending one hour a week throughout the year during their seven days on, when one time spent an hour reviewing, and their knowledge would be so much better. And when I went into that environment, they told us, they said, guys, you know, when we come out, we know when you're not using the checklist, we know who's using the checklist and who's not, because we can tell who the guys are to start using the checklist day before the check airman shows up, right? So a little bit of what goes on in the real world. People don't stand their knowledge like they're supposed to. Private owners. A lot of our members in helicopter ground school are private owners who remain have memberships because they say, I honestly go in and every so often review my knowledge because I'm a private owner. And we know that with private owners, a lot of times they get into trouble. And why there's a one of the Robinson safety notices is about private owners can be a problem because private owners aren't being checked out at a flight school. They own their aircraft, they can do what they want. So again, in that environment, there are private owners who literally study and honestly keep their knowledge fresh. Then we know there's private owners who just go grab their helicopter whenever they want. They pay their insurance policy, they get their flight review every two years and there's nobody watching over them. Where if you're going to rent from a flight school, they're going to say, how many days has it been since you've flown here? Go get checked out with an instructor, where's your knowledge at? But when you're a private owner, you pretty much just can do what you want. So again, the reality of that's reality is that's why there's a safety notice about private owners and how they get into trouble maybe more often than the average pilot who is in a curriculum where they're at a flight school and they're renting a helicopter and someone is watching over them. Of course, because if you come here to want to rent my instrument and say, when's the last time you flew? You know, and I'm gonna go out and fly with you and make sure your knowledge is where it is, even if you just had a flight review. Because I don't know if somebody didn't just sign you off and you didn't even really, you know, do much, which happens a lot of times in a flight review. So back to you, Brian.

Yeah. Actually, you know what, since you were talking about the, you know, private owners and things, and one thing I wanted to show, you know, we look here at the, at the Robinson manual, you know, not very big, packed with a lot of good stuff in there, especially the safety notices in the very back. I was quite surprised when I started transitioning into the EC120 turbine helicopter for work. That manual was about that thick and it was a big three ring binder just packed full. And I thought, oh my gosh. I thought learning everything about the Robinson helicopter was a lot of study material. And I moved into the EC120. Then when I moved up to the uh, one H Huey. Wow, that's a lot of information. And I'll tell you, I hear people all the time. We get the emails. I want to be a professional pilot. I want to do this. Well, I'll tell you this, if you want to be a professional pilot, start now with the. Learn everything you can about the helicopter you're going to be training in. Whether It's a Schweitzer, an instrument, an R22, an R44, know those systems inside and out. And if you can force yourself to become a master of those aircraft when you move up to bigger aircraft, you'll have set the foundation for proper studying, staying on top of all the systems, emergency procedures, things of that nature. Because if you don't, if you can't handle the small, small binder of a Robinson, or maybe, and I'm not, I don't have any time in an instrument, but I would half suspect that the flight manual is nowhere near the size of one for a EC120 or Huey. But really, really force yourself to become a master of every aircraft that you fly. And it takes a lot of work. And the more aircraft you fly, different aircraft, the harder it is. You really have to stay in tune with what's going on. And here's a prime example. The EC120 that I fly at work, that rotor system is a clockwise rotor, rotating rotor system. I could at the same time, you know, a few hours later step into the uh, one Huey. That rotor system is the opposite direction, it's counterclockwise, so pedal inputs, emergency procedures, things vary between the different aircraft. And you, you have to. I forced myself to, to read the manuals and I'll be honest, I've been retired for six weeks now and I've kind of sat back and been working with Kenny and I haven't spent as much time as I would like to. But this was one of the things I wanted to talk about. And it's not us telling everybody you need to do this, it's for me and Kenny as well. If we want to be safe, proficient pilots, we need to stay in the books as well. And I'll tell you, if I can't stay in the books, I have no business getting in the helicopters at work because I just, I'm not at that proficient level that I should be if I let too much time lapse. So again, you know, this is a challenge for everybody to get out there and, and actually really take a, take it serious on emergency procedure training and knowing what to do if something really bad happens. Just real quick, a story. When I was flying patrol, this was several years ago, we were in the EC120. I thought I knew the systems pretty good and we were on a patrol flight, me and my partner and we were working a call, so we were doing left hand orbits in the helicopter and I needed to slow down so I went to lower the collector just a Little bit. A little bit of aft cyclic. The collective stopped moving. I couldn't push it down. And it literally felt like something was under the collective. So I looked under my collector, make sure nothing had dropped under there. It was free. Asked my partner if there was anything that was obstructing the collective on his side, like the MacBook Pocket or something. He looked over, he's all, no, there's nothing in the way. So I tried pushing the collective down again, and it was not going down. And I felt like, man, if I push too hard, I'm gonna break something. So I was a little concerned. I could raise the collective all I wanted, but I couldn't lower it past a certain spot. So I asked my partner on his side, and I'm thinking in my head how, you know, I know how the controls are rigged, but I asked him, you know, you push on your collective, see if it'll go down. He tries to push it down, same problem. I said, all right, we're gonna head back to the airport. Well, our airport was a class Delta Airport Tower had already closed, so it reverted back to class Echo to the surface. So I just did normal announcements, made my way, and told my partner what we were gonna do. I said, I just can't lower the class all the way. In my head I'm thinking, am I having some type of a servo jam with the hydraulic system? I knew it wasn't a hard over because the control didn't move on its own, but in my head, I thought it was a servo. I'm sorry. Yeah, it was a servo jam. And which is, you'll have, you know, some force or some resistance in movement with the control. And so that's what I was thinking was going on. So in my mind, I'm thinking I'm gonna have to shut hydraulics off. That's what I did. I got to the airport. We got almost 11,000 foot Runway at this airport, so I knew I had plenty, plenty of Runway to set the helicopter down. And I just did normal approach with no hydraulics. Shut the hydraulics off, flew the helicopter. And in that helicopter, just like most, when you turn off hydraulics, a lot of resistance you're going to feel on the collective and on the cyclic. But that felt normal to me when hydraulics were actually operating and I tried to push down the collective and it got stuck. That didn't seem normal. So I was concerned about that. Anyway, shut the hydraulics off, did a landing, no problem. Called the mechanic, he said, park it. We'll look at it in the morning. He came in the next day and what it was in the EC120, there's an anticipator cable that's separate from the throttle cable. And this goes through a bell crank underneath the belly of the helicopter. And it's supposed to be a self lubricating cable. And when they took it apart, they tried to pull the center cable through the sheathing and it wouldn't move. I mean, it was in there, it was stuck tight. So that's what the problem was. He said if I continued pushing, it probably would have broke the bell crank underneath, but, you know, should still be able to land the helicopter. The whole point of this was in my head. I thought I knew the systems well enough. In reality I didn't. I never once thought of the anticipator cable at all having anything to do with this. And so that was something that showed me that I need to stay on top of the systems. Because if you know the systems well enough, you're a lot better suited when something does go wrong to be able to come to the right conclusion on what your procedure should be. And remember, you look in emergency sections of most helicopters, they'll say a lot of them anyways. And I know in our Huey manual, on our EC120 manual, it'll mention things like, you know, the items in this, you know, that are bold are things that you should be doing immediately upon this particular type of failure. Which tells me you better have these memorized because if you don't do those immediate action items, your likely outcome is not going to be. Not going to be a good one. So anyways, just wanted to throw that out there and really emphasize the importance of knowing the systems of your aircraft that you fly. And know those really, really drive home those emergency procedures that if you don't get it right when it happens, that typically the outcome is not very good. Got anything else, Kenny?

This is inspired about 10 different things that I was thinking about while you were talking that would turn this into an hour and a half presentation.

Uh oh, sorry.

I'll try to make it short. I mean, one of them is, you know, let's take this from a training standpoint point and getting ready for checkrides. Just throw that in there. Emergency procedures. When I failed my first checkride, it was because that's the area where I was struggling when the FAA examiner was asking me questions about emergency procedures and I was stumbling and fumbling around and I was really nervous and it was a problem. And at one point he stopped the test, he said, let's go outside and calm down, talk for a few minutes. It was a beautiful day. We did that, we come back in and he went at the emergency stuff again. And when I stumbled, he just said, okay, I'm going to have to stop the test. And his words to me were, if you can't answer across the table from me like this, you know, very quickly, very sharply, then how are you going to react in the aircraft when something really happens? He said, so I'm going to have to stop the test today because when I ask you these questions about emergencies, it has to flow out of your mouth and you have to not even think about it. You have to study these emergency procedures and you have to memorize them. That's why I failed my first checkride. So when you people ask us, what kind of stuff is he looking for in a checkride? I remember my private pilot instructor that helped me after my failure, said, Kenny, emergencies and aerodynamics. Those two things you have to know, those are the things he's going to, he's going to hit. An examiner is going to hit or she's going to get, because that's what's going to kill you. If you don't understand aerodynamics and if you are not 100% on the emergencies, you're not going to get through the checkride. That's the two areas. So when you say, well, what should I know? For the checkride, you need to know a lot of stuff, but the areas you really need to focus on is aerodynamics so you understand what's going on with the helicopter and then emergencies so you, you can deal with those things that come up. So, God, I mean, there's so many things that are going through. My mind is just listening to you and I'm like, oh my God, poh, where's your poh? They're not always in a handy place. Try to make this story short. Jed who Our video has 4 million views with Jed, now the tree saw pilot. When he was working on his commercial, he went with me to pick up an Instrum 480 in Ohio or in Chicago. And I hadn't flown one a little bit. So I studied the PoH of the Instrument 480 before I went to pick it up. I went through and I reviewed the emergency procedures. Anytime I jump in an aircraft that I haven't flown in a while, just like Brian, you were mentioned flying different aircraft. If I haven't flown it in a while, I pull it open before I go fly, usually the night before. Because I have POH on several different aircraft that I teach in. I will open up the emergency procedures and I will go through them before I go pick up that aircraft. We go to Chicago, we get that aircraft. Jed had trained with me, right? So we're over downtown Chicago, populated area, and the oil pressure warning light comes on and neither one of us say anything. Judd's sitting right there and he sees what I do. We both see it. What do I look for? First I look for oil pressure, oil temperature. What are those doing? Because the warning light says, go to the gauges, figure out what's going on. So I look to decide, do I need to land right now in the street or in a parking lot or can I continue on a little farther? So the idiot light gets my attention to the gauges. I see I have oil pressure and oil temperatures. Okay. Reached behind the seat and grabbed the POH that I checked when we arrived that day. I looked, where's the POH at? I looked. It was behind the seat. So the warning light comes on. I check the gauges. Jed looks at me, I reach behind the seat, I hand it to him. We never even said anything to each other. He knew what I wanted to do. I wanted him to verify what I just did, which is okay. If we would had another indication, oil pressure warning light and then a drop in oil pressure. Oh, I'm going to put it on the ground right now. I'm going to land right now, whether it's a street, a parking lot or whatever, but I'm not going to land in a heavily, densely populated downtown Chicago area. If I can get to the next airport and by pulling that POH out, we were able to verify that I made the right decision. I made the right decision by going, okay, it got my attention. Look to the gauges. We got oil pressure, we got oil temperature. I feel safe to go on to the next airport and land. And Jed verified that by pulling up the poh. So something like that. When there's two of you in the aircraft, there's nothing wrong. There's nothing wrong with dealing with what's going on in the cockpit. Okay, what's going on? There's nothing wrong with pulling that POH out. If you've got somebody with you and verifying that, you just do the right thing. And we did. Right. So we land at the next airport. Call the mechanic. He said, how's the oil pressure? How's the oil temperature? They're good. How's the oil level? It's good. He goes, fire it up. And come on home. You probably got a bad light, flew the rest way to Indiana, no problem. God, just one of the many things going through my mind.

I mean, well, that's a. That's a good, you know, that's an excellent, you know, learning moment for, For a lot of people. And I'll tell you, the only other one that I had that really got my attention in a helicopter was me and my partner was a night flight. We took off and made a right climbing turn away from the airport. And as we got about, about a mile away, the caution light, warning and caution light illuminated. And it was main gearbox light. And I thought, whoa, okay, it was the pressure. It was main gearbox pressure light. And I got that light and went, whoa, wait a minute. And it was red. And red gets your attention pretty quick. And so I lowered the collect a little bit, turned right back towards the airport. But one thing I noticed was that I didn't. The gong, there's supposed to be a. An actual, you know, tone in your. In your headset of a gong, like, hey, guy, something's wrong here. I didn't get that. And so in my mind I was thinking, oh, is that a faulty. Is there something wrong with the. The oral warning system, or is it actually. Am I having a main gearbox problem? So we turned back towards the airport, and as we were coming back in, as I lowered the collective, the light would go out. When I raised the collection to slow down and come into a hover to set it down, the light would come back on. This is really, really weird what's going on. Nonetheless, we did the procedure the way we were supposed to, you know, reduced our torque below 45%. And when that light comes on, that's what you're supposed to do and take it back and land. So that's what we did. And we, me and my partner were talking about it because he's a pilot as well, and we landed and it ended up being the. It was a pressure switch problem. That's all that was wrong with it. There was nothing wrong with the main gearbox. But had I not known what the proper procedure was like, reduce torque below 45%. That is something you have to do immediately, because if you don't and you're actually having a main gearbox problem now, you risk, you know, just, you know, disintegrating the main gearbox. So they want you to reduce torque, get that, get that torque down. So anyways, again, just another example of things will happen. They can happen. You can have various things happen while you're flying, but it is incumbent upon you to know exactly what to do, especially when the bad things happen and you've got to get it right. There's a lot of times no time for second chances. So just want to emphasize that again.

That's good. And then what it brings to my mind is you and I complement each other because we have different, we come from different backgrounds. I have started in small helicopters and did all the Robinson and Switzer, all the little ones. But most of your training and your flying has been in a turbine powered helicopter, right? I mean, that is correct. So. So you've got your experience coming in. So me coming from the private sector, where I, where I went out and did my ratings, the amount of time that I've spent teaching since 1997 when I started flying on instruments specifically, because I have more time in that than anything I can tell you. I can't count, I can't count how many times I've had alternator chip or alternator lights, main rotor gearbox chip lights. Very common that these come on. Understanding that the warning lights, caution lights are. They're a light sending you somewhere else. So for me, they're very common. I even had an engine chip light in a Jet Ranger. I had just went through some Jet Ranger training and it was because I just went through this course, I'm flying along and I get an engine chip in the Jet Ranger and I immediately go to the gauges, check everything. Is there any vibrations, anything else going on? Nope. We get, we're good. I'm on the way to the maintenance shop anyway. I'm going to continue flight and I'm not going to freak out. I get there, land mechanic comes out, I tell him what happened because he was expecting me. I was taking it in for maintenance, right. I tell him the story, he goes, kenny, you did exactly what you were supposed to do. He had just come back from bell school himself and they bell at that time, this was back in the early 2000s, they had just had a Jet Ranger totaled because a guy did an auto rotation on a chip light. And after the aircraft, after the accident was done, the investigation showed there was nothing wrong with the aircraft. It was a chip light. So there's understanding emergencies and getting comfortable and learning about these things. Depending on what you're flying and in this instrument specifically, you get a lot of main rotor gearbox fuzz lights. I mean, you get a lot of them.

Oh yeah.

And I've had tons of alternator chip lights in the small helicopters. Robinson Schweitzer, pretty common. You're Flying along. Alternator light comes on, reset the switch, light stays off. But usually it doesn't just quit on you. Usually it'll do that. A couple times you pre warn a mechanic and they're going, yeah, alternator is probably on its way out, so, oh, my God. Inspiring. So many things here to think about that I just want to talk about. But that's why studying the PoH in learning what you can. And the more you know in your mind, the more that you have what's memorized, what's in that poh, then when you're in the aircraft, you go, okay, I know what the POH tells me to do. I know what is right. And then you always have the factor of do whatever it takes. Right? You fly the aircraft to the ground and I'll add one thing and then we'll cover. A couple of questions that Heather has posted here. Heather's been talking a lot of people. We've got 55 air people or 56 people here. Brian.

Cool.

My helicopter accident, I want to talk about that for a minute. I was ejected from a helicopter in 2005. The helicopter went into ground resonance and destroyed itself. And I can tell you, I know exactly what the PoH says about ground resonance flight. Aircraft, they didn't even go into it. Even the maintenance manual said that style of helicopter doesn't suffer from ground resonance. Well, we were flying one with a new part in the rotor system that was never used before, so. But I knew what the helicopter flying handbook said about ground resonance. And I remember knowing what was going to happen. The aircraft was going to destroy itself. And I was flying that thing to the end. I was trying to stop the spin. I was trying to stop the shake. And it was destroying itself. And I knew even though I knew it was going to destroy itself, I was thinking about my daughter, and I was married at the time. I was thinking about my wife, and I was thinking about my family and thinking that I might not survive this accident. And I never stopped. I never stopped trying to get the thing under control. And you, Brian, as a law enforcement officer, I don't know how much you and I have ever discussed my accident. But honestly, the will to survive came back more from my law enforcement training that day than ever did my 13 years on the police department that. That were they ingrained into. You don't stop. You don't stop. You don't stop. You just keep going until you're dead, right? And I go over there and try to dig it up right over there in a shelf is The. Is the pedal from that helicopter. They gave it to me. The engineers said, here, have this, because after the accident, I'm explaining what happened. And they go, you know what? Now we know why the pedals bent. Because I remember the aircraft spinning, and I was trying to hit. I was trying to hit the pedal. And they go, apparently you made contact with it, because all morning been trying to figure out why that pedals bent. And the only point I'm telling the story is I never gave up. I kept trying and trying. And they go, when you finally made contact with that pedal, that's probably when the tailbone snapped. And that would have been right before you guys got ejected. And he goes. They go, we don't. We'll never know. But maybe you saved everybody because you didn't give up. Maybe at that point when you hit that pedal and bent it and the tail rotor snapped, because it was. It was the tail rotor. The whole tail boom was doing this. Literally, it was flopping, braking. And they say when you hit that pedal, that cable pulled and it snapped the boom. And then we got ejected. So who knows? Maybe I. Maybe I saved us. But I can tell you, understanding what ground resonance was and knowing what you should and shouldn't do, come to play later when you're sitting in a room full of attorneys and they're trying to blame you. And I can tell you what, I still hadn't memorized what ground resonance was. And it's a whole couple paragraphs in the helicopter flying handbook. It's fun playing with a bunch of attorneys when they're sitting there trying to, you know, accuse you of something because they always want to blame the pilot. Right? And you're throwing the helicopter flying handbook right in their face. That was fine. Right? Because I know what it says. I did then. I do now. So knowledge, man. Freaking knowledge is. I. I'm. Let's go to some questions. Let's. You got anything else, Brian? Because I'm just gonna keep going, man. I could talk.

I figured we could. I figured we could wrap it up with that one for sure. Yeah.

I mean, God, there's so many areas we can take this. There's not a whole bunch.

I just didn't. I don't. Yeah, I. I just figured. I want everyone to understand, you know, as far as the emergency procedure, you know, each helicopter has their own. Own set of procedures. That's fine. But. Yeah, I think the. The biggest takeaway, you know, from what you just said with that whole story is, you know, fly the helicopter until it's Just not until it stops flying. Never give up when you never, never stop, you know. So anyways, I think that that ought to be enough.

Okay, Question. This is a. And maybe I know you've been looking at some of this, Brian. Maybe you have an answer for this. Kevin says, what are the options for getting an aviation medical these days with all the pandemic? I don't think anything's changed as far as getting a medical because you're still gonna.

I just had my medical done two weeks ago. Two weeks ago I had to have an appointment about four weeks in advance.

Sure.

And when I went in, it was just like going to any other doctor's visit. You know, the doctors and the secretaries were all wearing masks. And I went through my normal routine, did the vision, did the hearing, did everything. And I was in and out of there. Received my second class medical and I was out the door. I was maybe there 30 minutes.

Awesome. That answers that question then. I know the FA did put something out about you can. They're waving if like say if it's expiring, you can still fly until you can get in.

Yeah. I don't have the exact, the exact dates up in front of me, but plenty of publications, plenty of online information has gone out over the. Over this last weekend. I think it came out on either Thursday or Friday. Talking about medical certificates that were due to expire between a certain date. I wish I had those dates with me. I didn't know we were going to actually talk about that today. And additionally, if you have a flight review that is due between a certain amount of dates and I want to say from March to. I think they're given a three month extension. In addition to that, if you have a CFI renewal that's coming up, there's an another additional. There. There are some things that you have to do for each one of those. In regards, if I remember correctly, the flight review portion. If you go on to the FAA Safety Safety team website, which is the wings program, and you watch some of the videos, I think there were three or you had to, you had to earn a certain number of wings programs. I wish I had those numbers. But anyways, you research it, it'll pop right up for you and it'll tell you exactly what to do. It's a long document. I think the document was like 94 pages. But if you specifically go in and search your question, you should get the results right there in front of you. But those are the three I can think of, the medicals they were going to Extend those flight reviews. They were going to extend those with some additional things that you would have to do and it has to be during a certain time frame. And same thing with your CFI renewal as well. They had some more for instrument training as well. Instead of getting an ipc, you need to get your six approaches, instrument approaches done and you're coming up on that time frame. Read up on that as well. So they covered everything in the document and they're trying to make it as easy for people to continue without having their certificates exp.

Okay, one question I saw pop up was, how's. What's the difference between online ground school and what you guys are doing daily? Because the daily is newer. Well, of course, if we're going live, it's newer.

Yeah.

The big difference with online ground school is you go to online ground school for all of the specific information you want on any specific course, take FAA written test practice, and you don't listen to us get on and tell war stories about, you know, this and that and everything else and like, and subscribe and you know. And we are updating videos inside Helicopter Land ground school. We've updated half of the. The maneuver videos. Half of those are brand new videos. So not every video is old. And we're producing more new content right now inside Helicopter Land ground school than we ever have. We're cranking out lots of new stuff. So the big difference is on YouTube, we're providing this to the general public, you know, talking to people about different things and current issues and doing a little teaching. But there's always new stuff going into ground school as well. And then several comments here from Jordan. He said, hey there, Kenny, thanks for helping me get my license. Awesome. And two more things from Jordan. He says he has a story. So email me your story, Jordan. Okay. He's talking about a crash in Vegas, so no, I'm not familiar with that. Okay. That's all he's saying there. Let me go on to the next question. Any experience with low fuel situations? Haha. Yeah, we could talk about that real quick. I've been flying since 1997. Have I ever got a little lower than fuel than what I wanted to? Yes, I have. Have I ever run one out? No. And I can tell you I'm more conservative right now than I've ever been about fuel. I don't mess around with it anymore. I don't mess around with it. I don't mess around with it. I don't mess around with it. Luckily now I fly an instrument and the instrument Has a fuel stick. And I am and I religiously before, when I do my pre flight, I dip the tank. I know how much fuel is in it. I pull the helicopter out, I order fuel after they're done, I check it again once the fuel is leveled off. When I'm done flying at the end of the day and I push the helicopter back in, I check the fuel again so I can verify what the gauge says to what I know was burned. Helicopter accidents are frequent, are general aviation accidents. A lot of people lose their lives from running out of fuel. It's a problem. And earlier in my career when I was dumb and brave, sometimes I pushed it a little bit and there was a few times I was scared. And after a couple of good scares, I just put my foot down at a certain point and said, you know what? I'm not doing that anymore. And without proper pre flight planning, it's easy to get yourself in that position. Sometimes it might mean if you ran into bad weather, maybe you got a land in a field and you got to call somebody for help to bring you fuel. Boy, that's another big subject. And if you want to add something on that, Brian, go ahead.

There's really no more than what you've said, but I think if there's anybody watching or who watches this later, if you're brand new to aviation, you're just starting your training. Do not, do not fly that helicopter or whatever aircraft you're flying until the fuel light comes on. You know, and some, some don't have fuel lights. You know, the EC120 has a fuel light, has a low warrant, a light that'll come on the uh, one Huey, you'll get a, you'll get a light. Some aircraft, you know, you better be paying attention. But there's no reason, absolutely no reason to ever run your helicopter out of gas. Because wherever you're flying, typically, typically there's always a place that you can land. Like Kenny said, someone can bring you gas. It's better to do that and explain why you're sitting in a field than to run out of fuel in flight. Shoot an auto rotation, do it poorly, crash the helicopter, hurt yourself or kill somebody. So they're always just land the helicopter if you, you need to land. It doesn't matter. Well, you'll, you'll get the helicopter out of there one way or the other, but land it so you don't, you don't end up hurting yourself.

I'm going to add one thing to that. I could spend the next 15 minutes talk about this how being near and dear to my heart I've lost people that I know. Guy I flew with airplane pilot died from running out of fuel. And I have other stories about friends of mine getting hurt from people I've trained that were good pilots that just made a stupid goof. But the story would turn on to the next half hour. So people I know, people I've trained have lost their lives from running out of fuel. Guys I've flown with. So it's real, it's only preventable when you lose somebody that you, that you literally flew with and you lose that person for running out of fuel or your people you've trained run a brand new customer aircraft and Both guys are CFIs and they destroy an aircraft and bust one guy's backup and they run enough fuel over stupid reason. It happens and it's, it's, it's no, it's no joke. It's not it's nothing to mess around with. Don't ever fly to where the low light comes on. Just, just dumb. Well we got questions popping like crazy. Let's look here real quick. Is FAA going to give an extension aircraft annual? Don't know. I'm not going to comment on that one. Where can we find more about your accident there? I. There's a big long video on YouTube. You can search it ground residence, helicopter underground school. You find it's like an hour long I talked about about my accident. So it's, it's on YouTube. If you want to hear the me long drawn out story about my accident, it's there on YouTube.

Right.

Did you guys ever have weather did you guys hear whether there was any pressure on the pilots to fly in sketchy conditions in the Kobe? I'm not, I'm not commenting. He shouldn't have been flying. We know that and I you know as of the accident just happened this weekend. Just so you all know, I'm not going to comment on the Houston accident just like I'm still waiting on a preliminary report on cobe. There's too many people out there making judgments without facts and I'm not going to be one of those people. I never do it on recent accidents. I don't comment. Not until I have an FAA document to go. So don't ask me to about the Houston. I'm not commenting. Let me look here. What about low inertia systems like the rotorway or R22? What kind of hazards there are Fly the hot okay. That's where go to ground school. Man. We harp this stuff all the time. I'm telling you what, in helicopter land ground school, you'll hear me talk about rotorways, R22s, height, velocity diagram, high inertia, low inertia system. Hey, there's a. That's a whole big long subject, Gino. Thanks for the question, but we start talking about all that, we're going to turn this into another hour. That's all inside helicopter on ground school, man. We talk about it in depth. And I harp on this stuff. I harp on it. Tommy. Kenny, do you think instruments shake when it spools up is a very slight ground resonance condition? No, it's not ground resonance. It's two different things. That's what they call the instrument bounce. They all do it. You just have to get used to it. It never happened in instruments history for many, many, many years. The only reason it happened to me was because I was flying one of the only aircraft in the world with a new part in the rotor system that was just newly certified. They took it away and it hasn't been back since 2005, and it happened again. Okay. All right, let's. Let's wrap it up. I know we both, we all got stuff to do today. We're going to thank everybody for coming today. That's awesome. We still got 54 people here, so. I'm Kenny Keller, creator, helicopter line ground school. This is Brian Rutledge, our operations manager. Members, current members, you have a free consultation coming to you with Brian Rutledge to discuss your ground and flight training. Anything you want to talk about. If you want to sign up for helicopter on ground school, one of your perks is you get a half hour with Brian and having that person outside the box to talk to. Many times you might be at a flight school and instructors telling you one thing and then flight schools telling you different and somebody else telling you something, you get confused. You got Brian there for you. And many, many times we can very quickly take care of your questions. Do you agree, Brian? Most of the time somebody like, they're all frustrated, overwhelmed, and usually pretty quick. We can go, hey, just step back for a second. And we can usually send you in the right direction. When you're struggling with your training. There's so many things to talk about. And so helicopter line ground school, hey, we have a 33% discount going away the 15th. We extended it from last month just because of the stay at home stuff. But I can honestly say I can't. We can't keep doing these sales forever and ever. This one's going to end the 15th. The code is 33. The number 33, it's that easy. Helicopterground.com link should be below the video. It should even tell you 33 in the coupon box for 33% discount. That's available till March 15th. That's off the first month of the monthly. That's off. The big professional pilot package. We jump in, man. People are. People are. People are training. People are logging in work on their written. So we have a lot of activity in the written test. We have a lot of activity in the comments. Brian answers comments. Every morning I see them popping up in my email. Boom. Brian Rutledge. Brian Rutledge, Brian. Brian's in there. He gets in there in the morning, answers your questions inside the site. God, throw something in here. Brian. I'm the one always tell them why they need to sign up for helicopter underground school.

Honestly. Well, I used it for my CFI and it worked out great. And that was seven years ago. And where it's gone from seven years ago to where it's at now, night and day in comparison.

So, yeah, absolutely. All right. Hey, thanks, everybody. Subscribe the channel, click the bell. So be notified. We're going to do something. Every day. Brian's going to pick four more things. I don't know what he's going to pick yet. Tomorrow will be something different. We'll put you out an email in the morning, let you know what's coming up for tomorrow. So, all right, subscribe, click the bell, and we will all see you in the next video.

See you.

Peace out.