Helicopter Instrument Pilots on the H.O.G.S. Wall Of Fame

Because we're gonna edit anyway, right? So you're recording. All right, we're gonna answer a couple questions today from members. We're gonna, as you can see, your first big shot of the full HOGS wall of fame. I don't have to yell. We got a mic right here. And we're gonna highlight the instrument pilots that have. People have got their checkrides using the HOGS instrument course. As you can see right here, this is our hangout area. This is the area where more than just hang out. This is where we do our ground school. You show up for a final approach course, we sit down immediately, we grab the pts, and we go through. Okay, do you have everything you need? And then we go through the far AIM manual. Are your requirements done? We check them, we go over them, and then this is our spot. Getting ready for your checkride. Heather, if you would swing the camera around. I'm gonna mess up her beautiful camera shot. Over Here is the R44. And it's nice just to have it right here. We can grab the poh, we can clean the windows, we can do the oil, we can pre flight. Everything we need to do is right here. Maintenance logs are over there in the cabinet. Oil, fire extinguisher, paper towels, everything we need. She's going all the way around. We got plenty of room for the maintenance guys to come in and do their thing. We do maintenance every other week in between the final approach courses. We have two EMS mechanics. They work on multimillion dollar aircraft. They come in every other week after our check rides and just look it over. Even though we're pre flighting and keeping track of it ourselves, I'm also spending the extra money to have professionals watching over this aircraft. And so again, we're going to highlight the instrument people here in just a minute. But first I'm going to ask her a couple of questions. This is from a ground school member. He has a bunch of ratings working on his cfi. And he said, I searched through your video library, was not able to find any videos on ownership. It'd be great to learn about the pros and cons of owning Robinson Schweitzer's instruments gimbals. And then he goes on and talks more about owning an aircraft. And I have to say I've done. I have done these videos in 11 years and 1100 videos on YouTube. I have talked many times about aircraft ownership. You can go back and find them. And the theme in the past has been don't do it. Don't buy one, rent Screw it, okay? I had a bad experience with ownership, and it's very, very difficult for one man, one aircraft to make a living owning an aircraft. It's very difficult. So I did on one for four years, basically bankrupt me. So I've spent 10 years of my life rebuilding. And now we have the R44 that Heather just showed you. This is a lease aircraft. And I spent months in planning before I entered the agreement on this aircraft. And I had everything figured exactly, minimum what I knew it was going to cost me. And then we jacked all that up, right? Like, if you think it's going to cost this much for this, you add something to that. If you think this is going to cost you so much, you add to that. We covered every single penny we could find, and then we still jacked that up because of those unexpected things. So that's what you're going to run into with any helicopter or any aircraft for that matter. But with a helicopter, they're super expensive, okay? They're hands down, across the board expensive. If you don't have the funds in the bank to fix that aircraft at any time, that becomes a problem. As you could. As you can imagine, I've done a video in the past, within the last two years, it's on YouTube, where I break down what the NSTROM cost me. So you have to think about it. You're going to get a helicopter. It's not just the helicopter. Where are you going to store it? You know, where's it going to hang her? Are you doing this for a business? Do you already have a business up and running like we do? Or do you need a phone line? Do you need accounting? Where's your office going to be? You know, there's all these added expenses when somebody goes, hey, I'm going to start a flight school, I'm going to buy a helicopter. I'm just always like, just really, really think about what you're going to spend and then double it, because the expenses are always going to cost you more than what you think. So I have a different tune now from the videos of the past ten years of me going, don't do it, don't buy one, just go rent. I just caution anyone, if you're going to make the move on an aircraft, you got to be prepared for that financial burden when that helicopter breaks. Because, yes, you can. Insurance is a fixed payment. Your helicopter payment can be fixed. You know, you're going to have 100 hours, you're going to have annuals, you're going to have 50 hour oil changes, all those things can be a pretty hard number. However, give you an example. We recently had a student up here, came up to finish a rating. Him and his helicopter instructor were flying a new aircraft. Beautiful aircraft. I flew in it with them. They went out and had an overspeed during training. They had to end up tearing the engine down. Okay? Those types of things that happen that you're not prepared for, you're replacing an engine or repairing an engine, you lose a cylinder head again. It's not the fixed costs that are going to kill you or bite you in the ass. It's all the stuff that can happen that's unexpected damage to the helicopter, damage to a rotor blade. You're on a cross country and you weren't expecting bad weather. And the aircraft set all night and then there was a hail storm come through. There are aircraft who have lost rotor blades sitting outside during a storm because an aircraft didn't get moved in, didn't get tie downs, rotor blades destroyed. Okay? So there's all those extra costs that are unexpected that can really come back and bite you. And he says pros and cons of Robinson Schweitzer's instrument gimbals. You can see our members fly all of them. I'm trained and have taught in all these. I've taught in Robinson Schweitzer Instrum, Cadbury's. I've taught in the Jet Ranger. And I'm going to say hands down, you got to pick the aircraft that's right for you. And as far as breakdown on maintenance and all that, every helicopter is maintenance intensive. I think all four of those aircraft I mentioned and others, all aircraft have pros and cons. Every individual has to think about what's right for them. What is your size, you know, how well do you fit in the aircraft? Are you going to want to take, you know, do you want a baggage area or do you not need much baggage because you're only going to be using it just for short missions. You're never going to go somewhere and stay overnight. There are so many pros and cons. This is a video series that could just go on and on and on for the next two months, breaking down down different aircraft. I owned and operated in Enstrom. I love the aircraft. They're wonderful aircraft. This time around I've chose a Robinson. I enjoy both of those aircraft. I've enjoyed every aircraft I've flown. But every aircraft has pros and cons, you know, and you really have to do the research and find out what's right for you. And then the other gentleman, not a member, but looking to join helicopter line ground school. And he said, do you have chapters on covering flight schools and how to pick the right one? Another great big topic that this is like any product or service, I can't tell you where you need to go fly. Okay, number one, again, you've got multiple aircraft that you have to choose from. I can't tell you which aircraft is right for you. Flight schools come and go, right? And any flight school could be really reputable at one point things could go downhill and you never know. There was something called Silver State helicopters years ago that ruined the lives of many people because they took a bunch of money in and then all of a sudden they closed the doors, ran off with the money and all these people lost hundreds and hundreds of thousands of dollars. So you hear horror stories, you hear good, you hear bad. You really have to spend the time like any product or service and go out and find what's right for you. Talk to people, network, read reviews. And then again, you know what you find on the Internet? You'll look at a place and oh, wow, man, you see it on the Internet and it looks like this wonderful place. And they, you see the pictures and you go, wow, man. And then you go show up and you go, wow, this place isn't anything like it looked like on the Internet. This place is a dump. You know, or it could be vice versa. Maybe on the Internet their appearance isn't that great. And you get there and go, wow, clean aircraft, clean facilities, the way they treat me, you know, great treatment there. Reasonable. So there are so many variables in picking flight schools. No, we don't have chapters on how to pick a flight school because it's a really, really big talk topic. You know, you're going to have to do this research for yourself. I wish I had a better, you know, answer for that. And if, if you've got some tips, put them down in the description box below. Description box. No, the comments. All right, Heather, let's move over and let's highlight. Cuz I was going to. We're just going to roll that while I talk about whatever, right? All right. As we roll through the instrument pilot pictures here on the wall, these are all people that have used hogs to get their instrument rating and sent us in a picture after they've been finished or after they were finished. And you'll see many of these people on our wall four times. They got their private, they got their instrument, they got the commercial and got their certified flight Instructor. So Heather gets a lot of questions from new people that are just starting out, haven't even flown yet, and they just call up and say, hey, they call it text or email, hey, I'm brand new, I want to know where to start. So you can imagine this wall up here. We got private instrument you're looking at and then commercial and cfi. We put that up on purpose because if you're going the professional route, that's the best way to do it. Get your private, get your instrument, get your commercial and then move on to cfi. That's a great way to make use of your training and make use of your money. Because when you're working on your instrument pilot, you're gaining what we call pic time towards your commercial pilot. It's just a really good move if you're going to go the professional route. But let's back up to private pilot. If you're brand new and you say, I'm not sure where to start, here's what you do. You research and find your local flight school and you call them up and you go take an introductory flight. Because you might climb in there and go, oh my God, this sucks, I hate it. I don't think that's going to happen. Nobody says that everybody loves it. But go get that introductory flight and give it a try and sign up for helicopter at land ground school. There's a link for that below because we help you start learning the information that you're going to need throughout your training. So get an introductory flight. And back to our questions this morning. You know, picking a flight school and picking a helicopter. Here's, here's one topic that I'll, that I'll add on that. We interviewed Tim Tucker during a heli Expo and we posed the question, why should someone come and fly the Robinson helicopter? Why should they pick the Robinson for their flight training? And he surprised us all as the president or not President, chief PILOT of Robinson Helicopter. We do the video the next morning at Heli Expo and he goes, you know, Kenny, I thought about your question last night and he said, you know what? To the question of which helicopter should they fly or why should they fly the Robinson? He said, I don't think it makes a difference. He said, I think what's important is that you fly a good quality aircraft with good maintenance and you find a good instructor or good instructors with your flight school or with a flight school. Your training in the quality of the aircraft and how well it's maintained is more important than which helicopter you fly. And we were all kind of. We were all kind of amazed by that because he didn't push Robinson specifically. But when you think about it, you know, I kind of agree with that. And he said they did a study in the military where they trained guys, a certain amount of guys or girls in a small piston aircraft, and then they train a certain amount of people in the larger turbine aircraft, more sophisticated aircraft. And through their study, to the best of my knowledge, is how he explained this. He said it really made no difference in their overall performance and how they did as a pilot and through their testing, it really didn't make a difference where they were flying the small little piston helicopter or whether they were flying the big fancy turbine helicopter. Really made no difference. So for someone just starting out, we recommend researching the different aircraft. Big thing is researching your area because you may only have or not may. You most likely will have very few opportunities depending on where you live in the country. Who knows? All right, so you're pointing at me now. How fat and ugly do I look? Okay, we just took a little pause there. Heather was filming the side of my head and I'm like, maybe I should be talking to the camera. So where I was was, you know, finding flight schools and picking the aircraft again. It's going to take you a little bit of time to do the research. I would look and see what you have in your area. I was thinking about this this morning when these questions were posed to me. When I started, I had two choices. Drive two hours to Indianapolis or drive two hours to Chicago. That was my only two options. So depending on where you are in the country, where you are in the world, what's available to you. First option is probably going to be whatever's closest. And you may find that what's closest may not be the best school for you, may not be the best helicopter. There's so much behind the decision making. I can't. There is no. There is no one answer for any one individual on which aircraft to fly and which flight school to go to. You have to do your research. But. So for the newbies, go get your intro flight sign up for hogs Start learning. We have a month to month option compared to what you're going to spend on your flight training. It's dirt cheap. You can cancel anytime. You can come back anytime. Those links are below. And let's say you decide. I like this. I like the local flight school. I like this helicopter. I'm going to continue to fly. Your instructor is going to work with you and you need to Keep studying the whole time that you're going through the training to make the most of your training. Because a typical person, they fly, fly, fly. They don't want to study, they don't want to do ground. The flight school makes the helicopter blade spin. They don't care about teaching you anything because the longer it takes, the more they make, the longer that helicopter flies, the more money they're going to draw out of you to go into their bank account to pay for the helicopter. And can't really blame them because helicopters are super expensive and they're very hard to take care of. So you can't blame a flight school for what they charge because helicopters are extremely expensive. So you have to get over the fact that this is going to cost you a butt ton of money. Private pilots are probably going to cost you 20 grand. Could cost you more, could cost you less. You got to get over the fact of what's going to cost you. You appropriate the money, you get started, you start flying and you start doing dual training. At a certain point, they're going to need to solo you in the aircraft. They'll give you a certain amount of training, they're going to endorse you for that. And there's 10 hours for the private pilot. You have to go out and do a bunch of solo stuff. Then they continue to do dual with you. And somewhere along the way you're going to need to do an FAA written test. So you have to do a pre solo written test that the flight school makes up before you take your test. To become a private pilot, you're going to have to take an FAA written test and you have to go to a facility to take care of that. Your instructor can help you with that. And we help you with that inside hogs as well because we have FAA written test practice within our site. And that FAA written test practice also is available for FAA wings credit, which you'll learn about later as you move on through your career. So then you get all your requirements done. There's a minimum of 20 hours of duel with the helic or with the Instructor. Minimum of 10 hours of solo and then you need 10 more for a total of 40. And that could be some more solo time. That could be more time with your duel. Most people don't get done in 40. National average is more like 50 or 60 to get to private. But you'll do more dual training. You have to get signed off to go take what we call the practical test, or they use the term checkride. Once your instructors helped you do all that, you've accomplished your. All your required training, all your solo, all your dual, your pre or your pre solo, your written test, FA written test, get all your dual. Then when you're ready, your instructor is going to sign you off to go see an FAA designated examiner or an FAA examiner and you're gonna go into the facility, wherever you're taking your checkride and it's gonna be a situation like this where there's gonna be more like probably a desk in the middle. And the examiner's gonna sit there and you're gonna sit here and he's gonna start. He or she's gonna start asking you questions. And you have to get through that knowledge before you can ever get in the helicopter and go do that part of it. You can come over. I paused. I was expecting anybody to come walking through the door. And so I just lost my train of thought. All right, we paused there. Just. My daughter walked in for a second and lost my train of thought. So to go back up just a little bit, you're going to go sit down with the examiner. You have to get through the oral test. After the oral test is complete, then you're going to get in the helicopter and you're going to go fly. And you're going to have to fly to what we call a standard. There's a little book that we harp on called the Practical test Standards will soon become the Airman Certification Standards. That's what the examiner is using to test you that day. If your instructor has prepared you properly, you have all your requirements done, you go to the examiner. If you make it through the oral portion, you then go do the flight portion. If you do everything to standard, at the end of that day, he's going to sign you off as a brand new pilot, brand new private pilot. If there's a problem during the test, you can take a little additional training and then go back and test again. That's part of the hype of it, right? I failed the first time. I went through and didn't go back for six months because I was devastated. And good news is I now have a business over it, you know, 20 some years later, because I know what it's like to fail. And I studied so hard that I wasn't going to fail the second time. But another long story that's been told many times in the last 11 years and 1100 videos on YouTube, that's the basics of getting through the private pilot. And again, as we mentioned earlier in the video, everything starts with a private, right? And then if you want to go the advanced route, we highly recommend private pilot first. Then go get your instrument rating because you need to build time for your commercial. And a lot of the EMS jobs and other jobs require an instrument rating. So you get your private, you go get your instrument rating and then you've built some time towards that commercial, you get your commercial rating and then you jump over to CFI and become a certified flight instructor. And many people ask, well, how do I get my time? This industry is backwards, okay? Most of your instructors out there are brand new instructors with a couple hundred hours and they're out there teaching. And people say, well, shouldn't it be the guy who's been flying a long time? Yeah, probably should be. But the way our industry works, that's about the only job available to you as a new pilot. A new commercial pilot with low hours is to become an instructor. That's about the only way to do it. There are a few other avenues, but most generally that's the way people take. So if you go through all four ratings, get your CFI and you go out, start building time, and as you build more time in your logbook, you'll be able to advance your career, move up to better jobs, more pay, more sophisticated aircraft. But that's the route for professional pilot. And we have a professional pilot course down below. So we have links down below for all these courses. Private pilot, instrument pilot, commercial pilot, cfi, all those have a monthly option. They all have a yearly option. We also have a pro pilot that includes all of them with lifetime access, never expires, which is very handy for some people that know they're going the pro pilot route. The monthly options are nice for a lot of people as well because you can cancel anytime, come back anytime, as many times as needed. And it includes a 24 hour test flight. So you could actually log in, go check out the training, training, see if it's right for you and then decide to keep the training or unsubscribe. It's that easy. Come back and we'll see at a later time when you come back later. This so happens to be Labor Day special. Okay, we'll wait till the end. Down below there are links. We have some pretty heavy duty discounts on the yearly and a big heavy duty discount on propilot, like a third of the normal cost. There's links down below for all of those. You can go check those links out. You can also go to our website@helopterground.com and you can also email the person behind the camera. Her name is Heather 574-767-1797. Been working for us for almost six years. So she can talk the lingo with you when you call or you text because she understands we didn't just hire her yesterday. She knows the lingo. She knows the process. She can answer 99.9% of your questions. So we'll put that number down below as well. One big, big last look at the hall of fame there, Heather. Roll past it one more time. We're really, really excited about this. We started this five years ago. Here's where we'll add some pictures that Heather found yesterday that I forgot to add to the video yesterday. We'll add them here at the end of where this wall started. And just some shots kind of along the way. It started in this old gross paneling office at this other airport we were at. Anyway, it was a good start, but this is what it's turned into approximately five years later. And it just keeps continue to grow. And so if you don't, if you're new to us and you're still hanging around, what we do when you pass your, your helicopter rating, whether it's private, instrument, commercial, or cfi, you send us a picture, write a few sentences, just something simple about how we helped you get through the rating. And then we send you what we call the Hogs no go button. And again, you might be new to our videos, maybe not, because it seems like it's the same three people that watch our videos. We send you this live to fly another day. Helicopterground.com hogs no go button. All right, that's it. See you next video. Peace out.