Helicopter Online Ground School

Are you struggling with all the information there is to know to become a helicopter pilot? Discover the number one helicopter training system on the web. Now you can attend Helicopter Online Ground School from the comfort of your own home, at your own pace, 24 hours a day, experienced, certified, and passionate. Let Captain Keller guide your online instruction to help you succeed in obtaining your helicopter pilot's license. Only at Helicopter Online Ground School. Hello, I'm Kenny Keller with Fort Wayne Helicopters and the creator of Helicopter Online Ground School. I help people prepare for their helicopter checkride so they can get their helicopter rating and go do the fun stuff, the flying. Have you or are you struggling with all the information there is to know? Well, I feel your pain. Back when I got started, back in the late 90s, I failed my first private pilot check ride. And man, did that hurt. And I know I studied hard and thought I was prepared, but I just wasn't prepared as much as what I should have been. After my failure, I went home and didn't go back for six months. And then when I decided to go back and try it again, I sat down and started gathering all my notes up, and I went down to the local drugstore and got a big thick notebook. I wrote down everything from all the notes that I had scattered all over the place, from the different places I'd flown, the different instructors I'd been with, and the different books that I had, because I thought, you know, I wanted one place to study. And I studied really hard. And when I went back to retest, I smoked the second time around. And. And the examiner said, well, how come you had so much trouble the first time? And I said, well, I didn't know my stuff the first time around like I do now. So that was my solution at that time, was to basically create my own training, my own one central place to study. And then I get out into the helicopter world and start training. As an instructor, I'm a big believer in the pts and would always use the PTS to prep guys for checkrides. But then, like the last test before sending a guy, I'd take them through my notebook, and if I could ask questions out of my notebook and they could answer everything, I knew they were ready. And people would say, well, you should write your own training manual. And we kind of laughed and joked about it. I had a lot of students that would say things to me like that. And it was always just seemed kind of like a joke. The cool thing. Now it has turned into my own training manual of sorts. It's online helicopter training. I Found my own solution. I built my own solution when I was trying to study. There was nothing for helicopters out there, lots of stuff for airplanes, but almost virtually nothing for helicopters. And what you do find for helicopters is almost always a supplement. It's some flight, airplane, flight school that has a helicopter supplement. So when I was training, there wasn't much available. You know, the old world ways was just go pay your instructor 30, 40, 50 bucks an hour for every hour that you needed and then go home and study, study, study on your own. Or some places you'd go, they would just say, ah, here, here's the book, read it. So that's kind of the old way. Now in our world we have laptops, desktops, smartphones, iPads, all kinds of stuff, all kinds of ways to consume information. You know, a popular myth would be that you're just going to lay down at night and put the study manuals underneath your pillow and that all this knowledge is going to come into your brain. Or go pay your instructor 50 bucks an hour for the next 50 hours to help you get through all the ground knowledge that you need to know. And what normally happens with helicopter training, not always, but a lot of times a guy's flying will get ahead of his ground knowledge. That's what happened with me. And it happens to a lot of people. You fly, fly, fly, flight schools want the blade spinning. They want to be in the helicopter. Instructor wants to put time in his logbook. So the focus is usually about making money for the aircraft and putting hours in the instructor log book. That's reality. That's what really goes on a lot of the time in the helicopter world. Get me wrong, there are schools out there that have great ground school programs. It's not everywhere, but a lot of places, not so much. So our training's for those that want some extra help or that maybe just aren't getting virtually hardly any ground at all. So I stayed really busy as an instructor for a number of years. And then I got into EMS flying and flew the BK117, the EC135. But I always stayed active as an instructor while I was doing these other jobs. And whilst flying ems, I met a young man named Nick Logan who came to work where I was working at at the EMS base. And anytime a new pilot starts out, it's just normal procedure that he flies with everybody for a day or two just to kind of get their take on the area and how they operate and the way things go. And I hear Nick Logan in the next room talking about Marketing. At that time I'm flying ems, I own an instrument helicopter, I'm running a business on the side with my own flight school. And I say, hey, tell me about this marketing I heard you talking about in the other room. And he says, well, you should be blogging and doing videos. And he got me started blogging and doing videos. And then pretty soon it turned into a hey, you should start an online ground school. Well, at first we kind of joked about it and then it became reality. March 1, 2012 and I have to say we are December of 2013 right now and I just launched this new PTS section in site online ground school that completely and utterly rocks. I spent a bunch of time loading the content into the PTS section, getting it all set up, but I'm always at a desktop or a laptop and when I actually sat down with a tablet and brought it up and scrolled through it, I thought wow, this is incredible. Do you need help for preparing for a helicopter? Checkride. Well check this out. I've been bragging up how our online training will work on any device. Well, I just got done for the first time taking a look at how the PTS section, the practical test standard, works out on a tablet. This is cool. You simply log into your device and in this case it's a tablet. Go here to the PTS section and we go right down the list. Pre flight preparation, pre flight procedures, airport and heliport operations, hovering maneuvers, takeoff, landings and go arounds performance, maneuvers, navigation, emergency procedures, night operation and post flight procedures. So let's say you're just starting out. You want to start at the beginning pre flight preparation. Click on it. Then we work down through pre flight preparation step by step. So the first section here is a quick 1 minute intro video explaining how we have a full 2 hour MP3 download for pre flight preparation and then each other section has its own individual mp3 download. So after the intro video says start here. So it brings up that section, has a video, has the MP3 download below the video, click play. And the video starts to play. In this case it's a three minute video, just an intro to help get you started. And then when you want to move on you just over here to the left. This is what's so cool. It goes down the section step by step. So the first time going through of course you're going to want to hit every section, work down the list. Then when you want to come back later and let's say you want to hit weather, you're struggling with weather, click run the weather Tab. Welcome to Helicopter Online Ground School and there's your 20 minute weather video with MP3 download below. It's coming out way better than expected. I was actually surprised when I actually checked it out on a tablet for the first time. It's pretty cool. So now that you've had a look at how that works, I have to say I am super proud of this training. It is really cool and I've had awesome feedback so far. The original TED modules I built, they were okay at the time, but it made it kind of tough because it was random following my notebook, which is good checkride preparation, especially for VFR flight. For anybody that maybe flies a lot of IFR and they're doing an add on and they haven't flown VFR in a while, it's really great as like a flight review. With the new PTS section, I'm going through step by step taking you all the way through basically the beginning of the pts, all the way through the oral portion, the flying portion, giving my tips things I've seen, the mistakes I've seen people make and pretty much just putting everything I got into this and giving you the whole checkride preparation thing that I've been doing for years. We're building R22 and R44 training. Part of that's up. We've got all kinds of extra stuff coming out. It's really turning into a neat deal. So don't make the common mistake of letting your aircraft flying get way ahead of your ground knowledge because ultimately it will cost you more money in the long run. If you have to slow down the flight training because you're behind on the ground, then you need more time in the aircraft. Once you get the ground knowledge where it needs to be and it just turns into a big mess. So if you're ready to start with our training today, you can click the link below. You can also request a test drive. Go back to our homepage@helopterground.com Shoot me an email. Just give me a quick short version of where you're at and you're flying and what you're flying, which aircraft and I can set you up with 24 hour test drive to go in and look at our training. Right now we have the 10 original modules on DVD. So there's two packages, the online package and then the online package with dvd. We have like six of those left, so that's all we have at this moment. I am going to come out with a new dvd. After these are sold out, then we're going to work on something New but then the pricing structure is going to change and it's all going to be different. We have a new online classroom. They've been working one on one with students getting ready for their checkrides and that has had rave reviews as well. It is really pretty darn cool. We can go in this online classroom, we can upload video. My presentations that I already have built, I can build new presentations. We've had four people in there at one time, including me around the country. I've done training one on one with a customer from Mexico. I just did some one on one training with a customer from Canada and that was cool. He had his laptop projected onto 150 inch screen on the wall. So I'm looking at him in the classroom and where I'm seeing him, I can see me in the background inside the online classroom on his wall. So the tech stuff is getting crazy but I'm trying to stay on top of it and I'm just super thrilled and excited with where this whole online training program is going. So again, if you're ready to get started with us now, if you go with the online membership or online with dvd, once you purchase you'll get immediate access to the training system. It will send you an immediate login. If for some reason it doesn't, just shoot me an email@fort wayne helicoptersmail.com and I'll get to it as fast as I can. Normally the system works really good, but once in a while there'll be a glitch and somebody purchases. If you don't get within a few minutes, email me and I'll get the email as soon as I can and I'll go in and manually reset it for you. Most of the time there's no issue. So that's about all I can think of for right now. You can click one of the links below or I have something else that I'm going to tack on the end here. I've been getting the question a lot about well, how does your training compare to Sporty's and or King schools? And I shot this video the other night for a customer and you're welcome to hang around and watch the rest of this video and hear kind of how I talk about where I'm going with the online school and how it compares to all the other training out there. So thanks for stopping by. Send me an email if you have any questions you're having any trouble and we'll see you all soon. It. Sam. Come up with something new and I just got a great question. That's popping up more and more as time goes by and I'm getting questions like this more and more often. So I'm going to address this and then when somebody else asks, I can shoot him this video, shoot him this podcast, and help kind of answer the question instead of typing out a big long email every time. But I got an email from a fixed wing pilot. He's flying an R44 and working on his rating and he's flying, getting along with his instructor well, but he wants some added help on the side for his ground training, which is cool. That's what we do here. And he says, I've considered buying the commercial prep DVDs from Sporty's or King's schools to help with the knowledge test, but don't really feel they will help specifically with the R44 training. I'd like to hear your take on this subject matter coming from someone who doesn't know a lot about what he's doing and I can appreciate that. So starting off, I want to say no disrespect to Kings or sporties, but quite simply what I do is a lot different than what Kings and Sporties does. You know, as far as Kings go, they've been around forever. When I was a young pilot, I used King videos for instrument training, as most all of us have. And I recently used the King schools to renew my cfi and the training that I purchased from them I was very happy with. It, was very easy to use, did about six hours online and had what I needed to renew my CFI and it worked real well and I was very happy with that training. As far as Sporty's training goes, as far as I know, it's really like a two hour video covering a lot of different things about learning to fly helicopters and aerodynamics. And I haven't seen the entire video, but looks like it's pretty good stuff. But as far as I know, it's a two hour video. What else they have, I'm not really sure. I don't slow down enough to really look at what the other guys are doing because I get this question a lot about certain things and I am just doing my thing the way I like to do it, the way I want to do it. I don't have time to research what everybody else out there is doing. I do what I want to do and that is help people prepare for a checkride, help learn the information that they need to know. And then there is one other online helicopter training school out there. I've never Purchased it. I haven't seen it first hand so I really can't say a lot about that one. I do know that last I checked their training expired in six months. So you buy their training, six months later it expires. That's why when I designed my training I decided eh, lifetime membership. Membership is good as long as I'm current and flying and in the helicopter industry which I intend to be for quite some time. I've only been flying since 1997 and I'm now in my later 40's so I got a lot of good flying years left and I completely plan on staying with my flying career and continuing on. So again over the years I've seen a lot of people that they come in, they want to work on a rating and oh, I want to be done by January, I want to be done by March. Well that's all well and good but life gets in the way, work gets in the way. All kinds of different things play into getting your rating done. And most of the time if a guy wants to do it in six months it takes him a year or he wants to be done in a year and it takes a year and a half. The scenarios are endless and there are guys that get done really quick and girls I should say there are people get through the training really fast but a lot of the time you don't get through it that quick. So I don't think it's fair to charge somebody a lump sum of money and then say well but you gotta be done in six months or you'll have to renew your membership. I just don't think that's the way I want to operate. And with my training for anybody that's watched what I do or any of our members know that I am continually doing building training, I am continually adding training, I'm continually taking older training that I built two years ago. Now I look at it and go oh my God, that audio was horrible on that and that video was horrible on that. But it's a learning process. So with time moving forward my work does get better. I do add new programs. I'm super proud of the new PTS section. We have the practical test standards. Basically I'm just going through the practical test standards step by step by step by step and walking you right through the list of everything that's going to happen during a checkride, the kinds of things that the examiner is going to ask you, kind of what you can expect. And a lot of that content is new and some of that content is from the original 10 modules. And that original 10 modules was cool when I got started back in two years ago, basically March 2012. Hey, it was an idea, something I did. And we realize now that, you know, the random training out of my notebook, it was great for checkride prep and some people still really like it. Some guys love the DVDs, they love the 10 modules, especially guys that are instrument pilots, fixed wing instrument pilots working on a helicopter add on. And they've flown instruments for years and they haven't done anything VFR in a long time. Those guys are the ones that love the original 10 modules. So what's cool about the PTS is I have it all broke down. The content that's good from the original 10 that I want to keep. I can move right over into the PTS section. The things that are older and the audio wasn't so good or video is not so good, I can update those with new presentations. And now that we have the new PTS section, it's very easy to go in and say, oh, I need a new weather video or I want to add something to one of the maneuvers, I can go right to that section of the pts, go in, fix what I want to fix or update what I want to update. And boom, it's ready to go. So the whole search works better inside of our online training. So this new PTS thing is awesome and it's really cool and it's working out really, really well. I just last night actually sat down after working for about a week loading content into the PTS and getting it all set up. And then when I sat down with a tablet and started going through it, I thought, wow, this thing is incredible. The way it lays out, you can go to the video, you can watch the video, you can download the MP3 file and then look over to the left hand side and go right on the list of different things you're looking for. So the PTS is coming out really cool. The R22 and R44, those projects have been vamped and revamped and I'm getting ready to make another big revamp again because I'm building this 141 flight school program that's just killer. And at this time the world has not seen it. Nobody has seen the content that I have built for this 141 program. And honestly, it's going to be some of the coolest R22 and R44 training on the planet. And I wanted to get the PTS done first because I had that promised to customers. I've got that under control and about finished up other than going back later to do updates. Be adding a few things here and there, but it will be much easier to work on and keep going. We have the R22 and R44 sections. I'm going to get those finished up and streamlined. So where you just have the basic R22 and R44 training built on the pilot's operating handbooks for both those helicopters. And then the 141 program is going to be a whole separate training section. So the membership we have now will stay the same. And then I'm going to add the 141 training as a different project. I haven't worked out all those details yet, but I'm going to get to that here in the very near future. So that's my mission. Right now the PTS is looking awesome. R22 and R44 is going to be done very soon too. Going to start banging out the 141 program. And I've also got content for the Schweitzer and instrument modules too. There's not a lot in there now, but that's going to start getting in there too because I promised that to customers and I'm going to live up to my promise and get that training in there. That training I can build a little bit faster, a little bit easier because a lot of the instrument stuff I already have in other forms I just haven't put it into the ground school form yet. So there's a lot of cool stuff going on there that answers the question on how my training is different versus Kings and Sporty. So again, we all have our place and I think what I do is quite different. And the other thing that I told this gentleman who was interested in my training, I basically said my customers deal and interact with me. So I don't think you're going to get that with Sporties and Kings. I don't think you're going to have John King on the phone with you for four hours the night before your checkride, talking you through last minute this and that and everything else getting ready to go. So that's kind of the gist of it. I'll probably just kind of stop there. That's a good idea of kind of where we're at and where we're going. Oh, online classroom. We haven't talked about the online classroom yet either. We go through the PTS section and I've started adding links for past classes from the online classroom. I've now worked with about 10 different people on checkrides, getting on the Internet on our online classroom and working with them one on one and putting presentations in there and then those are recorded and customers can go back and view those recordings later. So we're moving those links into the appropriate section of the pts. So if, say you're hungry for more information on the difference in lift, you don't want to hear just the definition. You want to go into more depth. Right now we have some classroom on difference of lift where I was going through with these two guys working on their instructor ratings and I was showing them how I teach the symmetry of lift or difference in lift and just giving them an option on how you could teach it. Well, that works great for anybody that wants to learn more. They can view that and see basically one CFI interacting with two soon to be CFIs and talking about the ways it's going to be taught or the ways it can be taught. So the online classroom is a whole other thing on top of what we do that, as far as I know, you're not getting that with any of the other programs out there either. You're just buying a set program, a certain amount of information. They're not working with you online one on one and helping you through specific subject areas. So that's where we're at. So thanks for stopping by and we'll see you all soon.