Helicopter Pilot Knowledge Key In Reducing Fatal Accidents / Let's Start Today

All right, we're rolling. So. So you can start. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Pick up the camera, flip that screen just because it helps, helps me keep looking. Oh, good idea. It helps me keep looking at the camera if I can watch myself. And if you want, maybe even sneak around and come and get the back of my shirt while I'm talking. Good idea. Hey, it's Kenny with Helicopter Online Ground school. Thanks for joining us today for this event. We're going to talk about a couple important things, but in the big picture, it's all about being safe and going home at the end of the day and whether we're talking training, testing. It all boils down to knowledge and making your good no go decisions. Every single thing we talk about, everything we do is absolutely relative. And the first thing I want to talk about today is understanding weather, understanding the no go decision. And then we're going to talk about actually testing. And I have a question from a young man I'm going to bring up about getting ready for the test. And I'll get to that a minute. But the simple answer is knowledge and studying very hard. Want to introduce something I've been wanting to talk about for a while and with the recent celebrity death in this fatal helicopter accident, I've kept pretty quiet about it. But what I will say is, you know, from what we know, law enforcement wasn't flying. Search and rescue is not flying. Search and rescue has turned down a flight. And I know that's a fact because a friend of mine that I've trained with was actually there that day at the same airport where the flights originated from. And he said we weren't going. And when his crew said, well, that helicopter's taken off, my friend's like, well, that's their choice. We're not taking the search and rescue flight because the weather's too bad. Something we used in ems, right. Fatal accidents are a big deal. Of course they are. Right. We need to curb this mentality that goes on the interest industry. These choices get made, helicopters take off and something we did in ems, and I don't remember, I'd like to say I was responsible for this, but I don't remember who started it. But at the base we were at, you know, I learned a lot from the older pilots, right. And particularly one of the guys from Vietnam, and I think I remember him starting this. And as a pilot, whether you're making a decision to go on an EMS flight or your training flight or a for fun flight or a news flight, there's all these pressures that we talk about all the time in these videos. Pressures can come from anywhere, from inside you, from people you're working for, a celebrity client. Pressure could come from anywhere. You have to have the knowledge, you have to have the ability to say no. And one thing that we came up with, and again, I think it was the Vietnam air pilot that came up with it, and I liked what we did, is we had this little button right there, right? So, for example, you get a flight, let's say it's midnight and you got to go to an accident somewhere. And they say, well, so and so already turned it down. Will you go? You've already got a hint there's a reason why the other another service turned it down. But that's called helicopter shopping, right? Where they keep calling somebody else. You look at the weather and you go, hmm, I see why that guy turned it down. And I'm gonna look at it. I'm not going either. Sorry. We're going to decline the flight due to weather. Hang up. That was easy. There you go. Now, you know, we could laugh and joke about that, but somehow it made you feel better about making those decisions, right? Because these decisions can be hard. And anybody, everybody could be macho and say, oh, well, you know, I turn them down anytime. I'm never unsafe. I never fly in whether that's iffy. Obviously, a lot of pilots do. And that's why we have people flying inadvertent IMC and flying in the mountains, losing control of aircraft. You know, there's the wedding video that people talk about, and many have seen where the guy could have landed. He kept flying to weather sped. So remember, you know, you're working for a news agency. They call you up, they want you to go to an accident scene and you check the weather and you go, ah, the weather's just too bad. I'm going to decline the flight. We're not going to go for this flight. Well, channel 16 is up. Well, Fox News is up. Well, those pilots chose to. Chose to fly in this weather. I'm sorry, it's not in my comfort zone. It's not in a situation where I want to fly. We'll have to decline the flight. Then they'll say something like, well, can you go? How about in half an hour? Well, call me back in half an hour. We'll take a look at the weather. Maybe it's improved. Maybe we can then. But as of right now, I can't go. Well, you sure? Yep. I can't go. All right. Well, thank you. Thank you. That was Easy. That was easy. That's what it's going to take to change this industry and change this large number of, number, number of fatal accidents that are happening, okay? So remember that. Let's, let's start, let's start a phase here. Let's start a trend. I'm probably going to get copyrighted, you know, by our friends at the company that made this little button, but how cool is that? Think about this the next time you try and make a decision to go fly. Should I go, should I not? You're looking at it. It's iffy, your guts telling you you don't go, you shouldn't go, don't go. Make the decision. That was easy. And you live to fly another day. Alright, next I want to talk about training, okay? So we learn to make good no go decisions through training. We learn about weather through training. We learn everything that we do involves training. Okay? So I want you to think of the big picture here of knowledge being as knowledgeable as you can flying any aircraft you can, anywhere in the world. It's really about knowledge. And we have a helicopter line ground school member, he's been a member for less than a month. And I'm gonna read you his question here. It's very short, so don't click off yet. Listen to this. Hey Kenny, I'm only a few solo hours away from having to do a checkride. I take my written exam this weekend, okay? First thing that written should have been done weeks ago, months ago. If you're at the end, you're close to checkride and you're trying to get the written done, there's nothing wrong with that, but it would have been optimal to have that thing done weeks or months prior to this point in your training, okay? Because that way once that written is done, you can be focused on the dual training in the aircraft. You can focus on the, your, your studying on your own, going through the hogs videos, doing one on one with your instructor, whatever method you're using to study once that written is done and behind you you can be studying, learning all the things that you need to do and learning through repetition, right? We learn through going over this stuff over and over. So first thing here is nothing wrong with these, trying to get it done now. But for those of you looking for a good course of training, get that written done early as possible, okay? And then he says, any advice on the checkride? Heard the instructor was super tough. Yes, I have advice. I failed my first checkride going with an FAA examiner and I heard he was Tough. And I failed. Why did I fail? Lack of confidence. And I had the knowledge, but I didn't have the confidence. And maybe I didn't know the knowledge well enough. Right. I should have. I had the knowledge, but I didn't have it solid, I didn't have it concrete. So when the examiner starts asking me questions, I freeze up. And he even gave me a couple opportunities to calm down. And when he walked away at one point he said, let's take a break, this isn't a failure. Let's go outside, just talk for a few minutes, calm down and we'll go back at it. Went outside, had a nice little chat. Is you ready to go back in, try again? Yep. So I've talked about this many times in videos and you could research all this and I'm not going to go through everything. There was several screw ups that I made just from being nervous, not getting enough sleep, not knowing the information as well as I should have. So when he failed me, he said, I don't want to come to your helicopter accident. That's what he said. He said, I'm the FAA representative in this area and if you go out and crash, I'm going to be the one that shows up. Most likely I will be at your aircraft accident. I don't want to do that. You need to go back home and you need to study harder. And when I ask you about selling the power, I want to hear 30, 20, 10, you know, radius to enter 300ft per minute or greater using 20 to 120 to 100% of power. Airspeed less than ETL, not, let's see, three, you know, and fumbling around those things are going to kill you is what they want you to know. So you should be ready for any check, right. With any examiner anywhere. But you're telling me you've heard that this guy's super tough. Okay, the way to get through a super tough examiner is to know your stuff, know it through and through and know it and be ready. And he said, and he's the only one within my range. Here's what I want. Main thing, I want to get anything particular that I should study extra. What do you think I'm going to say? Everything. You need to be solid in your knowledge, not looking for study extra other than anything that can kill you. Anything that can get you into trouble. How many rivets in the tailboom? Who cares? Making a bad weather decision will get you killed, not understand emergency procedures that'll get you killed. Anything that will get you killed. So now I'm going to have Heather come over and roll something up. And when I first got this email, what do I do? I immediately go check his status because we have what we call progress tracking. And with the progress tracking you as a member can check your, your own progress. Well, we can check your progress as well. So there's a theme here. Every time somebody tells me they're ready to go or if they tell me they're struggling in an area and they're a HOGS member, I immediately go in and look at the progress. So I go immediately after I read the email and I go, let's go see how much he's done. Now let me give a disclaimer. Maybe this kid is spot on on his ground knowledge and he's, and he's excellent on everything and he only used ground school to touch up. Could be the case. But just like I was telling Heather the other day, somebody wanted to come down and do one on one on ground with me and I said, you know, she said, well he told me on the phone he's good. Or in the email I'm good on the ground. I just want Kenny to kind of check me out. And I told Heather, I go, you know what? 9 times out of 10 I blow you out of the water when you show up because you think your knowledge is great and I prove within 5 minutes your knowledge isn't what you think it is. So I look at this young man and okay, here's the beginning of the course. 60%, 66%. Alright, couple videos. There's 100. Do you want to slide it down Heather? And then what happens? We got supply list. Okay, you didn't watch all that. Well, supply list is making sure you have everything you need the day you show up for the test and all the things you need to study going along. But then we got airfoil, lift, drag, the four forces of flight, all pretty basic stuff. But guess what? Examiners going to ask you on those. Is this young man confident in those areas? Why didn't he watch those videos then down here? Helicopter streamlighting he watched that one. Okay, so let's go to the next one, Heather. Let's see how he does going through the course. Translating tendency, pendular action coning. Those questions are going to come up on your private pilot checkride. Didn't watch those watches. 200% Coriolis effect and gyroscopic possession. Great. Examiner's going to ask. But then we're spotty again. We skip three, we're skipping to symmetry of lift difference in lift, hover versus in flight, effective transitional lift. Okay, why not go through and watch those, why not go through and watch those videos? This one in particular, something that I learned when I was training to be an instructor. This is something that you're not going to see that some instructors don't teach. But there's some good stuff in here that gives you some food for thought that I was taught as a cfi. That's really good stuff. Why not watch that video and even if you think you already know it, why didn't you watch that video and learn more? Then we get down here. Autorotations, of course they watch those, right? Because everybody wants to watch auto rotation videos, but because people worry about the auto rotation. But you know what? If you don't pass the ground knowledge test, the oral flight test, you don't even get to go fly, just like when I failed. So my opinion is why didn't he watch these other videos? Let's go to the next one, Heather, see what he's got going on next. I see nothing. I see nothing. I see nothing. Okay, and that's all the controls of the helicopter, you know, he skipped them. But why, why not watch them and maybe one of either me or one of the instructors to help us in helicopter and ground school. Maybe you'll learn some little nugget of information by going through one of those videos that you just had never picked up before. Next page, Heather. Alright. Nothing, nothing, nothing, nothing, nothing. Next page. We're in lesson seven right now. Now we're going to move into seven and eight. Nothing, nothing, nothing, nothing, nothing. You know, airworthiness requirements, safety in and around helicopters, tail rotor passenger danger guarding the collective rules to fly by. Wouldn't you want to go through those videos? They're all short. You know, most of our videos are five to 10 minutes long. So if you want to be the best you can be, why not watch every single video? Why not learn every single nugget of information that you can learn? Go to the next page, Heather. And I'm also, you know, kind of showing you what's in our course, which this is kind of fun, right? Hovering square pattern. This is something a lot of instructors don't teach. It's something that really helps any one individual hone their skills. You know, we got hover taxi, air taxi service, taxi traffic patterns, general safe rule for approach. Everybody needs to have that one memorized. Go arounds. He watched how not to fly your approach, which, that's cool, right? But maximum performance takeoff. Maybe I'LL teach you something in that one that you've never heard before. Who knows but we watched one video. Next page. All right. Nothing, nothing, nothing, nothing. Let's go to the next one. Heather, this is the private Pilot course has 18 videos. Go ahead and scroll. Yep, go to the next page. Look at everything. We're skipping over a lot of stuff. Lte big one. Rex helicopters selling with power. Rex helicopters selling a power demonstration. Vortex ring state with 2018 flight. Start of the year. Dantas Christman retreating blade stall. Ground resonance dynamic rollover. Maybe he's perfect in all those areas. But if you have the training available to you, why not watch every single one? Let's do a couple more. Heather, we're getting the drift here. Alright, let's click on to the next one. I'll guarantee you there's good nuggets of information in every one of these videos. Whole nother page of nothing, 21% of a video. National airspace system. Guess what? What's the number one people get violated from the faa? Airspace violations. That's number one. Why people get there, get a strike against their license is not knowing airspace. And the gentleman I was talking to last night on the phone where I'm telling you, he's interviewing pilots. Airspace. The guy's a commercial pilot. Instrument pilot, multi engine pilot. And he's failing the questions for airspace. There's no reason for any pilot anywhere to fail those questions. You're a rated pilot going for a job interview and you don't and you can't answer airspace. Come on, you got to have this knowledge and you got to retain this knowledge. Let's go another one next we're into 15. All right, cool. He did watch special use Airspace by Holly Gardell, which is awesome. Great airspace video. I'm glad he watched it. Holly, come on, train with me for two weeks to get her cfi. And that presentation is incredible. So many people over the years have commented about how they love this video. He watched that one, good for him. Security related airspace, he only watched 29% so apparently he's got that under control. So one more page. Watched a couple down here, radios all right. And watched a few on this page. But you know, didn't complete the videos. So I'll have Heather come over and roll that out of the way. You can kind of get the drift here, right? It's about knowledge. And if you're getting ready to go for a check ride and you're using helicopter land ground school, I do highly recommend going through every single video. Every single video. Again, I'm gonna give him the benefit of the doubt because I appreciate his question, didn't mention his name, I don't want him to feel bad. I'm just saying is there anything extra I should do? Study and make sure you go through every single area. And those videos you haven't watched, if you're not 100% confident then you need to watch them or study on your own or sit down with your instructor. But you know you're going to a tough instructor. You need the same knowledge whether you're going to any, any examiner but going, going in knowing that it's going to be extra tough, just like the one I did where I failed because of lack of self confidence, lack of self confidence in my own knowledge, I failed, didn't go back for six months, whole nother story. So on this topic of learning and knowing, it doesn't matter whether it's training for your checkride or making your no go decision or going for a job interview as a rated pilot and not having your knowledge where it should be. And I'm having this discussion on the phone with this individual and I said this is the same kind of conversations we have all the time as teachers, instructors, examiners. Let's give credit to people who have their knowledge iron, you know, just have it down. Awesome. Because there are plenty of people out there like that. But there are so many people that are slacking and just doing what they got to do to get through the rating. Do you want to do that or do you want to be the best you can be? And I tell these young guys all the time, Kenny, how do I get my start in the industry? Here's an example. Study your frickin butt off. Know your stuff. Because it's not that tough to be better than most. I have this discussion with other trainers all the time. Longtime friend of mine was a trainer in EMS world and I've told this story before, he said half these EMS bases I should be shutting them down Kenny, because of their knowledge. But we're all short of pilots and I'd have everybody upset when I'm shutting down hospital bases because these guys are behind their knowledge. Not fair to the guys that are on top of their knowledge. But I told this same gentleman on the phone last night, I stayed current as instructor as an EMS pilot a lot of times we took check rides together, annual checkouts 135. And when another pilot couldn't answer it, the examiners or check, everybody would look at me. Nine times out of ten I'd answer The question why? Because I stayed current as an instructor even when I was flying full time elsewhere. So it's your own personal responsibility to keep on top of your knowledge, whether you're brand new and going for a test, or you're a private pilot flying once a month, or you're out in the working world. So we're going to walk over and check out the Hogs Wall of Fame, and I'm going to talk about some of our members and specifically one Jamie. So we're going to walk over there, have Heather got the live mobile camera. And the fun thing about Jamie was Jamie came to me back in, I don't know, probably 2015, something like that. And he was one of my ground school members, had been a member for a long time. And we had some emails and some phone calls. He's like, Kenny, I got 200 hours. I have this new R40. I've had eight instructors, and I can't get this checkride done. And I'm like, okay, well, how about, you know, you want me to come down there or you want to come up here? And he's like, I'd like to come up there. So I said, well, make sure you watch all the videos. And he's like, I have. And I sent another pilot down to pick Jamie up and pick his aircraft up. They came all the way from Texas. And I could tell the first day Jamie was, you know, in my mind, okay, you got 200 hours, you own your own aircraft, and you've eight instructors, and you're not done yet. My job as instructor was to figure out what made Jamie tick and how come Jamie was not done yet. And Jamie and I are outside talking the first day he's there. He gets there and he comes in. I know he's like, extremely nervous, right? I don't blame him. Guy traveled all the way from Texas all the way to Indiana, and 200 hours and eight instructors. You know, I could understand his hesitance, right? At one point, he goes like, hey, can. I'm gonna take a break for a couple hours, man. I got a headache. I'm like, hey, go in there and turn the light off. There's a nice comfy couch over there. Just relax, Jamie. So he does. And then about supper time, he comes back over and, okay, it's a nice night. Let's go outside. So go outside. And I just started asking Jamie questions. And I'm asking about service bulletins and, you know, selling with power. And I'm asking him about what is, you know, basic vfr. What's special vfr? I just started asking him random questions on a nice evening in Indiana, sitting outside watching the sunset, and he's banging this stuff left and right. In my mind, I'm going, I'm not sure what's the problem here, because the knowledge is looking really good. So this goes on for maybe an hour, hour and a half. And I asked Jamie. I go, jamie, you're nailing every single question that I'm asking you. He's like, I am. I go, you're answering to private pilot level. He's like, I am. And I'm like, yeah, you're kicking ass. I don't really. I need to kind of figure out why you're here, man, because you should be done. Well, I don't remember where the conversation went after that, but I know I put him at ease. Nine days later, he was going home with his private pilot rating. Within that first couple of days, I realized my job was just. Was building up Jamie's confidence because he flew the aircraft really well. His ground knowledge was really. Was. Was awesome. But we dive into the log books to start looking and making sure he has everything done. And he has signatures that are missed cross country. That was supposed to be two hours, was 1.8. We start finding these little problems in his logbook. Some of them, he could. He could contact the instructor and go, dude, I need this proper sign off. Okay, we'll ship it to you. Some things we couldn't fix because you couldn't get a hold of the instructor. Some things he had. We had to go out and re fly. And he was so thrilled. He's like, wow, you know, this is so amazing. You're doing such a great job. And I'm like, you know what, Jamie? I'm just doing the same job that every other instructors out there should be doing. Going through the PTS and training you properly. We spent a day cleaning up Jamie's logbook and taking care of requirements that should have been 200 hours been met. And in the. And Jamie goes, well, these guys took advantage of me and my good nature. You know, I'm like, well, I wish they did, because nine days later, he was done. He was rock solid on the oral. He was rock solid in the aircraft. Examiner said, wow, I understand you've had some struggles along the way, but wow, you did amazing today. Only had one little critique on the whole entire flight. The ground was incredible. And we'll look up here at Jamie real quick. Here's the picture of the day he gets his checkride done. He's out with the examiner getting shaking hands. And the cool thing was it was gusting like, I don't know, it was like 15, gusting 22 knots. And when they went to go fly and he picked up, I was like, oh my gosh. You know, he was comfortable, examiner's comfortable. And he went out and flew in some pretty gusty winds and passed the checkride. So we come back, Jamie's happy and Jamie's the one. As another businessman, Jamie says to me, kenny, you know what? When people want to come here to fly with you, I would tell them they got to be a ground school member and they got to go through every single video in your course. He goes, because I'll be honest with you, he goes, I went through your entire course. And he said, I know. I watched every single video minimum of three times, if not more. Now that was apparent because he did so well that first night he was there. Any one individual is going to learn differently. Maybe you go through it one time is enough. Maybe you got to go through it two or three times. We learn through repetition by going over and over and to have somebody like Jamie who's obviously been successful in business and done really well for himself and then see what happens when you're, when you're not getting good quality instruction and how things get messed up, up. And I didn't do anything that great. I just did what I was supposed to do. Go through the pts, do what the FAA has laid out for us, cover the things that we need to cover, make sure that they're in the logbook and they're signed and everything is where it's supposed to be. So it goes back to knowledge, good decision making, be the best you want to be. Applying yourself in study. Are you going to be a great pilot? Are you going to be a half ass pilot? Yeah, know. So I like telling that story because that's a lot of the reason why we require you to be a member to come here and fly. Because I'm not going to say anything to you face to face. It's not in our course. My heart and soul is in that course. And so to this young man, getting ready for a check ride, man, I hope your knowledge is good. If you're, if you're finding that there's some areas there that you not 100% confident in, I'd go back and go through that whole entire course, make sure you hit every single video, do some more read study on your own, sit down with your instructor and do a little more one on One, you're going to a tough examiner. The knowledge should be the same either way. You should be to a standard regardless of how you tough you hear the examiner is. Shouldn't make any difference. Your knowledge should be there anyway. But there's going to be added pressure when you know the guy's tough. Tough than average way it is. Right? It's real world. That's the way it works. All right, well, let's head back over to the main area here and we'll let Heather give you a little. Show you around just a little bit. We're just still so freaking thrilled to have this hangar and the events of the last year or so have been just freaking amazing and moving over here and having these instrument back and all ready to go. And we'll have some more other big new comments or other big developments coming in the very near future. Remember, we got a big sale coming out March 1st, eight years online. We launched March 1st, 2012. March 1st, 2020 will be eight years online and my birthday is March 15th. We're gonna do some special. We'll do some specials on the big professional pilot package and we're gonna do a special on the monthly thing too. I think I'm gonna do something I've never done before. I'm gonna offer something that's never been offered and said it's gonna be a freaking. A pretty good deal. And I'm pretty sure my operations manager is gonna say, you're gonna do what? But I'm crazy, Kenny. That was easy. So remember that you know what it's about knowledge. It's not that hard to be better than the average pilot. And if your skills aren't where they need to be and your knowledge isn't where they need to be, you probably already know it and you know who you are. Kudos to those who do stay current. There are guys that and girls that like to study, like to read, like to watch videos, like to learn. And they want to be on top. They want to have their knowledge. This isn't a discussion I've had one time. This is a discussion I've had over and over and over and over with other instructors and trainers in our industry. And I suppose you could take it to any industry, right? Any industry, any profession. You're going to have people that are going to excel and you're going to have people that are going to want to do the least they can do to get by if you want to keep yourself safe. It's all about knowledge. It's the knowledge first. And just like on the test for this young man, if you don't get through the oral part, you're not even going to get to go fly. You know, the oral's the hard part. I've said it a thousand times. 75% of the work is this learning the knowledge. 25% is climbing in the aircraft with your instructor and going, learning how to fly and doing your solo and all that kind of stuff. So do us a favor and subscribe to the channel. Click the bell for more great videos. Leave us comment down below and we shall see you in the next video. And P.S. you get a flight. The weather's iffy. It's at minimums your friends and your family or your employer or your celebrity friends pushing you to go or anybody's pushing you to go the news station. And the weather's not where it should be. You're not comfortable. Sir, I'm gonna to have to decline that flight for weather. Sorry. Thanks. Talk to you next time. That was easy. That's all you got to know. Peace out, Sa.