Helicopter Stunts for Views? Don’t Be That Pilot

But when you see people taking off from the ground and you see away they go, that is not a proper helicopter takeoff. There's no reason to ever go yank it completely off the ground and do this backwards and start turning around.

This is more prevalent than ever. We're going to get back to that full video. But daily, weekly, I see more and more as social media grows. You see so much going online, things that you're getting the wrong presentation a lot of times of what helicopters should do. You see a lot of stuff going on. We're going to get back to that video, but I want to tell you real quick about our 60% off. Memorial Day sale monthly is normally 97. With the 60% off, that's only $38.80. We have never in 14 years sold a membership that cheap. It's nuts. Then for the yearly that is normally 697, that is down to $278.80. With the memorial Day sale discount, then our lifetime, those sell at 997. On the private pilot. I think it's only on the private pilot right now. 398.80 savings of 60%. And our absolute best deal is on professional pilot. Professional pilot. You get private pilot, instrument pilot, commercial.

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Day 229 Coffee with Kenny. I want to talk about social media takeoffs. In the past I've done a video about television and movie takeoffs, which a lot of us grew up on. But now what? The world has changed. A lot of you are getting into this and you're watching all this cool, crazy helicopter stuff on social media, Facebook, YouTube and wherever else. And something that all these people know, our new Hogs Wall of fame. These are all people that have completed our training and have got their ratings and they've heard me preach about hover pre takeoff checks, the proper way to take off, all these types of situations. So after our conversations with Dave Faulkner yesterday, who was here and did a video with us, I'll put that link up above. We talked about a whole bunch of stuff and Dave and I spent the day together and he's going for his CFI, 20 year experience, pilot, flew law enforcement. And we talked about a number of things. And the one thing we talked about was how on social media you're seeing a lot of crazy stuff going on. And you're seeing these fancy helicopters looping and rolling and doing all kinds of stuff and these fancy takeoffs. Well, guess what? A lot of what you're seeing. If you're new to this, you'll know this if you're an experienced pilot. But if you're new to the helicopter thing, do not get yourself. If you want to like those videos, that's great. But just understand that's not what we do in a helicopter and that's not what's safe. Every single thing that we do in a helicopter starts with a hover. It ends with a hover. We take off like this when we can build our altitude and airspeed. When you have to clear obstacles, yes, you will do max takeoff depending on obstacles performance, the aircraft, it may be straight up, it may be something like this, it may be something like this. Several different methods, depending on who you are, where you're flying, conditions in aircraft. But when you see people taking off from the ground and you see away they go, that is not a proper helicopter takeoff. There's no reason to ever go, yank it completely off the ground and do this backwards and start turning around. Or lots of the other crazy stuff that you see going on out there. And I've been seeing a lot of, oh, this guy is helicopter pilot of the year. Check out this guy, he's the helicopter pilot of the year. No, the guys that are helicopter pilot of the year are like Dan Taz Chrisman, who got 2018 flight instructor of the year. You wouldn't see Dan Taz Chrisman ever going out in a helicopter and doing stuff like that. You'll never catch me doing stuff like that. So keep in mind that a helicopter, the way it's designed, is designed to take off nice and slow, build altitude and airspeed, go. And these hover pre takeoff checks again. If you're new to this, you may not know this. If you've been at part of our ground school, you know this. Everything should start and end With a hover pre takeoff check. The reason you do that is because when you pick that helicopter up, you're putting a load on all the components, the engine, the main rotor, transmission, gearbox. You lift it up to see how the helicopter is going to act. You don't know when it's on the ground, there's no load on it. You won't know until you pick it up and whether you give it 5 seconds, 10 seconds, 20 seconds, you pick it up to check systems. How's it running? Is there any kind of a miss going on? How much power are you pulling? When you see people yanking off the. Yanking off the ground and just going without a hover pre takeoff check. That's never right. It's never right. We've been talking a lot about EMS flying yesterday. Or we did it. We talk about it often in these videos. But also Dave and I were talking about this a lot because he's looking at maybe going to an EMS career after his law enforcement flying, which is awesome. And I was telling Dave how at particular EMS base I worked at, you know, we're all trained by the company. Right. And the company says hover pre takeoff check every time. Right. More advanced aircraft, twin engines, you have a lot of systems to be testing. You lift to a hover regardless of whether you're doing training, ferry flight, or even if you're going on an EMS medical mission. The emergency is for the medical crew in what they're doing. As a pilot, you're getting safely from point A to point B. So yanking it off the ground and going is not the answer. And I have to say, trained by the company. Cool. Everybody has to do a hover pre takeoff check. Cool. I did that. All fine and dandy. So I get flying ems and one day the pilot that I worked opposite of said, kenny, the medical crew has a problem because you hover every time before you take off. I'm like, yeah. And he's like, well, you know, they're just kind of wondering. And I'm like, I'm not gonna say his name. But I'm like, you went to the same training that I did. Navy pilot. And the company wants us to do a hover pre takeoff check every single time. Did you read the company email where the chief pilot put out an email to every pilot and said, guys, we're hearing there's a lot of you that are not doing hover pre takeoff checks. You will do them every single time. And if we observe you or one of our, you know, check airmen observe you doing a Hover or doing a takeoff without a hover pre takeoff check, you won't work for us anymore. Even with that mass email, the three pilots that I worked opposite of didn't do it. Why didn't they do it? Because they were all about getting off the ground and going, well, it's not how the company wanted it done. It's not safe. You always want to lift the aircraft up, do a hover pre takeoff check, check the systems, make sure you're good to go. And then when it's time to go, you're going to use whatever kind of takeoff is necessary to safely get the aircraft moving. If you're at an airport, you're just going to use the taxiway, the Runway, you're going to build some speed and.

You'Re going to fly away.

If you have obstacles, trees at a scene, a hospital in front of you, sure. Then you're going to be doing different variations of max takeoffs to get whatever it is you need to get out of there. So I just want to put that message out there today after this. Yesterday was an awesome day with Dave and Dave was here, signed his picture up on the hogs wall, had a great day. And this is one of the things we discussed. And I was just, you know, telling him as a cfi, this is something that you have to teach. Right. And he already knows that, but it's just was a great discussion. I thought, you know, that's the video I wanted to do today. So fancy flying videos are great and the Red Bull helicopter looping and doing all that kind of stuff is great. But Heather just asked me before the video and she was like, well, can helicopters fly upside down or can they do those? And I'm like, that's, that's the thing. Heather specifically trained pilots in aircraft specifically built for doing loops and rolls. Yes, it can be done. If you go back and check like some of the articles from Chuck Aaron, who was the original guy that really started doing all those loops and really fancy aerobatics. It's kind of impressive because he talks about how he didn't just go out and start looping a helicopter. When he was first asked if it could be done, he said no. And they asked him, you know, several times and he put thought into it. And then once he started working with that, he built a helicopter specifically to go out and loop and do aerobatics. And they did a lot of work and a lot of different things to the aircraft. And he even talks about how, and I don't remember whether it was 50 times or 100 times. But he said he kept going out and practicing, and he would chicken out, and he would chicken out, and he would chicken out, and each time he just kept taking it a little bit farther and a little bit farther. So when you see these crazy things going on in a helicopter, know that if you're specifically trained for aerobatics and you're in an aircraft that can do aerobatics, great. But for the newbies, these crazy takeoffs. You see, I just saw another one the other day, some guy taking off, just some kind of for fun flight. And I said, here's his takeoff, and away he goes. And I'm watching this going. There was no obstacles in front of him whatsoever. And everybody's on YouTube or Facebook or wherever it was. Oh, that's so cool. You're so cool, man. You're a great pilot. And he needed to take off like that. Why? I have no idea. Just to show off, right? So keep in mind as you're getting into helicopter flying, the fancy shit you see going on in helicopters, on tv, movies, social media, ain't necessarily the way that you need to be doing it.

When you feel the pressure to fly. But know the right decision is to stay on the ground, hit the hogs, no go. And live to fly another day. Helicopterground. Com.