How long should my Helicopter Flight Lesson be?

To fly another day. Helicopterground.com that's the hogs no go button. We send these out to our members when you end up on the HOGS wall of fame after you pass your checkride and send us a picture. That's just one side of the wall. This wall now has another side to it because it just keeps growing. So we send you a no go button when you pass your test and send it a picture and just give us a quick sentence or two about how HOGS helped you. So one hour flight lesson or more than an hour, which is best? I have a firm belief on this subject and I'm going to get to that in a minute. I am Kenny Keller, creator of Helicopter Line Ground School. Been online approaching 11 years now. Our training is now used as a curriculum at Madisonville Community College in Kentucky. Very proud of that. I went down and did a visit with them last week. They're using the quizzes, they're using the FAA test at the end of the courses to be part of their credit hours and the formal testing for their ratings at this college. Super excited about that. So why am I selling you that? I don't know. Just because I'm proud of it. That's what I'm telling you. Really, really proud of that. This little site that I built all those years ago, it's turned into what it has. Very, very proud of that and we're super excited. So the one hour lesson. I am a firm believer and I'll fight tooth and nail on this one. One hour flight lesson is perfect. Can you go less? Absolutely. Can you go longer? Absolutely. Are there appropriate times to go longer? Sure, if you're on a long cross country flight. I'll give an example. I had a doctor who became one of my great friends. I used a helicopter he ended up buying for years here with Hogs. But when he was flying, he knew I was a firm believer in a one hour flight lesson. The average person is trying to make use of their money. And at the end of an hour he'd go, I know you don't like to go past an hour, but can we just go play for a little bit? And I'm like, if you want, you know, what do you want to do? He goes, I want to go do autos. Just because he loved doing autos and it was in his budget. He was a busy doctor. So his time off at the airport was his, you know, actually was relaxing for him. And I allowed that in that instance because we were doing legitimate training for an hour. And then if he wanted to go a little over and just go have a good time and practice some autos. We did that. Okay, so I'm not saying you can't do it. Here's what I am telling you. What I learned early on at that same flight school I worked at a flight school in Cleveland, helped me jump start my career. I learned a lot. Worked for a gentleman there who said the way he explained that I liked, he said one hour lesson is perfect. For the first 20 minutes you're getting warmed up for that lesson. The second 20 minutes you're making progress and things are going well and it's going good. And then that third 20 minutes, you know, towards the end that hour, a student starts to drop off. He explained that to me. And again, I was a new instructor at the time. So over time I began to see that. And I also remember back before I became a helicopter pilot, I was a police officer and I was a firearms instructor. And I had to go to instructor development course before the firearms instructor training. And they told us never keep a student in a classroom for more than an hour or if you're on the range for an hour, after an hour, give them a break. The instructor course told us after one hour, the human brain needs kind of a break, whether it's five minutes, 10 minutes in a classroom setting, whatever the case may be, but never keep somebody in a classroom more than an hour. Let them have a break. So with those two ideas in mind, what I learned from the guy I worked for and what I learned is that instructor development course. And now over the years I've watched it happen. I can tell by somebody's performance when it's about 50 minutes, five zero. I like to be heading in at five zero because you're still going to have shutdown parking by the time you get done, you're going to be right at about an hour. And that way you can get out and walk away feeling pretty good about that lesson. Here's what happens when somebody wants to go over an hour. Let's say you're toward that end of that 20 minutes and your last approach was pretty decent, but it was little off. And you go, I want to go around one more time. If I let you do it, the next one nearly an hour is probably going to be not as good as the last one. And then you get frustrated. Well, let me try it one more time. So then you go around again and then it gets even worse. This is the normal of what I have seen. It's nice to stop the lesson where you're at a good point and you're making progress and you're feeling good. Just saying this as a general rule, when you near that hour, your performance is going to start to go down in most situations. So my opinion is I love the flight one hour flight lesson. I think it's a good standard. You can go less if you need to. You can go more if it's required. My opinion one hour is perfect. All right. Did I mention the top 10 checkride tips free PDF down below co author just with Dan Taz Christma 2018 fly structure of the Year we have a sale going on until the last day of summer, September 22, 33% off our memberships with the code Summer33. You can go to helicopterground.com below. Use that code during checkout to save on any membership now through September 22nd. If you have a question, text or call Heather at 574-767-1797, our Hogs member concierge. She can answer questions for you, help you get signed up, help you out in whatever way that you need. You can text or call her, call her seven days a week at 574-767-1797. So those links are all down below. We'll see you in the next video.