"I feel I should have command of hovering and approaches by now. Is this common?"

That's me. That's you? Yeah, I said you can see cat's a porn star. Keep it. I don't want anything of that. Excuse me. I should have grabbed a diet coke. Ray needs some. 97. Two hours of deal.

Big old plus five you can use today.

Big old plus five.

Clear on the right.

You are clear left. All right, I'm gonna. It's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's it.

All right. How was that for a little opener? A little more exciting than the normal. Just looking at my stupid face in the morning. Gotta show this picture first. This is Henry. I met Henry at heli expo this year. Nice guy. Just want to come up and say hi. And we talked a little bit and that was awesome. And I didn't realize until he emailed me yesterday that he is right here in the video from yesterday. So there's Henry with Jim who just passed his checkride. I did a video on this yesterday celebrating Jim's success. So there's Henry right beside him. And Henry emailed me last night and goes, dude, I just got the email, watched the video and saw myself. And he posted a picture on our helicopter line ground school Facebook page. The picture that me and him at heli expo. And I was like, oh, heck, man, I wish I remembered. I thought he looked familiar in the picture, but I just didn't. You know, I was all in a big hurry yesterday to make that video and so that's really, really cool. So there's Henry that I met heli expo. I'm telling you, what a nice guy. And I really appreciate him coming up to say, hey. And then boom. He just happens to be, you know, in the picture from yesterday with Jim. Go back and watch that video from yesterday. It's a great video. A lot of good content there. We talked about hogs, all kinds of stuff. Great video. So if you missed that yesterday, go back and grab that video and you know what? Do I have a camera for me, I'm going to have to add a camera. You know what? I didn't. You know what? Does anybody even really care if I have a camera looking at me today? You know what, let's do something different. Who needs to see me? Maybe I'll add it in a minute. I want to get to this question from a helicopter online ground school member. So let's pull it up and this is a great question. And we get this all the time. I just emailed him and said, hey, I'm going to answer this live today. And his question, he said. Hello, Kenny Hogsmember here. Question for you. I'm a fixed wing pilot with approximately 1000 hours. I have 12 hours so far in the instrum F28F which is cool, right? That's what I got sitting behind me right now in instrum F28F. So that's really cool. He's got a thousand hours doing his helicopter add on. Alright, so key here 12 hours. So I can already tell you he's getting a little bit too worried already. Okay, let's go a little bit farther. He said it is of course fairly expensive per hour to get my rating, which is something I've always dreamed of, which is awesome. And you should keep continue to go for it. But it seems like I'm not really getting it. I don't feel confident with my skills so far. I feel like I should have command of hovering and approaches by now, which I get it. But at 12 hours, man, give us some more time. And he says, is this common? I know your videos say once you should be sowing by 20 hours or so. When I say that, that's just. That's just a. That's just a.20 is usually where like insurance company. A lot of times I want you to have 20 hours. So actually I'm gonna try to bring my camera up here just because this bugs me. Let me see if I can do this. Come on, come on, come on. Video capture. Here we go.

Add.

There we go. Let me fix that just a little. Gotta bear with me today because you know what? I'm doing this alone. I'm getting pretty damn good at it on my own. It's much easier when Heather's here. But that's okay, she's home. So this is such a great question. Let me finish out what he says. I know your video says only by 20 hours or so. Don't even worry about that. Nobody worry about it. If you solo at 15, great. If you don't solo until 30, who cares? Alright? Who cares? He said, I don't feel I should be ready for that based on how I feel at 12 hours. That's okay. You're going to do. You're going to make a lot of progress in the next six hours. Okay? I'm on the fence as to whether I should bail and cut my losses before I throw good money after bad. I'm not going to really discuss the money because I've said it in a video in the past. I had a gentleman once who was flying, he had a lot of hours and I gave him the speech. You know, I'm like, man, you got a lot of hours and you're not soloing and, you know, you're spending a lot of money. And he said, it's none of your damn business how much money I'm spending. I want to do this. So I learned early on, right, it's not any of my business. The money that you're going to spend is up to any one individual, right? Because I don't want anybody to ever overextend themselves. That's just good common sense. So this gentleman has to make a decision on whether he wants to spend the money or not. So let's not put the money into the picture, right? Because that's his decision. I'm on the fence as to whether I should bail and cut my losses. My instructor is very thorough and a great teacher. So I feel confident that this isn't the problem. Okay? You've only got 12 hours. Remember that. Then here's the key part, and this is important I want to talk to you all about. It just seems the aerodynamics are so much more complex, which. They are more complex. This is a different animal with the rotor blades, the main rotor blades, the tail rotor blades, all the control inputs. It's a lot different than flying an airplane. And I did my airplane rating after my helicopter rating, so I understand, I know the difference, and I can compare the two and a little more as we talk through this. So I get it. It is more complex, and piloting skills required are so much greater. Is the fixed wing background making it tougher for me? It can. And let me. Let me reiterate on that. You know, there's the safety notice that says airplane pilots high risk when learning to fly helicopters. Okay? There's certain things that are different between the two. A lot of your knowledge is going to cross over, of course, between fixed wing and helicopter. But in my 20 years of teaching, this thing that I see for fixed wing pilots is it's very hard to learn that approach because you're going against the grain of what you learned, okay? And I know this because I did it vice versa. So airplane, fixed wing pilots, you know, you're trained for your minimum airspeed that you got to have all the way in, coming in, right? Because you're going to stall and you're going to crash. In a helicopter, we're making you do the total opposite. In a helicopter, we're making you start. Let's use 60, for example. Let's say 60 or 70 is your minimum speed in your airplane. We start 60, 70 in a helicopter. But the whole time, if this is our hella, this is our landing spot, the number is 2, 8. In a helicopter the whole time we're making you slow down. You start at 60 and then you're going to be 50, then you're going to be 40, then you're going to be 30, then you're going to be 20, then you're going to be 10, then you're going to be at 0. So this is totally going against what you were trained to do. So Randy, at 12 hours, give yourself some more time, man. And remember, you got to change hats. Jumping between helicopter and airplane. Let me tell you what happened when I did airplanes after learning helicopters, okay? It's the exact opposite. I'm trained to just bring that thing in slow, slower, slow, slow, slow, almost to a stop. It should always look like you're approaching those numbers at the same speed. So I'm more my. One of my first helicopter jobs I worked at for five years. One of my students became one of my closest friends and he was an airplane pilot. Every rating under the sun in airplanes. So high time instructor rated in every fixed wing under the sun. Computer geek, smart. Oh my God, this guy was so smart. Anyway, he taught me to fly airplanes. So what happens when I go to learn to fly airplanes? You know, we're coming in, I'm trying to slow the thing down by my instinct, even though what he's telling me and he was my buddy, but he was knocking me in the head going, kenny, you're going to frickin kill us. You. This is not a damn helicopter, this is an airplane. You have to keep that speed up the whole time you're coming in. You're going to stall the aircraft, you're going to kill us, right? So Randy, I don't think you should give up yet. The money, that's your decision. But I don't believe at 12 hours you've given enough time. My opinion, give it a little more time. Who cares if you solo at 20? Who cares if you solo at 22? Who cares if you solo at 35? It doesn't matter. There is no shame. You want to be safe in the aircraft and you want to know, you know what's going on. And so you got to change that hat. Today I'm in an airplane. Change the hat. Today I'm in a helicopter and there's lots of people that jump back and forth. Brian Rutledge, our operations manager, he's a CFI in airplanes and helicopters. He learned Airplanes first. Then he learned helicopters. And he's in the chat today. Brian is in the chat along with Heather is in the chat. Brian is our operations manager. Brian can elaborate this with you. Brian has taught me some interesting things between airplanes and helicopters because I'm not an airplane cfi. So already just in a few weeks of Brian working with us full time, he's brought me some insight of being an airplane pilot first and then becoming a helicopter pilot. I only know becoming a helicopter pilot and then becoming a fixed wing pilot. So this is such a great question. And we get this often. I want to reiterate one more time. 20 hours, a lot of the time is a minimum for an insurance requirement. It's a minimum in the Robinson.

Right.

Some aircraft, like the instrument behind me, there is no insurance requirement for me and my policy. I'm the instructor. I can do what I want. If I don't want to solo you at 12, I sold you at 12. I've never soloed anybody at 12 hours. What's the minimum ever solo to anybody? I don't remember ever soloing anybody under 20. Just because I think 20 is a good general rule. I really feel that. So I just really wanted to go through this again. Randy is a Hogs member, and I think at 12 hours, you know, we get a lot of emails from people anywhere between 6 hours to 12 hours where they're struggling with whatever their case is. Ground school, flight training, it's a very, very, very common thing that happens. And I just think at 6 to 12 hours, you need to give us some more time. Practice, practice, practice. And remember switching aircraft from one to the other. Airplane, helicopter, it is difficult. One other point on this topic that I was told in the beginning, and I believe this now as an instructor, a lot of times you'll hear a helicopter instructor say, we prefer to take you off the street only because we don't have to break what you learn in an airplane.

Okay?

There's nothing bad about learning airplanes first, but it's like, here's the story I like to tell. I'm an ex cop. I'm an ex firearms instructor. I went to firearms instructor school. I was the firearms instructor for our department. And you go back every year or every two years and recertify, Right? And in the one year I went back and they're like, guys, make sure you teach people okay? Or tell your officers, we don't recommend you carrying your handgun here. We don't recommend you carrying your hand but your handgun here. We don't recommend it down Here on your ankle. We recommend you off duty to keep your handgun right here because you go out to the range every day. 3 yard line, 7 yard, 15, 25, 50 yard. And what do you do? You're consistently doing this all the time, right? So this is where I, before coming to helicopter instructor, I learned. What you learn and what is ingrained in your mind is very hard to change later. So you're a police officer, you're trained all the time and you're doing this. Then you get yourself a fancy cool holster with you to wear with your leather jacket when you're going out on a Saturday night to be all cool and shit. And you're stopping by the liquor store and you walk in and the guy's robbing the place and he looks over at you and you go, oh shit. The guy knows you're a cop because you just weren't here for your handgun. It ain't there because you've trained over and over and over to do this. Your handgun's up here, Boom. Guy shoots you dead. So it's the same thing with learning airplanes and helicopters, what we are first taught, what is that? The law of primacy or one of the laws. In the CFI training, it's very hard to veer away from what you originally taught. So it's not a bad thing. Just understand it's a big deal jumping between airplanes and helicopters. You know, the knowledge transfers over airspace, radio communications. There's so many things that are going to be similar. So in one way doing an add on pilot is nice because an add on pilot has a lot of the knowledge that they need. So that part's easier than teaching someone off the street you're a lot easier to teach ground wise. But in the aircraft it can just be more difficult because of the way that you were trained. So I was on a roll there. I feel much better today. Yesterday I was down, man, but I feel much better. And we did that video yesterday. If you didn't see it, go back and check it out. I'm gonna throw up. Henry again. One more time. I met Henry at heli Expo. That was so cool. Just turns out here he is from the post. Yesterday when I talked about Jim and Jim emailed me all excited, he got through his check rod and he just said, hey, dude, I saved money by using ground school. I didn't do much ground at the school. And Henry emailed me and said, you know, hey man, Kenny, Jim did great, you know, thank you for your program. And I emailed him back today and Said, dude, thanks for sending me that email. I'll plug you today. Because I just felt bad that I didn't remember that we had met at heli expo and such a nice guy, you know, it's just, just, it's just freaking cool. You know, we talk about the Hogs family and it is like a big family. We'll all get to know each other. People get to know Heather. Now they're getting to know Brian. It's just a cool thing. Just really, really cool. Free resources down below top 10 checkride tips. It's free PDF down below helicopter checkride free PDF down below free radio communications course down below subscribe to our channel and click the bell because we're badasses and we do a lot of cool shit and we go live a lot. We do premiere videos, sometimes we just upload videos. But during this pandemic, I've been trying to go live about every day or do something cool to keep people entertained. And people have been enjoying it and I know that because they've been telling us, they've been telling Brian, they've been telling Heather, man, thanks for going live and keeping us entertained. And I enjoy doing it. Helps keep some eye spirits up, you know, things are looking a little better in some areas of the country. Things are peaking a little bit here and there and there might be some areas just going up, but all in all, we're gonna get through it. It's gonna get better. Utilize those free resources I mentioned yesterday and I put the links down below and I mentioned again today, if you're interested in building an online business and doing what I do, I got some links down below. You could take our train or you can check out the training that I use. That I use. It's the livelihood for me, Brian and Heather. We work full time with helicopter online ground school and it's all created with one site. You can take that for 28, 28 day challenge where they push you along to try to make your first thousand dollars online. If you've got knowledge of something special and you want to share it with the world, you can take your iPhone and start making videos and have a product up and you can start making money in 28 days. And I haven't talked about this much in the past, but with what's going on in the world right there, right now, I know there's people that want to get online and want to do what we do, you know, and you can teach anything, anything that you're passionate about. And I have a course down there Below that link there's a course where I teach you how to how I did it off the street with this little camera, broke with no money. And eight years later, a full fledged business that employs three of us with a nice hangar and nice facilities and good equipment with a great membership site to help all of you. I think I got that down to a buck. I'll even refund your buck if you want to take it out and learn about how I did it. So I know Heather and Brian's been there, so I'm not going to bore you with stand here trying to read through the comments. Appreciate Everybody being here. 29 people watching now. That's awesome. I'm in a much better mood today and that comes from you, our members, our viewers, comments from like Henry and emails from Jim and members sending their pictures. All I want to say is the pandemic sucks. My heart goes out to anybody affected. People have lost jobs. I mean it's, we're all in this together, right? It informs, it gets everybody in some form or fashion. You know, we're all affected. Be smart, stay strong and we'll keep doing what we do. You keep doing what you do and we shall see you in the next video. Hell yeah. Peace out.