"make sense to just start with ground school before incorporating flying?" General Questions/Advice

Hey, it's Kenny with helicopter online ground school. I'm heading over there to the, I don't know, what do you call that area over there? Anyway, been kind of quiet the last week or two, you know, since got past the new year and we just had a cool email the other day from Sam which some of you will know. Sam from our Hogs Wall of Fame from our videos. Sam flies for UPS or FedEx. UPS I think. Flies the big heavy jets. And he emailed Heather. Hey, is Kenny alright? He hasn't done any videos in the past week or so. Everything's fine, we're all good here. We've been doing a ton of stuff behind the scenes as always. There's just so much to do. There's always, always stuff to do. So we just you know, kind of back down a little bit on the videos just because once you get in the mode of cleaning house right and working on things, taking care of members, lots of different things going on. We've been doing a lot of updates, things in the background that you don't see that just needed updated. So we've been doing a ton of stuff. So we are here. It's second shift, Heather's done went home for the day. So I'm gonna go through some questions here and then I'll go over and check. I did make sure the feed was live. That's why before I did that, before I walked over here I just want to cover some really recent questions that just came in and these are things that we've covered in the past through you know, copy with Kenny videos and others. But that's okay, right? Because this number one question, I'm getting a lot here just recently even though we've talked about this many times in the past. But it's great question. It's from Aaron, he said hello Kenny. I have a strong interest in getting my helicopter rating. I currently have my private pilot rating, vfr. Awesome. And would like to take the next step in helicopter training. Does it make sense to just start with ground school before incorporating flying? I'm working on ways to afford the flying portion although I'm eager to start learning. Please let me know your thoughts. Thank you. So this is a great question that comes up all the time and you know, it's kind of changed over the years a little bit early on as instructor I had the same answers most any instructor. We like you to do the flying while you're doing the ground school. Right. So you're going to your flight school, you're going out and you're doing flight lessons in the aircraft, and you're also going home in the evening and you're studying. Traditionally, that's what we always tell people, because as you're learning these subjects, then when you go to the airport and you get in the helicopter, it helps you take these things that you're learning, and then it helps you put them all together in the aircraft. Now, with that being said, all our members have taken helicopter online ground school. And so I've changed my tune. One guy that I talk about very often is Johan. And Johan is the one that did his private rating in three weeks. He was in another country. He studied with helicopter online ground school. He spends all day in a tractor driving up and down the field, right? So he had the iPad in there with him in the tractor so he could drive the tractor. Listen to the. Basically listen to the audio from the videos, maybe glance down a time or two, I don't know how fast. Probably driving pretty slow on the tractor so he could get away with it. Right? Anyway, Johan comes over from another country, shows up at a flight school, walks in, they evaluate his ground, and they're like, wow, you're ready to start flying. And this one instructor passed Johan off to another instructor and said, I think his ground is good. And the other instructor went, yeah, right. You know, I'm gonna poke holes in his ground school. And then it was his instructor, Travis, who actually emailed me after they evaluated Travis and said, kenny, what did you do to this kid? He shows up here fully ready to start flying because his ground is rock solid. That's four or five years ago. Johan was really the first one to really do that. And we've told that story many, many times. And so now my answer, it has changed a little bit because you can learn the ground before flying. You can. So I'm going to say it's really up to you, the individual. I mean, it depends on your situation, depends on your money. You know, our private pilot membership is so cheap. When you look at the amount of money that you're going to spend going for your private rating, our monthly membership is. It's less than an hour of ground, one on one with an instructor. And Brian Rutledge and I discuss this all the time. Brian's our operations manager. And even though it's so cheap, doesn't mean I'm going to raise the price. The price is good because you can keep it one month. You can keep it as long as you like. So I think it depends on any one individual. So the answer for this young man, I'm going to send him this video and say, hey, right in the beginning of the video on this live stream, I talked about your question and answered it and say, reference the video. But I think it's up to you. You can certainly start now learning if you want. You could unsubscribe at any time, you know, if your money doesn't come in as soon for the actual flying portion. So I think this depends on any individual if you want to start learning and get as prepared as you can before going to the aircraft. Totally up to you. You can absolutely do that. What's going to be the best? I'll state it again, and I do believe this, if you think about it, does make sense, right? You're studying, you're going through the books material, you're going through our videos, you're learning the knowledge. Then you're driving to the airport. And a lot of these things when you're, when you first start learning a lot of this stuff, especially like aerodynamics and things going on with the rotor system and all the things going on with the helicopter. Sometimes it's kind of hard when you, when you're reading this stuff and you're looking at it and you're going, ha, you know, I kind of get it, but I don't really get it, right? And then all of a sudden, once you're in the aircraft and you're out there flying around and you're operating the controls and you're putting your inputs and, you know, going in and out, pretty soon you go boom. That light bulb comes on, right? So one more time, you can start anytime you want. You're welcome to start learning anytime you want. The more, you know, before you get there is going to save you time and money in the aircraft. If you've got good instruction and they're evaluating on your knowledge and making sure you have the knowledge you need and helping you with the areas that maybe you're deficient. And they're like, hey, you're good on, you know, aerodynamics and regs, but boy, your weather is kind of sucky, right? Let's, we need to, we need to really work on this weather. And a lot of questions come up like, well, what if I'm going to 141 school? If you're a 141 school, you still have to do the ground that's set up with their syllabus. So that all depends on the flight school you're going to. And I will go over here and check Heather's area where Heather would normally be answering your questions. But it is second shift, right. Heather likes to come in early, I like to come in later in the day and work into the evening. So next question. Gentleman just asked me, he's in Europe, been dreaming of flying helicopters for many years, wants to know if he can use our ground school and if there's going to be anything difference between where he's located in Europe and the US and the answer of course is yes, there's going to be certain things depending on what country you're flying in. There's going to be some different regulations for airspace and other things. But with that being said, a lot of the things we learn as far as flying a helicopter doesn't change country to country. A lot of things with weather relevant, helicopter safety, aerodynamics, there are so many things that are relevant that I say again, as cheap as it is, you can utilize our training especially for a low monthly month to month payment that you can stop anytime and come back anytime. I believe I answered his email, but I'll answer him again after the I get done tonight and I'll send him this link and say, hey, I covered your question at about, you know, five minutes in or whatever. And so the answer for this man is he's just getting started and he could do the same thing. You know, we have a lot of people that are in other countries that use our training to learn before coming over to the U.S. just like what Johan did. And it's amazing how many people now have said, Kenny, you help me learn the English language. And I don't know how much of a good thing that is. Right? Because you know, Indiana hillbilly. I do have some strange words that pop out there occasionally. Not, maybe not the best English, but it's kind of fun actually when people say, Kenny, not only did you help me learn about the aircraft and the things I needed to know, I I helped me learn the English language. And it's true. Right? So that is really, really cool. So I'm going to jump in here real quick. I got to go to. Gosh, where to put this? This is several questions from a young man and I'm not going to say his name because I don't want to make him feel bad when I answer his questions. But his questions are like, how do I deal with a girlfriend that doesn't want to relocate, but the only school is about five hours away from where I am. Okay. My saying is if you're going to wait for your friends and your family to support you in your dreams, then you might as well just give up now. Okay, not telling you what to do with your girlfriend. Any person that's going to get into this, you have to make these choices about making your commitments and how bad do you want it. So I guess trying to not get enough, get him in a fight with his girlfriend. I'm going to say if you're going to wait on your friends and your family to help you go for your dreams, then you might as well forget it because it's probably not going to happen. Right? The things you want to chase and the things you want to do with your life, helicopter training or otherwise, not everybody's always going to support you. Most people are going to usually be ready to tell you why you can't do something. And my whole career has been that way. And everything I've done in life, you know, have my friends laughed at me when I told them I want to be a cop? Oh, yeah, right. You of all people. I did it. I wanted to have a towing service. I want to get into big, heavy duty trucks. Yeah, you could never do that. Well, before I was done after 10 years, I had one of the largest trucks in the state and was doing tractor trailers. And, you know, I had a lot of fun with it. Among other things I've done. I've always been told I couldn't do it. And people will always tell you why you can't do it. So let's move on to some of the other questions. Would it be best to find a school or work one on one with an instructor full time? It's got to depend. That's going to depend on any one individual. The theme lately we've been telling people, and Taz and I just talked about this right at Christmas when he was here. I think it was Christmas Eve or New Year's Eve. Maybe New Year's Eve we went live. That's just New Year's Eve. A lot of people should go check that video where taz was here. 2018, Flight Instructor of the year. We talked about a lot of stuff concerning training. And the one thing that we talked about was it's always better to fly with multiple people and multiple helicopters. You, yes, it can drag your training out and it can take you longer. But people most generally want to hook up with one instructor and then they don't want to fly with anybody else. You can certainly do that. And I understand because I remember I was that way. I had one guy teaching me. I was comfortable with him. And then they bring in the older Senior guy, right? To give you a stage check and then he jumps in and kicks your ass. That's the way it works, okay? You're always going to learn flying with different people, different helicopters, different flight schools, you know, and if you jump around a lot, of course then it'll drag your training out even further. But my best advice is you don't want to stick with just one instructor. Every instructor is going to teach you something different and teach you something new. And one instructor may tell you something that makes complete sense or maybe doesn't make sense and you jump in with another instructor and they explain it in a different way, Same concept, just a different way of explaining and you go, wow, you know, and that's just, that's the way it is, right? I mean in high school I was horrible in algebra. I could barely get through it. Then the next year was geometry. That teacher made it such a different experience. I aced the frickin class. How do you go from one to the other where you can barely get through to excelling? And that to me was completely. The teacher ended up being my favorite teacher that I ever had in school because the guy could teach and he could get the points across in a way that made people understand. So that's my advice on that one also. I have a full time job now and can't really quit while I have the bills coming in. Welcome to the world of going toward your dreams, right? I would have financial help, I would have financial help from my dad, but I don't know if I could ask him for the amount it would cost to get CFI and live on. This goes back to what works for you and what works for your family and you and your dad. I can't get in there and give you the straight answer on that, right? When I started, my dad was not a fan and didn't believe in what I was doing. Near the end when I was getting close, he helped me with the commercial and he helped me with the CFI later on because he became a believer. But whether you should, you know, you got to figure the money out on your own and whether you ask your dad for it, you get it from rich uncle, you start saving now you take out loans, becoming a pilot and changing careers. I mean if it's what you want to do, you should do it. But there is so much to think about for you. And I do tell people and I have told people over time, it's like I am a dreamer. Always been a dreamer, always will be a dreamer, right? And learning to Fly helicopters was a dream for me. It is tough, it is hard, but if you're motivated and you want it, then you go after it. And this gentleman is just getting started. Don't worry about all the money and getting your job. Right now, you're just getting started. Work on just the private pilot. And if you can't leave your full time employment, find a place where you can fly on weekends, study during the week. Do whatever it takes to start working towards that goal. Because to become a helicopter pilot and then get out and work there in a professional area, it's going to take you several years and it's going to take a bunch of money. It's going to take a lot of money. So my advice to him on this one is slow down, worry about that private pilot and figure out how you're going to get there. Ask your dad, don't ask your dad. That's up to you. That's between you and your dad. Next question, same guy. My passion is flying. But I. But how do I know if I'm mentally strong enough to move away from everything I've ever known and pursue this dream? I would love to fly Ag, ems, oil rig. Okay, this goes back to anything in life. Am I mentally strong enough? You probably are. I can tell you when I got started, I. I was so terrified of that aircraft. I didn't think I was smart enough. I didn't think I knew math well enough. I had all these reasons why I talked myself out of why I should go for it. And I could bore you for the next four hours on all the struggles I had. But what did I do? I went after it. And 20 years later, it's my living online full time, helping people like this gentleman learn the information, learn the knowledge. I'm your cheerleader, I push you along. This is something that you have to, you know, going for your dreams, whether it's flying helicopter or anything else, you know, are you mentally strong enough? I don't know. I think you probably are because I think anybody is. But I get it. It's a big question, right? And it's something that you have to go after. But again with the same last question. Start in the private, go take some lessons and at least get started. Any person's path can change from the time they go out to start a dream to where it ends up. You know, I had noticed, I never knew I was going to be like the ground school guy, right? And what this has done and where I'm at now is not where I wanted to go. You Know, I want to fly helicopters for law enforcement, but would I leave what I do now to go do that? I don't know. I don't think I would even do it if I had the opportunity, because I love what I do now. So your plans can change. I say go after the private, go see what's up, get started. You know, I tell people that all the time. People are overwhelmed in the beginning. Oh, my gosh. I got to do private, and I got to do commercial, and I got to see if I should I do the instrument between private and commercial. Should I wait and do it later? And it's like I tell people, take a big deep breath, calm down, and go work on that private first. It's so much easier to break it up in steps. Like anything you're going to do in life or in your career or anything. Break it down into baby steps. One goal at a time, one thing at a time. You know, you have your eyes on the end goal, but your focus is one at a time. Private, commercial, instrument, whatever, however you choose to do it. And then his last one. I'm working with the CFI now, who owns his own spray company company with Hilos. Cool. He said he's always looking for good pilots, but his insurance required 12 in our total time. That's going to happen throughout the industry. Almost everything has a requirement with time. And I could totally see an insurance company saying, now we need 1,200 hours total time. That's a realistic figure. Some my insurance companies may want more, some insurance companies may want less. Most people have to start out as a CFI and start building your time. And a guy just on YouTube the other day, his comment was, oh, well, Kenny, I don't want to be. I don't want to do tours, and I don't want to be a cfi, but I still want this as a profession. I'm like, well, you know, you can try it and people have done it, but it's not the norm. The normal is getting your CFI and start teaching and build hours. And then as you start building hours, those jobs will open up. So it goes back to going for your dreams. Do you have what it takes? Are you willing to do what it takes? You know, the way I look at it now in life and going after dreams and chasing your dreams and doing things you want to do. I'm going to say it. Most people have a dream, but most people don't go after it. It's easier to sit home and complain and talk about what you want to do. But then just keep going to that job you hate every single day because you don't want to sacrifice. Going for your dreams takes sacrifice. Anything good takes hard work. Nobody rides for free. Jobs aren't going to fall in your lap. You got to work your butt off and you got to apply yourself and you got to study. And there's all kinds of hurdles along the way to become a helicopter pilot or do anything worthwhile in your life. That's just the way it is. And he also said, hey, I want a hoodie. I'm like, well, hogs hoodies dot com. That's where you go if you want a hoodie. Hogshoodies.com. all right, I'm gonna head over there, see who else here. I'm assuming that maybe there's some people here. I don't know. Let's go check it out. Let's go see. We'll switch cameras. And like I said, usually Heather's here doing this for me, but I don't expect her to be here at 9 o' clock at night. But again, this is the time I like to work. All right, let's go see what's going on. Let's check YouTube. I went live on YouTube. Facebook. Whoa. This is the time I like to work. Nice. Hey, we got a whole bunch of people in here. Let's see what we got going on. James Young, Orson Daniel. Sold. Brian Rutledge. Brian Benny. Maybe something I can't read there. Cool. All right, let me just go back and look at comments real quick. Good evening, everyone. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Same old thing there. Here's from Brian Rutledge. Ground school first is my advice. Get the knowledge first. It's so much easier. So there you go, coming from Brian Rutledge, who you all will hear a little bit more from here in the near future. Brian has been working with me for quite a few years now. He is what we call our operations manager. He still flies full time for an aviation unit out on the west coast. Sometime in the future, Brian is going to retire. And we've been talking about this for years. One of these days that's going to happen. Don't know exactly when, but you're going to see Brian take a more active role in the ground school, which is awesome because Brian is a 30 year aviator now, instructor in both airplanes and helicopters. So, you know, Brian brings a lot to the table when we have him more on a full time basis to help with evaluating the site and evaluating videos and evaluating training. And he's going to do a lot of stuff as far as talking to a lot of the members, helping me with that. So that's kind of exciting. So there you go from Brian and again from Brian. Most people get a college degree first, then get into their chosen field. Same thing can apply to aviation. Yep, I talk about that quite a bit. I still say get a. I still say get a. Those lights in my glasses are freaking me out. I still say if you have an inkling to get a college degree, go for it. It's not mandatory for a lot of helicopter pilot jobs. But you know what, it may help you in the future. I think it's a good thing if you want to go for it. Not mandatory, but just like my daughter, you know, still in school, putting back a little money for college. And tonight at supper we had this discussion. I'm like, changing your mind about going to college? She's like, I don't know. I'm still thinking about it, dad. Always a good option, right? It can't hurt. On the other hand, I'm an entrepreneur. And I think right now, in our livelihood, this is, right now is a better time to become an entrepreneur than ever in our livestock, in our lifetimes. Lifetimes. Okay, so there's that. Benny. Hey, yo, Benny. What else we got, Jim? I'm going for it. Thanks, Kenny. You go, Jim. Just do it, man. Love your videos. Fixed wing airship pilot here. Awesome. Thank you very much. That's from Raspy Squares and Brian. Soon, very soon. Yep, can't wait. It's going to be awesome. You guys are going to dig it when. You're going to dig it when Brian comes on full time. Because Brian helps me now with a lot of different things and has for quite a few years. But once we have him full time, he'll still be on the west coast. But because we're an online business, no big deal, right? East coast, west coast, Midwest, doesn't matter. And we're still going to get together and do some things together. He's going to come out here this year to fly with the instrument which. The instruments coming back very soon. I thought it was going to be this past week, but they're have the rotor system apart. Updating the rotor system with some new parts. Updating it. There wasn't anything bad. It was just some updates. So that's going to be done here real soon and Brian's going to come out and we're going to go fly the instrument. He's going to help me do some videos and we're going to go do some complicated airspace. Stuff and having Brian will be nice, right? We're gonna go over Chicago and do like maybe some class Bravo, some class Charlie and some things that I'm not necessarily confident on my own to try to go do. To go try to fly clear over there and run cameras and talk and navigate and do all the stuff that I have to do. I'll be quite honest, you know, in the aircraft flying is number one. And I don't like getting too wrapped up with worrying about cameras and other things going on. So when Brian comes out, we're gonna go out and shoot a bunch of video and do a bunch of stuff while he's here. When I've got a 30 year aviator that could be at the controls and I could be messing around with cameras, making sure I'm getting the shots that I want, making sure I get the audio I want. So we're gonna be doing that this we were hoping in February we'll see if that works out. But so that's exciting. Heck yeah. Gonna be a fun trip. And so yeah, hopefully that happens with in, in February. So what people have been asking us about coming out to fly the instrument. It hopefully will be here in the next couple weeks. We got Heli Expo coming up and so they're asking about the schedule flying with me in the instrument. Not going to happen until after Heli Expo because this is the 14th, I believe we're going to be leaving. I'll be leaving in just over a week because I'm going to San Diego first. Before I go and meet everybody at the Expo, I'm going to put out something here to our members. I'm looking for someone this year to help us out at Heli Expo with audio and video. But I'm really looking for somebody who's one of our members and is either CFI or working towards cfi but is really into the whole photography thing and into cinematography too. And the reason I asked for this that I'm kind of looking for some help this year because there's gonna be six of us there, right? And we're all going with the hogs gear. It's gonna be a lot of fun. But when we get there and this is fun, we run into members everywhere, right? We're talking to people constantly and so I could be trying to get everybody else to run cameras too. But I want the whole group of us to be able to be involved in talking with the people and the members that we're meeting up with along with some of the other stuff we're going to be doing. We'll be at the instrument booth quite a bit and also meeting with the helicopter U.S. helicopter Safety Team. That's going to be cool amongst talking some other people. So I'm looking for someone that's kind of into the audio video, even maybe has some experience editing, but with a little bit of background and audio video because we'd like some. Like some extra help at least for the first day that we're there on Tuesday to really follow us around all day and have cameras ready to go and taking pictures. So looking for that. All right, I'm a. I'm a bust over to Facebook just because I'm live on there and I doubt there's many there. I get much more people here on YouTube, but let me just go see. Good evening from Montgomery, Alabama, Todd Bradley. Awesome. There's only four people there. And that's pretty much it. Good evening from Montgomery, Alabama. And Tink. Tink. Tom Tink logged in. Cool. All right. That pretty much answers that question with who's on Facebook. All right. So, yeah. All right. What else did I want to say? So, yeah, I just decided to go live tonight because like I said, Sam, thanks for checking on me. Heather forwarded me the email and she's like, heather, Kenny hasn't done a video in like a week or two weeks. Is he okay? What's going on? Which is not normal for me. Right. I mean, we had coffee with Kenny and then still going, you know, at least live a couple times a week. So nothing wrong, nothing bad happened. You know, I did slow things down a little bit around Christmas and New Year's. Cause My daughter's now 16, and I wanted some good quality time because one of these days she's gonna be gone, man. And since the first of the year, we've been digging into the site, updating some things, a lot of things in the background that stuff that no one would see and just keeping the business moving forward. We've been inside the HOG site and there's a lot of updates that I had available to the site that I needed to get done. So we've been doing a lot of that stuff. So we didn't go anywhere. We're still here. Fun stuff coming. And it'll be a little bit quiet between now and heli Expo because we're just getting ready to go. Like I said, I'm leaving actually the week on Friday before Heli Expo. So a little over a week, I'll be heading to San Diego because I'm gonna do some stuff down in San Diego. Before going up to Anaheim and we'll be looking for. Just send me an email. If you're one of our members and you're kind of into the audio video thing or think you could be really good at it anyway, like somebody who got a little bit experience, send me an email@kennyhelicopterground.com because that first day when all six of us are walking around being cool, you know, we'll be like a gang walking around. Hai. And we're just kind of excited. It's going to be a fun trip and having six of us there together is going to be fun. So Daniel, you're only going to be at LA Expo Tuesday and Wednesday, correct? That is the plan. Brian is going to take off Wednesday afternoon. So Brian will be there with us Tuesday. Me, Brian, Taz, Taz's wife, and then Heather, who many of you know, and then my friend Rolanda that's helped me off and on with helicopters and helicopter business for years and my longtime 25 year friend, she's going to be there with us too. So we are going to be there all day Tuesday. Wednesday we'll probably have to take off early to get Brian to the airport. But Heather's not leaving until Thursday, so probably not Thursday. No, everybody's just the third day. People are kind of ready to just jump out of there. It's definitely not as busy on Thursday. Most people I know go Tuesday and Wednesday and then usually they're heading out on Thursday. So yeah, that's the plan. All day Tuesday, then probably just a partial day Wednesday and that'll probably be it. We'll probably, probably have enough after that. Alright, well, hey, so you all can get on with your evening. Give us a thumbs up on the video. I don't see any thumbs up on there. Page probably needs refreshed anyway. Give us some thumbs up on the video. If you haven't subscribed to our channel, please do because that way you'll be notified when we do go live with all kinds of stuff we do online go. We do live events, we do recorded videos, we upload all kinds of stuff. So subscribe to the channel. When you do, make sure you click that little bell because after you subscribe you click the bell. That's what gives you that notification when we do go live with our videos. So I'm going to go ahead and end it right there. Thanks everybody for tuning in and we shall see you in the next video.