My "YODA Time" with the Robinson R-44

So today has been my Yoda time with the helicopter. We just got back last night from Tennessee, Five hour flight back home, cross country went good. Did a no go the first day, probably should. Done a no go the second day because we got beat around pretty good in the win on the way home. If I had to do it over again, I'd have picked no go number two. But we made it here safe and sound and the aircraft's inside. So when I parked last night, when I left, it was late, I was tired. I checked the floor, took a picture, make sure that there was nothing dripping because I thought that way overnight I could see what's there when I come in the next day. And I'll talk more on that about a minute. So I came in today, thought Heather was going to stay home and recuperate. I thought, I'm going to come in and just have some Yoda time. So I just come in. I thought, all right. We flew five hours home. It just was overhauled. They did a bunch of test flying, a bunch of tracking on the rotor system because a lot of control rods got replaced. So I have total faith in the guys that did the work. They did a great job. I flew with their test pilot. I'm new to the aircraft, flew it five hours home. So I thought first thing when I come in today, make one big walk around and just start, you know, learning the little nuances, you know, looking for any kind of little chips in the paint or anything, any dents, any dings. Notated this down here, there's a little bit of a gouge in there I'm going to take a picture of. So I know over time if that changes, you know, tailboom gets too low at some point. But the first walk around was just, okay, walk around, take a general overall view. How's it looking? How's it sitting? And I did notice off the bat there was a little bit of oil underneath, which I have some floor dry on there now. Nothing to be concerned about. I grabbed the creeper, got underneath, checked a little bit of oil, took pictures of a little bit of seepage here and there. Totally normal. With an overhaul and a flight five hours back, Home Depot think there's anything to worry about there at all. However, I went and got some kitty litter and when I take this out to fly, we'll clean the floor up so when we come back in, we could keep an eyeball on it. So really happy there. So my first thing, I did one great big walk around, thought, okay, let's take a Look, you know, see how it looks? Everything looks good. So I had the five hours with it, but again all cross country, some landings for some fuel and that was it. So after the first time around then I thought, okay, let's do really detailed, let's just start looking at the nuts and bolts and screws and door hinges. Started opening up all the panels. I opened each panel, took a look inside, checked all the fluid levels, fluid levels all looked good. Didn't see anything dripping anywhere up here. So again I wasn't super concerned about the little bit of oil on the floor because there was nothing obvious inside. And went down, you know, started grabbing stuff right on a pre flight, that's what you should be doing, touching things, how does it feel? So I went around grabbing things, grabbing my hand, just checking, taking a closer inspection, looking for any little nicks or anything and I'm gonna take pictures of that stuff. There's only a few little, you know, nick here, there, things have been touched up. It's overhauled aircraft but of course looking really, really good. So again the second time around, grabbing everything, you know, grabbing all the links, checking the blades, getting a really good look at everything, grabbing stuff, getting your hand on it. So same thing came around to this side and I'll have to figure out how to keep that nice and clean. That's always a problem with the exhaust on the back. Opened up this side, checked the oil, used just a little bit of oil coming home, which I think for a fresh, fresh engine with a five hour trip home, I think it was right where it should be. I'm going to keep real good, close track of that. So then after I did inspected all the panels, looked at everything, then I climbed in the aircraft, I thought you know what, we'll start over here because we brought home oil with us, bought a case of oil because we're running the special oil for a fresh engine, got that out and oh yeah, let me mention, we got the easy wheels. You know, I battled last summer when we had an aircraft here and it was a complete nightmare moving that thing in and out, like beyond belief nightmare. And the owner couldn't seem to get his act together and figure out how to get a good set of wheels and get things fixed on it. So anyway, got that stuff out, got the oil out, had a couple water ball or water bottles in there, made sure everything was cleaned up, make sure the seat belts were latched back in. Took a, took a good look inside the aircraft, new interior, so everything's looking real good. I started with the Back and then I thought crawl inside, get inside and check it out. So I crawled in, sat down, just started refamiliarizing myself with absolutely everything in the aircraft. Just looking things over again. I don't expect any problems, but you know, why not make sure, you know what every button is, every switch is, make sure everything's working. I was really happy with the flight home other than, you know, being pretty windy. So I want to go fly today. However, it's gusty again today and I thought, you know what? I proved I can fly in the wind, so I'm gonna wait. Maybe my daughter. I want to go up this evening and I'm just gonna go fly for a couple hours, go out, do all the maneuvers, do some autos, you know. I got my flight review in Florida with straight up aviation, flew with Gavin and I flew about 10 hours that month down there because some of the Hogs members want to jump in and fly with me. So I got freshened up at that point. But been a couple months, right. So I flew with the test pilot again. Like I said yesterday morning, that flight went good. Just making sure I felt good with everything and we came home. So after the first big go around, second go around, then getting in and looking inside each area, I went over and sat down. I went through the Hogs R44 specific section inside helicopter and ground school. And that was actually pretty cool. I made those videos in 2016 and I actually learned from myself, believe it or not. I'm going to put a link down below too. We offer that as a separate deal. Now you can get just that R44 section by itself without becoming a member for a one time price. I'll put the link below the video that price will go up because now that we have this dude sitting here, I'm of course going to update that course. And when I update that all with fresh videos, price will have to go up. It's just the way it works and considering it's, you know, everything in our world has doubled. So anyway, so I went through my own videos and I was really happy when I went through because I'm like, I kind of forgot about that. So I had some good ideas on some things that I had forgot about over time, right? Some things to look at. So then I came over, refreshed my memory again and then I got in here and again expecting everything to be right. But you just got to be careful, right? So I came in, grabbed the registration certificate and everything is, took a look at them, nice, clean, everything's in Order exactly where it should be. And then I grabbed the poh. So I took the POH out, went over, sat down at my desk and just, you know, went through the PoH looking for things that I may have forgotten about. And it's kind of funny, right? Like a lot of the stuff you learn, it comes back to you. But then sometimes you might read something, go, good thing I went through that. It never hurts to grab the POH out on whatever you're flying and leap through it just to keep yourself fresh. Again, I mentioned I got down on the creeper notated, you know what little bit of oil was leaking down there again. I think it's still just average everyday stuff. And I went and got some. Well, I'll show you. I just went to Walmart and got some fresh kitty litter because I want to make sure that I'm ready to go on the back end of things. We'll go over here. So I got the oil that we brought a case of oil back with us so we know we'd have the right oil for the break in. Got out my timesheet so I could log my first trip back home. Get ready to start logging flights as we go and grab some kitty litter. I want to help clean up the oil. I've used regular floor dry, but I was looking for floor dry and I thought I didn't see any. So I'll use kitty litter, paper towels. Robinson Log Books. Opened that up, started going through it. I want to go through, go through it again and look a little bit closer. But everything looked good, all nice and neat, packaged up the way they should be. Everything looks really good. And there's our creeper for rolling around underneath. And then after I did all that, then I thought, don't be lazy, grab the ladder and I just brought it around and I started over here on this side, set the ladder up and I just went to the tip of the blade right here. And then I moved the ladder down a little ways further. And then I came back to the cross section, not cross section, middle, the rotor blade, hub, hub section. Moved it again down here, moved it again down here. And what was cool was when I was up there, then I'm getting a good view over top of the aircraft as well. So then I did the same thing. I just came around and went down this side again, not expecting anything. But just so we have a good starting point, you know, I have a good, you know, documentation right here with this video. The more documentation the better, right? Not pursuing any problem, but just protects everybody if you spend the time, take a really good look. And what else did I do? Check the lights. Made sure all the lights were working. Jumped online, ordered a couple mounts for GoPros for one. I didn't know they even made us, but it's kind of cool. It goes on the. The ball underneath the front of the helicopter so you can mount a GoPro right there and then make sure it's nice and safe. We're not going to scratch or dent anything, but got those on order. Now I'm probably going to start setting my cameras up on the inside. However, I'm going to wait because I want to go do that first flight where I can go become one with the aircraft. You know, laugh, go ahead. It's silly, but that's just what I thought. You know what? Heather stayed home. Instead of just rushing out and trying to fly, take some time, get set up, really learn the aircraft and just feel really, really good about it again. I'm happy with it, happy with the way it flies. I was really happy with the way it starts. Starts good cold and started great. At each time we stop for fuel, boom, fired right up. I'm excited. So hopefully the wind dies down tonight. I'll go do my first flight and then we're gonna start shooting some fresh videos for hogs, which every so often we've tried to update videos and I've had helicopters in and out and it's all great. But now we've got one here that we can start doing our flight training. We have one final approach customer booked for August and some other people that want to come fly. So I thought, you know what, just spend the time now by myself. Got another. Have what I'm going to call kind of an intern coming in that wants to help me learn. Wants to learn about filming and editing and all that stuff. And that's going to be a big help so that I can speed up editing and because I'm going to have somebody that's going to take care of making sure cameras are ready, cameras are charged, help me download, organize files, and even help edit a little bit so it can speed up the process when we're cranking out fresh videos for hogs. So exciting stuff. Took a long time. And I'll. And I will say this, this was months of planning. Been thinking about this since last fall. So I've done tons of math on what I need to do and how I need to do it. This wasn't a spur of the moment thing. I've had a lot of time and effort and getting ready for this endeavor. So we are helicopter land ground school. Gonna have lots of fresh content coming. We'll put the link down below for helicopterground.com I'll put a link for the R44 specific section if you want to grab that at the. What I think is still pretty darn good price because I used it this morning and I've been planning that for a couple years. If I ever get a hold of an R44, I'm going to go through my own videos just to see how the course looks and I can update that stuff. But it was still good content to go in and as silly as it sounds, learn from myself. I can't stand listening to myself or watching myself in videos. It's difficult. It's very, very difficult. But I forced myself to do it and I was pretty happy by the time I was done. So we were going to do this great big smoke and mirror show with fancy lights and stuff to announce the helicopter. And we can still do that of course. But I thought, you know what, A lot of time and energy and effort went into this. Really proud of it. And I thought, you know what, let's just. I want to do kind of a laid back video. And as we kind of set up our flight training process, I'm just going to use the different things I've learned over the years, different schools I've flown at, I've seen a lot of different things and heard a lot of things and I learned some good stuff from one of the first flight schools I worked at full time. And I'll tell you one little tip and then I'll hit this again, another video. Because I'm going to do a series of videos as we kind of get rolling. I think it'll just be fun. First one of the first place I worked as a full time cfi, this man and woman owned the company. And she made very clear to me when I got out of the helicopter, every seatbelt better be put in its place, everything better be cleaned up. No water bottles. Put everything back to where it belongs. Right? And she was a super stickler about that. And I'm glad she did. Right? Because now I do that all these years later. It just looks presentable. And that way when you get out, if you clean everything up, the next person that goes to fly, whether you own your own, you're coming back to your own aircraft or it's a rental aircraft. By taking the time to put everything back the way it should be, pick up your water bottles, pick up your trash you know, I've told a story many times. I did an intro for a guy, and I'm telling him at the end of the flight, I'm like, okay, when we get done, you know, we make sure we latch the seat belts, we put everything back the way it should be so that if the FBA comes to walk, happens, come walking up, wants to ramp check, ramp check. You've got your documents in order. Everything looks nice and neat in the aircraft. Aircraft's clean. You look like you got your act together. And I swear, he walks away. And then I was mounting a GoPro on the end of the rotor blade. This was, God, 12 years ago. And this dude walks up, hey, what you doing there? Are you doing that rotor blade? And I'm like, I'm just mounting the camera up here so I can spin the rotor blade and get kind of a cool look. And he was like, oh, well, hey, I'm so and so with the faa, and starts hammering me with a ramp check, right? Everything went good, but the end then he kind of changed tune and went, well, you know, I had to put my half FA hat on at first, but then we kind of stood. And after he was done with his ramp inspection, he was chit chatting. He was a nice guy, and he's like, sorry for being so intense, but, you know, he was new, right? And he played the game. But I played the game as well too, right, Because I had just buttoned everything up and I'd even checked the fuel. This. This happened to me in an instrument, and I had just even checked the fuel. So I knew exactly what was in my tank, and I was explaining that to the new student. So when this guy walks up, yeah, everything's in order, everything's putting away. Put away. He knew I just got done flying. I could tell him exactly how many gallons were in the tank. Ramp inspection went well, so you want to present yourself well. And I see so many people, they just get out, flop the seat belts, wherever, leave their water bottles in there. Don't use the checklist and their switches and stuff on. Just not professional. It's really just not the way to do it. All right, so stay tuned for more videos and more stuff to come. Super exciting. So put a link down below for helicopterground.com text or call Heather at 574-767-1797 if you have any questions about ground school, because she can take care of you. It's been only five over five years now. So Heather knows the lingo, she understands. And Heather's in Charge of taking care of setting up people with flight training. So we are developing a few packages very similar to what we had before. We're going to do something with the final approach course. Making a little adjustment to that. When we did that last year we do and we're doing three flights a day prepping somebody for a checkride. And three is just a lot. And I've decided this time around if we do it, we're gonna do like two hours each day. If you need four days to get ready and then take a checkride, it's gonna be come in pre flight, talk, discuss what you're gonna do, go fly an hour, take a break, we'll have lunch on the charcoal grill, talk about second flight, pre flight again, get fuel, do what we got to do, go fly, come back, sit down, fill out logbooks, debrief. That pretty quickly turns into a six hour day for two flights. Not saying we couldn't do a third, but just what we did last year. I think a person really walks away feeling really good after about a six hour day and two flights and again can go longer. And the thing other thing we're going to do this time around, we didn't weren't really trying to do before was flight building. So we're coming up with some numbers for flight training like if you need to build time for, you need five hours in the air in an R44 specific or you need 10 hours because you need 25 so that you can teach in it. Whatever the case is, we're going to offer some actual packages where you can just buy a block of time. And of course you'll have to fly with me, it's under my insurance. So we'll make sure cover some ground with you and go out and fly together, make sure you're in good shape to go out, you know, make sure aerodynamics emergencies are solid and you're solid in the aircraft and what else? And then just we're going to have some day like a day package where you just want to come and experience the R44. We're just putting a one day rate on that because if you want to fly twice, you really take about six hours of instructor time. By the time you do a meet and greet and you go and you look at the aircraft and if you do a proper pre flight, push it out, get fuel, go fly, come back. Kind of the same thing I mentioned with fac, have a nice meal, take a break, shoot the breeze a little bit, same thing, go out and fly again, doing everything right doing it all by the book. Do another hour flight, get done, sit down, talk about what you did, debrief the flight sign logbooks. So we're offering like a daily rate. Hey, I just want to come for a day. Sure. I want to go for, you know, we'll do the six hour day with two flights. So that's what we're going to be putting together and we'll release when we do our big unveiling. But I felt like just grabbing the camera and saying, let's just show everybody what's up. I like it. So all that info is down below. We'll see you next video. Peace out.