Kenny Keller (H.O.G.S.) announces the addition of a Robinson R22 to their training fleet and explains that final approach courses (FAC) are now available in both the R22 and R44. The service targets pilots who are stalled in completing checkrides (e.g., examiner delays, broken school aircraft, instructor turnover) and uses an immersion model: initial Zoom knowledge checks followed by concentrated dual training, oral prep, and practical-test readiness. H.O.G.S. offers services in Indiana, Las Vegas, and Southern California, runs corporate team-building events with introductory flights, and emphasizes use of HOGS videos (self-study) as a common success factor. Contact is via Heather at 574-767-1797; resources include askhogs.com and helicopterground.com. Anecdotes: program inspired eight years ago, FACs have been run about a year-and-a-half, Kenny has worked with the same examiner for 24 years and reports only four failures in that period.
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Hogs excited to announce the addition of a Robinson R22 to our training aircraft. We're currently doing final approach courses. We've been doing these for about a year and a half where we help people that are struggling to get a checkride done. You might be waiting on an examiner or the flight school has a helicopter that's broken or your instructor just left and they're trying to hire a new instructor. We've been providing this service where we just bring in, do some training, starts with a couple of zooms to check your knowledge out, see where you're at, then we bring you in and help you finish up checkride. So we've been doing them in the R44 and we're going to offer them now in the R22. As you can imagine, some people are flying the R44 for various reasons. And over time we've had people say, well, hey, I thought you had an R22. So now we have an R22 available and we have instructors available and we can help you finish up your rating. We're also doing a book signing in Vegas coming up here real quick. And we're going to be offering flight training in Las Vegas in the R44 with 2018 flight instructor of the year, Dan Taz Christman. He's one of our online helicopter online ground school members. So you can now get your final approach course in the R22 or the R44. They'll both be available. You can reach out to Heather at 574-767-1797 and that's how we get the conversation started. And I can do a couple zooms with you, see where your knowledge is at and get a time and set up to do some training, do the dual required to give you the sign off, go over the materials, go through the airman certifications, make sure that you're ready to do the practical test, get through the oral portion and the flight portion. So that number again, 574-767-1797. And the people that have had the most success that show up and do a really good job on their checkride, there's one common denominator, and that common thing is they're using the HOGS videos to prepare. So we have private commercial instrument and cfi and people are using the home self study program either on a computer or their phone or their iPad. And this is what we call the HOGS Wall of fame. Our members, after they pass checkride, as you can imagine, they're excited and they want to share with us that they've passed their test. So you'll now start seeing all these popping up in our helicopter. But they're also from around the country or even around the world where they're using our training to help them prepare for the checkride. And once you pass your checkride, you just send us in a picture, we get you up on the Hogs Wall of Fame and then we send you the Hogs no go button. We'll take a look at one of those real quick because, yeah, we need to add a no go button now to the R22. We've got one located in the R44 here. Just as kind of a reminder to make good weather decisions before you take off or good no go go no go decisions. We've got one there on the dash for the R44. We'll get one installed in the R22 as well. So this all started about eight years ago, actually. I want to mention we have another R44 available to us. This is new in Southern California South. So we've got an R44 available and facilities available. So if you want to do an R44 final approach course in Southern California, we can hook you up with that too. And then we just did something neat in the last week that we're going to start offering in Indiana and also offering in Las Vegas and also offering in Southern California. We did a, we call it a executive team building event. They came in on a Monday and they spent a couple hours doing some of their own, you know, get together and talk about their companies. It was two different companies, about 15 people. We did hot dogs and hamburgers on the grill, had a great time, took them out for karaoke at the local watering hole. Then we came back for the next day. They did a half day of team building, used our wall for presentations, four things they want to discuss among business. And then the afternoon we gave 10 people introductory flights in the R44. Super popular. It went over phenomenal and these people can't stop talking about it. So we're going to offer these here in Indiana and we're going to offer them in Las Vegas. And we're now offering them in Southern California as well. We've got the facilities to make these events happen for you at any one of those three locations. So back to how all this started. We had a gentleman named Jamie. He had an orange R44. I mentioned him a lot in our videos and he had an R44. He had 200 hours of instruction given eight different instructors. And he was Frustrated, he's like. Called me. He's like, kenny, I'm about ready to sell this helicopter and give up. And I'm like, jamie, don't give up. What do you want to do? He said, can I come up there and train with you? So I sent a pilot down to pick up him and his R44. They brought him back to Indiana, and in a couple days, I'm like, jamie, I don't know why you don't have a rating, other than you've been getting run around by, like, eight different people. And we fixed up his logbook, made sure he had everything he needed, did some final prep, and nine days later, he was flying his R44 back home to Texas. And Jamie was a businessman, became a personal friend. And he was like, kenny, you should be doing these for people all over the country. And at the time, I thought, yeah, right, that sounds kind of funny. And that was eight years ago. So inspired by Jamie, something we weren't even trying to do. And I just kind of realized, you know, that I'd actually been called Kenny the finisher. Like, that's what I like to do, and that's what I'm good at. Helps people put together the final stages. You've got the training, you've got the requirements. You just need somebody to put it together for you and help you cover the ground, get you scheduled with an examiner. Examiner. I've been using. I've been using now for 24 years. So when you work with the Same examiner for 24 years, you can say, I got a good idea what it's going to take. He is a fair examiner. He's not easy. He still goes through the airman certification standards, and he has a high level that he expects you to be, a high level of knowledge for all the ratings. But he's fair. And you can imagine after 24 years, you know, he has to break things up now and then, right, to keep us on our toes because we get too good at it. But if you know the airman certification standards and you're going through it and you learn to a good standard, you can get through this. I've only had four people fail in 24 years. Four failures. That's it. And we went quite a few years with zero after the first three, when I was early as the cfi, and the last one was just an iPad froze, and the gentleman didn't know what to do with the chart that was underneath his leg, under the iPad, and he just froze because he was just. Everything he had done through all of his training was all done with an iPad. He'd never been exposed to charts and cross country planning and we went over that stuff, but he just freaked out when his iPad froze. So whether you're Interested in a R22 final approach course, an R44 final approach course, or a corporate event, reach out to Heather Hogsmember support at 574-767-1797. You're interested in either an FAC or a corporate event. Or maybe you just want to put, you want us to put you together a package. Like, let's see, for example, five hours to do an SBAR sign off because you want to get a PIC sign off because you're rated, but you need the five hours in the R44 because maybe you're R22 qualified and you're rated but you want to learn the R44. We do immersion training. We don't share the schedule with Billy Bob and Mary and traditional flight school where you get an hour here, an hour Tuesday, an hour Friday. We don't do that. We just immerse you into whatever you need, whether it's finished in a rating. We have one gentleman going to come out in the R22. We've already got our first CFI add on scheduled. We have our first SFAR 73 instructor sign off schedule for next week. It just arrived and we've already got two basically, one checkride, one SFAR sign off set up, set up for the R22. And we have a gentleman coming out in December. He's only got like 25 hours, but he feels like he's just not making progress at his flight school because he's doing the, you know, one hour here, one hour there. So he's going to come out for like a couple weeks and we're just going to fly with him, do ground every day, except for maybe taking a little break on the weekends, but just let him immerse himself into it. Immerse, Is that how you say it? Immerse himself into it. And he wants to just come and just stay at it every day and see what he can, how much progress he can make and maybe even finish up a checkride if everything goes well while he's here. So you can go to helicopterground.com that's down below for all of our online courses. And if you want, you want to chat about helicopter training, we've got ask hogs.com that's available 24 hours a day, seven days a week. That's my clone has 13 years of my contact content loaded into it. Paid courses and, you know, 1300 probably free YouTube videos, blogs, podcasts have all been loaded into it. So you can talk to askhogs.com 24 hours a day, seven days a week. And you can also reach out to HOGS member support if you want to talk to a real live human. Yes, you can still talk to a human with hogs 574-767-1797. Because we all know we still like to occasionally talk to a human, right? AI is cool and it's helpful, and the clone is cool. But. But there's times where you just want to talk to somebody. So Heather takes care of that phone line seven days a week at 574-767-1797. So reach out to us at either askhogs.com helicopterground.com or 574-767-1797. And let's talk about finishing up your training. Peace out.
