See us at Heli Expo 2020 next Tuesday!

Foreign. Yo Live impromptu Heli Expo's coming this next week. So a lot of people have been, you know, emailing us and texting us on the hog's phone and asking, are you guys coming? We will be there. And Heather is getting ready to carry over hoodies and T shirts for everybody part. There's gonna be six of us there next week. Taz is and his wife is coming. Brian Rutledge will be there, Heather's gonna be there, and Rona is gonna be there as well. So when you go to look for us, we're gonna be easy to find. There's gonna be six of us. Depending on whether we're gonna walking around with our hoodies on or if it's warm, we're gonna have shirts on. So we're gonna open up this box here real quick, make sure they look good. But we're getting ready to ship out a couple. Brian needs a new hoodie, and I think Taz, his wife, needs one. Taz got his hoodie and shirt, didn't he, when he was here last? Yes, Taz got his shirt and hoodie. He's all go, all good to go. So we're going to. Get these sent out to Taz, Brian and Sheila, Taz's wife. So Tuesday when we're there, we'll be there all day. We'll be there when the show opens. And we have no booth. People ask us all the time about where's our booth? We don't have one. We find ourselves more effective just getting out on the floor and walking around. And there we go. And a lot of people have been asking us about getting the hoodies or the T shirts. You can get those@hogshoodies.com. we do not buy them and ship them ourselves. We do some giveaways once in a while for different things, but it's just not on the list of things that we want to do with ordering them and stocking them and shipping them. It's much easier just to let you order them. If you're interested in one. There's a link around this video somewhere down below. If you're on YouTube, hogshoodies.com so go there if you're interested in a shirt and a hoodie. So details for next week. It's gonna be fun. We're all gonna arrive on Monday night or Lana and I will already be there. Taz and Sheila will be there mid afternoon Monday, and we're picking up Brian and Heather will fly into Long beach, we'll pick them up, go out for supper, have Some fun, have a couple beers maybe and get ready for Tuesday morning. So we will be there Tuesday at 10:30. We'll be there all day Tuesday. Wednesday will probably be there just a few hours because Brian's flying out in the afternoon. So we will probably leave the show early on Wednesday to get Brian to the airport. And then Thursday, doubtful. We'll be back Thursday. Heather's heading back home on Thursday. I'll still be there in case something big pops up. We want to, you know, meet with anybody or anything's cool going on. But we will be there all day Monday and a partial day, I'm sorry. We'll be there at the show on Tuesday all day, open till close on the morning. Wednesday we'll probably be heading out of there. I think Brian's plane leaves at 4, 5, so we should probably head out there by, you know, 1 o' clock or 2 o' clock on Wednesday. So what else was I going to tell them about real quick? Heather, what else were we thinking about? I talked to last week. We heard from Travis out of the blue about midweek last week. Travis calls me up and he was driving down the road and Travis is the young man that you see on the COVID of Helicopter Checkride. So by the way, two Amazon best sellers, you can get those both@helopterground.com the link below. But I wanted to update you on Travis. Travis is the young guy that called me up clear back in probably 2013 or 14 when I'm trying to get hogs off the ground and I'm out in West Virginia trying to earn some money flying with some guys and they were jacking me around on time to meet and I'd been waiting around for like a day. Travis calls me up, I'm sitting at a gas station, hey Kenny, I live up in the mountains and I'm going for my ratings and I'm gonna go off the street to see if I or double I in six months. When he told me that, I thought, yeah, right, you know, trust me, that's just what I thought. Right. I'm being honest. But he lived up in the hills and didn't have good Internet service. So he said, I want to sell your DVDs. And I was like, we discussed this on the phone last week. It's fun because I was so broke at the time. I'm like, well I can sit here and wait on these yo yos. They're maybe never going to call or going to keep jacking me around. Or I can go home and set up, burn a set of DVDs and get them shipped out to Travis. And he was anxious. He's like, dude, you know, I'll send you the money now, you know. So I blast back Indiana to burn a set of DVDs to send off to Travis. So at that time, it's the first I'd heard of Sevier county choppers. But I didn't know that much about them. I knew they were out there and had been around a long time. Travis tells me on the phone that they promised him they could get him from off the street to double I in six months. And I was doubtful of it, right? But that's okay. I went home, shipped the DVDs off to Travis, heard from him a few times. Each time he would pass a rating, all super excited. Calls me up six months later, a double eye. And he starts out instructing. And within a very short amount of time, once he got some hours under his belt instructing flying R22 and R44, I believe. Then they moved him into a job flying tours in a Jet Ranger. And that's the picture of the Jet Ranger that he was flying. And we went down to Tennessee, and me and one of my students went up, spent the day with Travis. He took us up flying around the mountains of Tennessee. So not only, you know, that's why he's on the book, right? Because it's such a fun story and I like repeating it. And I have a video with Travis. It's pretty good video, has a lot of views, but you get a lot of negative feedback, right? People get on there. I think the video is, you know, becoming a helicopter pilot. Is it worth it? And of course, Travis is saying, it's absolutely worth it, right? And we get all the people to say, oh, you can't get a job and you can't do it in six months. And no, it's too hard. And, you know, right. There's living proof. You save your money, you go after it, you find the place to go, you make the hookups, you do the networking and apply yourself and you can do it. Then Kyle Parish is the second one. And we have a couple videos out there with Kyle. And he's actually on our home website when you check out our video for the information. Video for signing up for helicopter and ground school. We include several videos from Kyle because each time he passed a checkride, he'd send us a video. Cool kid. And we were discussing. Travis and I were discussing Kyle, and he was saying that he actually got to fly with Kyle a little bit, right? While he was still instructing before he moved on to his EMS career. And let me finish with Travis the story I want to tell you. Travis called me because he was all excited. After several years of traveling around, working some different EMS jobs, he was finally on his way back home because he had, he'd got an EMS job close to his home, where he was from. And he goes, I still gotta do my checkride. So I don't want to jinx it, you know, But I'm like, Travis, I know you're gonna do great, man. I know you're gonna do fine. And it was just fun to hear the story, right? Because I told Travis, I go, this is what we're after, right? Everybody's going for that goal of hopefully getting to fly somewhere back home. When you first start out and you're chasing this helicopter pilot dream, you're probably going to have to be a road dog for a little bit. And people ask the questions all the time, what helicopter should I fly, what flight school should I go to? And everybody's got a dream, right? And everybody's got an idea what they want to do. But normally to get this profession, you're probably going to have to travel around for a little while. And that's exactly what Travis did. But now he's made the circle and he was all excited because now he's finally got an EMS job back near his home, where he's from, where he wants to be. And that's just so much fun talking to him. And I wanted to just mention today, for all of you that are out there chasing the dream, whether you're brand new to it or you've been working at your ratings for several years, Kyle, that I just mentioned that again flew at the same place, Sevier county chapters. We met Kyle at Heli Expo three years ago, I think now. And I want to tell this story as we're getting ready to go to Heli Expo because a lot of people say, well, as a student, should I go to Heli Expo? And I always tell them, you know, if you have the funds and you want to go just check out some cool helicopters and see what's going on in the industry and it's not going to hurt you. Sure, why not go. But it is pretty expensive. I think the tickets are overpriced. I think it's, it's too expensive. Me personally, that's what my opinion. But is what it is, right? So I don't think as a student it's necessary. But if you have the money or you can score a student pass or you can get somebody to get you a pass. Whatever the case is with Kyle. We're eating lunch, it's me, Taz and Brian eating lunch. And Kyle comes up with another one of our ground school members. And at that time Kyle's like, dude, I got my private a few years ago and I've been saving my money for the last few years because I want to get to become, you know, I want to be a helicopter pilot. But man, it's so hard to get a start in industry and what do I do and how am I going to do it? And I, you know, give him the pep talk. I'm like, dude, just, you got your money ready, you, you find a school, get through the ratings, study hard, be the best you can be. But then you got to get out and network yourself and you got to call people and you got to meet people and you got to, you know, apply for jobs and you just got to go after it. And you got to be willing to maybe take a job that isn't what your end goal is. But to get to your end goal, you got to put the time in. And I don't care what profession you're talking about. That is the deal. You know, whether you're going to drive a garbage truck or you want to be the president United States, or you're going to be an astronaut or you're going to. I don't care what you're going to do. You got to build up your time, build up your experience and network and pay your dues. So the way to do it is be the best you can be, study as hard as you can. So I had a nice lunch with Kyle and he takes off and I go outside and I run to the guys from Sevier county shoppers and they're like, hey, you know how we've always got somebody going through our program and you know, we put them in jobs? I'm like, yeah, of course, right? Because I knew the story with Travis. And they go, we have no students. And I'm like, are you kidding me? And they're like, no, just so happened. We finished, finished a couple up and we don't have anybody. And I'm like, you guys have one of the best frickin opportunities in the country for somebody that wants to become a pilot, that wants to bust their rear end and work really hard and go after it. And I'm like, well, hey, you want me to do a video for you real quick like on Facebook? And they're like, yeah, do It. So I just go live on Facebook from Heli Expo outside and say, hey, there's an opportunity right now in Tennessee at Sevier County Choppers for the person who has the time that can go there and be a full time student and is ready to study their butt off, fly their butt off and go after it. Because it's an intense course where you're just, for six months, you're flying and you're studying and you're going after it. So I do this short video, I go walking back in the Heli Expo. I'm not in there more than five minutes. Here comes Kyle, comes and finds me about, knocks me over. Kenny, Kenny, who is this guy? Where are they at? Whatever, you know, all excited. I'm like, kyle, here, take a deep big breath, man. Here, let's get him on the phone. So I hook him up with Jim from Sevier County Choppers makes the phone call right there and they make it, they make a, a plan to meet within a few days after we all get home from Heli Expo and all that. So it all works out, right? Kyle makes the connection, makes the call. But see what he do, he went after it, right? I put up an opportunity, minutes later, boom, there he is making the call. So now Travis, I'm sorry, Kyle has been several, several of our videos. And Kyle is in New York City flying tours. So he did the same thing that Travis did. One exception was Kyle at least did have his private done. But he, like I said, he'd done the private years earlier and knew he needed to save up the money. So when the money factor comes up, there's a number of ways you can do it. You borrow the money, you save the money, you sacrifice, you go to a rich uncle, you do whatever it takes. And in Kyle's point, he just said, you know, I decided I was going to save it, I was going to work my butt off and I was going to save what I needed. So that's how Kyle did it. So once he had the money, he had the motivation, he just needed the, I don't know, the vehicle or the place to go to get there, and he did it. And so now this young man is flying tours in New York City flying a turbine aircraft, and he did it within just a couple years. And just like Travis, he went there, he studied his butt off, did what they told him to do. His instructor was Nick, who's one of our helicopter underground school members. One of the first ones I ever met years ago when I went down to Sevier county chapters for something, for some aircraft maintenance and ran into Nick as a student. And Nick was in there studying when we go walking into the maintenance shop. And all of a sudden I hear Kenny Keller. And I turn around and here comes Nick. He was inside on the iPad, going through helicopter online ground school. And I believe he's working on his private at the time. So anyway, there's another one of our ground school members that used Sevier county choppers, and it ended up being Travis's. One of Travis's instructors. Dang it. Kyle's instructors. So there's two guys, young men, that went after it. They saved their money, they got their money around, they made their goal, and when they were ready to do, they went after it. So for all the naysayers that say you can't do it, baloney. Say you can't get a job, baloney. It's like anything else in the world that you want to go after. Nothing good is easy, Nothing good is free. And anything worthwhile is going to take hard work. So anything else I want to bring up there, Heather, before we get out of here? So, yeah, Amazon number one best seller here, too. Top 10 Checkride Ships this one here. People ask all the time, well, which one should I get? This one's really more for somebody that wants to say you've been studying, you've been getting ready, but you're really trying to put your plan together to go for the checkride. Top 10 checkride tips means Taz and I got together, and Taz is 2018 flight instructor of the year, by the way. And we just said, let's sit down and figure out all the things that we see. We both have been instructing 20 years. One of the things that we see, people have a problem with getting ready for the test or the day of the test. So this is really for someone that's just wanting to put an edge. That's the word I want to use. You want to put the final touches on your checkride. You're getting ready to go, and you want to read about things that people commonly screw up. Because when you fail a checkride or have a problem on a checkride, it's almost never that thing you were worried about. Look, I'm so worried about weather. That isn't the thing that stumps you. It's something else. And it's usually something with the prep work, it's not having a proper sign off, it's not having something for the test that day. It's something dumb. And Tas went out and actually talked to examiners in the Las Vegas area. And this was just a little over a year ago, two years ago now, and went out and just said, what are you? I think male and female examiners. What are you people seeing? There are the problems currently that people have shown up for checkrides. That's kind of what this book for. This one to me is fun. I did this one first, but the first chapter's a little about me and how I got started and I talk a little bit about some of my struggles that I had. Like everybody has. That's how I started the book out. But then it's got all kinds of stuff to do with training, training tips, stories of the dumb things that I've done. You know, it's just a good all around general book really for anybody going after helicopter ratings and wants to learn more about the industry and the do's and don'ts and the things that happen and flight training tips. So it's more general just all the way around. Helicopter training and a lot of my story. Both of those are available on our homepage@helopterground.com Heather ships these every single week. Heather is shipping these books out. That's one of her main jobs each week is checking the orders and getting them shipped. We are just charging you shipping and handling. We don't charge you for the book. We've already bought them. Heather lets me know when she gets low, I order a big shipment of them and she has all of them up there in her office. So what we do is we ship them to you for $7 shipping and handling. So those are@helopterground.com links below on YouTube, Facebook, it might be wherever. So if you want to either one of them, we ship them to you. We bought them, we paid for them. They're your book. You just got to pay 7 bucks shipping handling to get them to you. And oh yeah, things are looking a little bit different today. We just expanded the Hogs Wall of Fame. What you've all been seeing for the past several months is we just had the four panels and we were using several of the others for a background. And so we've filled up all the way with those four panels. And we're like, well, Heather starts sitting them on the floor. We're like, how are we going to expand the Hogs Wall of Fame? So we went ahead and decided to add two more panels over there. You can see where she started. Another row over there. So we decided, you know what, let's rearrange the studio because the instruments coming back very Soon. So we thought, let's rearrange the studio. We moved everything around so we can have room to pull the instrument, still have our TV for presenting. We can move this up there, roll it back there. We can do different configurations of things. So we wanted to show you real quick that the Hogs Wall of Fame is still expanding. It just got bigger. So once we fill those up, we don't know where we're going. But, yeah, probably within a few months, we'll probably have that filled up. And if you're new to our videos, the Hogs Wall of Fame is when members pass a CheckRide, private, commercial, CFI or instrument. They're so excited, they go out and snap a photo, either themselves with the aircraft, they do a selfie or have someone take a picture with them and their examiner. And they send us a photo in and give us just a little brief description of their. Their checkride and how they got through it and how helicopter online ground school helped them. And it's so much fun. And it started out as an idea at the last airport we were at, and we were just sticking them up with little sticky things we're putting on the back and throwing on this old plywood wall, you know, and it started with five or ten pictures, right? And we're like, oh, this is kind of cool. So we just kept adding to the pictures that we had. And then ever since, you know, more and more people have been just sending us pictures. And it's a lot of fun and we like telling the stories and we like sharing the pictures as they come in. So the help the Hogs Wall of Fame is you now got the full view. Its members that send in pictures once they pass their checkride. So keep them coming as you pass your checkrides. We do have private, commercial, CFI and instrument. All four of those courses, all four of those have FAA written test practice. We've been getting a lot of questions about how that all works. We just did a video on that last week, and we'll put that below. I'll put a link once we get done today, I'll put that link down below that explains exactly what we endorse you for and what we do not, and how the FAA wings program works and how you can get credit if you want to use online ground school and go through the videos and then take a practice written test. You can get FAA wings credit for that. And we explain in that video exactly how that works, because we get those questions often. And I've been getting a lot of people been Emailing me, hey, does it help with the written? Yes. Does it help with the oral? Yes. Does it help with the flight? Yes. We really are helping you with every aspect of the checkride for all these ratings. We're going through as much of the knowledge as we can pack in there. And it's like people say, well, can I come there and do ground with you? And I'm like, you could, but why would you want to? You know, we fly with our members in the instrument. But I was explaining this to a gentleman who came in the other day and he was looking up to Hogs Wall of Fame. He's a fixed wing guy and he's like, well, but don't you do ground here? And I go, I can, but I go, do you get what I'm saying? For the private is $49 a month. You got over 20 hours of video that you can go through at the private level. And I put my whole heart and soul into that, right. Everything that I've learned and seen over 20 years, I put in that private membership. There's nothing I'm going to tell you sitting here face to face that's not in the training. So I do fly with members occasionally and I do help them get through checkrights, but all I have to do then is test their knowledge. And usually they've been through the videos before they've come here, they've tried hard and usually they've already got their time. They usually have most of their requirements done and they just want to come and get finished up. Because a lot of people we've been helping the last year or two and Heather can verify this, their people have been working on their ratings 5 years, 10 years, 15 years, 20 years or more. And many times it's just kind of putting everything together right? Somebody, everybody, everyone is usually struggling in one area or another, whether they're struggling on the ground or they're still going with one maneuver, or they're still, they're trying to get their test done but they still don't have their FAA written test out of the way. There's always, people always have a hurdle, right? So. Or they have a problem with getting an examiner available with an aircraft on a certain date and time to fit their schedule. So we've got a pretty good thing going with a couple of different examiners where we can usually pretty much work to your schedule and get you done. So the instrument will be returning. We was hoping it was going to be this month, but they're putting the rotor system back together right now had some updates done to it, and it now have to be after Heli Expo 4. We get it back. So we've had some people asking about. About when they could schedule. So on hold. We get back from Heli Expo, we'll go get it picked up and get it back and get some flying going. All right? And I was like, man, what am I gonna talk about, Heather? Oh, I'm sure I'll find plenty, right? Any big questions to answer? Anything exciting? Awesome. Look us up on Tuesday. That'll be the day to find us. We'll be a little more crunched for time on Wednesday, so be there all day. Look for six people walking around looking like a gang, man. We're gonna be a gang at the Expo, Heather. Like, oh, man, how do we do we dress up? What are we wearing? I'm like, wear what you want, man. We're just us. We're not trying to put on anything special. That's why we're wearing T shirts and hoodies. I'm wearing blue jeans. I said, why would we go try to be anything that we're not? Wear what you want. You see us in our everyday attire. All right, so go below to sign up for Helicopter one Ground School. Do us a favor. Subscribe the channel if you haven't yet. When you subscribe, click that little bell, because that way you're notified when we put out new videos. I'm getting ready to do one on that. Another helicopter crash. Not a crash, but have you seen it on YouTube yet? Helicopter lands, traffic behind, traffic in front. Traffic driving by the side, nobody helping them. And then what happens? Here comes the pickup truck, or no box truck driving up behind. Boom. And destroys the rotor system. We're going to do a video on that because I've had a bunch of people ask me about that one. And there's a couple other accents that I've just eyeballed that I want to do some videos on. So we're gonna do those soon, too. Let me try to pop one of those out this week before we go. I'm actually heading to San Diego this weekend, so before going to Anaheim. All right, well, I'm gonna roll out, then subscribe. Click the bell. Go to helicopterground.com for either one of our books, our memberships, hogshoodies.com for hoodies and T shirts. And we'll see in the next video.