In this instructional vlog, Kenny Keller recounts the accelerated training of a student named Brooke, who soloed a helicopter after roughly 30 flight hours and passed the private pilot written exam shortly thereafter. Keller critiques the conventional flight‑school model that often stretches training to 80‑150 hours without completing key requirements, and he outlines a streamlined approach that emphasizes early, disciplined ground study and efficient flight scheduling. The training plan included providing Brooke with essential resources (Helicopter Flying Handbook, HOGS video series, ACS, and a written‑test prep book) from day one, enforcing a rigorous self‑study routine, and integrating both traditional (sectional charts) and modern (iPad, ForeFlight) navigation methods. Flight time was organized into twice‑weekly sessions with a mix of ground work, dual cross‑country, night cross‑country, and advanced maneuvers (confined area, low RPM, governor‑off, autorotations) interleaved with solo practice. Keller emphasizes the importance of early ACS familiarity, continuous self‑assessment, and questioning instructors or schools when progress stalls. He argues that with proper resources, disciplined study, and focused lesson planning, students can achieve solo and written success well before the national average of 60‑70 hours. The video concludes with practical advice for newcomers, a call for viewer feedback, and a teaser for future content.
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And if that's your case and you're not willing to put the study time in and your rating drags out to 100 hours, 150 hours or whatever, if you can afford it and you're okay with that, that's fine. But people on a budget can't afford— they run out of money and then never finish the race. Rating is the real challenge. All right. We're going to tell you a quick story and we're going to be talking more about this in the coming weeks. But we got a story to share with you about a Young girl named Brooke that I've been training the last couple of months. And interesting thing with Brooke is we did all the things that we could think of from the very beginning to try to make her training as smooth as possible, make the most, make the most progress. And at 30 hours, she is in really good shape. And I want to tell you kind of a little bit about what we did. And hopefully we'll be doing some more videos on this topic moving forward. But the thing we did with Brooke— by the way, I haven't done initial private pilots in a long time, probably 8 to 10 years since I was doing initials, soloing people, because I've been specializing the last 8 years or so on just finishing people up, and especially the last 3 and a half years or so since we've been doing what we call the Final Approach Course. I took Brooke on for the summer as kind of a special project. Slowed down the checkrides a little bit so I could kind of have some time to enjoy my summer. And I knew early on I had— it was time for me to put my money where my mouth is, right? I complain about flight schools and flight schools that run people up to 100 hours, 150 hours, 160 hours, and they don't have their rating. In particular, we had a guy from the Chicago area, had 100 hours, never even soloed, you know. So we know that at times this gets drug out and training goes way too long. In this case, what we did with Brooke, I just sat down before hitting record and wrote down some of the notes of things we were going to be talking about. Early on, we got her everything she needed, made sure she had all the books, what was important, didn't get her any extras or garbage that wasn't really necessary. All the basic stuff, Fire Aim, Helicopter Flying Handbook, subscription to Hog so she could go through the videos. She started watching videos from the beginning. And let me say, I want to make this emphasis on Brooke because she has done the work. We've been guiding the process. But this girl goes home, does what she's told, she studies, and she comes back, comes back and she knows it. So we got the— got her the written test prep book early on. And I said, you know what, I kind of want to try to have you have this private pilot written test done by the time you solo. And I don't know if I've ever pushed somebody to do this, but I heard this years ago that that's a good idea. And I said, let's try it with you. And actually she was answering at the private pilot level for her oral before she even took the written test. So I started first off just doing a lot of ground. She took good notes, make her write stuff down. She would study her notes. She'd come back and she'd know it. So early on, we had her to the private pilot level, pretty much oral-wise. Amazing. Because of our hard work and her going home and studying. I introduced the written test prep book to her early on and we set a date and said, by this date, let's have it done. And because of some things that happened for her through the summer and us, we extended it a couple weeks. I said, okay, we'll move it from this date to this date. I know where I'm at and now I'm going to have to edit. You know what? Maybe we can just roll with this. He just shut down. We got some ag sprayers over here and I didn't know how loud that was going to get. So perfect reason to hurry up and try to get through this so we can talk more about this in the coming months. So she comes 2 days a week. In the beginning, we planned on flying twice a day, once in the morning, once in the afternoon. Sometimes we didn't fly because of weather, maybe because she was tired or whatever the case is. Yeah, it is an airport. I can't complain. I'm just trying to say I should shut the fucking door. No, just keep going. It's probably not that bad. All right, so here we go. 2 days a week. So a lot of times maybe we just do ground only, which is okay, right? In the beginning, hit the ground heavy. She tried hard. She studied hard. We did lots of ground. In the beginning, we were doing more ground and less flying. Now at this point where we're at, now we're going to start kicking up and I'll explain why. She's around 30 hours, just past 30 hours. Of course, her pre-solo is written, is done. She did a solo on a Thursday, her first solo, a hover solo, done on a Thursday. On the following Monday, she goes in and takes the private pilot written test. So she did get it done a few days after her first solo. Private pilot's done. We have her cross-country training during the day, dual, done. The girl can fly me wherever I want to go and back and do everything on her own without my help. Using both the iPad and ForeFlight, also using a chart in the good old cross-country planning. Because with her, we've made sure she's versatile in both. She knows the old-school way of using a sectional chart, doing all the math with a good old-school chart, and she also knows how to do it with iPad. So she's versed in both. So not only is her day cross-country done, we have her 3 hours of night cross-country done. So the day cross-countries are done, 3 hours a night is done. Now we're starting on advanced maneuvers. So here's what my point is, people. You shouldn't be at 100 hours or 80 hours and you still don't have the written done. They haven't really done any of the night with you yet. They haven't done any cross-countries. They've had you out there beating around the pattern for 60 or 80 or 100 hours. Why? Ask the question why. Question your instructor. Question your flight school. Right here, this girl is living proof if you start early, go through the regs, figure out what you need, work on requirements early, work on studying. I know this is— it sounds easy and I get it, it's hard. And again, Brooke gets the credit for going home, doing what she's told, studying what she's told to study, and coming back and knowing it. My point is anybody can do it. We've guided her through the process, through the training here, the ground and the flying, but also she has the tools, all the, all the tools that a person needs for private pilot. She's got plus the Hogs videos and she applies herself. She applies herself and we in turn try to do the best job that we can at making every single time she comes here as absolutely, um, as much progress as possible. Last week we had a couple days where the humidity was just crazy and we had a couple days where It was just hard to really be motivated and didn't make the best progress because we were just sweating like crazy all day long and the heat was so bad. But other than that, my point is the girl's around 30 hours, all this completed. First solo, private pilot written test, dual cross-country, dual night, the night done, all that stuff is done. And the beauty is when she left yesterday, I'm like, do you realize what a good place we're in? Now all we got to do is finish the solo time. And in between, while she's soloing, we can work on all the harder stuff, which we worked on yesterday. We went out and we did all the harder stuff. Autos, pinnacle, pinnacle. We did confined area, we did low RPM, we did governor off. All of those things that she's going to need to do for the checkride. We're now working on that stuff. So in between the solos, we can be perfecting everything for the test, and then whatever we end up at, 45 hours, 50 hours, wherever we're at, once she's proficient, she can go take the test. We know that national average is 60 to 70. My private took 88, I think, because I failed my first oral, which is in turn why we created Hogs, because I've been through it. I know how it goes. I'm just making the point, anybody can do this. But it takes applying yourself. So part of the time we can blame flight schools, but sometimes we're going to blame you, the person themselves, if you're not studying. And why does this happen? We know what happens. Everybody wants to fly, right? Flying is the fun part. Who doesn't want to fly? Getting in that aircraft and going to fly is the funnest thing you can do. It's crazy fun. So nobody wants to study. And if that's your case and you're not willing to put the study time in and your rating drags out to 100 hours, 150 hours or whatever, If you can afford it and you're okay with that, that's fine. But people on a budget can't afford— they run out of money and then never finish the race. Rating is the real challenge. So we're going to talk more about Brooke in the future. I just want to tell people, if you're questioning your flight school or your instructor, ask them. Ask them about these things. Well, why do I have 75 hours and I haven't soloed? I haven't done night. We did one cross-country. Why? Why aren't we getting some of these things done? And this private pilot written, I know I brought this up before and I've had people go, ah, you know, that's kind of, that's an awful lot to try to get that done by solo. Well, you know what? Now that we've done it, freaking amazing. She feels good. And so do I. We don't have to worry about that stupid written anymore. It's done. It's behind her. Now it's just fly and prep, fly and prep, take the test, become a private pilot and be done. And before we go, for one of our members, new member. He reached out to Heather and he was kind of like, "Well, hey, how— I got all the information, I got the helicopter flying handbook and I got the ACS and kind of what should I be going through and should I be reading what while I'm— when I'm doing this?" So I wanted to give it just for him and anybody else that's just starting out. The Hogs videos are laid out to loosely follow the helicopter flying handbook. You don't necessarily have to read the helicopter flying handbook as you're going through the Hogs video, but you certainly can. But we didn't design Hogs for you to have to be going through a book while you're going through the videos. You can go through the videos at your own pace. You can go through them as many times as you need, but you don't necessarily have to be looking at the helicopter flying handbook. However, you should be. The helicopter flying book handbook is the helicopter Bible, so you should have reading time. If you want to do really good on the private pilot, you should— you're using Hogs videos or somebody else's videos or free videos on YouTube, whatever you're using. That's study time. That's when you're watching somebody and you're listening and you're getting those visual cues. There are other times where you should be, you should read through the helicopter flying handbook. The examiner is going to expect you to know what is in that book, how to navigate it and how to find answers. And you should become very familiar with helicopter flying handbook. Go through it kind of as we go through the sections in HOGS, do them together if you want, but not necessary. And then the ACS. There's a lot of opinions out there on the ACS, and I know there's even some published materials that say, oh, start using the ACS like 3 days before your checkride. I think that's horseshit, to be honest with you. I think you should be looking at the ACS very early in your training, and throughout your training, you should be at home looking through the ACS and becoming familiar with how many feet do I have to be within an altitude for downwind, How many feet on my cross-country? How far should I be from the numbers when I do my autorotation or whatever spot the examiner picks? Is it plus or minus 50 feet, plus or minus 100 feet? Those things you need to know, and the ACS guides you through the test. So the closer you get to your test, the more important that— sorry, it's an airport. We can't help it, right? The closer you get to the test, the more important that ACS becomes. ACS. Just a little bit in the beginning, closer to the day of the test, use it more, use it more, use it more. And here's a problem in the industry. Instructors aren't using it, flight schools aren't using it. A lot of times students don't use it. They have it, or if they have it, it's in their bag and it's all nice and clean and no pages bent because they've never looked at it. Using it is more important than when to use it and should I wait till day 3 or day 1? Just use it. So hopefully that helps this young man just starting out and going through the videos and working on his training. Hopefully that helps. So we're going to wrap this video up because Heather's arms are getting tired holding the camera. And leave us a comment down below. Let us know what you think. Tell me about any of these that you think is good or bad. And we're going to be on a podcast here pretty soon and we'll let you know more later, but we're going to— I'm I'm gonna cover a lot of these things along with some of the other things I've introduced during her training that ideas I've heard about in the past and I thought, you know what, I'm gonna try that with her, like having a handheld radio while she's soloing and some other things that we're gonna talk about. So stay tuned, subscribe to the channel, leave us a comment down below. I wanna know what you think and we'll see you in the next video. Peace out.
