The All Mighty TOWER GOD! & more Helicopter Student Struggles

Foreign. Hey it's Kenny with Helicopter Land Ground school. Have a good presentation ready for you today. We've been here clean oops. And I here I beating the mic up already. We've been cleaning this hanger like crazy for the last week, getting ready for what's next. It's big exciting stuff. Some of you already know what it is, some of you may not. Stay tuned because there's lots and lots of cool stuff going to be happening for today. Here's what we're going to do. I'm going to give away two copies of helicopter checkride the paperback two copies of top 10 checkride tips and we're going to ask you four questions to win those out of the new private pilot study guide. Link down for that below. And I'm going to ask basic easy private pilot stuff. It is going to be so easy whether you're a student or private. If you can't answer these four questions then you better be hitting the books. We're going to do that after we go through seven different things that came up just this week on a one on one I did with one of our professional pilot members. One of the things going to be talking about is use of a checklist in the cockpit and a knee board and what you can do there. And I'm going to give a plug. This young man sent these to me or I don't know, he's young, a gentleman sent me quite a while ago and I never used them and I'll tell you about that when we get to that part of it. Non paid. He just sent them to me out of the blue. Two of those and then first I'm gonna have Heather walk over here and help me. We've got two members going up on the Hogs wall of fame and we just want to share what they had to say. So Heather will bring up the first one. Michael Remy, she'll bring it over and show it to you the camera. He said thank you. Hoggs today just turned 67 so another one. We've had a rash of these lately. Guys in their 60s getting their ratings. This is so cool. I love it. Thank you for the great product. Thank you also Hogs played a big part in my education. I fly a corporate jet and the business wanted me to get the add on. And we also have a Bell 47. I'm off to. I'm off to that school with fright with flight safety international on the 15th. Awesome. That is so freaking incredible. And the guy I'm going to talk about that I did the one on ones with this week, he's like more closer to my age and he was making a comment about people going, well, you know, you're over 40. I'm like, you know what? Bull crap. You can learn at any age. I get tired of hearing that. All right, Heather's going to show you the next one. This is really good. I think we're just going to go on the homepage. Heather got this from Nick Long. I found hogs while browsing YouTube prior to the beginning of my helicopter training for private. So I came in with a pretty strong ground knowledge head start. Both my CFIs admitted this. On top of my already great ground instruction at my school, which is awesome. I found Hogs extremely useful during long car commutes or workouts. The easy access to the very structured categories made brushing up topics a breeze. Prior to my checkride, I went through all the videos one or two times, which people tell us that to do the best they've been through it videos two to three times. I got recommended. I got 93 in my knowledge test and passed my check ride with no issues in either the oral or practical portions. 10, 10 recommended and have already signed up for HOGS instrument course. So thank you both Nick and Michael. So there you go. And those are going up on the HOGS wall. Heather was going to put them up and she goes, well, let's just show them live before I put them up yesterday or the day before. We went over and made sure we got the wall all cleaned up and was checking pictures, make sure we have everybody up there. So lots of cool, fun stuff happening. So what we're going to do is go through these seven things and over the Halloween special we offered a pro pilot special with six one on ones with me. I haven't done any one on ones for a while. Decided to do that as a Halloween special. The first gentleman to take me up on this offer. We've had a great time. We've done two of them so far. One this week and one last week. And as I was working with him, it became obvious to me very quickly that, well, it's like I said when we announced those packages, I said, you know, usually when somebody's struggling, it's not usually that hard to kind of get them straightened out, right? And it was just, it was fun doing the one on one. I love talking to this guy and as he's telling me the story about his flight training and where he's at, you know, these things just start popping up. So I made a list of Them of the seven top things that popped up in our two one hour sessions of things that I, that he would talk about and where he was having trouble. And because they're so common, I thought, let's do a live event and cover them. The first one, slow, smooth, methodical. Everything we do in helicopter training should be slow, smooth and methodical. Everything I did in the helicopter EMS world was slow, smooth, methodical. Doesn't matter. You're going on a, you're going on a flight out to a car wreck, going to a scene, you don't operate any differently than if you're just taking an aircraft to maintenance because you can't get excited, you can't get involved in what's going on emotionally. You have to walk to the aircraft, you have to walk around the aircraft, you pick up to a hover and you do your hover pre takeoff checks. And if you've got the space to do a normal takeoff, you do the normal slow takeoff. And some people don't understand that. And they find that they don't understand, they're like, oh, but you gotta go, it's an emergency. You can't fly that way. Flying like it's an emergency is always going to, not always can very quickly turn into a problem. And this gentleman, when we were talking, you know, he was admitting to me about, well, he was having troubles and we'll talk about some of the different ones in the next six, but this kept coming up and I'm like, all right, man, everything has to be slow, smooth, methodical. It should be that way in training. It should be that way for your checkride. When you get out in the real world and start flying, it should be slow, smooth, methodical. Now I just had a buddy of mine text me, show me a picture of an ag sprayer today of this guy flying up and doing this backwards wild thing into above the truck to get fuel or put product on. And I get that some environments, people do things out of the realm of slow, smooth and methodical. It's just never a good idea. Okay? Everything you should do is slow, smooth and methodical. You know, on all the checkrides I've done all these years, the examiner will always say, you know, today you know, you were slow, smooth, methodical. Or they'll tell the examiner that, well, Kenny, you know, everything he taught me was slow, smooth, methodical. And that's the way it's gotta be. You know, even inputs in the aircraft when you're dealing with an emergency are still slow, smooth and methodical. There's never a reason to just slam a control. Okay? So if you're struggling, think back for a second. Are you rushing what you're doing in the aircraft? Are you rushing the pre flight? Are you rushing to get there that day? Everything we do should be slow, smooth, and methodical. All right, let's move to the next one. And I'm going to try to keep these fairly short because you know me, I'll turn this into an hour and a half event if I'm not careful. All right, so checklist with no one around. And this gentleman has never done this, and he told me before I brought this up, he said, man, I'm struggling through the checklist. And he's pre solo at this point, and, you know, his instructors, you know, getting aggravated with him, you know, and he's, you know, fumbling a little bit in the aircraft. And so I said, have you ever went out and just sat in the helicopter with nobody around when it's quiet and work through the checklist as a practice? And he said, no, I've never done that. And I go back to one of the guys who was responsible as the kind of the check pilot or the stage check pilot for me on my private commercial and cfi. He was the guy we were all terrified of, right? Because the guys I flew with every day, they were my buddies. Then this guy come in. You're always terrified, but I learned some of the best things from this. His name. His name was Adrian, by the way. Adrian, where are you? I haven't seen you in forever. Anyway, Adrian always kind of come in and kick my ass just a little bit, right? But I've taken those things that I learned from Adrian and they've been huge for me through my career and. And using these things as an instructor. And he come in to check me out one time, probably at the private level. I'm pretty sure this was private level. And he's like, after a flight, we do. He goes, kenny, what you need to do, you're struggling in the aircraft during the startup. He said, when there's nobody on the schedule, keep kicking the mic. When there's nobody on the schedule, he said, go out in the hangar, take your checklist and do everything that most everything on the checklist with the exception of turning the power on, right? Because if you turn the power on, you sit there for an hour, you're gonna run the battery down. Or you could run the battery down, but mentally go sit in the aircraft, take the checklist and just go through it and work through each step. Go through again, leaving the power off, do the switches, you know, don't move anything that could cause a problem on the aircraft's not running. But most switches and most things you can do, most checks you can do, just sit alone in the aircraft and take your time and just practice and just run through that checklist several times and get yourself a good flow. And I did that. I went out and did exactly what Adrian suggested that I do, and it worked. It was phenomenal. And again, this is these simple things. If nobody ever tells you and you've never thought of it, it's the simple little tricks that sometimes just turn things around for people. I told him that in the first one. He. That was the first week or this week when I talked to him, he's like, dude, I did that and it helped so much. And I'm like, see, it's these little tiny things like going out, getting in the aircraft when you're struggling and practicing. Going through your checklist again, power off, take your time, you know, nobody around bothering you. Just you, the aircraft and the checklist. Okay, Big help. If you're struggling, learn the checklist. I know I did. Heather, go ahead and click to number three, because this is going to be continuing on, on the same topic. Checklist, finding cockpit items. The other thing Adrian told me one day we were out flying and I was fumbling around for carb heat or whatever. And you know, if you're flying the Robinson and you're have the carb heat, you know, there's certain positions for everything, and you've got your little guard. And he said, I need you to go out in the aircraft and practice reaching down and finding everything, like, you know, the safety for your collective, where the mixture control is at, where the carb heat is at. And get used to reaching down and finding these different things in the cockpit when. While you're looking outside so that when you're flying, you're not looking down all the time, trying to find this, trying to find that. If you take the time to just sit there again, when nobody's around, sit there and just find these things. Find your safety. Make sure, you know, you know, what's the procedure? Do you reach around the cyclic for one? Are you going to the left of the cyclic for this thing that you're grabbing? And you can use this for any aircraft. So going out in the aircraft, taking your time, learning that checklist, going through it, finding things without looking at them, all very, very helpful. And back to this checklist. And I want to mention this gentleman it's been a couple years since he sent these. I did see his website still up, it's moagear.net he's not paying me anything, he just sent these. And I thought, you know what, I've been meaning to show these all along. So the other thing I did during the startup is actually go to number four Heather, because I think this is still going to be along the same lines. This is good. Starting over, disrupted or failed startup. Okay, so another day, I think this is when I was getting ready for commercial. I'm still struggling a little bit because I wasn't flying a lot. And anyway, I remember Adrian going, well, you're losing your place on the checklist and you're wasting time and blades are spinning. So what I did very simply and this, I just came up with my own. This is our HOGS official checklist here, by the way. I had a kneeboard when I was doing my private and commercial NCFI and I used them and what I decided to do is my knee board I had at that time had this plastic strap here just like this one has right now. Okay, Plastic strap going across the knee board. What I would do is I would go ahead and get my checklist loose and as I would go through the checklist I would just slide this down to item number one, complete that, come back, slide it up to item number two, complete that, come back, check, slide it up, go do the next thing. That worked out for me because I would get lost when I would get further down through the checklist, you know, and especially if you got instructors sitting beside you and the blades are spinning and he's huffing and puffing and you're going, oh God, where was I? That was my little thing that I did, I just came up with. And after time, of course, you get faster with the checklist, you get more comfortable and it becomes easier. But I did that for quite some time and I even did the same thing when I went, let's say when I went to the EMS environment. I'm learning a twin engine aircraft with dual systems in a completely different environment. Aircraft I'm not familiar with. I did the same thing in ems. You know, that checklist would be right there and I would just use that so that I could go through the checklist taking my time and not lose my place. Which leads into this one. Again, these things are all coming up in these two one on ones I did with this professional pilot member. The next one, he was telling me a story about something. He was going through the checklist and the instructor's going, would you forget something? Did you forget something? And he got all frustrated trying to figure out what it was that he wasn't finding. And I said, has anybody ever mentioned if you get disrupted during a startup, like say you haven't even started the engine yet, like whatever the case is, something happens, something's out of place, you got to get out and walk up to the FBO and get something and come back. I think it's best. And somebody taught me just go back and start from the beginning. You don't want to come back and try to pick up from through a checklist when you got partway through it and someone interrupted you or you got confused for a second and you know your heart starting to racing because you're trying to get through this startup. Anything that disrupts that checklist, just go back and start over. That way you know you're not missing anything, you know exactly where you were and same thing again with a failed start. Now, depending on whether you're in a piston powered or turbine powered, there's a number of things that could happen. And of course in training it might be something as simple as you forgot to turn the magnetos on. You know, little tiny things like that happens, you miss, you miss the mixture or most people leave the mixture off or leave it on. This is very common in flight training. People just leave the fuel valve, valve on and then someone will come along and they'll turn it off. So then you go to start, you're used to the fuel valve, fuel valve being on, somebody else has turned it off. You didn't use the checklist property properly and you just can't get the engine start because the fuel valve's off. I'll add a super embarrassing story that I haven't told in a while. I got my tarbin job flying 135 charter and I got to fly. Oh, big NASCAR racer Wall trip, not Daryl Michael Wall trip. Okay, so him and his guys come out, I go to the airport, meet him and we go out and we get in a Jet Ranger and we all left the fuel valve on in the Jet Ranger. Now a new company comes along and says, hey, the check. The checklist says off at the end of the flight. We want you to do that. Okay, so now we're disrupted, right? And I try to do things from memory that day. And for whatever reason, I shut it off like I was supposed to. When I landed to pick him up, I didn't turn it back on. So how embarrassing is that? When you have A celebrity like Michael Waltrip on board, and you fire up the Jet Ranger helicopter and you're all excited, taking the celebrity on a Jet Ranger flight. And engine goes up, and then the engine dies. How and horrible do you feel? I felt like a complete idiot. What'd I do? I went back, went through the checklist, figured out what I did. I didn't say a word. And they didn't say anything either. And I was nervous, right? Heart racing. So he doesn't say a word. We get to where we're going, I shut it down. I ask him to stay in the aircraft till the blades are done moving. And Michael leans over the seat and goes, hey, how come the aircraft died when you started it? And I went, well, I. And I explained kind of what I just explained to you and told him that the difference in the fuel valve, that we were doing it one way and da, da, da. And he was, you know, he was nice about it, but he questioned why the aircraft died when I started it up. And that with good reason. So if you have a failed start or you're getting ready to start and you have to stop because again, something interrupted you, just go back to the beginning of your checklist and work through it step by step, I think is always going to be the best way to do it. All right, let's go to the next one. Heather, just again, because I know I'll go on too long. Oh, the. All that says the Almight tower God. Okay. The almighty tower God, which is what I entitled this email, because this. I think this one for this member, the almighty tower of God, is causing a lot of the problems. And he's in complicated airspace, and he's learning in complicated airspace. So I give his instructors credit for, you know, there's a lot that's going on. They're flying, they're training in controlled airspace. There's complicated airspace going in and out in that area. So to do his cross countries, he's got to be really good on the radio. And he was admitting the struggles he was having. And so I went back to my old story of the almighty tower guide. And that comes from my initial training working on my private pilot. I was getting ready to go do my long cross country in a Schweitzer by myself. And I was terrified, right? I'm student pilot, and I had to fly to a controlled airport, and I was terrified to talk to the tower and. Which is really kind of stupid because I'm ex law enforcement. I'm ex fire department. I had a towing service for 10 years we had our own radio equipment for all of our trucks. I'm used to talking on a radio and I'm used to talking on radio in stressful situations. Why is it learning helicopters? I was going back to like, you know, I've never talked on a radio before. So I'm all terrified of talking to the tower and approach on this long cross country. And my instructor at the time, good buddy of mine named Eddie, and he's like, you know, he's like, dude, he's not the almighty tower God. You know, he's like that guy up there in the tower puts his pants on every day in the morning just like you and I do. He's up there to do a job and he's there to help you. Just talk to him, you know, so it's always just been kind of a joke, the almighty tower God. Because it's very easy to get intimidated talking to the tower. And I get that. And the one thing I've been telling this member is, you know, you just got to keep after it. I'm going to grab a water here. I think it's hiding back here. Maybe not. Maybe I drink it. There it is. So my train of thought, oh, so it's just talk to, it's just talk to the guy, right? Or talk to the woman, if it's a woman in the tower. It's been my experience most of the time the people in the towers are usually pretty easy to work with. Once in a while you might get somebody who's kind of cranky, but most of the time if you tell them who you are, where you are and what you want to do, even if you don't have the best lingo and you don't have all the lingo down yet, just be as plain English as you can be and just talk to them. So I remember being terrified on that cross country trip way back. And then because I trained mainly in uncontrolled airspace, I get working as a CFI, one of the first jobs I get. I'm like 300 hour pilot or whatever and I go to a bigger city where we're gonna fly in class Delta, there's another Class Delta beside it. There's a class Bravo on the other side and a class Charlie to the south. And the pilot that I flew with, awesome guy, he was a Vietnam veteran, cool, laid back individual. And I fessed up at some point about, I think we went to flying the cross class Bravo and I was all nervous and he told me something very simple that's Always helped. He said, hey, I know you only have limited experience with Talkatu controlled airports. He said, here's the trick, here's the key. No matter how nervous you are, sound confident on the radio, even when you're not. And he said, if you sound confident, you will be amazed at how far you will get and how they'll treat you at the tower versus and you've all. Either you've done it or you've heard it. You've heard somebody on a radio in the aircraft going, yeah, I'm. You know, you've heard that. You've heard the person, right? So even if you're nervous, just make sure. Like using a. Making sure you have your frequencies down so that you have time to be prepared to make that call. Be thinking before you get to that airspace, you know, prior to the flight, you should have all the frequencies written down, you know, where they're at, you know, at what point you're going to call the tower. The preparation of being ready and mentally thinking about what you're going to say before you get there is a big. Is a big, huge help. And his hint when he said, man, he was, I'm telling you, you will get confident, sound confident. And you won't. You. You will. You'll be surprised at how far you will get just by sounding confident on the radio. And I'm here to tell you that it works. And one other point, the other thing that helped me get over the almighty tower God experience was same place that I'm talking about, I'm a new cfi, and they wanted us to do things a little bit different than the way the flight school was operating. And we actually got invited up to the tower. Now, some of you may be able to do this, some of you may not. We were allowed. And a couple of us, the CFIs went up to the tower and we probably spent maybe half hour, 45 minutes up there. And that was a huge help and just making. Making me realize that, hey, you know, this guy is just like my buddy Eddie said years ago, the guy puts his pants on every day just like everybody, like you and me and everybody else. He's up there doing a job and making that trip to the tower and being able to meet the guy that we were, you know, hearing his voice on the radio all the time to meet him one on one and have a short discussion about our helicopter operations and what we do and how we get from the ramp out to the Runway. The problem there was students are lifting up off the dolly. They're Calling off the dolly before liftoff. And by the time they get up, do their hover checks, and get out to the Runway, they'd have to go, hey, helicopter, hang on now. I've got an airplane coming in at the tower. He said, you know what? You know, we'll talk to your flight school for you if you'd like. But you know what we'd like you guys to do? We'd like you to get up to a hover, get yourself positioned, get all that stuff done that you normally do. And in your. In the area where you can move without talking to us, just get as close as you can and be ready. And when you tell us you're ready to go, be ready to go. That was huge. That helped me throughout my career in other situations along the line. So that visit to the tower was also a great, big, huge help for me. All right, let's go to the next one. Heather, what do we got for number six? Oh, all right, here we go. This is why I want to move through the other ones, because here we go. I need a drink on this one. So yesterday, on our second one on one, we're talking and we're going along, and I'm picking up this theme about him getting super tired and all these struggles he's having. And I started thinking, hmm, I'm wondering how long his instructors have been flying him. So I take a pen and I go, hey. And I stopped him. At a certain point, I go, I'm going to write something down here on a piece of paper, just so you know. I go, tell me, how far are you into your flight? How many minutes are into your flight when you start getting tired and start having these problems in the aircraft, or the. The instructor is getting aggravated with you, and he's like, oh, yeah. They're usually like, oh, man, you know, probably 1.4, 1.5, 1.6. And I went, all right, all right, hold the. Stop the press. We're in day two. I know where the problem here is. I said, you know, when a person gets tired, I go, it's 45 to 50 minutes. That's when your performance starts to go down. He pulls his logbook out, and I actually waited a few minutes. We talked about what I'm gonna talk about here in the one hour flat lesson. And the more he talked, I go, all right, you know what? Go ahead and go find that logbook. Go get it. Open up the page one. Your first page of training. I go over the flight times. Start off not bad. It was like 1.0, 1.2, 1.1. I'm like, okay. But then like the fourth lesson, it goes to 1. 1.7, 1.8, 1.9, 1.7. I'm going, Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, stop. I said, I've been sticking up for these guys until now. And I said, I will fight this one to my grave. Now, I'm not talking about cross countries. When you're out doing cross country duel and you're learning those kinds of things, that's different. When you're brand new and someone is flying you. 1.4, 1.5, 1.6, 1.7, 1.8, 1.9. On the first page, they are stealing your money. You are getting tired, you are not doing as well. I became a police officer at the age of 24. Shortly after becoming a police officer, chief says, hey, you want to be a firearms instructor? Yeah, I'd love it. So he sent me to the Indiana Law Enforcement Academy. Well, first I went to a local school actually in South Bend, Instructor development course. And in this instructor development course they said, guys, whether you're teaching in the classroom or you're taking your guys out on the range, the human brain needs a break at around 50 minutes to an hour when learning a new complicated skill. And they said, even if it's a 5 minute break, 10 minute break, let them get up, walk around, stretch, go get a drink of water. You know, whatever the case is, do not keep someone in a classroom more than an hour. Which, you know, years later, I'm, I get completely annoyed if I'm in a class somewhere and it's going on to an hour and a half. I'm going, God, let us out of here. That's where I first learned in instructor development course about the one hour training somebody a new skill for a new hour. Then that first job that I worked at where I met the Vietnam era pilot who taught me a lot of stuff. I mean, oh my God, so much inside hogs came from this Vietnam pilot that I only spent a couple days with losing my train of thought. Okay, I got it. He said, the owner of that flight school says, yeah, you know what, we really want to keep our students like it about an hour on a flight lesson. I'm like, okay, you know, that sounds good. And he said, the way he explained it all these years ago was for the first 20 minutes of your one hour of dual flight, you're warming up, things are starting to improve, you're getting better. That second 20 minutes, you're really kind of Honing things in, and things are starting to go really, really well. And you're making progress and you're learning and you're putting things together. And then that third 20 minutes of that hour, you start to drop off a little bit like this. And he said, so that's why we like to have our students right at about an hour. That's just good training. It's, it's good for their progress. And of course, I agreed. So again, learning that as a new CFI, now 20 years later, hands down, if you come here and fly with me in the helicopter that'll be sitting behind me here, very soon, we will be back here either on the ground or on the dolly at 50 minutes. After my 20 years of flying, teaching, getting people through check rides, all kinds of ratings, I don't even need the clock anymore. I know when it's 45 to 50 minutes because I know by the way you are performing in the aircraft and maybe you're Superman and you don't ever get tired one in, I don't know how many cases, the average person, I know exactly when it's 50 minutes. And here's what happens. And I learned from watching this over the years. This is why now I stick it to the 5 0. On the ground at 5 0. That way, you know, you do your shutdown. Students taking their time learning the proper shutdown, you're going to be 0.9 or 1.0 by the time you get everything shut off. Okay, so losing my train of thought again here. One hour flight lesson back on the ground. Lose my train of thought. Was I saying Heather? Yeah, okay, so I got it, I got it, I got it. So here's what happens when you let somebody go a little longer. Let's say you're at that 45, 50 minutes, and let's say you're just working on a normal, normal takeoffs, normal landings. You're doing your pattern. Let's say you're even getting ready for solo and that you've done three or four normal approaches. That last one was pretty darn good. And you're right about 50 minutes. I'll always go, well, we should just go in. If somebody like, well, let's go one more time. Okay, go around one more time, and then that one won't be as good. And then what happens? They don't want to quit on a bad note. They'll go, well, come on, let's go do it one more time. Okay, so you go around again and it gets worse. Pretty soon you're at an hour or you're over an hour. But they want to prove they don't want to leave on a bad note. And you end up 1.1, 1.2. It just goes downhill. It doesn't get any better. And that's why over the years I've perfected it to where we're done at five, zero minutes. We're going to go in and land. And if you want to fly again, we'll fly again. Or we'll even break it up into two 45 minute flights. Going past an hour to me doesn't make any sense. And that was the other thing that popped up with this member propop members when he said, here's how it really started. I remember now. I go, oh, where was he start having problems? And he goes, oh, like on our approach number 10 or 12. And I'm like, approach 10 or 12. Holy hell, how many times are you going around the pattern in an hour? And that's where the conversation went. That's, I remember now, right. So, and I'll argue this. No, I won't. That's my thoughts on it. And I'm, and I told him, I said, you know what, Everything you've told me so far, I can understand why your CFIs are doing that. I go, this one? No, it's wrong. It's, it's, it's horse manure. Anything over an hour, somebody's wasting your money. Now another example, the instrument that used to sit back here, my buddy Nick, one of my first students, Nick was a doctor, worked super hard, didn't get many days off a week. So when he come to the airport, we'd fly an hour in the Enstrom that the flight school owned. And he knew I liked quitting at an hour. And he's like, hey, we got our hour in. Can we just go play and just do some autos? And I'm like, if you want to just go play and do autos knowing that this isn't going to be, you know, real super conducive to learning. Sure. And so he'd go, come on, let's go do it. Right? So we do it. So I'm not saying if you want to fly over an hour and you've got the money to do it and you want to fly a little extra, you can. I'm not saying you can't. I'm saying if you are the person who is trying to get done on a certain fixed amount of money or you're a person trying to get done in a certain amount of Time. The best training is going to be if you're keeping them at an hour. I had a state trooper, female trooper, she was a great student, and she was trying to get her private in time to interview with the state police to get a spot in the aviation unit. And she was flying with somebody else, and she asked me if I'd help her. And the kid she was flying with, good kid, but he was flying the hell out of her. And so we go out and fly, and she said, I want to fly every day, all day. And I'm like, okay, we're not going to fly every day, all day. Well, how about three times a day, two times a day? So she pushed me, and I let her. You know, this was back earlier in my career, let's say before I went to ems, I was building my time, and she has a checkride, like a week away, and we're flying a couple, two or three times a day every day. And I'm getting frustrated. She's getting frustrated every day. It's just getting worse. And finally, she called me Teach. For whatever reason, the one day I'm like, you know what? Just set it down. I go, I'm gonna go inside. When you're done, come in. And I went and sat down, frustrated. And she comes walking in with her head hanging kind of low, and she went. Sat down beside me. She goes, ain't working, is it, Teach? And I'm like, no, it's not working. And if you want to be done, you know what the problem is? This flying every day, all day. You gotta fly, fly, fly, fly. I go, you know what? And I know you don't want to do it. You need to take a freaking break. And she's like, I've only got, you know, a week or whatever. And I'm like, you need. We need to take a break. Like 20, like a day or two days. Let's just take a break, breathe. Let's schedule one flight, and we'll come back and let's see what happens. Boom. We go out after a small break, and she flew. It was unbelievable, right? Taking that break. And she says, you're right. Flying every day, all the time, pushing so hard was no good. It was no good for either one of us. And I'm like, I know. That's what I'm trying to tell you. So in another two or three flights, we had her done. Ready. I was flying. Actually, I was flying the EMS at the time her check Raiders on day. I was flying EMS. She flew 2 1/2 hours to A check right on her own and went and passed. Why? Because we slowed down and went, this is not working. So it plays into how much can any one, you know, person really handle? So let's go to the next one. And he got. Man, he got me riled on that one. I was just like, okay, I've been calm and cool for the last two times. Last two days now. Now my blood's boiling. I'm like, this has got to change, man. I go, if you really want to get to your goal in the time you want to get it, I said, you're going to have to stand up to these guys. And I go, or make up an excuse and just go, hey, guys, I can only fly an hour today. Don't even blame them. Just flat out say, I need to keep my hour to training, you know, for the next couple of weeks, whatever. So number seven, flying three times per week. Okay, now he gets credit on that one and his instructors get credit on that one. I asked him after we talked about the one hour, he said, yeah, I'm flying religiously three times a week. And I'm like, that's perfect. I love three times a week. And I think now, I think now a person even does good at two times a week. One time a week, one time a week, you can make progress, but it seems like you're always just kind of catching up. You can fly more. I mean, we've got members that went and did off the street to double I in six months. But those guys, they studied like crazy. And you'd have to, like, not be working another job. Like you're at a flight school and that's all you're doing. If you're a person who's got a family and you're working a job and you're flying part time, all this plays into it. So I was really happy when he said, they fly three times per week. And I'm like, that is awesome. So three times a week, I think, is great. Of course, you can go a little more if you want to, and you can go less. But a person to me, and I am not bragging, I've trained a ton of people and I've done a ton of checkrides, and the people that do the best and make the most progress for their money fly two to three times a week. You know, the whole hour kind of thing plays into that. But I think flying three times a week is the. Is usually the best for your money. Just seems to work out. So I was really, really, really happy with that. 1. All right, maybe I should get to some book giveaways. Otherwise I could keep rolling on these topics for a while. But I hope some of these seven help you, because as we were talking, I'm like, these things are popping out, man. And it's just like. It's not because I'm a genius. It's because I've seen it and I know and I've been in it. I've taught heavy for years. Even when I was flying ems, I flew my days off. I ran my business on my days off. I've always stayed active as an instructor, and I just know what I see in the cockpit, and I know when I see what works and what doesn't work. I mean, that's ultimately the bottom line. Okay, so let's go to the private pilot study guide. I picked out easy ones in the beginning. I'm going to give away one helicopter check ride, and I'm going to give that away first, because with this pro member, he kept referring back to this book, and he's like, well, it's like when you wrote about this. And I'm like, I'm glad you read that. Well, what about when you read this? And I'm like, you know what? I haven't really pumped this book lately. But you know what? There is a lot of good stuff in there. And even though it's called Helicopter Trek Ride, it's got a little bit about me in the beginning. And that's how he's like, hey, we've got some similar things in our lives, you know, close to my age and been through some of the kind of same things. There's a lot of good stuff in this book. I got links down below if you want the paperback copy. We have these in stock. Heather ships these to you for seven bucks, shipping and handling. So I'm going to give away this one first because he brought it up and I was so glad to see it again. Thought, you know, there is a lot of good stuff in that book. So I tabbed this, so it's easy. I think Heather's gonna maybe. Are you gonna. Am I gonna watch the chat? How busy are we? How many people are in here? Oh, 47. Whoo. We got a nice crowd. Hell, yeah. That's right. YouTube says you can cuss after the first 30 seconds, so, hell, yeah. Just being me. Okay. I've got YouTube up right here, so I can see Heather's got YouTube over there. You gonna come over here and help me watch or why don't you come over here? Because here's the thing with these contests. We know our the way our chat works. Sometimes you as the viewer, you see somebody else come up in a different order sometimes. So she's going to help me watch so we can see who the winners are. We're going by our chat. We even had a guy that emailed Heather, well, I'm going to send you a picture of what my chat shows. We can't do that. We have to go by what our chat shows here. I'm on a laptop, she's on another computer. I'm like, I don't even want us to get confused. So she's going to help me watch here. And these are very simple. So four helicopter checkride. The very simple question is when must the aircraft position lights beyond. What's the simple first one to get it gets helicopter checkride. Heather is going to ship this to you because we have them in stock here. So you email heatherelicopterground.com and Heather will ship you helicopter checkride. So the first person to type in and we know there's a Little Lag on YouTube so the first person to type in the correct answer for when must aircraft position lights be on gets helicopter checkride. So we're watching, we're watching. Don't see anything moving. We always go through this should pop up soon. Should we do the next question while we're waiting on the first question? I guess you can check your chat and make sure your show is the same as me, Glenn Roberts. Okay. More than that. That's not good enough. No. You guys see, everybody messes up night. Come on. When must the aircraft position lights be on? Come. There we go. Well, we're okay. That's the first one, right? That's even close. Sunset to sunrise. Sun down to sun up going. Come on. That's so easy. It's sunset to sunrise. I'm sorry, Tommy. K. You got it. I mean, it's basic simple private pilot stuff, man. It is sunset to sunrise. That's how the red rigs and that's how the rig is in our book. Tommy, email heatherelicopterground.com Tell her which book you won helicopter trek ride. Give her your address and she will ship it out. Next question and we'll see how it goes on this one. Here's the answer. Okay. We covered this before. Yep. It's got to be in one form. It can't be any other. This is easy, but people will mess this up and you don't mess this up on checkride. When is a flight Review due. First person to tell us when a flight review is due and you got to tell it in the right form is which book we doing? Let's do alternate top 10 on this one. So the first one to answer when is the flight review due? Is going to get top 10 checkride tips. And while we're waiting, I was going to mention this. This was from. This is a tribute to my dad. This was on his desk at high school. He was athletic director, guidance counselor, baseball coach, everything under the sun sports he did. And that was on his desk at school in his office. And I thought, you know what, I'll put that on there today. He's got another one that's a friend he had when he was in Korea. He was a Korean War vet and he had another one that's all fancy. I'll bring in sometime. All right. I see. Is this the first one that's popped up correct? Looks like it. Right? Yes. Yes. Okay. Munchers. 2010, 24 months. You got it. That's it. Email heatherelicopterground.com munchers with your real name and your email. Not your email, your email her with your name and address and she will send you top 10 checkride tips. So and again, there's links down below. If you don't win, you want a paperback copy, she'll send to you for seven bucks. And the study guide link is down below too. Okay. For helicopter checkride. And people mess this one up too. It's simple, but I'm asking easy questions that people do screw up and they even screw these up on checkrides. Who is responsible for maintaining the aircraft in an airworthy condition including inspections and ad compliance? Right there. Heather is the correct answer. Some people may say that that's not correct. This is the correct, correct answer. So the first person to answer who is responsible to determine. Whoops, I just blew the next one. Well, kind of. Who is responsible for maintaining the aircraft in the airworthy condition, including inspections and ad compliance? We are watching. We are watching. Which book are we doing? This one. This one. Helicopter check. There you go. There, we got it. Kp that's the one that missed a little bit ago, right? Okay. KP and a K. You are the winner. Helicopter checkride. Email heatherelicopterground.com Give her your shipping address and Heather will ship you the book. So we got one more basic private pilot. Okay, see now they're. Okay, I'm going to change the question because they know what's coming next. So they're answering before I even answered a question. So I'm going to change it. Let's find an easy one. Oh, This is a good one. I'm not going to say 18. Yeah. Okay. In section 2 of the PoH or rotorcraft light manual, do you have to comply with it? Do you have to comply with section 2? I'll make it easy. It's the limitations section. Do you have to comply to limitations? So the answer is very simply, that right there. Easy peasy. That's top 10 checkride tips, right? All right, while we're waiting on the answer. It's a very simple answer. Don't see it yet. Heather has a special on one year. Got it. Who's the first one? Right there. Right. That's the first one. Rocks. 1989. You are the first to say yes, according to our chat. And you'll verify that. So we saw the same thing, right? Yes. Okay. That's by our chat. Sorry if your chat looks different. We can't help that fact. Email. That was this one? Yep. Email heather helicopterground.com with your address and she will ship that out. And Heather has a special code and we decided to. Not a code. Heather has a deal on yearly. It's not as good as the Halloween, but it's still a deal. But we made up this deal. You have to text or call Heather to get the details. She's got a link. It's not public. It won't be in an email. It's not on our site. You can't find it anywhere. If you take the time to text or call Heather, can you bring up our phone number? Heather, while you're over there typing away, she's going to bring it up here on. Just going to bring it up here on the screen. This is Heather's HOGS member customer service number. Heather. Heather. I'm getting tired. Heather, she monitors this seven days a week. That's been our deal since COVID She works a lot from home, so she can monitor the phone seven days a week. You can text or call Heather either way at that number. She always knows what's going on. She knows what the specials are. And Heather can help you with anything, pretty much. If it gets real technical, she can always get ahold of one of us. But when it comes to memberships, upgrades, downgrades, refunds, anything, Heather can help you with that. If she has a question, she'll get ahold of us. I recently had a guy said, well, Heather's only for like password logins or something. I'm like, that's not True. I never said Heather. I've said Heather is your member concierge Member can help Member member Heather. Heather can help you with pretty much about anything. So don't hesitate to call or text Heather at 574-767-1797. We've got a professional pilot membership where you can talk to Daniel down below. He has several options. There's a link to either email him or sign up for a book. A call where you enter your information. He will call you. Heather has the down low on everything else and man, I just keep bumping everything. How did Hope you enjoyed our show today. This was a little better than our last one. Our last one was we spent some time to getting ready today. We got the hanger all cleaned up. We're proud of what's going on. We're glad to be back doing some live stuff. That was awesome having a bunch of people in here. Heck yeah. That's the best live event we've had in a while. So all the links are down below. Text Heather if you need anything. That study guide, this has over 400 questions. Operations Manager Brian Rutledge put this together. He spent four months making it and it's tabbed up as he went through the practical test standards. We know that will soon be the ACS certificates and documents, airworthiness requirements, weather information, cross country airspace, performance limitations, general aerodynamics, operation of systems, aeromedical factors. He has first each chapter. It will give you the questions where you can we left you space so you can self test and write the answer in. And then in that same chapter the same question is repeated with the correct answer so you can go through and check your answers, write them in and then go through and read the correct answer. This is not for sissies or wimps. This is for hardcore. Somebody who's gonna spend. You're gonna spend some hours going through this but if you want to really, really, really, really nail a checkride, look at that. Over 400 questions. Brian Rutledge put this together this year. It's a pretty phenomenal piece. And just for stuff like this, it's easy. Just open up, start asking questions, man. I'll be using this next week on my next 101 with our pro pilot member. Awesome. Well, I'm going to get out of here so we can get moving on with our day. Thanks everybody for tuning in. Hope you like the look of the studio or I mean the hogs hanger. Things are changing fast. We've cleaned this place, got our studio back in gear, we had everything changed While we did the new aerodynamic videos inside Private Pilot, we rebuilt that whole entire section. And our artist took off this week, Tuesday flew to get him to Indianapolis to fly back home to Colorado. He is going to work for us remotely. He is right now working on illustrations for our Carb Heat video, what yout need to Know. That Carb Heat video was done by Dave Redmond, same guy that did a lot of those aerodynamic videos that people loved and necessarily didn't want us to get rid of those videos because they liked Dave's teaching. But Dave wrote on a black on a whiteboard, and the particularly the green marker was really, really, really hard to see. So we brought an illustrator in to see if we could take those presentations and have him draw to Dave's teaching. And we weren't sure if we could pull it off. And Jason Cutter, who I know here was here earlier, which you're gonna hear his name more often here in the future. Hint, hint about helicopters coming. He might have one and I might have one if they're, you know, something that's gonna be happening anyway. He said, I didn't know how you were gonna be able to pull that off and if it would work, but he said, nice job. And the members have been making comments in the aerodynamics section about how much they love the fact that we kept Dave's teaching and we added an illustrator drawing what Dave had drawn, but drawn it, you know, with more color. And we go to that screen. People have really enjoyed it. So Dave is. Or our HOGS illustrator, Ken Penn, is working on Carb Heat. What you need to know. That's the next one. And then I'm not sure what we're sending him next. We're all in agreement that we're going to keep him drawing images for us on any video where a hand drawing helps retention. And I can tell you my aerodynamic knowledge is refreshed. And some of it I understand even better now than I did before, because, yeah, I've been teaching that stuff for a lot of years. But when you take Dave's teaching and then I'm helping an illustrator try to learn how to draw that, and then I'm in editing, trying to put it all together, it hone. It's like honed my memory on aerodynamics and a couple areas, I'm like, wow, I never thought about that before until we were really dissecting the drawings and diving deep into it. So I even benefited from hiring an illustrator and going in and reworking these videos. I got a lot out of it. So I Know that all of you as well. So there's still monthly. Oh, I see. Dave Faulkner. I was hoping you'd be here today, Dave. Dave was here a couple months ago and I thought about mentioning you today, Dave. So, you know, you can see behind me. Remember what it looked like here? Dave was here this summer and I was wrapped up working on payroll taxes and setting up 401k for us and doing a bunch of stuff and I was pulling my hair out. So it wasn't. I wasn't doing anything. I was doing behind the scenes things to make hogs bigger and better. And Dave was here and he's like, wow, this place kind of needs, you know, you. This isn't, you know, this needs to get to be your happy place again. Well, it is. We're having a blast. We've been cleaning the hell out of it. We've got a spic and span. We've been washed, every single wall. We've cleaned everything. We've rearranged the studio. Just getting ready for so much stuff that's going to happen. I'm glad, Dave Faulkner, that you got to, you know, be here a few months ago and go out and enjoy. But now, you know, we're back and we're back in a big way. Actually, we could say bigger, badder than ever. It's kind of the deal. All right, my throat's getting sore. I'm going to roll out. Thanks everybody for tuning in. There's helicopterground.com for our self signup options. Those are@helopterground.com. remember it's 24 hour test flight. You can go in, check out the training, decide if it's right for you. Keep as long as you like. Cancel anytime, come back anytime. Remember, Heather at 574-767-1797 is your concierge. She can answer pretty much about 95% of anything you're going to want to know. She can answer. And if she has any trouble, she'll reach out to Brian, Daniel or me and we'll get you an answer. But she can handle most all of it. Remember, she's got a yearly deal going. So thanks everybody for tuning in. I'm gonna shut up and walk away. Otherwise I'll just keep talking and talking and talking and talking. Peace out. See.