Kenny Keller explains why weight and balance matter: an overweight aircraft can fly fine until an emergency happens and you can't recover. He shares flying his R44 slightly overweight, how powerful helicopters hide the problem, and recommends checking with modern apps before takeoff.
Questions this video answers
December 10, 2023.
Robinson R44 (referred to as "the R44").
Tim Tucker app.
moagear.net knee board.
$9.95.
Chapters
If you're not taking the time to make sure you're within weight and balance, within the center of gravity limits, you could get yourself killed. The reason that we push weight and balance is because the aircraft may take off just fine, the aircraft may fly just fine, and you won't notice anything. The problem lies if you're overweight or out of the center of gravity limits. You have an emergency, you may not be able to deal with that emergency and end up in a fatal accident because you couldn't recover properly because you're out of CG or you're out of weight and balance or out of over your weight, over your total gross weight. So this is something that all of us that are experienced pilots, at some point, we probably have done something that we were maybe a little bit out of weight and balance. Well, I'll just tell you, we have the R44 here this summer, and I was going to take up a friend and I loaded the helicopter with fuel on a warm summer night because I was planning on staying up for a while. Then the friend says, hey, can I bring my two kids? Sure, bring them along. I should have done the weight and balance real quick. And that night, I knew when I picked up, I was like, man, this feels a little heavy and feels a little bit funny. And after that flight, I checked and went, yep, I screwed up. I was a little overweight when I took off that night. And I know that's why the aircraft was acting just a little bit different. I was still very careful, but I was just uneasy. Weight and balance, you know, for us old school people, we've been doing it forever. I think my iPad just died. We used to have this by weight, and we had to do it by hand in this. I hated it. I hated weight and balance. I hated figuring it by hand. But now you have, like, the Tim Tucker app that I was showing you at the beginning. We did it. Did. We did recently do a video on this. Geronimo was cool to reach out and ask us if we would do a video on the weight balance app. And I did that. I tried staying old school as long as I could because I still want people to know how to do it old school. But you know what? The weight and balance, once you start using that weight and balance app, oh, my God, it figures the performance for you. Figures the weight and balance. It makes it so freaking easy. There's the iPad coming back to life. So I just want to show you here on the knee board made by moagear.net we've been ordering these and putting these with our packages. This is a nice knee board, has a simple quick way to attach your iPad. You can put this back on top. So you have the old school way. You have the option of having both. I can't stress enough the importance of weight and balance and why you need to spend to do it correctly. And I'll reiterate, you know, if you're new to this, you may have never heard it before. If you're an experienced pilot, you already know this. The problem is and I'll give you instrument for example, I went to a specialized instrument school, they talk specifically about this. The instrument is a brute helicopter. It's built like a frickin tank and it can take a lot of abuse. And it can also fly really really well overweight. And they made the point. They said these aircraft are powerful enough that you can definitely overload them. You'll be overweight and you'll go fly it. And you'll have no idea that you're overweight. If you didn't do the proper weight and balance, you won't know the aircraft is going to fly just fine. But they pointed out numerous different reasons why in certain events, certain failures, you will not be able to accomplish the emergency landing due to being overweight. So that is the reason why we spend so much time talking about weight and balance. Now, as easy as these, that Tim Tucker app makes it, or other weight and balance apps, whatever you might use, it makes it so freaking easy it's not even funny. We do offer these knee boards along with our Pro Pilot special. Not Pro Pilot Special. Pro Pilot now has this as an option. We have a cool Hogs backpack that we're utilizing now. And with Pro Pilot we send you everything you need. If you know you're going to go off the street to see if I start building your time and I'm going to flight school. I've approved my money and I haven't got the books or anything yet. We'll ship you everything you need along with the Pro Pilot. So there'll be a link down below for that along with links for a free PDF of my number one bestseller, Amazon Checkride. Free PDF of my number one bestseller I did with Taz Chrisman 2018 Flight Instructor of the Year. We put our 50 years combined experience in there on things we see people screw up on checkrides. We'll also ship you these within the US for 9.95 and then we got one more that tomorrow will have a new logo on it. Maneuver Guide Free PDF down below. You can just view it on your electronic device. Print it off if you like. Based on the Helicopter Flying Handbook, just a simple little tool to help you refresh when you're sitting around thinking about maneuvers and going through your mind practicing going how to shoot a normal approach, how to do a steep approach, and on and on and on. So click the bell and that little subscribe button, give us a like and go down below. Make a comment too. We're putting out a lot of different things. Mishaps, screw ups, things that we see because we felt super important that you understand the real world, things that go on out there. It's not all about shiny paint and navigation lights and cool photos on, you know, Facebook and Twitter and Instagram. There's a lot of stuff that goes on behind the scenes that you need to understand to be a pilot. So we'll see you next video Peace out.
When you feel the pressure to fly, but know the right decision is to stay on the ground, hit the hogs, no go and live to fly another day. Helicopterground.
