"well Kenny my check ride was surely a horror story"

Today I want to share a story with you about a failed checkride. And I just got this email just like an hour ago and I thought, you know what, I'm going to shoot this before it slips off into oblivion, Right. And I don't make the video. I've already responded to this young man. I'm going to give you the jest of the email, the really important parts. It's really long. And he emailed me after failing his checkride and I want to give you a little bit of the background. He contacted me after our Christmas sale and he'd missed the date. Want to know if he'd get a discount. And so I did give him a small discount. Not as big as the, the Christmas one. But anyway, he was telling me how he was getting ready for his private. And he was like a week away and he thought he was pretty good because he'd had some things that held the check right up. And he's like, I've been hitting the grounds really hard and I think I'm going to be pretty good. But I'm still looking at your ground school. And he didn't become a member, which if he'd have taken the time, I'm going to brag it up. I definitely think that we could have helped him maybe put his foot down at some point with a couple things that went on here. But I'm going to read through it and I'm going to be honest and transparent with it. I am going to keep it confidential. Not going to mention his name or the flight school's name or the instructor examiner. Not going to do that because it doesn't matter. This is about getting through checkrides. And the interesting thing about this one, this is a part 141 flight school. So you expect a higher level of instruction at a part 141 flight school. Okay, you can have good at 61, you can have great, good and great at part 141 and then vice versa. You can have bad at part 61 and you can have bad at part 141. Not going to say this gentleman got really bad instruction, but this problem with this check ride boils back to the same thing that we harp about all the time. And it's about the preparation. And in that book that Taz Chrisman and I did, 2018 play striker of the year, Dan Taz Chrisman top 10 checkride tips. It's covered in there. The things that are talked about in this email where this young man got tripped up. So starting off his email said, hey Kenny, my checkride was surely a horror story and I wanted to share it with you and others so that others can learn from my experience. So he goes on to tell me that he didn't make it past the oral and that he was up until 2:30 the night before completely stressed out with his mind going crazy. Okay, that's normal. The only way you can even try to avoid that is preparation, the proper ground school, the proper flight training and having everything just super ready a few days or a week or two prior to taking the checkride. And I understand what happens in the real world, right? I failed my first checkride for some of the same reasons that we're going to talk about today with this young man's email. It's about the preparation. Hands down, it's about the preparation and when there's something going on that's a little bit behind the game or a little hinky or something's not quite right and you're trying to fix it last minute, it does add unneeded stress to the checkride and that stress the day of can totally blow it for you. So let's move forward a little farther through this. I showed up at 7:30 but the school opens at 8. Anyways, me and the examiner were talking with each other before anyone was there and he informed me that we were going to be observed that day. Okay. So he goes on to tell me that, you know, he's stressed out, that he's going to be the examiner is going to be observed by the faa. Okay, that occasionally happens. It's part of it. And I understand that's going to be added stress to the checkride. But if you are totally prepared, your instructors in your flight school are prepared and you've been through the pts or what will soon be the acs. When you've crossed every T and dotted every single I and you feel really good and you real feel really confident you should be able to sit through that. And I understand it's out of stress. But I've been through checkrides where an examiner was checking out another examiner who was checking me out to be like say I was going to be a check airman for our 135 operations and in checkrides I've been through that where occasionally that's going to happen. So if you're going to go the professional pilot route which this young man is doing, knowing that any examiner any time might be getting evaluated by the faa, right. It happens. So skipping a little further in, next thing I highlighted the things that popped out to my mind. So my instructor called in sick the day before the checkride. So we were unable to update my accurate info and be prepared for the checkride. Okay, people get sick, right? It happens. So as soon as I read that, I'm thinking, okay, your instructor called in the day before sick. If you were truly ready and prepared and all your documents signed and everything done, it could be a little nerve rattling, but it shouldn't be a big deal. The instructor calling off sick the day before. It's nice when your instructor can be there. Okay. I try to do that for my students, but there's sometimes it just doesn't work out. So again, if you're prepared ahead of time as you should be, everything should be done to that point that your instructor could be sick that day. You know, had a flat tire on the way, had to call for a tow truck, Whatever the case is, the day before, you should be ready. I always tell people, the last day, the day before, I don't even really want to see you as a student. I want to be completely done the day before or the day before that. And then maybe you got some one last minute maneuver you want to go hit one more time. But I don't even, you know, I try to discourage that. I tell people, look, out of all these checkrids I've been through over all these years, the flying is never good the day before. And anything you're doing the day before, you're stressed. You know, those last few days, moving up to a checkride, your flying gets worse, your memory gets worse. It's just human nature, it's just how it goes. And people will normally find out that flying the day before the CheckRide or the two days before the checkride, their performance is going downhill, they're not doing as well. And then usually they'll come into the checkride and they'll surprise themselves of how much when they go out after the oral's done and they get in and they do the flight, they usually do way better during the flight than what they thought they were going to do. Right? Because once you've gotten through the paperwork and getting started and getting over that stress and you get through the oral, then the flight portion is actually pretty easy for most people. The ground school is what trips people up most of the time, goes back to being prepared. So he does go on to say that he felt abandoned the day before and you know, he had some things to finish up and actually admits it, says, well, I know I'm going to Be a private pilot. So I should know how to do these things on my own. Which you should. Right. Cross country playing and all the things you've been training for for weeks or months or years, it should all be at that point the day before you should be able to do that again. It's nice if your instructor's there to help you out last minute, but you can't count on it. So he goes on to say that he had to call the owner of the flight school to come in and finish out the acre and get that stuff done. So of course that's delaying what's going on. You know, the first problem was everybody should be on the same page at what time the school even opens. You get there beforehand. I always preach be there an hour before. But if you can't get into the FBO and get your books laid out and get your things organized, check weather and do the things that you need to do, that puts extra stress on it, then the instructor can't make it. And then you're calling in the owner of their flight school to do the IACRA when the examiner is standing there. That's totally stressful. And I get it. So you can see where this is going, right? It's going downhill the last minute. So it's the last minute. Preparation instructor doesn't show up. Flight school's not open when they get there. Examiner's standing there waiting. Students stand there waiting. Ikra is not done. You're calling in the flight school owner to come in and finish the icra. You know, this is going. This is going down the tubes, right? It's going downhill. So he says the owner played it off because he was supposed to be there anyways and then left shortly because he had something else to do. So instructor's not there, Flight school owner scatters. It's part 141 Flight School. You know, I would think this would have been a little bit better. A little bit better played out. Okay, so next he says, so then the money issue comes up. Nobody told me I was supposed to bring $500 for the check ride. Maybe I should have known, but that was actually supposed to be part of my block payment for my private pilot. Yes, they were supposed to pay that. Okay, in the front of the pts, there's a thing that a page that lists what you have to have the day of the checkride. And I've been harping on this one for years. You as a student should be going through that list in the pts. Your instructor should be going through that with you going through that page in the pts, it's your job as the student applicant to know that page and go through it. It's also your instructor's job to go through it with you weeks in advance going, okay, these are the things we have to have the day of the checkride. And I've harped on it in my training so hard for 20 years because when I got started as a brand new cfi, the examiner I was introduced to started using the flight school, says, hey, go out and fly with the examiner, get to know him a little bit. Which was nice, right? We get to fly a little bit together. And on the way to the helicopter, I said, what advice do you have to me as a brand new flight instructor? What should I be looking for? What should I be doing? And he said very simply, make sure your students have everything they need when I show up for the checkride. He said, I have a lot of problems with people showing up and not having an item that is required to take the test. And I've been telling these stories for years. And that's why we harp on this so much during our helicopter land ground school. The examiner fee should not be a surprise. It's in the pts and it says examiner fee if applicable. Okay. This should have been discussed between instructor and student. And I encourage all students, everybody I've worked with over the years, and everybody goes to helicopter land ground school. We talk about that page and I say, look, you as a student even need to be going through that ahead of time, making sure you have all that. And if you have a question about something, you go to your instructor with it. But the instructor should also, a week or two before the test, a couple weeks is best. Should be going through that, going through that list and say, do we have this? Do we have this? Do we have this? I see it over and over and over again. People not having what they need and then you have problems like this. So skipping a little bit forward here, he says the examiner expressed a lot of discontent about that and all of this and I apologize and asked him to please stay. So the examiner stays and he goes on in the email talking about how he keeps apologizing over and over to the point he's annoying the examiner and the examiner's going, you know, stop it, quit apologizing. Let's move on. Okay. Of course the examiner is aggravated. The my examiner I've been using for 20 years, he'd be. I know how unhappy he would be. Right. And that's why in the chapter of top 10 checkride tips one of them, the chapter is, you know, being there an hour ahead of time and taking that hour to make sure everything's ready, everything's done. So when he walks in the door, stuff is ready. Examiners in general aren't going to be impressed if it's last minute and things aren't done right because then they're in their mind, they're going to, well, how's the rest of this checkride gonna go? They've had months, weeks, maybe years. They've got all this time to complete. So you want to be fresh and ready to go that day and you want to be early and the flight school needs to be open and your paperwork's got to be done and you got to have everything you need. And I know it sounds so simple, but that's what we've been preaching for years is it is the simple stuff that trips you up. And I just did a video yesterday and I talked about it in the video yesterday. It never fails. This is just what happens. It's not that one thing that you've been, you're so worried about this part of the training and you worry and you worry and you worry. Checkride day comes and that thing you've been stressing over, it goes like clockwork. And then someday something that you didn't see comes along and boom blasts you out of, you know, midair and you go, oh my God. You know, so he goes to say, all of this got into my head. And when the oral finally began, I was so stressed I could not remember wake turbulence. When he asked me, okay, that's a problem. Any examiner, it's going to have a problem if you don't understand wake turbulence, right? I mean, if you don't remember how many rivets are in the tail boom, who cares? But if you don't understand wake turbulence or you just can't recall it because you're so stressed, the checkride could stop right there. You know, I get it. The stress monster comes along and grabs you and it is because of the lack of preparedness and all these issues last minute. The prior 24 hours where things should have been done is just making that stress level soar the day of the checkride. So then when you finally get to sit down and take the test, your heart's been racing for an hour and a half, two hours while you're trying to get things together and get things signed and log into Iacra. And that stuff can be a nightmare. You know, just do, do you have your login information. People forget that sometimes and you're trying to fix an IACRA problem and a person doesn't have their login and they can't find it and they're calling to try to find a login or you're trying to reset it. Oh, my God, those things just turn into such a monstrosity. I also froze on the I'm safe and guess which one I could not recall and had to ask for a water break. It's stress. Seriously, I'm not making this up. I could not recall the S in the I'm safe. He finally stopped the exam and I couldn't even recall the placards and stickers on the aircraft. It sounds like he gave you ample time when you're having that many mistakes on basic private pilot stuff that you have to know. I can't see an examiner going on past that point, right? It sounds like he was giving you a break, let you have a water break, breathe a little bit and try to go in and out. But when you start, you know, right off the bat hitting things that are absolutely mandatory to know, he doesn't have any choice. I mean, the examiner is there to help you get the rating. He wants you to be prepared. He hopes you're going to be prepared and have a good check, ride, get paid and everybody go home and the day ends right, and everything's good. They're not there to fail you and pick on you, but they want you to be prepared. He says, I know I can't put the blame on others that I failed my checkride, but I can't ignore that. All this compounds the stress I was experiencing, which is what I've basically just been saying. Honestly, I feel like we all failed. And he sums it up with, I know one thing for sure, I will not fail again. And then he goes on to ask about if he can still sign up under that discount for ground school. And I told him, I said, you know, your story isn't so unlike anybody else's story that I've heard in the last 20 years. We hear this all the time, right? And I just said, hey, man, you know, it's okay. And I gave him a discount code and said, you need to sign up for hogs because all these things I'm preaching all the way through helicopter land, ground school, right? And we talk about these things, and if you use the training and you go through it step by step and you listen and you go through what we're telling you, you're probably going to make that checkride and you're probably going to make it the first time around. Of course anything can happen. But, you know, here's an example of someone who looked at taking our training, but they thought they were pretty good. And no disrespect to him, I appreciate the email and that he took the time to write all that out because I failed my first check ride and I know how devastating it is. He said he was up till 2:30 in the morning. I think I was up all night. I might have finally fell asleep at, you know, it's been many years ago, but I remember being up a majority of the night terrified. Why was I terrified? My own confidence. And then we had problems when we got there. We couldn't get access to the maintenance log books. Maintenance logbooks are locked up at the mechanic shop and there's nobody around. I'd never even seen the log books. That's one thing that my instructor failed to show me during the training was always like, oh, well, we got to go through aircraft logbooks, but they're locked up today. We'll get them another day, right? So we felt getting ready, if we'd have went through the pts like we should have a couple days ahead of time, we would have, oh man, we can't get into the maintenance. We need to call that guy now and say we gotta have these maintenance log books for Tuesday or whatever day it's gonna be, right? And I played that game as an instructor later where we're getting ready and we're calling around and going down our flights go, where's the logbooks? Oh, they're down at the mechanic shop. Mechanics an hour away, right? So we're sending people by car, send people by plane or whatever to go get logbooks last minute because they were normally with the mechanic. There's so many of these little things, right? So it's about learning all the knowledge that you have to know, which is huge. There's a lot of things you got to know, but it's not the knowledge itself that normally trips people up. And just like in this young man's email, he said, kenny, I know this stuff. I've studied it through and through and I know it. And I couldn't spit it out to the examiner. And I'm like, I feel for him, right? I know what it's like. I've been there, done that. And at the end though, he said, I won't do it again. Well, good for you. Don't do it again and you won't, right? You take your time like I did. I didn't go back for six months, six frickin months. But what did I do? I studied my ass off and I sat and created my notebook that I talk about over and over and have for many years. And I just started writing things down because we learned through repetition, right? You can learn through watching videos, you can learn listen audio, you can learn through reading. You can learn by making your own notes and writing things down. It's science fact that writing things down helps the memory. And that's why I always encourage people to make their own notebook. Especially things that they know that they're struggling with. The more you see it, the more you hear it, the more you read it, the more you write it down, the more concrete and the more solid that comes into your brain to help you on Checkride. But I can't say enough. That's lack of preparation. It's too many things going on at the last minute. Especially to part 141 school. You really wouldn't expect that it shouldn't go on any school, right? I would just think it'd be more common at a part 61. Just saying that's my feelings on that subject. So helicopterground.com below you can sign up for in our memberships. You can also go to helicopterground.com and grab that book for seven bucks shipping and handling that top ten checkride tips I told you about. And I, and I checked this, I checked his account tonight and this young man did buy Helicopter Checkride which is a great book for general knowledge. And I was like man, I wish he'd have bought at least bought top 10 checkride tips. That may have been enough to help him if he started reading it a couple weeks in advance. Where we're harping, you know, getting the paperwork done, iacra, all the stuff you need, being on time, getting everything set, maybe, maybe not. But so he is going to become a ground school member. I'm going to go through the videos before he goes back for his checkride and hopefully we'll hear back and hear how he excelled in the training. So do us a favor, subscribe to our channel and click that little bell when you do, when you subscribe a little bell pops up. Click that bell and that way you'll be notified of our videos that we do weekly, pretty much two or three times a week. We're usually putting out content on all kinds of different stuff. Sometimes it's just fun goofing around in the studio, sometimes it's content, sometimes we're doing Accident review videos. We've been doing a little more and more of that. So subscribe. Click that bell, go check out helicopterground.com. leave us your comments below and we'll see in the next video. All right. Got me switched over. Awesome. I have to mention first, Kenny Keller's hanger. Tony Stark's garage. Very similar. I love that. I freaking love that. Hey, we had a nice crowd today, man. That's awesome. Thanks, everybody, for tuning in. If you got any questions, ask them now and we'll debrief a little bit. But you know, I put my thoughts in on this, on this checkride. And again, no disrespect to this young man. I'm glad that he took the time to write all that out and he learned a valuable lesson, right? I mean, he's not. Not the only one. Like I said, it's not a totally unsimilar story is what we hear, right? We hear all these. Check right. Horror stories. Oh, my God, you wouldn't believe some of the stuff we hear. And to help him out if he's watching, you're lucky if you get through it the first time. Some people do. But there's other horror stories where somebody has failed once or twice and then they have weather issues, maintenance issues. I don't know what the record is for the amount of failed checkrides or just couldn't even go because of weather. Some other issue. So it happens. Being prepared is the way to combat that. So pretty awesome. We've seen the big Bill theory. Brian, Paul, whole bunch of people in here, Daniel. And answer the question about the heli exports next week. And we just did a video yesterday. Isn't that right, Heather? Letting everybody know we'll be there on Tuesday and then just partial day on Wednesday. But we did that video yesterday. Who else we got here? I don't see any big questions. I mentioned Paul. Robert. I know. I saw Mark McDaniel. And awesome. Got some lugging in from France. Love that. Ryan. Tommy. Awesome. Very cool. So, anybody else got any questions? Bridget. Nice. Hello. From Suriname. Is that right? All the best for 2020. Awesome. There we go. On this subject, would you advocate your instructor giving you a mock exam, flight skills test before the actual test? Absolutely. I mean, that should be. I mean, I do it and have for years. Right. I mean, it's always good to have another instructor fly with your student to give them a checkout before a test. But I've always done that, you know, throughout the training from day one to the day before they go to the Checkride. There'll be a time where we sit and you know, when you're doing ground school, I feel like I'm always kind of prepping them for the actual oral test because we're teaching, but I'm always asking questions, questions to test their knowledge. And I like this question because the other day, well, not the other day when Taz Crispin was here at New Year's, we sat, had a good conversation about, you know, the acs coming out soon for helicopters, it's already out for airplanes. And we were also talking about, oh, spt, scenario based training. And he goes, you've already been doing it. He goes, you've been doing scenario based training all along. Which I feel like I have. Right. Because I don't just sit and teach subjects the whole time I'm asking you questions. And then we go out and we're in the aircraft and we do dual training and we do a lot of different things. But there are times where I'm giving you scenarios. Well, let's pretend we're going in to land at a, you know, off airport over here, here, and this is your area. There's all kinds of things. So yes, I think most good instructors are going to be giving you those scenarios when they're sitting doing one on one ground with you. But yeah, having kind of a mock checkride. Absolutely. It's a great idea to do it with your instructor and it's an even better idea to have another instructor come in. And I know I've done that with my fellow instructors over the years where maybe I'm prep and stuff somebody and I'll say, hey, Chris, you want to come in and give my guy a mock oral and a mock checkride and vice versa. We've done the same thing where, you know, we test each other students because, you know, the more variety the better. Right. And you learn something new from almost everyone you fly with. So I highly recommend that. Absolutely. Hey, Kenny, what was your most challenging flight? I can answer that question. It's a little off the subject, but it was when I first went into EMS and I transitioned into my first twin engine helicopter, which is a BK117. Loved the aircraft. But my first thing that I got to do after going through my initial 10 days of training, I had to go to Dallas, Texas, do 10 days of training on just basically 135 operations and our company operations. Then I went to Ohio for several days to do the actual flight portion, learning the BK117. So I come back to Indiana and before I Start working at the base. My first assignment is to take a BK117 from Fort Wayne and land it on the roof of the Mayo Clinic. And was kind of a long flight, you know, here I am, new company, new aircraft that I only had, you know, not a lot of hours in. And when I went to land on the roof at the Mayo Clinic, the wind, I don't remember. I know it was gusta near 50 knots, right? And I can remember making my approach to the roof helipad, and the wind was knocking me around so freaking hard, hard. And I can remember just, you know, I was a nervous wreck. And I can remember in my mind going, breathe, right? Just like we teach our students all the time when they're in there and they're tight on the controls. I remember going, just breathe in and out. Fly the approach the way you know it needs to be done. And I was terrified because I'd never landed on any. On any roof quite that high. And because I'm an unfamiliar city state of never flown in an aircraft I'm new to, and these high winds, going to the rooftop. And I think if I do that again today, I would go to the local airport and I would call my company and say, man, I parked at the airport. I can wait here and take it when the wind calms down. But I wouldn't do that again. That was my most challenging. That came right to my mind. That was most challenging thing I ever done. Flying to a rooftop heliport and an aircraft I was not that familiar with, with wind gusting 50 knots. And I've used that in my career since. Right? I won't go now in that kind of wind. I wouldn't do it, and I wouldn't do it again. I just wouldn't even take the flight. That was a great question. Cool. My instruction, my instructors throwing questions at me while we fly. And that's good. Your instructor should be asking you questions while you're flying, not on his phone texting his girlfriend. Which we've actually had these complaints, members emailing us saying, you know, dude, my instructor's on this phone texting while we're out flying. And I'm like, I'd fire him. I'd get another. I wouldn't. I wouldn't put up with that for a minute. So your instructor should be asking you questions why your flight and your preference prepping? Because the examiner is going to do that. And that's part of the examiner's job, is distractions, right? He's going to distract you during the Flight not to try to fail you. He's going to distract you because he wants to make sure you can handle your workload right. Because you're taking a test, you're nervous, you're trying to navigate on part of this or your flying maneuvers, whatever it is you're doing. He's going to ask questions during that checkride because he wants to know you can fly to a standard for whichever rating you're going for. You can think, you can answer questions and you can evaluate things that pop up. Like they like to reach down and turn alternator switch off. Right. In most aircraft it takes a couple minutes before the actual light will pop on. So he may do something like, hey, is that, is that a water tower over there? You know, he'll get you just to look outside for a second, you know, reach down, look, the alternator switch off. I've never, can't say they don't. They shouldn't point anything really dirty on you. Things like that are simple, you know, it's not a big deal. And those things you should be able to handle. So that is great that your instructor is talking to you and asking you questions while you're flying. That's exactly the way it should be. So thumbs up for your instructor because that's exactly what he should be doing. Thanks for sharing. And you probably would have done it differently. Yeah, I guess I covered it already. What was the question? I missed it. Biggest in flight mistake you made as a student. I gotta think for a minute. It's been a long time. First one that pops up. I can remember getting close to dynamic rollover on a pickup. I can remember doing some solo work in my first couple hours and I can remember having the cyclic off and I can remember bringing a skid up like. And then I set it back down and came up level. Probably not using a good two step process, but I was brand new student pilot. That's the first thing I can think of is bringing the skid up pretty high on a pan pickup. Working on them by myself. And I'm sure it was one of the first ones I did right. Got lost on my. Here's, here's a good one. I got lost on my private pilot checkride retesting. Okay, so I failed my first private. Don't get through the oral study my ass off for six months. Go back during the oral portion especially. Examiner says you brought a pink slip with you today. I'm like, yep. He goes, why did, why is that pink slip here? Why did you fail the first time? And I said, because I didn't know my stuff then. Like, I know my stuff now. And he's like, well, you're batting 100% today. And that's why I'm wondering why you had such a problem before. And I said, I studied and I knew my stuff, but I didn't know it. Like, I know it now today. And I was not going to fail again. And because I studied so freaking hard and maybe even went overboard, I was. I wasn't going to fail that second time. So get through the oral. He tells me how good I'm doing. Great. We get in the helicopter, and we're up near Chicago, and I'm supposed to take off on a heading of, like, 115. And in my nervousness, I pick, like, 150-and-we're in a little R22. So I know he sees what I'm doing, right? I don't realize I've taken off on the wrong course just out of nerves. So we take off, and pretty quickly, I noticed that, like, my first landmark is not where it should be. And I can't figure this out because I knew the area. So I keep flying. And I'm getting nervous, right, Because I'm thinking I'm gonna fail because I'm. I'm freaking out. He didn't say a word because I know what he was doing. He was wanting to see what I was gonna do, right? So I keep flying, hearts racing. I'm thinking, oh, great, I'm gonna fail. And I know that I'm off. And I hadn't even figured out what I'd done wrong. I don't think. I don't remember what point I figured out. I do remember looking over and seeing what it was at the time called the Holiday Star Theater. And it's, like the biggest structure in the. That part of Indiana up near Chicago. And I look over and I see it, so I know that I can take that landmark and I can look at my map and figure out where I'm at. So he's watching me. He sees what I do. So when I look and I realize where I'm at, I realize what I did realize the course about that time. He goes, yeah, Holiday Star Theater. Pretty cool, huh? I go, yeah, the son of bitch is right over there, you know? Know, Because I was excited, right? He goes, all right. So now he goes, you got yourself all screwed up, obviously. And I'm like, yep. He goes, what are you going to do now? And I said, I'm going to go back to the airport and Start over. He didn't say a word. I turn around, fly back to the airport, and I'm freaking out because I'm thinking I'm going to get to the airport and he's going to fail me and tell me to go on in. So I get back to the airport, make a turn, get on the right course. And he goes, so what'd you do? So I took off on the wrong course, you know, 150 versus 115 or whatever it was. And he's like, now what are you going to do? I said, I'm going to restart and I'm going to go on the right course. What'd that just do to your time factor? What did that just do to your fuel? What about your. Are we going to be able to make it to your first intended fuel stop now? What's it going to do to that? Right? So he puts me through the wringer, asking me the questions, and I had to breathe and think about it and continue on, right? And I did. And then he gave me my diversion after getting lost, going back, starting over, then gave me my diversion, found it, went back to the airport and finished the checkride. And he did tell me after the fact, he said, this guy was cool, right? So once you were done, you went over to the restaurant slash bar next door, right? We had supper and we were having a few drinks, and he was like, I almost failed you. He goes, but you figured out where you screwed up, you went back and you fixed it. And I actually remember now him saying. He said, I think it was when we. When I took off, when I fixed the corner. He said, okay, I'm buying on that one, but if you do it again, I'm failing you. So he told me that after the fact we were in the restaurant, he's like. He goes, I was going to fail you, and if you would have got lost again, I would have failed you. But he said, at least now I know that you can be frustrated and you can be scared and you can think through it. He goes, so I let you continue on because I know you failed once, and I put you under the pressure. Well, you put yourself under the pressure, but then I watched you. I observed what you did or what you were going to do after screwing up. And he goes, and I find comfort in that. And he. And he actually said, actually, the guys or people, guys or girls, where somebody completely aces an entire checkride, he said, that actually worries me just a little bit because if I don't see them get stomped or I don't see them making mistakes and know that they know how to correct it or they know how to get themselves out of a. Out of a jam. He goes, I'm actually a little bit uneasy about that. He goes, so I. I prefer to try to get somebody stumped or a little frustrated because then I can see can they deal with it and can they work through it? So that's. I forget what the question I was even answering, but that's. That's one of my best stories there. Because that's part of the check ride. Yes, that's. That's probably one of the biggest ones. And I'm sure I could, you know, go on, think others. It's great knowing all this from you. He's been switching my hydraulics off lately too. Yep, that's all right. You got to know how to land with hydraulics off. And yeah, it's a tough. It's tough, but you'll get through it. And they just want to make sure that you can handle it and get the thing on the ground. I've been through that with hydraulics on, hydraulics off. With the jet ranger, the R44, BK117, I don't think that would work. We had two systems. If they both fell, you can't fly it. But anyway, been through that. What was the scariest situation as a cfi? Oh, this one I know immediately. Okay, I know that one was a fairly new cfi and this is actually a good story, but I almost quit. You know, this is the day of failures, right? This is. This is telling you all the bad today. But it's good, right? The end. The end result is good because we learn from these mistakes and we learn from the bad things that happen. I'm a brand new cfi, couple hundred hours, and I'm really not confident to go out and teach autos because I was kind of terrified of him all the way through anyway. And I said to the other instructor who I worked with, and I knew this guy because we did our commercial together, we did our CFIs together, we went to California to do our CFI and took our checkrides with Tim Tucker. So I knew this guy and I just said, hey, you know, I want to go out and do some more autos and I want to do them with you. Just, I want to get some practice up before I really start teaching them because I'm just started brand new. And he's like, hey, cool, yeah, sure, I'll ask the owner. So he asked the owner about it and the owner's like, oh, well, I want to go do them with Kenny because I want to go practice some. I wanted to go with another cfi, right? Especially CFI had been training with. But the owner's like, oh no, I'll just come in, I'll go do them with Kenny because. Well, just because the owner wanted to do it, right? Well, the owner was a pretty private pilot, not a cfi, not a commercial pilot. He was private pilot, had a few hundred hours and he's what I'll call a weekend warrior. He had a full time computer job and he was in his business all week, Monday through Friday and they would come out and fly on weekends, you know, when he could. And he was just, he bought the flight school so he could build time. Nothing wrong with that. But we go out to do autos and we're doing some straight ins and we're doing whatever. And I go, okay, well let's, you know, let's go do a 180. And as I'm talking him through, he's taken off. And when I teach 180s, I always tell people, look, make sure you go out and make a nice big circle and give yourself plenty of time to get set up for the 180 because if you rush it, it's just hard to get everything ready and for that 180 to come out nice. And I could tell the guy, you could tell when somebody's not paying attention, attention to you, right? So we're going around, he's making cranking in real tight when I feel like it's going too fast, right? And I'm trying to tell him, you know, you probably gotta go a little bit farther. I want you to take your time, I want you to get set up better. And boom. Enters the auto. And very shortly after he enters it, I don't remember exactly now what happened, but everything goes to hell. Our low RPM horn goes off, he switches the governor off RPM and everything's going freaking crazy. And we're, we're heading for this neighborhood of houses off, just off the end of the airport. And all I can remember now is I had to take control of it. And the problem here, I wasn't really ready, right? I thought he could handle it. So I wasn't right there stiff on the, not stiff, but I wasn't right there under controls, thinking I was going to have to save our flight. Flight. I was just wanting to go brush up. And so anyway, somehow I fix it right. And I know what the factory says is the lowest you can go before it stalls and you die. We were there, I'm telling you. So I was that scared that we were going to stall the blades and go straight to the ground or I wouldn't get it recovered. And we'd hit this flying to one of these houses and it scared both of us to death. I got it under control. We got down to hover and he's like, man, it wasn't good. I'm like, no, we're going in. And we didn't even hardly talk, right? We just go in and we decided to go next door and get something to eat and debrief. And then the CFI who I wanted to fly with goes with us and we sit down, we talk through it and he goes, you just saved us today. And I go, yeah, I know, I did. And I was so terrified and I was so upset by that that I was going to quit. I was going to be done, you know, four years, the time, the money, the headache, the heartache. And I'm like, I'm done. It scared the shit out of me, you know, I'm like so hard, struggle so hard, so long to get there. And then to have an event like that happen, I was terrified. And so I told my, we're calling, you know, my partner, my fellow cfi. I went home that day and go, dude, I don't even know if I'm going to come back. I just, I don't know that I can do this. And I talked to the examiner, the same guy that I did my check ride with, and he's a Vietnam era pilot legend in the industry. And I discussed it with him and he said, now you've learned your lesson. He said you've admittedly you weren't really prepared, that you were kind of just sitting there, your hands weren't near the controls and you thought he could handle it. And he said, there's your first mistake. You never ever, ever get in an aircraft and believe that that person besides you is any better than you. He goes, he's a private pilot with a few hundred hours. You're a commercial pilot, certified flight instructor. You've been through much more training than he has. You've been through advanced training. So your mistake was ever believing that the this guy was going to be able to handle it. He said, so you've had your scare. And he said, almost everybody needs to go through that. As scary as it is, you need that eye opener that makes you sit back and respect the machine, respect the instruction, inspect or respect the rules, the things that were taught from day one. On how to keep us safe. And because I talked to him, he said, you know, Kenny, don't give up. He goes, I understand it scared the hell out of you, but you got to get through. Happens to most everybody. Now it's done, you'll never do it again. Move on. And that's when I hired a CFI to come in and work for me. Not work for me, work with me. Because as a brand new cfi, of course I was broke, I didn't have any money. And that's why I originally asked the owner, hoping he'd list, let me, any other instructor, take the helicopter out, hopefully for free. Right. Well, he wanted the flight time. So anyway, I learned my lesson and that's hands down the most scariest moment I've ever had because I thought I was gonna lose my life. And the second one was the ground residence I went through, and I thought I was gonna lose my life that day too, but that was different. Anyway, I've done plenty of videos on that one and I've talked about that one a lot, lot. But instructing that was my most scary moment and literally changed everything for me after that. And I to end the story, the CFI comes in. He has like 4,000 hours. I've got 200. Right. And he was a CFI that worked at that school, but he was the senior guy that would come in and give people stage checks and do other things, right? And I told him what happened, and he says, okay, I'll come work with you for like a couple days, for a weekend. We come in, I met him, and he goes, all right, today we're not even going to fly. The first thing we're going to do is we're going to do ground school. And we sat and discussed quick stops straight in autos, 90s, 180s, went through all the lesson plans, went through all, every single bit of knowledge there is in every aspect of an auto, and honed all the knowledge just to make sure that that was just rock solid in my brain. And then the next day he goes, okay, we're going to go out and we're going to start with quick stops. We're going to do quick stops and we're going to talk about how close the quickstop is to your flare and the auto rotation. I'm going to show you some things, I'm going to give you some insight on what I want you to do during the flare to prepare for the auto. He goes, and then we're going to do straight inside. Then we're Going to do nineties and then we're going to do one hundred and eighties and then we're going to do one hundred and eighties with two ninety degree turns. And after a couple days of working with him, whether it was two days or three days, he said, all right Kenny, you're good to go. You know, I've been out with you, we've covered every single thing there is to cover. You're doing fine. You have to get back on the horse. You got to get out there and work your way back into it. And he said, of course, course, start easy. You know, when you got a student that gets ready for autos, make sure you do just like we did. Do the, make sure you do the ground, do the quick stops, start with the straight ends and then just work into it and you know, and you'll be just fine. And I would, I've told this story for. It took me probably about 500 hours to actually get comfortable teaching autos because of that first scare. And I kept after it and I just with time build up my skills, put up my confidence. And that first flight school that I worked at, you know, I became kind of the auto king in the end. Right. But it goes back to like fell in my private. It changed everything for me, right. And I wouldn't be here today talking to this video camera and having a ground school if it wasn't for that first failure. That failure shaped how I was going to act and teach after that point. And the same thing happened when that 180 scared me. It scared me so bad that I was going to give up and quit. And then talking to the examiner, getting another high time instructor to go out with me and work through all that again, you know, changed the course, right? So goes back to this day of talking about a young man that fails a checkride. Hey, it happens. I failed mine. You move on, you learn from it and you don't make those same mistakes again. That was kind of long winded. Anything pop up on the questions there? I'm trying to talk and read at the same time, but. Most successful moment as a cfi, I can't think of one in particular. You know, the, the, the thing is successful is I think of, there's tons of them. You know, when you meet somebody that comes in and they say, I want to learn how to fly helicopters. And that day when they get done and the examiner hands them their certificate and they walk over, shake your hand, probably every time that happens, you know, that's a huge success because you've taken that person and helped them become a helicopter pilot. So there's not a whole lot more satisfying than that. And that's why I've always worked hard for my students, even the beginning. And like, now I'm the ground guy, right? I have this ground school. It wasn't my dream, it wasn't what I set out to do, but because of all my failures, everything that happened, I always wanted to go to the extra mile for students. And because I. My first busy flight school I worked at, you had a whole bunch of instructors that were all flight time hungry like I was, and they wouldn't do ground. And a guy who's now one of my best friends of all time was flying with another student, another instructor, I'm at the same school. And his instructor says, hey, you're ready to solo? I'm gonna have you fly with Kenny. Okay, cool. So I take him out, we fly around, and his flying was freaking excellent. I mean, he was a madman. I'm like, God, man, you're ready to sell. This is awesome. You know. So you guys got the. The written test or your pre solo written test done? And he's like, what? Pre solo written? And I go, oh, well, you know, you just got to sit down and answer some questions and look them up in the far AIM or the poh. And he's like, like, far aim, poh, what's that? And I'm like, your instructor's getting ready to solo you. And he just asked me to check you out. And you haven't seen the FAR AIM manual. You don't know what the PoH is. And his instructor was a frickin worked at a college. He was like a freaking professor. And I'm going, you're kidding me. Well, I go, let's go back in. I show him the far aim, show him the poh. So this, this young man is pissed, right? He's like, I'm spending all this money and I'm ready to solo. But I've never seen these books. I'm like, well, you can't solo until you know the basics of the things are laid out in the far AIM that the FAA says I have to cover with you as a cfi or any CFI has to cover with you. So that's my introduction as I'm a brand new cfi to what goes on in the world and what goes on to the real world with instructors that just want to fly, fly, fly, and they don't teach you anything, and they don't sign things off properly and they don't do what they're supposed to do. It's rampant in the industry. You know, if you've hung along this far into the video, it is horrible out there at times, right? Not to take away from good instructors that do do it right, because they're out there. Not to take away from good flight schools that do it right, because they're out there. But there's an awful lot of them out there that don't. And this comes up a lot in question in discussions between, like, me and Taz or me and Brian, my operations manager. You know, we know the right way to do things, and everybody else knows the right way, too. But it's whether you're going to continue to do it the right way or you're going to just veer off on your own path and ask, screw all that shit, right? You forget the basics, that 101 things you learned as a pilot. And that's why people get into trouble, because they don't stick with. Stick with the basics. And I've had people give me compliments and go, wow, man, God, you're so good at this. You're like a genius. I'm like, no, I'm not. You know what I am? I'm a guy that struggled and got taught by some really good people and got taught some really, really good basic fundamentals, and I've always stuck with those throughout my career. And now somebody will go, oh, you're a genius. No, I'm not. I'm taking everything that I learned the right way to do things, the way you're taught from day one, and kept those. Those things that we've learned my entire career. It's not that difficult to be a good cfi. It's not that difficult to be a good commercial pilot. That's not that difficult to be a good private pilot. It's learn the basics, keep your knowledge fresh, and stick by all those things that you're taught from day one and don't lose them and don't get away from them. So, man, I went off in eight different directions there. But you know, what a great audience today and all these great questions, and I. I can't help it, right? Because I'm passionate about what I do, and I just want to give you the background of. That's why I'm here, and that's why Helicopter Island Ground School is here. It's here because of my first failure as a private pilot and my, you know, the things that's happened to me through my career, and that's what goes into helicopter land ground school? Yeah, we're teaching you concepts and knowledge and helping you learn information. But throughout all of our courses, I'm always putting the bad stuff in in there too, you know, and I'm putting in the screw ups that we see on check rides and the things that happen in training. And it's just not that hard to be good if you apply yourself and you try and keep knowledge fresh. And I just don't think it's really that difficult. All right, what else we got going here? You know, I haven't actually heard that. So I'm not going to say that you can't. I wouldn't do it. I mean, it goes back to what I said earlier in the video when in the video that we opened up with today. Especially when you're going the private pilot, you're going to go the professional pilot route, right? If you're showing up the day of the test and you are prepared and your flight school and your instructor have done a good job and they're prepared, it shouldn't be that big of a deal that the FAA wants to sit in. They're not evaluating you, they're evaluating the instructor and the flight school. So if you are ready and you are confident, I understand it's an extra stressor and I understand it's going to make you nervous at the guy sitting in there. I get it. Right, I get it. But that's going to happen to you throughout your career. When you go to work somewhere, you might be the place where you sit and take check rides with multiple guys in the same room. You might have more than one examiner or more than one Czech airman. It's a part of being a professional pilot. So I don't know if you can say, oh, I don't want the FAA guy in here, tell him to get out. You know, I don't think, I just wouldn't do it. I would rather be there, show up, be prepared and know you know your stuff. And I'm going to show these guys that I can do this and I can get through on my hard work and my effort that I put in to get here today. So whether you can tell them to not be in there, I don't know that questions never actually come up. Nice stuff, Kenny. We appreciate your time. Awesome. We appreciate all you guys being here. Happy you're actually interactive when you're live. We like to do that. We do a lot of live stuff. I have not actually uploaded a video to YouTube since November 14th. Every single video I have done since November 14th has been live just like this. And even if we've showed a clip or we've roll something, we're here at the end or we're there at the beginning. So we do interact. So I haven't done an actual YouTube upload in over two months. Everything we've done has been live. And like I said, we may show clips or may have a portion of our presentation recorded, but that's just so we can make sure everything's working good and our feed's good and we can get in and chat with people and kind of see what questions come up. So we do a lot of live stuff where we interact and that's why we like it when people jump in. Heck, we still got 30 people here. That's awesome. In the middle of afternoon. That's great. I love it and I appreciate every single person that has logged in. And I'm going to wrap it up because Heather's getting ready to take off and it gets difficult for me to try to keep track of the questions and watch everything over the people who don't read the chat. So this is quite nice. There are people that don't read the chat. Yeah, that's true. Kenny, thanks for getting back in the saddle early in your flight career and creating such a great group of products. Top shelf. Many thanks, Kurt. Well, I appreciate it, Kurt. And just like I tell people when they look at joining hogs, I just go, look, it's my whole entire life. It's my whole entire livelihood. Helicopter land ground school is not a sideline. It's not some site that we built and then just lays there. This is my full time job. It's Heather's full time job. Taz helps us. Brian Rutledge that I mentioned often is getting ready to retire this year. And when Brian retires, he's going to be full time with helicopter on land ground school. Then we have Chris and some of the other guys that, you know, guys and girls that actually occasionally help us and help us do videos and do training and join us for live events. So it's growing. And when Brian joins up full time, Brian's already behind the scenes and has been for years. He flies full time for a sheriff's department in California. He's a 30 year aviator, CFI in airplanes and helicopters. And Brian is the most detailed, oriented person I've ever met in my whole entire life. So Brian's job, once he joins us is not only going to help me with the details of the site and upgrading the site and making what is a great product even better. But we're going to put an addition where Brian's going to be available to do talk to a lot of you on the phone. You know, a new member is going to get us a quick consultation with Brian to see where they're at and where they're feeling. And right now I don't do a lot on the phone just because I'd be on the phone all day long. So one of the things that Brian will be doing is interacting with more with customers one on one when they need to talk about something. So that's exciting. And so yeah, this is what we do. It's helicopter online ground school top 10 checkride tips. I mentioned early on in the video today, the young man that failed, I wish he'd have got this book and had a glance through that before going first checkride. Because we harp on that stuff that I talked about today and I'm going to harp one more time. It's about being ready and the sign offs and the books and everything you got to have that stuff's got to be done two or three days in advance. That's horrible that you wind up at the flight school. No instructor, the place isn't open. Examiner standing there, and you're standing there half an hour before they open. That should have never happened. And that starts the day on a just a horrible note, an absolutely horrible note. But I've been there too. And I was telling Heather earlier, well, I was giving a little bit of the backstory of this. My examiner who I talked about in the beginning of the video when he said make sure your students as a brand new cfi, make sure your students have what they need. He was very adamant about that. And he's like, so the first or second checkride I do with him, I have two people ready to go that day. First guy comes in, he's a real estate guy, dresses real nice. Airplane pilot just did his biannual on a, on his airplane doing a helicopter add on. And I asked him about his medical. Oh yeah, I got the medical. I got the medical the morning of the check ride. We're there, we're everything laid out, we're ready to go. Examiner comes in, he goes, okay, well let me take a look at your medical. Actually before we started, right before the examiner walks in, I go get your medical out. He gets it out and it's a copy. And I'm like, you can't use a copy of your medical. You got to have the real thing. And he's like, well, it's going to have to do, because that's all I got. And I'm like, oh, my God, you can't have a copy of your medical, right? Examiner's getting ready to walk through the door. What am I going to do? So I walk out nervous, going, great. Examiner walks in. A few minutes later, he comes over. He's like, this guy doesn't have his medical. Did you know that he's got a copy of his medical? And I'm like, well, he showed that to me this morning. And he said, what's all I got? And he goes, well, he's calling his secretary and he's leaving right now to go try to find his medical. Is your next guy here? And I'm like, yeah, he's here. And he goes, is he ready to go? I'm like, yep. He goes, have him grab his stuff and bring him down. So luckily, my boy is there hours early. The same guy that I basically took away from their instructor because he said, I don't want to fly with that guy. That guy doesn't know what he's doing. And this guy's rock solid, right? Goes in, they get set up, they get ready to go. I go back to my office. Examiner literally comes walking in, has this young man's log book in his hand. And prior to the checkride, I noticed he had pages that weren't totaled and they weren't signed. And I'm like, jeff, before your checkride, you got to total these pages and you got to sign them. Okay, yeah, yeah, I'll do it. I should have double checked. As the instructor, I should have double checked and said, give me your logbook. Let me look at it. Make sure you sign that stuff. I didn't. Examiner walks in your room and he goes. Tosses the logbook across my desk and goes, his pages aren't signed in total. Did you know that? And I'm like, I told him to do it. I did check it like a week ago. And he's like, well, we're going to get started. Why don't you go ahead and total up his hours for him and then bring it down there and have him sign it in front of me as soon as you get that done. So there was my first very beginning. The examiner tells me one thing, and my one student has a copy of his medical, and my other student, his pages aren't signed. And some of them were signed, but it wasn't all the way up to date. So that's why I'm here. That's why this video happened today. That's why this young man failed his checkride. And that's why I'm telling stories an hour later. Top 10 checkride tips. Go below. There's a link below. And grab this book. Heather will send it to you. It's seven bucks and we're still shipping them around the world for 7 freaking dollars. She just sent one to Malaysia for $21. I pay for that. The books are paid for. We ship these out to you for seven bucks. Taz and I put that together. This is top 10 checkride tips. This isn't teaching you to be a private pilot. This is teaching you what you need to do before your checkride to make sure you don't show up and fail all the stuff we're talking about. So there you got it all in a nutshell. That's what happens. It's not, oh my gosh. I struggled with the atmosphere. And how many thousand feet up is the tropopause? That's not why you fell. You fell because you didn't sign a document. You didn't have the IACRA ready. You don't have a far AIM manual or it's two years old or whatever the case is. People are telling you study, learn the stuff, go through the PTS weeks in advance. And you go through that PTS page where it says appointment with the examiner. And you go through and go. Okay, I got that, I got that. Oh, I need that. Oh, examiner fee. Okay, flight school. Oh, is that my block time? Are you guys gonna have that cash ready for me that day or I need to bring a check. You go through that list step by step, but you can't even start the test if you don't have everything you need. Or in this young man's case, he had part of what he needs. But they're screwing around trying to do IACRA the morning of. Oh, that's, that's when I read that. That's a nightmare. I'd be pulling my hair out. Craziness. Alright, anything else I need to answer, Heather? Can't wait to get to ground school. Get it? Our ground school has a 24 hour test flight on the monthly memberships. You got 24 hours to check out any one of those courses. Private, instrument, commercial or cfi. You can check, sign up. You got to enter your credit card or send it to PayPal. It does not bill you for 24 hours. So you can go in, look and see exactly what we got, how it's laid out. Just a decide if it's Right. For you. If it's not, you pull your credit card before the 24 hours is up and you'll be billed nothing. And then you'll come, and then you can come back later. And as many people do. We have people that sign up for a few months at private, take a break. They come back, do their instrument, they take a break, come back to commercial. And CFI is the same way. We've seen it more and more now. We started the monthly a little over two years ago, two and a half years ago. And we see it all the time where people just, you know, come in, keep as long as you need it, take a break when you need it, come back when you're. When you're. When you're needing it again. All right, I got everybody caught up. Looks like it. That's why HOGS is awesome. No one is even close to doing what you do. Thank you, Daniel. I appreciate that. I do work hard at it. I like this one. Beach geek just said HOGS is helpful when you've been flying for some years. Never hurts to refresh. We have members that come in, Rusty, CFIs. They'll email. Email me, Kenny, I haven't flown in five years. I want to get back in it. Do you think my ground school is going to help? And I'm like, absolutely. Because when you go out to teach again, you got to refresh all that stuff in your mind. You know, I run a full time ground school. I have to refresh. I'm gonna go teach something. I'm gonna build a presentation today. I go back and look stuff up in the far aim or the private pilot manual or whatever. Manual. I got to go to. Heck, nobody can remember everything all the time. I mean, emergency stuff, right? You got to have that memorized. Aerodynamics and the things that can kill you. Those you always have to have fresh. But that's why we review. So that's a great comment and I appreciate that very much. All right, well, let's wrap it up. Heather, what do you think? 436. She leaves. She leaves six minutes ago. All right, thanks everybody. Make sure you subscribe to the channel and click the bell because that's how you get notified of these little videos that we do once or twice a week, maybe more, maybe less. Just depends on what's going on. And we'll see you all in the next video. Peace.