What additional information do I study for Commercial Helicopter Pilot?

Kenny Keller covers what you need to study for a commercial helicopter add-on: stricter PIC-hour requirements than private, instrument training between the two ratings, and helmet versus headset choices. He recommends the R44 for training and walks through HOGS courses that include FAA written practice and Wings credit.
Questions this video answers
150 hours of flight time as pilot in command (150 total), including at least 100 hours in powered flight; within those, 100 hours PIC must include at least 35 hours in helicopters (private add-on requires only 10 PIC hours in helicopters).
Code: Santa40 — 40% off private, commercial, instrument, CFI, and ProPilot memberships.
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Reduced from $350 to $295 for a five-hour block; must be used before the 20th (limited, immediate-use offer).
Two calendar months (as entered by the winner Noderik).
Chapters
To get it to go. There it goes. Should be working now. Type in chat, let us know. Sorry guys, I just pushed the R22 over here. Telling you I'm gonna announce a smoke, a special smoking hot deal here before we get done. When we give away the instrument pilot, I will let you know of el cheapo smoking hot deal. We want to get this thing flying. It's been sitting and we got some stuff toward the end of January, but nothing until this thing needs to fly. So we're going to make a smoking hot deal. So the first question we're going to answer. A gentleman who wanted to be in chat today couldn't make it. He emailed me a question. I'm a 4000 hour fixed wing commercial jet pilot. Completing your private course. Now for a private add on rating. Excuse me. And checkride in late January. See, everybody's talking about late January. The examiner suggested I should do a commercial add on. What additional would that include for the oral portion of the checkride? Okay, so you'll need to switch your HOGS membership over to the commercial, which you can do for free. There's no charge to switch to that. And you need to go through the private material and you need to go through the commercial ACs. Because the biggest difference between doing the private add on or commercial add on is your level of knowledge and then commercial pilot privileges and limitations. And what's going to happen is on the private or on your. If you go do the commercial add on, you're going to have to be to a higher level of knowledge. So if you've been training to private level everything in the commercials, it's basically all the same stuff, basically all the same maneuvers, basically all the same knowledge. But it's knowing it to a higher level, being more precise in the flying and being more precise on your answers. So if you've been for this gentleman, if you've been going through our private, you need to go through the. I would go through the private to refresh all the knowledge. And since you're a fixed wing pilot, you still need all that helicopter knowledge and you need to refresh your VFR knowledge. Even though you got 4,000 hours. A lot of the times guys have let their VFR skills kind of go out the window. And I see your jet pilot. So you probably do a lot of IFR flying. So switch and start using the commercial ACs to make sure you're covering everything. Switch over to Hogs commercial and know that you're going to be held to a higher tolerance on the commercial Questions. And then the questions are going to be privilege and limitations are going to be different. What can you do as a commercial pilot? What, what's legal, what's not. Also on this topic, I'd like to point out we have a lot of people that talk about doing commercial add on. Just like this gentleman who asked a question and what happens before they end up doing the commercial add on? They decide to go ahead and get the private add on when I read them. 61, 129. So you have to have this guy be covered because he's got 4,000 hours, but you have to have 150 hours of flight time as a pilot. He's got that 100 hours of powered flight of which 50 must be in helicopters. So you gotta have 50 total in helicopters. And then here's the kicker. 100 hours of pilot in command flight time which includes at least 35 hours in helicopters. For the private add on it's only 10. For the commercial add on it's 35. And you may already know this, the person that sent the email in, but this is good general knowledge for anybody watching the video interested in a commercial add on. Most people go, wow, so I have to solo for 35 hours. I'm a rated pilot, but I have to fly around with myself for 35 hours. I can't take friends or family. I can't just go do fun stuff other than just flying by myself. I don't want to do that. So people will almost always go ahead and do the private add on and then get their 35 pic, then take the commercial. So thanks for the question. Do it how you want to do it. That's your choice. But almost nobody actually does the commercial add on when they find out they got to do 35 PAC. If that's not a problem for you, then switch to the commercial ACs, switch over to the COGS commercial. Still go through the private material because in the commercial section we're digging in more on technique and to become smooth and solid for your commercial flying. So do us a favor, subscribe and like our channel please. It helps us out a lot if you give us a subscribe and give us a. Like tomorrow we're going to do a CFI giveaway. So before, let's see. I already answered my question. I was going to wait on that question. Type in. Do you have any questions yet, Lindsay?
Just a personal one from Tommy. He's asking helmet or no helmet?
Aha. I'll answer that question as soon as I pimp our clone down. Below we have a link for ask hogs.com you can talk to my clone 7 days a week, 24 hours a day. And at first it was kind of creepy, but now that we've been using it for a while, it's really cool because 24 hours a day, seven days a week, you can ask a question to my clone. It has 14 years of my content. Blogs, podcasts, videos, free content. Everything I've done electronically, digitally in 14 years is piped into my clone and it's free. It's also inside our site on all of our videos so that you can get immediate assistance while you're going through the courses. But it's free to you and anybody. So that link is below for askhogs.com and also passive income. There's a link down below hogspaysme.com we have an affiliate program. We pay you 50%. For example, a person signs up for a monthly membership 97amonth. You get 50% of that for as long as they keep the course. If somebody buys our Pro pilot for 2,800, you get $1,400. So that link is below hogspaysme.com and you'll have your own access to the site to see your dashboard. You'll know exactly who uses your link to sign up for hogs. And we pay you 50% once a month. We pay after they go past the 30 day refund date. So passive income. All right, so we'll answer his question and that that's a will constitute. That's not really a personal question, right? Well, it could be, but so we'll declare, we'll go ahead and clear that question as the winner. So you get for asking the question because the helmets a good question. It is. That is a flight or ground training question. We're going to send you a copy of Helicopter private or helicopter Private Pilot 101 helicopter training blueprint. You can get this free right now at a PDF link below. So anybody wants us, you can get it free right now. Go below privateblueprint.com and for the winner of that not winner just because you asked the flight or ground training question, that's what we're doing each day and every day until New Year's Day, we're asking questions. And the first person that asks a question when we go live, we send them a book. So stick around. And we're going to do the instrument pilot giveaway in just a bit after we answer questions. So helmet or no helmet? I've done this video a couple times. Over the years, and I even was talking with one of the FAA guys about this. My opinion isn't necessarily what you might want to do when you talk. Helmet or no helmet. I'll flat out tell you. Any reasonable person could say a helmet's going to be safer, right? That protecting your head, having a visor in case something comes through the windshield. There are probably more reasons to choose a helmet versus just using standard headsets, hands down. I can't argue that point. Now my opinion, because I wore a helmet. A helmet. I wore a helmet for five years when I flew EMS and I hated it. You know, you spend all your time building up over the years flying with headsets, then all of a sudden you wear a helmet again. I understand the safety, I understand why it's the smartest choice. However, once I left ems, I haven't flown a helmet since. I want to get in the helicopter. I want to be comfortable. I want to just throw a set of headsets on and I want to just, you know, I feel more natural and like I'm feeling the world around me. And the helmet's just bulky and it's hot. And so me personally, I don't wear one. Do I think it's wise? Probably. It's probably the smartest thing you could do. So I didn't ever. I've never been accused of being smartest guy on the block. So that's my opinion on helmets. I'm sure they're safer. Tons of reasons to wear one. I just choose not to. My favorite thing to do is summertime. Flying in a helicopter, doors off, pair of shorts, T shirt, headsets, pair of tennis shoes.
You're very casual, flying, very casual.
And the FAA guy I was talking to, he's like, well, you know, you'll be sorry when you crash someday. I'm like, well, hopefully I don't crash, number one. And number two, I did. I did get ejected from a helicopter in 2005 from a ground residence incident. Luckily, I didn't have a head injury, had a back injury, but it's my choice, you know, and if I was flying in a more of a commercial, everyday, heavy duty, more dangerous type of stuff maybe. But of course, anything we do could be dangerous. We could, any of us could have a wreck at any time. Even you could be slow and careful and methodical and you could have an aircraft malfunction like we did in the aircraft that I was in that exploded and blew itself apart. Anything could happen to any of us at any time. None of us are so good that an accident just can't happen. But I also do my best to be slow, smooth, methodical, try to fly the best equipment. Don't fly with anything that's broken. Don't go out and do macho stuff and don't go out and do watch this kind of thing, hold my beer type of thing. Right? We don't do it. So there's that. Any other questions?
I do. I have quite a few coming in. Nice. This next one is from John Pollard and he is asking is it better to train in the R22, R44 or the cavalry?
Great question. And we covered this yesterday and I'll answer it again because this question is going to be there till the end of time. And I like quoting. It's not really a quote. A few years ago we talked to Tim Tucker at Heli Expo and we went around and we were talking to Schweitzer and we were talking to Robinson and Enstrom and the different manufacturers and saying, why should they fly your helicopter over the others? Which one's best? And Tim Tucker told a story and he said, you know what? And if you don't know who Tim Tucker is, most people do. But he's big with Robinson Helicopter has been for many years and he was chief pilot for a long, long time. He said, you know what, I don't think it makes a difference which helicopter you fly. And he talks about how they did a study in the military when he was in the military and they took tall guys, short guys, big helicopters, little helicopters. And they did a study for over like five years. And at the end of that five years they did an evaluation of did the person in the larger helicopter, the turbine or the smaller piston. They decided that it made no relevance on what the person was flying, on how well their training turned out. And he said it's more important to have a good aircraft, well maintained aircraft quality instructor, quality flight school. That is way more important than which helicopter you fly. And I really. He shocked a lot of us when he said that and I kind of go along with that. Right. I've taught in the R22, the R44, Enstrom, Schweitzer's jet, Ranger, EMS. I flew BK117, EC135. I've flown B40, Bell 47. Only had one chance to fly R66 and I would say now it's personal preference preference. I think you pick what helicopter is right for you. Which one do you feel the most comfortable in, which one works best for your budget. I agree. You know, I might Pick if I have two choices and one is the helicopter I really, deep down want to fly, and over here is a helicopter that's not the one that's deep down what I want to fly. But this school and instructors have better maintenance, better reputation, better quality of instruction. I'm going to pick that one every single time. I'm going to pick that one every time. So again, I think maintenance, proper maintenance done right, everything aircraft needs, gets it, gets it on time. And we even believe in what I just been calling lately, progressive maintenance. We like to have a mechanic come in even when there's nothing wrong with the helicopter. Just come in, spend a little time with it, look it over, see if you can find anything that the average everyday pilot's not going to see. And I think that's a big help in staying ahead of the game. And the example I use, if they find a tail rotor pitch link maybe getting a little bit loose, still within tolerance, but they know it's wearing out, you can call up Robinson, get that pitch link, have it on the shelf, and then when that part finally exceeds the, the tolerance, boom, it's on the shelf ready to go. You change it out and you're back in business. You're not left with, oh, man, we just found the inspection. You need this part now. We got to order it, we got to wait for it to show up, et cetera, et cetera. So I think quality of training and quality of maintenance, number one over which aircraft you pick. I literally like, the R44 would be my number one choice personally.
Is it, Is it really?
It is. I just all around, I think the R44 is. Wrap this up. The R44 is good for training, it's good for commercial stuff. It's good to take up friends and family because it seats four. The R22 doesn't have that. The Cabri doesn't have that. For that reason is why I would pick, hands down, pick the R44.
Okay, next question comes from Trufitre. When are you gonna make something like HOGS in the European Union Aviation Safety Agency?
Wow, that's a great question. You know, we get, we get questions like that a lot like, hey, when are you going to do something for, you know, Canadian or. I don't know that that's going to happen. I would love to say that we will or we could, but as of now, we're, we're a three piece operation. There's three of us that work at hogs and so it takes all of our time. And that's with the addition of bringing other instructors in to help us do the flying, to build a whole other course and spend the time to go through the differences between regulations between countries. That'd be a pretty big undertaking. And I would love to do it, but our staff just isn't big enough. I just don't see, you know, if things would grow and we could take on more people. Possibly. But at this point, with over 650 videos in four courses, thousands of members, and the video production we do and the flying is just. It's really not feasible. And maybe at some point in the future we'll have a different answer for you, but as of now, no, I just don't think it's going to happen. While you prepare your next question. Right now we have 40% off with Santa 40. We have 40% off private commercial instrument, CFI, and then our professional pilot that combines all of those for a lifetime, never expires. All across the board, all memberships right now, 40% off with code Santa 40. So just go below helicopterground.com you go to the home page, pick the membership you're interested in, check it out, and enter the code Santa 40 for 40% off. All right, next question, next question.
Sorry, I had to take my eyes off the chat. Have to re.
While you're. While you're getting questions. Okay, go ahead.
What are your thoughts on the instrument FX280?
The Nstrom is a freaking wonderful aircraft. I flew instruments for years. I have more time in Enstrom than I do any other aircraft on the planet. I just spent a lot of time in my career and early part of my career flying instruments. It's a great helicopter. It's a bigger helicopter than like the R22. It's super safe with that big heavy duty rotor system. The helicopter that I was in in 2005 that we got ejected from was the instrument turbine 480. And that was a mechanical malfunction because they switched from hydraulic dampener over to elastomeric dampener. We were one of the first ones in the world to be flying it. The dampener failed and the helicopter blew itself apart. That's the only reason that aircraft came apart. They are super durable aircraft and I think they're great. I like the 280. I like the F28F. I like the 480 turbine. All great aircraft. I've taught in all those. I've flown all of them. I've flown all the makes and models of Enstrom. Great helicopter. Why do I not operate them here? Because at this point, the R44 and the R22 to me are a little less labor intensive as far as maintenance goes. They're a little cheaper on the maintenance. And being they're the most popular civil training helicopter in the world, it's what the majority of our members are flying. Robinson R22, R44. So, and these were made available to me, the instrument, you know, I flew one for a long time, but that was a buddy of mine, owned it and for about five years in the, through the winter months he'd let me have it and use it for training because he's a fair weather flyer. He only liked flying in the summer. And we had a kind of a soft leaf that leased that. I used that one. And at a certain point he decided his kids were, you know, going to college and he needed to let the aircraft go to, you know, put the money back in the bank. That's the only reason I don't use an instrument. I'd love to have one. If somebody wants to buy one and let us use it, we'd have one sitting here. But for me to go out and own one, I own one for four years and that's how I know the direct difference of cost and the one that I owned for four years basically bankrupt me. I never filed bankruptcy. I just operated until I had nothing left and then had to sell it and restart rebuilding my life 14 years ago because the instrument was expensive. Ouch.
These next couple of questions have been answered in chat. So if you would like to answer them yourself, here they are. So this is coming from Noderik and he's asking for his medvac. Should he get his fixed wing first and then have the company pay for Rotary?
You'll never get hired. I don't know if you're. Maybe you're in. I don't know if you're in the US or another country. I can't speak for other countries, but I flew EMS for five years. And when you go to apply for an EMS job at this time, Normally they want 2000 hours and normally they want either all helicopter or they want 1500 helicopter. Maybe 1500 helicopter, you could, you could use maybe 500 fixed wing. But getting your jobs in the helicopter industry and specifically the ems, it's all about the helicopter time. So getting the fixed wing and then doing your helicopter to me just doesn't really make any sense. There really isn't any reason for that, especially going the EMS route. I. If you're going to do fixed wing before helicopter, that's you got to have 40 hours minimum in the, in the airplane and then you're going to take a check ride and you're going to pay for all that. Then you got to go get 30 more hours in the helicopter, so you got to do 20 more dual, 10 solo, pay for another check ride just to get to your private in the airplane or the helicopter. So when people say, oh, get your fixed wing first, I don't really understand why they tell you that. I don't think financially it helps. And when you go to get your first helicopter job, majority of the time they don't care about the fixed wing time. This just they want to know how much time do you have in a helicopter.
And next question is somebody is going through with their private at the moment, but they want to know if IFR rating is required for their commercial license.
It's not in helicopters. In helicopters you can do your private and then you can go ahead and start working on your commercial time. However, if you think that you want the instrument training hands down, do it between private and commercial. Because for the commercial you're going to need 150 hours total and you're going to have to have like 100 pic. I'm lost in the middle of my question. Oh, okay. So you got to build a bunch of pic time for the commercial. So if you start working on your instrument, get your private, start working on your instrument. You're paying for the helicopter to get pilot and command time and you got to pay a little extra for dual on your instrument training. But you're working toward the instrument training while you're building your pilot in command time to work for commercial. So it just makes 100% hands down, if you think you're remotely interested in the instrument rating, do it between private and commercial. Super, super smart.
Well, that leads us into Nick Good's question from earlier. He wants to know what does our instrument course entail?
What does our instrument course entail? It's a full blown course to help you prepare for the instrument rating. All of our courses are full blown courses. To help get through the ratings. Each course has quizzes at the end of each lesson. Basically the way the courses are laid out. Each course is laid out in lessons. So you'll have like say 10 lessons in the course or 12 lessons depending on which course you go to, or 18 lessons. I think like in the private, each lesson will have a series of videos. You go through those videos and at the end of that there is a quiz for all of those lessons from all the way through the course. And then at the end of the course, we have FAA written test practice. You can take the FAA written test practice as many times as needed. And it's also available for wings credit. So when you take that, if you want to get wings credit for it, it automatically reports to the FAA and you'll be able to get wings credit for that FAA written test. So it'll help you prepare for the oral portion and help you prepare for the written test for the instrument rating.
Are we going to verticon next year?
You know, I just walked in the door this morning today, a little bit ago to warm this place up. I'm like, well, I guess I should start thinking about. I guess you can't call it heli expo anymore. Every year I say the same thing. Usually I'm like, I don't know if I'm going. I don't know if I want to spend the money. And I just thought that getting out of the jeep, coming inside, that I need to make a decision about whether we're going to go or not. Probably, but depends on what's going on here at the time. I haven't made a decision.
You never know. You might go.
I'll mention free PDF down below for the 1. The book that we gave away already today. So go get this down below if you need it. If you got any more questions, ask them. Are there any more coming up?
Yes.
Yeah, more questions.
Just one more from Paul. Are turbine or piston helicopter safer? He likes to ask the hard ones, doesn't he?
He does. I mean, I mean, you know what, I'm sure a lot of people are going to automatically say turbines are safer, but I suppose you could say that the. In general, they are. However, would I take a piston aircraft, well maintained, everything maintained to a T in perfect mechanical order, or would I jump in a turbine aircraft that somebody. Maybe it's a little dicey on the maintenance. History's a little bit unsure. I'm gonna pick the piston. I think helicopters in general are safe if you maintain them correctly, you do the proper maintenance and you do what we're taught from day one. Most helicopters, I don't think you're ever gonna have a problem. So a blanket statement of which is more, which, which one's safe? Well, let's use the example of the Bell Jet Ranger that held the record for many, many, many years on the safest aircraft ever built. So in general, would a turbine be safer? Probably. They're easier to start, they're easier to fly, they have more power. The only reason the requirements are so high is because they're more expensive to fix. So I guess in general you'd want to say Turbo.
Okay. I would like to go back to Robert E. Hammer. He was one that asked if you were going to Verticon and said that he would like to see you on your annual Pilmaridge from Bob and Sharon.
Oh, we always see Bob when we're there. Bob and Sharon.
Okay.
Is that who we're talking to? Yeah. Okay. All right, well, stay tuned, you know, because we'll probably end up there. So probably it's Dallas. I like to drag my feet and you know, last minute I'm a cheapskate and I don't want to spend the money. And if we all go, then it's a whole bunch of motel rooms and plane tickets and where is it at this year? Dallas.
Oh, why did I think that was last year?
Last year was up. Last year was California. Yeah, it was la. All right, well, we'll do a recap and then we're going to give away. I have a question come up and you just want to ask some more questions. Go ahead, recap. Santa 40, go below. Click helicopterground.com Santa 40 40% off private commercial instrument, CFI or ProPilot. Askhogs.com down below is the link for our clone. My clone sounds like me, talks like me, less cuss words. 24 hours a day, seven days a week. It's pretty fascinating. And it's. We continue to load content in it, so over time it just keeps getting smarter and smarter and smarter. Pretty amazing. Don't Forget the free PDF for Private Pilot 101. We'll be back tomorrow to give another one. Tomorrow we're giving away certified flight instructor. And then don't forget Passive Income with hogs pays me. That link is down below as well. So if you'd like to make some extra income for just signing up and having your own link that you share, particularly flight instructors. We know you're eating ramen noodles. We know you're driving a piece of shit. We know you don't have any money half the time. That's the nature of a new instructor. You don't have any money. Sign your students up for hogs. And once a month you're going to get a payment through PayPal. You have to have PayPal in order to for this system to work. But every 30 days you're going to get money pumped into your PayPal. If you got a lot of students, that can be a nice little extra amount of money that you might be able to use to make a car payment or make a rent payment or more. So. So we'll put that down below. All right, so for the giveaway instrument pilot we made you wait long enough. I'm going to read right from the 2024. Faraim. Yes, I need to order a 2025. Yes, I do use FAR AIM on my electronic gadgets, but I still prefer a book because I'm old and I'm old school. So this is pertaining to getting the helicopter rating. This is pretty easy, but you got to give the right answer. So for a helicopter rating, you have to have 150 hours of flight time as pilot of Command, at least 100 hours in powered flight. Oh, you know what? We already did that. Where's the mark for what I was going to do? I got to go back to seven. I got a different page. Sorry. Disregard page 76. Here it is. Scratch that. All right. For an instrument rating. I was on commercial. For an instrument rating helicopter, you need three hours of instrument flight training from an authorized instructor in a helicopter that is appropriate to the instrument helicopter rating. I'm getting ready to ask you the question. Please spell legibly. Use proper spelling to win spaling. Use proper. Spaling is appropriate to the instrument helicopter rating within. Blank, blank, blank, before the date of the practical test. So what is the time frame as stated in the FAR AIM that you have to have that three hours of dual instruction. And this is the same as any checkride, so it's not really instrument specific. Lindsey knows the answer.
Same winner from yesterday.
Same winner. Are you serious?
Should I go on to the next one? Because so far nobody else has gotten it.
I should have put a claim. Not quite fair for the same guy to win him two days in a row. I didn't put the disclaimer out there. You know what? We can. You've already got the commercial. We can. If you really want the instrument, we can tack it on your free membership. You already have. Let's give somebody else a chance.
Okay, if it's going to go on to somebody else, then. Oh, somebody retracted a message. I'm gonna have to give it to Noderik. He also put two calendar months.
Okay, Nodorik it is. So winner number one. Don't worry. We'll just tack instrument on to the one we gave you yesterday. I just. I'd prefer you, if you win something big like that, prefer you not come back and try to play and try to beat other people out of a free membership like that. So it's like a $700 value, so. All right, well, thanks for tuning in. Tomorrow we're gonna do certified flight instructor. And if you got something you want me to answer tomorrow and you can't make it live, do what this gentleman did, email me kennyelicopterground.com Send me a message. Oh, yeah, and I told you about a discount on the training. Here's what we're doing. We have a special right now that we've already been talking about. This is a limited time. It's going to end soon. 50% off our daily rate. 50%. And we do the daily rate because when we do specialized training for people, 50 off instructor rate. And because this thing needs to fly some, we have people looking at the end of January. I want to get somebody in the first part or middle part of January and get some hours on this thing. The owner told me last night, he said, hey, let's knock down the price just a little bit and try to get some flying. Get some things, get that thing flying. So at least charges up the batteries. Get a few hours on it. So we're going to reduce the 350 down to 295. This for a five hour block. You could do a Sfar or you could put it towards a checkride if you want. 295 for a five hour block. But you gotta act fast and you gotta use it before the 20th. This isn't good for February, March, April, May, June. This is a. Somebody needs to do some flying, like immediately. They want to get sbar done, they want to get a CFI done. Something along that lines, reach out to me direct. Kennyelicoperground.com because I don't. Heather doesn't know about that. She's not here. So since I just made that up, that special, you'll need to email me direct about putting together a special el cheapo package just to get this thing in the air, lubricate up the pieces and parts and get it flying. Alright, do us a favor, subscribe the channel, give us a like and that way you'll be notified of the video tomorrow. So come back tomorrow for a giveaway for one year membership, 12 months of certified flight instructor. See you then. Peace out.










