5 Mistakes Costing Helicopter Pilots $10,000

All right. Welcome to our live event. Lindsay will be sitting right there talking to you in chat, and we're going to cover a bunch of questions today. We had 140 people sign up for this event today, and they— we've got 5 pages of questions, which I think is awesome. And I got them here. We're going to cover as many of those as we can. And that'll cover all the topics of learning to fly, trying to save money, how do you get through the training, lots of great questions. So first, we're going to go over here to the Hogs Wall of Fame as we go by our Robinson R44. And we want to first say happy birthday, Hogs. Today is March 1st, 2026. I went live with Hogs March 1st, 2012. So as of today, 14 years online. So before we start getting to the content, I wanted to point out the Hogs Wall of Fame. This started out as we were posting pictures and we filled the whole wall up. And once we started these Final Approach courses, one of our CFI applicants said, well, what are you going to do? Because we ran out of room. We had this thing full of pictures and we were going to have to pull them all off and start making them like half size and One of our applicants said, why don't you just turn it into a digital wall? And I'm like, it kind of hurt because we put a lot of time and effort in that original wall, and it hurt to pull all those pictures down. But now we can update this. We just upload to the PowerPoint and add the new people. So we are Helicopter Online Ground School. Like I said, it's 14 years now online. The people you're seeing here on the wall are our private pilots, instrument pilots, commercial pilots, and flight instructor. These are people that have passed their rating using Helicopter Online Ground School and sent a picture in when they were done after they passed their test. So once you do that, if you send us in a picture, we put you on the Hogs Wall of Fame, and we send you out the Hogs No-Go Button. So the final approaches courses that we're doing, the The fun part is we get people to use our online training before coming out here. I jump online and do a Zoom with them so I can test their knowledge first before we schedule you a date. So if I get on with you on Zoom and I feel like your ground's at the level that we want it at, then I'll schedule you and we can do several Zooms before arrival so that once you get here, the cool thing is we've already met, we already know each other, I have a good idea of where your ground is at. And then we come in and we just sit right here and we sit here and we do ground with the two couches. And the way we've been operating this is, and it's kind of cool, we do it two at a time. So since we do two at a time, the examiner comes to us. So as you're sitting here and we're doing ground through the week, we're right here. The R44 is right here. So when we are talking, if we want to use the aircraft, we want to grab the POH, we want to look at the helicopter and talk about Camafut and Goal H and all the things reference the helicopter. It's right here, so it makes it nice. And so many pieces have just fallen together, like even as far down to our fuel guys. They do a phenomenal job here. We call them, we push the helicopter out, and they're in here. If they're not fueling somebody else, they're here in under 3 minutes. So Everything is right here. Over here we have our oil and we have our headsets and we have our maintenance logbooks tucked away, paper towels. Everything we need is right here. And the final approach courses even. Lindsay's over there behind the computer screen. She cooks. We have homemade meals. We've been having spaghetti, sausage, shrimp, salmon. Oh my God, a whole long list of things. And we eat here to save time so we're not going out to a restaurant and messing around. We have full 8 hours a day as we prep for your final approach course. And it's just kind of a neat deal. We've got it down to a science. Examiner comes walking in the door, and what we do the night before, we go through the ACS, which we'll be talking about here in a little bit, and we lay everything out. So over here on the table, we have your license, we have your medical, we have your cross-country, we have your logbook with endorsements. And your IACRA password. Examiner comes in, lays down his computer, logs you in, checks all the documents. Once he decides everything's ready to go, that takes about 10 minutes, then he just moves over here and sets down, and we have everything laid out the night before. Everything that's listed in the ACS is right here on the table. Logbooks, everything that's in there so that You set the tone by starting out with a good checkride. So, we are going to have, we got a Pro Pilot special going on. Pro Pilot, that's lifetime access to all the courses, private pilot, commercial pilot, instrument, and CFI. So for this 14-year special, I just ordered some new ball caps. These are really nice. Everybody likes them. They're a nice quality hat. We're going to open that dude up here in a minute. And if you want to go for Pro Pilot, not only you're going to get a Hogs cap, we're also going to add 6 zooms. I'll do 6 zooms with you one-on-one, and they can be on just doing ground, they can be do checkride prep, it can be you know, a little bit of help with trying to get your career started, whatever you want to use those Zooms for. Then I have to limit these because I can't get doing too many Zooms because we just completed FAC number 37 last week. This week we got 2 more. So we are flying a lot. Chris Hauser is down here helping me with majority of these checkrides, which is nice, but I still have to allow time for, of course, running hogs and going out and flying R44, prepping people, getting them ready for a checkride. So for this Pro Pilot Special, we'll talk more about it in a little bit. Pro Pilot Lifetime, you get private pilot, instrument pilot, commercial pilot, and certified flight instructor. I'll do 6 Zooms with you. We can do one a week over 6 weeks, and you can stretch it out farther than if you'd like, but I wouldn't limit it to one week of the of the 6, but Pro Pilot, 6 Zooms with me, and a Hogs ball cap. So exciting stuff. 14 years online. It's a fun deal. So let's go over here and we'll open up these hats. We good? All right, so let's just peek in here real quick and then we'll start Talking about helicopter training, so thanks everybody that came. People that have been following along with us for over 14 years now. It's actually 14 years that we've been— since we launched, but we were on YouTube doing videos for a while before that, before we launched. So here's the Hogs ball cap that comes along now with the— well, the limited time special, of course, Pro Pilot with the 6 zooms. And a Hogg's Ball Cap. Everybody's been digging them. They call it the— I think it's like the trucker style, but Lindsey wears hers all the time. Heather wears hers. I don't wear hats often, but people actually love them. So there are the hats. Get these out of the way. All kinds of other goodies here. So again, thanks everybody who's here today, have been with us through the years, members, commenters on YouTube, the whole ball of wax. Do us a favor, if you're on YouTube, subscribe to the YouTube channel. We're trying to get to 50,000 subscribers. We're less than 300 away. Just a personal thing for me to hit 50,000. I don't get anything, no YouTube play button, nothing exciting is going to happen other than it just sounds pretty cool. Taken me 14 years to get to almost 50,000, so And for everybody, we know 100, over 140 people signed up for this today and a bunch signed up yet tonight. So it's probably 160. I have 5 pages of questions that people sent in, and originally I didn't expect it to be this many. I figured I could answer everybody, and with this many questions, there's no way I can answer every single question. Okay, so what we did, I read every single question. I have every single question here. And we, with the magic of AI, of course, ran it through and condensed it down to the top 10 things that people are asking because a lot of them are very, very, very similar. So we're going to go into specific stuff. And there was a lot of newbie questions. And for newbies, we're just going to plug this real quick because you can get this for free. And we designed this for people just starting out. It's not just where you will start. Now you can be working on your ratings and still get a lot of benefit out of this book, but especially for newbies. That's why we created it. We have a ton of free resources down below this video and a ton of free resources here. So you can of course get it on Amazon if you want to get a paid copy. I guess the link that we have, what's it, what's the link, Lindsay, for this one? This is privateblueprint.com. She put a link down below the video. You can get a free PDF of it, so it costs you nothing. And we went through and we answered like the 10 most common questions for new people, and there's all kinds of tips and things. And most of them we're going to cover today in this video, or a heck of a lot of them. So there's a nice free resource for anybody, for all of you that are asking the, hey, I'm just getting started, I'm not flying yet. This answers a ton of those questions. So number one, we wanted to show you that. So when we created this a couple weeks ago, the core talking points are pilots often waste money because they train without a clear plan. Okay, we've seen it now. We've been doing the final approach courses in the R44 now for almost 3 years. May 1st this year will be 3 years since we got the R44. I've been teaching for 25, so I've got 25 years of experience sending people for checkrides. 3 years we've been doing what we call the Final Approach Courses, where we're helping people around the country that are trying to finish up a rating. And we just did number 37 last week. Next week we're doing number 38 and 39. We've done 10 this year already. So it's getting really popular. And here's what we find. We've got people coming here that have from— some people have had from 140 to over 200 hours and still hadn't finished their private. So the first thing I want to tell people is you got to look at quality of training. Everybody looks at, oh well, what's the best price? Where can I go that's the cheapest? That is not the answer in helicopter flight training, okay? It's about quality of training. It's about the flight school. It's about the instructors. It's about your habits. And we're going to go through a bunch of that stuff. So The first thing I got to say is people, quit looking for the easy, cheap way out because that is not the answer. We had, when we first started the final approach courses, we had 3 people come from the same flight school in Florida, pretty good-sized flight school, and all 3 people that came up here in a row said, well, I like my instructor, you know, I like the school, but I can't get a check right. They keep stalling, they keep holding off my stage checks. And, and they come, all three of them come up here and got their ratings. And we did everybody in less than a week, or about a week, 5 days. Usually it's the course is 5 days, and we can make adjustments if somebody needs a little extra. But we've been proving it now for 3 years, right? People are coming here from all over the country because of the things that go on at flight schools. And so we're gonna, we'll go through it and kind of COVID some of those things, but Just remember, it's about quality of training. It's not about who is the cheapest. It's not about the price per hour. It's about who can get you done.

Any recommendations on good quality flight schools?

Ah, man. See, here's a good— this is a phenomenal question. Good quality flight schools. It's a hard— I don't know how to really even— we answer the question. The biggest thing is talking to people, I think, and finding out, going out and visiting them yourselves when you want to get started. And I know helicopter, depending where you live in the world or in the country, you might have to drive quite a ways for lessons. I did. I had to either drive 2 hours to Indianapolis, 2 hours to Chicago, or up into Michigan for an hour and a half. Best way, I think, off the cuff is go out and visit. Check their feedback on the internet. Try to talk to people that are actually going and flying there, because you can have, you know, fancy shiny paint and navigation lights, and from the outside looking in, it can look pretty flashy. But what's important is what's really going on behind the scenes. And I think once you get out and you start talking with people and actually going there and attending, you'll get a feel for it. What I would not do is give a flight school a big chunk of money. You know, go in, start out just on an hourly basis. Go in and ask them to just show you around. And how are they on the phone when you call? How receptive are they? How good are they answering your questions? You can just kind of get a feel. Flight schools come and go so often that it's hard to keep track. And people go, hey, do you know a school in this particular state? Most of the time we don't have anybody in a particular state. There are, depending on where you want to go, we have some flight schools that we'll recommend. But it's a big question. So you got to take the time, do the research, and go out and see them and experience them for yourself. And don't give a bunch of money up front to anybody. Maybe later, if you're comfortable with them and you feel good about the quality training, you could look at that down the road at buying block time to get a discount. But I don't think block time is ever a good idea, to be honest. I just— flight schools come and go and people get screwed out of their money so often that I just don't— I don't think block time is a good idea. More flight time does not always solve training problems. Kind of falls into what we just said. Fly, fly, fly. That's what flight schools want to do. They need you out there spinning, making dollars to pay for the aircraft. Most pilots feel stuck because they don't know what to study next. All right. I failed my first private pilot checkride. If you're new to Hogs, you've never heard that before. If you've been watching our content for any length of time, you've heard me, you've heard the story. So I'm gonna reference to this quite a bit today. This is my original notebook, all right? So this thing is 30 years old now. And after I failed my private, the sticker's still on the front, I went down to CVS and I bought this. You can't even see the price anymore, it's all rubbed off. But I used this after my failure and I sat down and just started writing all the different notes I had. I compacted them into one place. And I just studied over and over and over and over and over and over and over because I was not going to fail again. Failing that first checkride hurt, and I didn't go back for 6 months to finish up. That's how bad it was. Or, I mean, I went home hurt, and then I had to go like, you know what, I'm not going to fail again. So my approach going back was study harder, get to know the material. And I won't drag the story out too much longer, but I want to tell you that I took it with the FAA the first time, so there's part of the problem. But I also probably hadn't studied hard enough. And so I took my retest with Jerry Ventrella. And Jerry Ventrella, still doing it. He's in his 70s now, like 77 or 78. He's still doing checkrides. Been doing it for 50 years. But anyway, I did my retest with him. And I got about halfway through the test. And at that time, you'd get a pink slip if you failed a checkride. So I went in with the pink slip and partway through the test, he stopped that day and he goes, "You brought a pink slip in today." And I'm like, "Yeah, I did." And he goes, "What happened?" And I said, "Well, you know, I didn't get any sleep the night before 'cause I was so freaked out." The instructor that sent me, I was his very first student. He was a brand new CFI. I was his first student sent into a checkride. And this gentleman is Eddie. You know, Eddie, we're still friends, you know, 25 years later. But I was his first, I was his first student. And many times the very first student that instructor sends, a lot of times they fail, right? Because when you're brand new instructor, you're just kind of learning and you don't know all the tips and tricks. And it's just very, very common. So When Jerry stops the test, he goes, I told him that. And then I said, I created this notebook and I just sat and I studied that thing over and over and over and over. Because there was no HOGS, there was no online ground school. There were no videos. There was, you know, VHS at the time of King Schools, but that was all just airplane stuff. So there was nothing for helicopters. But anyway, he says, when I said that, He goes, well, it's pretty apparent you applied yourself because you're answering 100%. You're answering every single question that I ask. And I said, well, that's because I wasn't going to fail again because it hurt so much that first time. So we'll talk more about that. That's how I got through my first rating. And I know that that failure was probably the best thing that ever happened to me because that changed the way I approached my training. On through private, commercial, CFI. I've been using my notebook for years and years. This is still what I'm using now to prep people as my last step before I send you to the examiner, is we go through this thing page to page. And if you can answer something from every page of my notebook, I know that you're pretty in pretty good shape. So I've learned a lot. I've learned a lot from— it's not because I'm the smartest guy on the block, I'm not. I've had all the struggles. I've beat my head against the wall, been through a helicopter accident. Helicopter business has ruined me financially in the past. I've had all the reasons, and I've had all the headaches, all the heartaches, all the dumb shit that you can do. I've done it. So that's why we created Hogs, is to help people. And again, that failure I think was probably, probably the best thing that could happen to me. So I don't know if I already read— most pilots feel stuck because they don't know what to study next. So I created my first Helicopter Online Ground School was originally just PowerPoints, just checkride prep made from my notebook. And then as time progressed, I changed the videos to follow the PTS. And then years into it later, we changed Helicopter Online Ground School to follow the Helicopter Flying Handbook. So now they're full-fledged courses. And of course, in this day and age, you can take our courses on any, any device. We have a mobile app, we have the regular desktop. You can use any of your devices. So you don't have to go this alone. You don't have to feel stuck and not know what to study because, for example, let's use private pilot. You go through our private pilot course, it's 18 lessons. Every single lesson has 10, maybe 10 to 12 videos under each lesson, and it's laid out so you can go step by step. And you can go through the videos as many times as you want. You can work along in the helicopter flying handbook as you're going through, and we're going to walk you through everything., and the pictures on the wall back there proves it. So there's no reason to be stuck. And of course, you don't have to use Hugs. If you want, you can learn and do all this on your own if you want to without the help of an online assistant. You can go to the flight school if they're willing to spend the time with you and spend $50 to $75 to $100 an hour for the instructor to teach you every bit of ground. If that's the way you want to do it, you can self-study. But if you don't have someone guiding you, yeah, it's a big overwhelming pile of information. And that's why I created the notebook, because as I was learning, there's all these books and I'm looking through all this stuff and I'm like, oh my God, I need one place to study. All right. Training problems often feel like a mountain, but you're usually only a few flexible issues. We're going to cover some things I'm going to tell you that are going to help you. And this we've found true in 25 years of teaching. When somebody calls or they email me or they come here to fly with us, most everybody usually has kind of what, what feels like a mountain to them. They're stuck somewhere. They're trying to get past a problem in training. And I can tell you, 95% of the time, the issues that people are having, they're not as big as what you think. It feels like a mountain, but it's truly a molehill. And with a little bit of guidance from somebody who's been there, done that, normally we can take away those mountains. And trust me, I've seen it over and over and over again. I know how it is to get overwhelmed. I get overwhelmed all the time. I got overwhelmed when I failed my first checkride. I get it. But I'm telling you, the issues you're having, there's usually a simple fix, easier than what people think. Structured training saves time, stress, and money. Again, we're— this is one of the key points, so we're going to keep talking and we're going to keep going back to that. And I'm going to keep saying, just remember, it's not about who's the cheapest. It's not about the cheapest aircraft per— or the per-hour rate, an instructor rate. If you're not getting quality training, that's how these guys were coming up from Florida from the flight school that had 140 hours, 180 hours, 200 hours, and they didn't have their private. See what I'm saying? At that point, it doesn't make any— it doesn't matter what they charge per hour. When you're flying 4 times more than you needed to to get the rating, look at how much money you're wasting. The very first one we did, I remember I had a young guy, neat guy, neat kid, come up here. He did well. But when we did a Zoom with him and his mother, and she was like, well, but I've spent all this money on the flight training at this school. And I get where she was upset. And now I got to give you this money to have him come there. And I just had to be blunt with her. I said, I understand your frustration, but that's on that flight school. That's on them. What I'm charging, I'm going to finish your son. And we did. And in the end she was happy, but I get the frustration. All right. Any big comments we need to address or anybody asking any great questions there in the chat?

What about your notebook? When's that returning back onto the market? People have been saying they need it, they want it.

I recently had people ask about that, especially a couple of the CFIs that were here. We'll put some thought into that. It's— the thing about the notebook is it's created to be random, so we When I put it out before, I had it published and it was on Amazon and it's a pretty big thick book. I don't have one laying here. They're all back there in the back, but I wanted something random to study. Right. And I got frustrated over the people on the, on the comments. Oh, this is just an instructor's bunch of instructor notes. You know, it's not even in order. And I'm like, that's the purpose. I never made that notebook to be a published book. I didn't make it for anybody but myself, but it makes sense and people like it. Because it is random instead of, oh, I'm just going to ask you a bunch of other questions and I'm just going to study these questions and I'm just going to study these. I built it to be random for the study part of it so that you're, you know, you're going right from one topic to another topic to another topic to another topic. So people have been asking about it and we'll look at that. I really need to make— I need to make something because it's such a freaking wonderful resource. However, until then, the one that we do have, and we just had a CFI here last month, and he was like, Kenny, this thing is worth its weight in freaking gold. He came here for an initial CFI. A dude actually flies for the Chicago Police Department, and he did phenomenal. And he told me, he goes, man, I've been using this thing. So we have this private pilot study guide. This is what you want if you want structured, right? Because this, this is made with sections: certificates and documents, airworthiness requirements, weather information, cross-country airspace, performance limitations, operation of systems, aeromedical factors, and general aerodynamics. There's 400 questions in this thing. In each chapter, that each chapter, the questions are repeated. So there might be 40 questions in that first section, Certificates and Documents. And then the second half of that chapter, the question's repeated again with the correct answer. So you can read through it first. We left space so you can write your own answer in. And then if you want to check yourself, then you can flip to the second half of the chapter and see the correct answer. This thing is badass. And we haven't really promoted it a lot. I don't know why, just because we're getting busy doing this and that, and I don't mention it a lot. But just recently, a lot of the people that have come for the FACs had a copy of one of these. I hadn't even pushed them to get one. They just go, oh, I got a copy of that, and they bring it along with them. This thing's badass. If you're wanting a decent— just a study guide, you don't— not interested in an online course, you know, it's like $97, but it's You know, our cost on the book is damn near $40 right now. So they're not cheap and it's not a cheap book to get, but it is a badass. So that's one way you can help yourself when you're trying to, you know, people that say, well, I'm not sure what to study. I'm not sure what to look at. Right there's one great resource along with Hogg's online courses. What you got? Why take a little drink here?

Um, somebody put in a concern about instructors, new instructors are guarding controls more so students don't really get the full-on helicopter training experience.

That's a great, that's a great comment, and let's just go ahead and cover that. This is where you have to remember that you are the customer, right? And if you have a problem such as this, you need to bring it up to the flight school and, and talk to your instructor about it first if you have to. Find another instructor if you need to. Talk to the school about it. I understand why instructors guard the controls, right? They need to guard the controls, especially when you're brand new. However, this is a common complaint where someone will be clear up to private pilot or getting ready to do private pilot, and they're going, I just wish I knew I was flying the helicopter because my instructor never lets go of the controls. We've heard this complaint. I know instructors that do it, and that is a problem that makes it harder for you because you need to know that you're flying the aircraft, right? So they can, in the aircraft, a competent instructor can have their hands close by. Like me particularly, I have my hand on the collective all the time. I never take my hand off the collective. That's just me. I want my hand on that thing all the time. However, when I'm progressing with a student, I want them to know when they're flying. So I'll have my hand resting right there by the cyclic. My feet, sometimes I'm just lightly on the pedals, or I'll have them close. But I purposely make sure that they can see that they are flying the helicopter. So for those of you that have that problem, you need to, you need to address it with your instructor himself or with the flight school. Change instructors if you have to, because yes, that hinders your training when the instructor's hogging the controls. And I know people that have done it, and I've heard this complaint before. Remember, it's your money. You're the customer. And if something's not fitting your needs, you got to be upfront about it. And if you have to change schools, get another instructor, then that's the most benefit if it's really bothering you. But I get it. A person needs to know that they're on the controls. So just getting out there and visiting them, go research, talk to people, find out what you can, and straightforward and go after it. And People are so many, they're so scared so many times to switch. They're like, yeah, but I, I have this problem at the flight school, but I, I'm not sure about this. I'm not sure about that. If you go with your gut, if you don't feel right about something, then you should move on. If something is telling you something's not right, it probably is. So a lot of it for me is going with your gut and Here's the other part of that. Flying with different people in different places is a good thing, right? Flying different models of aircraft, going to different flight schools, flying with different instructors can cause you to take a little more time to get a particular rating. However, those different experiences, every single person you, you learn from teaches in a different way, and you'll learn a certain amount of things from Instructor A, and then Instructor B, you're going to learn a different, a different take or different techniques. And the instructors see the same thing. And then the same thing with aircraft. I jumped around. It took 88 hours to get my private. Not only did I fail, um, I jumped around. I flew the R22, I flew the Schweitzer, I flew the Enstrom, and that probably caused me to have more hours when I got to private. However, once I became a CFI, I'd had training in all those, so that was a qualifier job. Oh, you got R22 time? Great. Oh, you got Instrum time? Well, great, we can hire you. Oh, you got Schweitzer time? I could— we can hire you, right? So there is benefits to flying at other places, and a lot of people, a lot of times people just don't want to switch. They're like, oh, but you know, I just— I'm scared about switching, or I— my instructor doesn't want me to go somewhere else. I think you should. If you have an inkling to fly with other people in other places, I think it's a good thing.

How would you help a student who is set up to fail by not getting the proper training from the CFI, resulting in student failing on the private written test? Could you help students?

Repeat that one more time.

Okay, how would you help a student who is set up to fail by not getting proper training from their CFI, resulting in the student failing their private written test?

Okay, well, I think that's a 50/50. Part of that is on the student themselves to be prepared to go take the test, and the instructor should only be signing you off when he, he or she has went through and evaluated you. So that instructor didn't do their job, number one. If someone takes it and you weren't really ready and they signed you up for it, is it because they didn't do a good evaluation with you? And how hard did you apply yourself? There is, there are plenty of ways to study for that written. We have written test practice inside Hogs that is available. There's other online, plenty of them out there on the internet. There's plenty of places that you can go Take practice written tests. What I did for all my ratings, and I've over the years talking to people, this is something that a lot of us do. A lot of us just used the written test prep books. I like, um, I don't think the name of it, ASA materials, like the ASA test prep books. And what I did for all my ratings is I went in and I highlighted every single correct answer in the book that was related to rotorcraft helicopter. And I'd read the question and I'd read the answer. And then, and I would do that through the whole entire book and I would just go through it. And then I would jump online. Even back then when I started my private, there was free written test practice online. So I would study the correct answers and then get online, take practice tests. And in the beginning, I'm sure my scores weren't very good because I remember I kept taking it over and over. I'd get my score in the 70s and then I wanted to be in the 80s and I'd want, And I just kept studying, going over it, going over it, and going over it until I could get online and score damn near 100 before I would actually go to the testing station. So part of it relies on, part of it's on your instructor. It's on your instructor to make sure they give you the proper evaluation and that your knowledge is where it needs before they sign you off and send you. It's also your responsibility to study until you can get that thing done. And pass it with a good score. So that's my answer on that. That's a person needs to just do the work, and there is no way, easy way to get the rating. There's no easy way to get the written done. It's applying yourself and studying and just put the nose to the grindstone so you don't fail. It's my best answer on that one. We got a couple more of the, of the core things that we're going to talk about as we move on. Trying to be perfect, overthinking slows learning. When our examiner comes in here, he'll ask the question to the applicant. He'll say, are we going for perfection today? And usually they go, yes. And he'll say, nope, we're not going for perfection today. We're going for the standard. Okay? So spending too much time overthinking does slow learning. You don't have to be perfect. You have to be able to be safe and competent and pass to a standard. And people don't always realize that, right? We all want perfection. We all want to be— do it perfectly. But the truth is, any given day, depending on how tired we are, how we're feeling, sometimes we fly pretty well. Sometimes we just don't have the best day. So perfection is not a standard. It's nice to go for perfection. You shoot for it, but don't let it overthink you and slow you down. And then here again, no clear training plan. We keep hearing this. Students don't know requirements or next steps. So here's one thing that surprises me, because I even hear this from add-on guys. I'll have somebody who's an add-on go, well, what is it that I need to do for the add-on? And I'm like, Well, you're a pilot, you know you can go into Part 61 and you can look it up. I'm surprised at the amount of people that ask the questions without ever looking. And here's a big one: saving time and money. This question that keeps coming up over and over and over, right? I'm losing my train of thought here for a second. Oh, I know where I was. We have a lot of problem And we can tell you this in the last 37 checkrides in the R44 in the last 3 years, how many times people say, oh yeah, all my requirements are done. And I'll ask them on a Zoom, are you sure? Yes. I should probably start making them over the Zoom actually going through it because they'll say, yes, my instructor and I went through them. They'll show up here. One of the first things we do is an evaluation. We go to Part 61 for the appropriate rating. And I go, okay, we're going to act like we're in kindergarten. Okay, we're going to do this slow and we're going to go through it step by step. Be like, okay, 40 hours. Do you have that? Okay, show me. You have to have 20 hours of training. Let me see it. You have to have this certain cross-country. All right, open it up. Show me. How far did you go? A lot of times people will go there. It won't be like they'll go, say, 50 nautical miles. It's supposed to be more than 50. They went to somewhere that was 50. That doesn't qualify. Or they only went 2 places instead of 3. Or the flight was supposed to be 2 hours and they have a 1.8 in their logbook. Or they did the flight and their instructor never endorsed them. The things that we see consistently— I'm just going to say it, there are a lot of piss-poor instructors out there doing a really sloppy job at checkride preparation. And it's a rampant problem. There are a lot of flight schools that do a great job with people. There are competent instructors out there for sure, 100%. There's great flight schools and there's great instructors, but there's a lot of shady ones. And there's a lot of them that don't spend the time in things like this, like going to Part 61. Even if you're a student going for private, don't leave it to your instructor. You sure yourself need to go to Part 61 Go in there, it's only a paragraph or two, and it's not that hard to go through it step by step and verify that you have the proper requirements. We see this repeatedly over and over and over. It's— I'm just amazed by the amount of issues that we see with endorsements not correct, cross-countries aren't right, they weren't long enough. The problems that we see are just over, over, and over, over again. All right. So anything else you got going on there? Let me pull this up. When I went through and we analyzed these 5 pages of questions that you asked, so I got 5 things that students do that cause them to drag out their training. And 5 things that flight schools do that drag out the training, and they relate to the questions that people have been asking. So, inconsistent training schedules. This is a big one. Biggest killer: students fly once every 2 to 3 weeks or randomly when they have time. All right, I agree, that is a big killer. So when you're asking us, how am I going to save time and how am I going to save money? I have an answer for you for what I've seen. What is absolutely 100%, hands down the best is 3 days a week. Now I know for some of you might not be physically possible, maybe because of your life schedule and home schedule, work schedule, you just can't get there 3 times a week. What I'm telling you is what makes the best use of your time and money. If you can fly 3 times a week, When you fly every day, it's too much. When you go a month at a time without flying, when you come back a month later, it's like, okay, well, what we were doing when you were here last month, and then you go out in the aircraft and it's just like you try to kind of get back to where you were. You want to go out and make progress, but you're really just going back and refining what you did a month ago. Very hard to make progress if you only fly once a month. 2 to 3 times. This is my 25 years of experience. I've watched people excel when they fly 2 to 3 times a week. It's just hands down the best. There's, there's an opposite of that. Flying every day is probably too much for most people. Some people want to jam out a rating at times, and I have seen it over and over and over. When you fly every single day, it's a lot more common for you to run into a learning plateau where you just get stuck. And you keep coming in and you just don't make progress. I have a great example. I'll try to make it short. I had a gentleman who bought a couple helicopters, had plenty of money to throw around, and he was like, I want to come down, I want to fly 5, 7 days a week. And I'm like, I'm not doing 7 days a week, I'll do 5 days a week. And he's like, okay. And I said, even then I think that's too much, but if you want to do it, we'll do it. So he gets to the point, and that's probably prior to solo, where we were just It was like the same thing. We got to that learning plateau where days go by and he's just not making progress. And I tried talking him into just backing it down a little bit. He didn't want no part of it. No, I'm worried I'm going to lose too much. And then at a certain point, right at that time when he was in that plateau, he had to leave for a week on business and he was pissed off about it. He was like, man, I don't want to go. I want to be here flying. And I go, you know what, man, just take the week, go do what you need to do for your business. Get away from this helicopter stuff for a week, and you might just be surprised when you come back. He didn't believe me, thought I was full of shit, went on and on. But bottom line, he takes the trip, goes and does it, comes back, gets in the helicopter, and we have the best flight that he'd had in weeks or months of flying. Taking that one-week break, just getting away from it, he legitimately came back and had his best flight. So under that topic, that's why I believe 2 to 3 days a week is best. Um, when you do that, you have constant— or yeah, when you drag it out, you have constant relearning, skills fade, confidence drops, more hours required. If you're not flying consistently, you're not moving forward, you're just relearning each time you go back. Firm believer in that. Here's a good one. Showing up unprepared. Students often arrive without studying maneuvers, reviewing previous lesson, reading the POH, watching training video. So the instructor spends half the lesson teaching ground instead of flying. Training becomes inefficient. I say every time you go for a lesson or every time you have a lesson scheduled, Go in, even if the weather looks iffy, because you could always do ground. People are always behind on their ground school, and people have this habit of showing up where they came in to fly. Maybe you find something wrong with the helicopter. Oh, it's going to take the mechanic till afternoon to fix, so you're not able to fly. You're there, you're there with your instructor, and I know when somebody— when that happens to us, I'll go, well, grab your bag and let's do some ground. Oh, I didn't bring it. Well, why didn't you bring it? Well, because I just knew we were going to fly today. Always take your bag with you. Always show up prepared. Have everything that you need and just get in the habit. You need to have a bag that has all of your books, a notebook, some markers, pens, pencils, all the little things that you're going to need you should take with you all the time. Always be prepared. Don't call and say, well, should I bring this? Should I bring that? Come loaded for bear. Bring everything you got. Using that time wisely. Everybody wants to fly. Nobody wants to do ground. I get it. Flying is the fun part. And that was my— a lot of the reason why I failed my private. I had young instructors, nice guys that we became friends. They're still my friends to this day. But they'd be like, well, hey, we should probably do some ground. But you want to do ground or you want to go fly? Well, I'm a moron. Of course I want to go fly. Yeah, let's go fly. Let's go fly. It's the instructor's job to go, you know what? We've got to get some ground scheduled in here. We got to get some ground time. So I was guilty of accepting it every time because nobody wants to do ground. But the more you fly, that's why the training, again, the training drags out so many times because that's all people are doing. Fly, fly, fly. Well, I'll study later. Well, I'll do the ground later. No, you need to start early on in the training from the very beginning, whether you're going to study on your own, you're going to use an online course, whatever your plan is. That's why we're in business. That's why Hogs has been created because of people's lack of ground knowledge. We see it and it happens. It's just nobody wants to fly or everyone wants to fly, nobody wants to do ground. In the beginning, hitting the ground as much as possible is going to help you excel through the training and save you money. Here's the next one I like. This is a good one. Waiting too long for the written test. Students say, I'll do the written later. I'll do it when I'm close. Result: weak knowledge, slower progress, checkride delays. The written test should be early, not last. I tell people, here's what I think. You need to start studying early. Start taking lessons and you start studying, doing ground with your instructor from the very beginning. And ultimately what I like to see is you have that written test done and out of the way before you solo. And I have some people that kind of argue with that and go, well, that's an awful lot of stuff in the beginning, you know, blah, blah, blah. Well, you know what? When that written test drags out, people wind up, oh, it's a week from their checkride and they're still jacking around trying to get the written test scheduled. That's a waste of your time because when you get that written done early, then it's time to focus on— if you can have the written done by the time you solo, then it's time to concentrate on solo and checkride prep. Going through here in Part 61, and covering all those requirements, you can put that written test to sleep. We had a gentleman who came here for a CFI, and there's a CFI add-on test, and his— I just assumed he had it. He seemed like a well-put-together individual, and he got here and he's like, well, I don't need the written test. My instructor said I didn't. And I'm like, well, your instructors are wrong. There is a CFI add-on test, and you have to take it. So he schedules it last minute and gets in somewhere nearby to go take it. Well, then we had a problem of when you, after you take the written, it can take like a couple of days for that to populate in the IACRA 8710. Examiner was a little bit frustrated with us because here we are checking the internet every hour the night before the checkride, waiting to make sure that it had populated in IACRA. So, just another reason why the longer you stall, getting that written done. It just again takes more of your time, more of your money. You want to focus on that thing, get it done, and move on through the training. Fear of making mistakes. Students hold themselves back by overthinking, trying to be perfect, not taking control. Slows learning dramatically. Students who try to be perfect take longer than students who try to learn. No clear path of direction. Don't know requirements, don't track progress, don't know what's next. So training becomes random. Most pilots don't fail because they can't fly, they fail because they don't have a plan. Same thing that we see all the time. Again, it's just jumping in, fly, fly, fly. You don't want to do ground, instructor doesn't make you want to do ground. Pretty soon you wound up with 100 hours, your written test is not done, you haven't soloed, because all you're doing is out there flying and not doing the ground. Unfortunately, that's the way it works. All right, 5 things that flight schools do that drag out training. Rush, rush, rush, flying focus. All right, I really want to hit on this for a minute because something that we've learned in the last 3 years, now that we have people coming from around the country and we're, we're not doing initial instruction, we're just doing checkrides. We're doing final preparation for private, commercial, and CFI. So a person comes here and we go out to fly with them, and we'll get in the cockpit and it's rush, rush, rush, hurry, hurry, hurry, go, go, go. And so I started asking them, I'm like, why are you in such a hurry? Well, that's what they want me to do. And I'm like, who's they? And they go, well, my flight school, my instructors. And I'm like, They push you like this and they're like, yes. They're like, they want everything fast. They want everything on the go and they push us. They push to get through the checklist on the startup. They push to get out in the pattern. And I tell them the same story every time. I'm like, that's unfortunate because I can tell you we're going to use the EMS world for example. When I got into EMS flying, my background was law enforcement. Fire department, towing service. I was used to run into the police car, run into the fire truck, hurry, hurry, hurry, go, go, go. So I get my first EMS job and the base manager's like, well, say, I see you've got some emergency services, you know, in your past. And I'm like, yep. And he said, so you're probably used to running to the police car, running to the fire truck, go, go, go. And I'm like, yep. He goes, "Well, in helicopter EMS, we don't do that." He said, "Here's the deal. Your job is to get the helicopter safely from point A to point B. What's going on in the back for the medical crew, that's an emergency. What you do up front is not. When we get a call, you of course check the weather and then you walk to the aircraft. You walk around the aircraft, touch every single panel, make sure everything's closed. Then you get in the helicopter, put your seat belt on, get it nice and snapped up. Then you pull out the checklist and you go through that checklist step by step by step. And a lot of times when you tell people this, they're like, well, yeah, but it's an emergency. No, it's not. We are trained. We're hauling cargo. And some people think that, oh, that's unfeeling, or, oh, well, that's cruel or rude. No, the fact is when you rush, it causes issues. When you rush, mistakes happen. Helicopters get wrecked and people die. So in the, in the EMS environment, we all had 2,000 hours or more. We're flying a $6 million aircraft and we didn't rush. Every single thing we did was slow, smooth and methodical. Because when you rush, again, bad things happen. So if that's the case in helicopter EMS, why are you being taught at a flight school to go out, hurry, hurry, hurry, rush, rush, rush? Nothing good ever happens from that. So I will say that is the problem with a lot of flight schools. When they're pushing you, it's all about the money. They're trying to get the helicopter in the air, get those blades spinning because they got big payments, hangar payments, insurance payments, maintenance payments. And then a lot of times it's instructor we know is a time builder. He doesn't really give a rat's ass about how soon you get your rating. He doesn't really concern about it. He just wants to get out there in a pattern and go fly. I'm going to walk over, turn the heat on. Lindsay's over there putting the blanket on and I'm getting a little cold too. So let me walk over there real quick.

We do have a couple of questions in chat.

I need to turn— oh, go ahead and ask me one and I'll answer while I walk over and turn the heat up a little bit.

How to plan their time and money for finishing a private helicopter add-on after not flying for over a year? They have their checkride endorsement signed off in 2024, but they didn't feel ready at the time.

Yeah, so they're probably pushing the 24 months. One thing, here's one thing that people, that I find is everybody worries when they worry about when they take a break from flying that they've lost everything that they know. And one thing that I'll tell you is people normally, I want to say this, a lot of the times you retain it better than you think. We had a CFI not that long ago, and the gentleman was airplane CFI, wanted to do helicopter CFI. He had 1,000 hours in the military in helicopters, but he hadn't flown helicopters in over 20 years. And surprisingly, he pretty quickly got back in the swing of things. He did a little bit of flying at home before he came here for his final approach course to do his helicopter add-on and CFI, and the flying came back. He had to spend more time on ground knowledge refreshing than he did really with flying. So, and I can give you other examples of people that have taken break for a year or two. I would say get your knowledge freshened up first, because again, that's why we're here. That's why we're called Helicopter Lane Ground School. Everybody wants to fly, Nobody wants to study. And checkrides, most failures are because of failing orals. Not that many people actually fail on a flight. This is my experience in, for what I see and what goes on with our examiner and the kind of things that he does. I've been working with the same guy for 20 years. I know for in our area, the problem is the ground. The problem is the oral. And for you, for an add-on, here's another little catch. A lot of times people say, well, it's an add-on, you know, it's an add-on, I'm already a rated pilot, so I don't have to know a lot of that stuff. Not true. When you're doing an add-on, at least what the way our examiner does it, yes, he has the choice of skipping over some areas, but he still usually has you plan a cross-country even though it's an add-on. On. And when you come in, you sit down and start doing the oral, it's back to Private Pilot 101. What documents you got to have in the aircraft? What do you have to have for day VFR minimum equipment? What do you got to have at night? What do you got to have to be current with passengers? So even though it's an add-on, you're still expected to have your private basic private pilot knowledge up to par. So my advice was, or is, it's been a couple years, so you'll need, obviously need a new sign-up. You're going to need 3 hours of prep with an instructor somewhere. You can probably, depending on where you were at, you probably won't need a lot more of that flying-wise, maybe a couple more hours. But I'd say the biggest thing is studying the ground, whether you study on your own, sign up for a hog course, use our Private Pilot Study Guide, or anything else out there that's available in the world. But knowledge is key, and knowledge is always the problem. So I would refresh the knowledge first, and that'll make the flying go quicker in the helicopter and help you get, uh, get that thing finished up. So I highly, highly, highly recommend that.

How does supervise pilot and command work?

Supervised pilot in command. Great, great question. They're talking about the PDPIC. I think that's what you're talking about, um, and that's for working on commercial stuff. We just looked that up the other day just to be 100% because we were looking, checking somebody's requirements. The PDPIC is used for training during the commercial. Like, you have to have 10 hours of solo or 10 hours acting as PIC. All right, so you're instruct— an instructor can go along with you, but when an instructor is on board, they're not in there to be teaching you. They're there just as a safety precaution. They're not providing instruction. So when you have— when you use the PD/PIC, instructor can ride along, but technically all they can do is just sit there, just in case you need help. And we looked into why do they do that. Used to be there was no such thing. And when they brought that out, we first kind of questioned, why in the world would you do that? Why would you want somebody to do 10 hours solo or 10 hours PDPIC? Turns out it makes sense. One of the reasons is for insurance, because a lot of times insurance companies don't really like people soloing an aircraft. And there can be other reasons, like insurance could be one reason why the insurance doesn't want a person soloing. So they've created the PD, PD-PIC, so they can get the elements of soloing, you know, the go out, I'm going to fly this course, I'm going to go here to this location, I'm going to go there and I'm going to come back. You plan it, you do it, and you do the whole entire thing by yourself. Instructor's there just to ride along. So That's how the PD/PIC works.

There is a note, uh, from helicopter training videos that you can't mix. You have to pick either solo or the PD/PIC for those 10 hours.

Thanks for chiming in, Jay.

Um, next question: Is there an age that is too late to start? One can You can start to learn to fly at any age, but is there a general age that really is just too late?

I don't think it's ever too late. We have guys, HOGS members, in their 70s getting ratings, and we've had guys come here just in the last 3 years, we've had at least one guy that was 70. We've had several guys in their late 60s. I think as long as you're healthy and you've got two arms and two legs and you can see and you can focus, the big thing is getting a medical. You know, as we get older, people start having more health problems, but as long as you're healthy and you can get either a medical or what we call basic med, which is very easy to get from a doctor if you qualify, I don't think there's, I don't think there's, I don't think there's too late until you're just like decrepit. Like, I mean, there's a point, right? But I've been impressed over the last 14 years, and even more recently, the amount of people getting aircraft ratings in their 50s, 60s, and even into their 70s. And it's like Jerry Ventrella that I talk about, the dude's 77 or 78 now, still giving checkrides. And we, we hear of instructors out there flying into their 70s, even into their early 80s. So they're out there, people that are able to maintain their health. I don't think it's, I don't think it's too late.

Um, Rico 9112 is looking for some clarification. They're currently going on with their CFI for 7 months. Their written test is done and their CFI has over thousands of hours. He's not looking for to build, but his instructor continues to insist on flying 2+ hours per lesson in the R22 with less than 5 hours of ground. We want to know what, like, why would that be happening?

I want to come over there and read that.

This is, it's an interesting question. Working on CFI for 7 months, written's done, My CFI has thousands of hours, so he's not chasing anything. He insists on flying 2+ hours per lesson R22 and less than 5 ground lessons.

All right, that's a great question. First one comes— first thing comes to mind, we had a young man that came out here to do his CFI, and he'd been— he was at a flight school out on the West Coast, and He'd been there for 7 months. That's what caught my attention when you said 7 months. He'd been there for 7 months doing tons and tons and tons of ground, can't get on the flight schedule. So when he calls me up interested in coming here for a final approach course, and I jump on and I do a Zoom with him, and I go through and I'm like, I'm asking him questions, and, and this kid's knowledge was phenomenal, like unbelievably good. And I'm like, get on a plane and get out here and we'll finish you up. Typical, came out, 4-day course, he was done, took his checkride on the Friday and go back home. I've just recently did a video on this. We've got a lot of topics on. A lot of times people drag out these CFIs. They want to sell you a 20-hour package for CFI, which I think for most people is ridiculous. If you— especially if you've recently got your commercial— if you're up to your commercial standards, the CFI is about being a teacher. It's all about the ground lessons. And I first learned this 25 years ago. We went to California to do our CFIs, and me and another guy named Ken— he was K1, I was K2, both of us were Ken— and we went to one of those accelerated schools in California, which is kind of like we're doing now with our FACs. And they told us on the phone, they go, if you guys have been studying, all we're going to do is fly 3 hours when you get out here. We are flying no more because if you are to a good commercial standard and you guys are telling us you just took your commercials, if you're flying to a commercial standard, there should be no more than 3 hours of prep for CFI. And we went to California and we did it. And what did we do? It was all day long practicing teaching. Get up on the board and teach. Ask questions, getting, you know, instructors asking us questions. And it was ground, prep, teach, prep, teach, and just hitting the ground. We flew the 3 hours in a week. We went and took our CFI checkrides. So I find a lot of times these CFIs are getting drug out for whatever reason, I don't know, and In the— in your comment, are you saying that this instructor flies you 2 hours at a time? Like one session is going out in the helicopter and flying 2 hours? Here's another one. One of the first videos I ever made was if your instructor's flying you more than an hour in the helicopter in the beginning, they're stealing your money. If that dude's flying you 2 hours a 2-hour block, that is fucking ridiculous. When somebody comes here and I see their logbook and the instructor was flying them 1.6, 1.7, 1.9, 1.6, 1.7— horseshit, okay? The human brain after an hour needs a break. Anybody learning a new skill— this is another one, back to the tip of flying 2, 3 days a week, 2 to 3 days a week. 1-hour flight lessons. I will go to my grave arguing this. I don't care who you are and I don't care how long you want to argue with me. When you get in the helicopter— and that was explained, this was explained to me by one of my first instructors, guy I worked for— he said the first 20 minutes you're warming up. You get in the helicopter, you go out, things are kind of coming back to you. That second 20 minutes of the hour is you're really starting to make progress. Things are making sense to you, things are going good. And that last 20 minutes of the hour, a student starts to fade. And he told me this back in the beginning, and I could tell you now after 25 years of teaching, I know when it's 5-0 minutes, 50 minutes in the helicopter, because I can tell by the person flying. Right about that mark is where, let's say, they struggled a little bit, a little bit with that normal approach at 50 minutes. That's where I go in because we used to come in, shut down. By the time you're shut down, there's a 1-hour flight. That makes the best progress. Here's what happens when you let them go over. Like, I'll say, okay, well, that approach was kind of sucky, but it's 50 minutes. Let's just go ahead and call that and we'll come out again. And they'll say, well, I want to go one more time. Let me fly that approach just one more time. If I say yes, they'll go around and the next, the next approach will be even worse. And then they're good, and then they're more frustrated, right? Frustrated. And then they'll want to go again. And I've let people do that, and what happens? Every approach just gets worse and worse. So don't get me wrong, I'm not talking about if you're going on a cross-country flight and it's going to be 1.5, or you're doing checkride prep and you've been flying for a while, or you're doing an add-on. Okay, I can understand that. But not when you're a new student and you're in the learning phase prior to solo, checkride prep after your solo, if instructors are flying you more than an hour, they are wasting your time and wasting your money. This is one of the biggest things I can tell you because so many of these questions that came in, 160 of them, so many people, how do I save time? How do I save money? Over and over and over. Insisting on a 1-hour flight. I'm telling you, flying 2 to 3 times a week, making sure your flights are an hour, take a break. And I don't care if the break's only— you know, sometimes people say, well, I want to fly, um, I want to fly twice. Okay, I'm not against flying twice, but at least take a break. Flying 2 hours, not good. Um, even if you break it up and do maybe 40 45 minutes, take a break, and then do another 45 minutes. Here's what we do on this same topic, and I'll get back to whatever's left because we're at over an hour already. I knew this was going to be like, no way I could get to a lot of this stuff. Um, yes, we're going to do March 6th. We're doing it. All right, after the next, the next two checkrides. Okay, we're gonna do it again March 6th. So I appreciate everybody for being here. I can't believe the amount of questions that have come in. So back on this topic, because I— where was I? I lost my train of thought. Oh, okay, here you go. So let me tell you this, in checkride preparation, in these final approach courses, when we started doing this, we said we would fly 3 times a day getting ready for a checkride on Friday. And that first summer we did it, when we started, after trying it, I went, you know what, I'm going to switch to 2 flights per day. 3 flights per day for us turns into like a 9, 10, 11, 12-hour day. And here's what I want to cover. Here's my other thing that my true frustration with flight schools and why these ratings get drug out and things that cost you money. When you have a flight school who has a schedule 8 AM and you can pick your slots 8 AM, 10 AM, noon, 2, 4, and 6, let's say. So you get a 2-hour flight block. There is no way in hell you can get a good lesson in 2 hours. Ain't gonna happen. Because when you walk in, like we do here, we sit down over the couches. How you doing? Did you get any sleep last night? Did you have breakfast this morning? What's going on? All right, what are we gonna do today when we go out and fly? So you need to have a pre-flight discussion where you sit down, find out how your student's doing, how they feeling, what have they been working on, what do we want to work on, Then you need to pre-flight. Okay, how long does it take for a good pre-flight? In the beginning, it might— you might spend half an hour doing a pre-flight. You might spend 45 minutes doing a pre-flight. You need a good pre-flight. Then you got to get fuel. Then you get in the aircraft and you go fly an hour, and then you come back. What a lot of schools aren't doing is a good debriefing. The student comes back, oh, see you next Tuesday, and out the door they go. Quick little sign in the logbook and you're out the door. You didn't get a debrief. That debrief is so important to come back in, shut down, little post-flight walk around, go in, fill out the paperwork on the helicopter, number one, put in your hours, sit down, debrief the flight. So during that flight, hey, those normal approaches looked really good, but that shallow approach, yeah, we need to work on that. Whatever the case may be, you need that sit-down time to do a proper debrief on what went well, you know, what didn't go so well, a good critique, sign the logbooks. That takes about 3 hours. So in these final approach courses, after we started doing it, I go, you know what, we're going to switch this. We're only going to do 2 flights a day, one in the morning, one in the afternoon. And here's what we found. We start at 10 AM, we come in just like I said, Sit down. Where are you at? What have you been working on? What are we going to do? Proper preflight. Push the aircraft out, get fuel, start up, fly, come back, good debrief, sign logbooks. Boom, it's lunchtime. We cater our meals in. We don't spend a lot of time messing around. By that time, it's time to talk about what are we going to do on the next flight. Go out, do a good hour, come back. Proper debrief, sign logbooks, a little bit of ground scattered in between throughout the day like it should be, and boom, an 8-hour day goes like that. Boom. And we find they make— we make the best progress because we're all getting out of here with about an 8-hour day. We're not here 9, 10, 11, 12 hours wearing ourselves out every day. So the whole flight school to our blocks, I think is I don't think you can do a good, a good lesson that includes a proper pre-flight, post-flight, getting fuel, debriefing, signing logbooks. I don't think you can do it in 2 hours. I just don't. My opinion. Let's see whatever we can cover here real quick. Um, the rush, rush, rush. Okay, I hit that one pretty good, right? I know I get on a tangent and I go off, but everything we do in a helicopter should be slow, smooth, methodical. From day one student to 25-year instructor to helicopter EMS pilot, everything we should do in the cockpit— startup, shutdown, the way we fly, the way we do our approaches, the way we take off— everything should be slow, smooth, and methodical. Um, we just hit the lesson blocks. Um, that's a problem. Poor scheduling consistency. Schools often cancel frequently. Move instructors, shuffle schedules. Yep. Students lose momentum. Consistency beats talent in flight training. No structured training plan. Many schools just follow the syllabus loosely. No clear milestones, no roadmap. Students don't know where they sound. More training isn't structured, it's reactive. And then not preparing students for the checkride. Big one. Perfect for FAC positioning. Oh, is that for us? They help you with an FAC. Schools often teach flying, skip checkride prep, skip mock orals, skip ACS prep. Student stalls near the end. And here's what I want to harp on this one. I got them laying right here. I'm in with a whole bunch of stuff I was going to show you, and again, we've been at an hour and 15 minutes. So here's the biggest thing. This is no bullshit, hands down the problem I've been seeing for the 25 years I've been teaching. When I met our exam— the examiner I'm still using now, 25 years later— the day I met him 25 years ago, I said to him, hey, as a brand new CFI, what can you tell me? You know, I had like 300 hours. I'd started at one school school, move to another one. I meet the examiner, he's like— at that time the ACS was the PTS— he's like, are you familiar with the PTS? And I'm like, yep. And he said, make sure your students get introduced to the PTS, make sure that you use the PTS with your students, and please go to that page, the most important page, the one that lists every single thing that you need the day of the checkride, start using that about a month in advance and make sure you have everything you need for the day of the test. I have a real problem with people showing up and not having what they need and we can't even start the test. I can tell you, 25 years of working with the man, that's all he told me as a brand new CFI, right? And he's right. So here's what we see in the industry. Here's your private, commercial, your CFI. ACS. Every single one of you working on ratings should have your own copy of this. You should be working through it. And here's what I find: somebody shows up here and they know from my videos I harp on the ACS all the time. I harp on people not using it. People still aren't using it. They show up and I'll go, you got— you've been working through the ACS? Uh, yeah, it might— usually they're like, Well, yeah, yeah, kinda. And I'm like, yeah, well, kinda, meaning you really haven't looked in it, have you? And I have them pull it out and it's all nice and neat. It's not like this one, okay, I got it marked up and it's got creases and the edges are folded. We actually open these things and use them. I've been seeing it for 25 years. Instructors not using the ACS, students not using the ACS. You need to be using it. Everybody needs to be using it, and so many instructors are not using the ACS. I see it all the time, and that's how things get missed on checkrides. We just did a video the other day where I said there wouldn't be so many— there's a shortage of examiners, but there wouldn't be quite the shortage if more people were passing on the first attempt. So they're showing up, number one, not having everything they need. So then they can't even— the test can't even start. You know, it's like going through in detail. I'll give you an example. One guy showed up to our examiner one time in the helicopter, and he had written tests for airplanes. How did the instructor miss that? How did the student himself miss that his written test said fixed-wing or airplane written? How do you do that? How do you oversight missing and taking the wrong written test? So anyway, ACS, man, if I'm gonna leave you with anything today for any of your ratings, if you don't have a copy, get one. If you're not working through it step by step, shame on you. You should go every, every single page, everything that's in here, and go through it. Do I understand? This is— I just picked up CFI, but for example, behaviorism, cognitive theory, preparations and insight. If I look in there and I don't understand those, then then I better go be going somewhere and finding up— finding the answer and looking it up. So that's one of my big things I wanted to harp on today was I'm just telling you for 25 years what I see— people not using the ACS, instructors not using the ACS. This is the freaking test. There's no surprise if you go through the ACS. You will not be surprised on the checkride. You won't be surprised because you properly fully prepared. Save time, save money. How can you get through these ratings? Using the ACS. So I didn't get to— oh my God, I didn't, I didn't even get to a quarter of what I wanted to cover, and we've been here an hour and 15 minutes. Thanks for joining us on— you know, type any last minute questions in there. Thanks for joining us. Thanks for 14 years. I'm getting— I'm tired too. I think I want to wrap it up and get out of here as well. We're going to do some more. This is— it's good stuff. I love the fact that we have 5 pages of questions people sent in ahead of time. I wish I could answer every single one of them, but we'd be here for the next 4 hours. So again, I put them together and we didn't even get through all of them. It's all right, we'll save some of this. We'll move on with the next one, March 6th. And so I want to talk about ProPILOT before we go. So save time and money. You'd save time and money by learning knowledge, doing ground school, studying, applying yourself. How do you be better than the average person? How do you get a job? Study your ass off. All right, and professional pilot is one way that you can help yourself with our professional pilot program. For those going the pro pilot route, if you just do the simple math on what you're going to pay an instructor per hour You're always going to have to have some knowledge, or some things have to come from your instructor. They've got to give you the basics. They got to make sure you have the proper knowledge for the writtens. They got to make sure that you have enough knowledge to pass the oral, but they don't have to teach you every single subject under Part 61. Part 61, if you learn it on your own, as long as you can prove to your, to your instructor through questioning, he can sign you off to go take the checkride. So having private pilot, instrument pilot, commercial pilot, CFI, all in the course, will be there for all your ratings. It won't expire. And like we were saying, we got the ball caps that we're going to add right now for the pro pilot. And for this special, if you want to go for it, there'll be 1-hour Zooms. I want to spread them. I don't want to do more than 1 a week, so we can spread it out over 6 weeks. We could go even a little farther if needed. And I'll help you with just ground preparation, written preparation if you want, uh, mock checkride where I can just sit and ask you questions, career advice, getting through the headaches and heartaches and hurdles that you have along with the training. Anything I can do to help you to move your career, move your path forward. And that is this limited time offer because obviously those would get to a point where I just won't be able to spend that much time on Zoom. It's just not physically possible. And I think I'm going to wrap up. Any other questions? Anybody left?

Everybody gone?

Holy cow, still have 60 viewers. Oh my God. I got to thank everybody, man. I'm telling you, that's incredible. 60 people on a Sunday night. I want to thank each and every one of you. I meant to thank be more thankful in the beginning of this video when we went live. I couldn't do— we wouldn't be here without you people that come attend live events, put a like on a video, uh, buy a course, give us feedback. You know, it's what drives us to keep it, keeps us going. And that I started this little ground school thing 14 years ago. I was up till like 3 or 4 o'clock in the morning trying to get my site live, and my sister was there at the airport helping me trying to get videos uploaded. And what has turned into 14 years later is absolutely amazing that we're still here, still doing it. Um, I just can't thank everybody enough. I mean, that's, that's why we're doing it. That's why we're here. We're here for you to help you get past these helicopter training hurdles. So So do us a favor, if you're on YouTube, subscribe if you haven't. Do me a favor and subscribe, please. I want to hit that 50,000. Like I said earlier, I don't get nothing. I'm not getting a play button, I'm not getting anything. I've just, for 14 years, I'm like, my, my idea has been, man, get to 50,000 subscribers on YouTube, that'd be pretty cool. Just a neat feeling. And I can, after that, I don't, I don't care anymore. Hitting 50 is kind of a big deal for me, so We'll plan on seeing everybody March 6th if you want to come back, and we'll try to get through some more. There's— God, I had so much I want to talk about, all this stuff over here. Anyway, let's wrap it up. Private Pilot links down below the video, you can sign up. And if you're interested in any other courses, you could go monthly. You can go monthly on Private Pilot. Commercial pilot. Those are monthly options, are on our site at helicopterground.com. And don't forget the free resource right here, all kinds of good info in there, PDF down below, lots and lots of good info in there. All right, sunny night. Thanks everybody. When you feel the pressure to fly but know the right decision is to stay on the ground, hit the hogs, no go. And live to fly another day. HelicopterGround.com.