No. 3 New Commercial Helicopter Pilot HOGS Member Interview

Oct 11, 2018

Meet Lance Easterling from Texas! New Commercial Helicopter Pilot HOGS Member Interview! We also had HOGS members from Las Vegas and New York! We had a blast having all 3 members live with us in the studio on the same day!

Join in the fun at: www.HelicopterGround.com

 

No. 3 New Commercial Helicopter Pilot HOGS Member Interview 

 

Kenny Keller:                      So we got Ground School member number three. So Lance right here just did his commercial last night with HOGS Chief Pilot and Instructor Gary Cleveland.

Lance Easterling:               Where is he?

Kenny Keller:                      He must be home sleeping. He texted me this morning. He's like "can you get the helicopter out and have it ready for Lance?" And I said "yeah absolutely, I'll get it ready." 

Lance Easterling:               He's going on vacation.

Kenny Keller:                      We did a short video with you last night when you and Gary came in and literally, they had just walked in the door so I knew that he passed his Helicopter Commercial Pilot Check Ride because he walked in with a big grin on his face and he's walking around with this certificate!

No. 3 New Commercial Helicopter Pilot HOGS Member Interview

Kenny Keller:               Alright. We're live again. Getting ready for the big day tomorrow. I'm going to bring Gary over here and brand new commercial pilot Lance. So come on over Lance. Gary just finished up his check ride. This is live. They just came in so I don't really know any of the details yet. I know that he passed and when I rushed to the airport to meet him here and I said "hey are you game to do this live, debrief live real quick?" And he said "yeah, let's do it." Lance walked in, he goes "turn it in" and here were are. Cameras rolling. So Gary, tell us just briefly how you guys interacted and how you got Lance up here to work on the commercial check ride and a little bit about how it went today.

Gary Cleveland:                 Well Lance is one of the ground school members and so he contacted me via email and wanted to come up here and finish his rating because of commercial add on in the helicopter.

Kenny Keller:                      The third one you've done in about the last three weeks.

Gary Cleveland:                 It's getting to be a common thing. And well, he had a lot of dual time already in the Enstrom and we just worked about eight hours flying around dual and had him ready and he had a Sunday afternoon check ride with the examiner and smoked it. He did excellent. Examiner coming out of the oral and said "you guys really have them on their game when you send them up here." So it was a pleasure working with them and he's going to be a safe pilot.

No. 3 New Commercial Helicopter Pilot HOGS Member Interview

Kenny Keller:                      Awesome. So tell us Lance, how you ended up here.

Lance Easterlin:                Well, about a year and a half ago, I was very frustrated with my training and I didn't think I was going to be getting anywhere with it, and I didn't. They just threw a book and me and I was like okay, what am I going to do? So I started searching-

Kenny Keller:                      Here's the book, read it.

Lance Easterling:              And I see this Helicopter Online Ground School course and I signed up for it and I told my partner CT, I said, I don't care what I costs, I'm going to do it, I have to do it because I don't know what I'm doing because my instructor's just sitting there on this phone going round and round and round. I was just frustrated. And so going through your course, they brought it up to me, like he said, and I got frustrated and I talked to CT and I said let's go.

                                             So CT contacted them and here we are.

Kenny Keller:                      Yep, and CT was here two weeks ago?

Lance Easterling:               Two weeks ago.

Kenny Keller:                      How many days was he here start to finish?

Gary Cleveland:                 I think it was about the same. He planned on being here two weeks and we had him out of here a little early.

Kenny Keller:                      Yeah, and you've only been here-

Lance Easterling:               Since Wednesday.

Kenny Keller:                      Wednesday. Here got here Wednesday, and it's Sunday, and he's done.

No. 3 New Commercial Helicopter Pilot HOGS Member Interview

Lance Easterling:               And I recommend these guys for everything.

Kenny Keller:                      Well Gary's doing an incredible job-

Lance Easterling:               He sure is.

Kenny Keller:                      And you know, the flying really has been a side line, not that we don't want to do flight training, we're just so busy with ground school and launching the new business tomorrow, build your online business, Gary's getting ready to retire just in a few weeks. We're a few weeks away from having him come in full time, and he's been here busy, all of his time off from the police department, he's been here flying constantly so we're looking forward to getting Gary started.

                                             We're going to keep doing the flight training, we have more and more members. That's five members we've had here in the last month. Month and a half that have come from Illinois, Texas, US Virgin Islands, and tomorrow, Lance is going to hang around, he's was going to go for a flight tomorrow, take his wife up, he's willing to jump on camera live with us tomorrow as we talk about the new business launch. We have another Helicopter Online Ground School member who is from Indiana but now he lives in Vegas, he's an instructor in Vegas and he wanted to swing by and I said "we're going to be live, come on." And I just talked to another member who's from New York, who happens to be in Michigan, he's going to come in and try to make it while we're live so tomorrow during our live event for the new book, three of our Helicopter Online schools from three different parts of the country are all going to come on here and join us.

Kenny Keller:                      And you want to add, so we did a little video on that last night, but you got here on Wednesday, Gary had you done by Sunday night, you ended your check right and five in the afternoon and you came here all the way from Texas to finish up and we did it in a few days.

Lance Easterling:              I sure did. What can I say?

Kenny Keller:                      Gary's the man.

Lance Easterling:               Gary's the man.

Kenny Keller:                      So is Kenny.

Lance Easterling:               Kenny, Gary, both. Both sat down with me yesterday and my nerves were shot, my wife thought I was going crazy and Kenny helped me just relate some things and-

Kenny Keller:                      Like to the simple. Where others are good at the detail, I'm good at the break it down to understandable able to relay it easily to the examiner.

Lance Easterling:               And then when I got to the examiner, he was like totally different than what I expected. So these are the guys. You need to come here, and you need to finish here. Start, finish, whatever.

Kenny Keller:                      And your partner CT was here two weeks ago, got his rating, got him finished up, and we've had a blast with everybody that's been here. It's been a great time. I don't know what else to say.

Lance Easterling:               You did an excellent job, thank you so much.

Kenny Keller:                      Thank you very much. I'm glad that you came back in to fly, it's cool having three ground school members all in the office at the same time. Never happened before, Texas, New York City, Las Vegas, how cool is that.

Lance Easterling:               It's cool.

Speaker 4:                          You can say how nice it is and flip it.

Lance Easterling:              Yeah, it is beautiful here too, I don't know what it is in the winter, but it's beautiful now.

Kenny Keller:                      The winter kind of bites. The winter kind of sucks. That's the only reason I wouldn't want to be here, but we're getting ready to bring the mayor in here because we're getting ready to talk about Dave retiring, but Plymouth airport, what a nice little airport that Dave's- It's a friendly atmosphere, the airport is right by the downtown because most of the time, an airport is always stuck out away so you have to have trouble getting to town, do they have a courtesy car, do they not have a courtesy car? When you come to Plymouth, you can walk across the street to the Holiday Inn, you can walk over to the Mexican restaurant for a meal, they have two courtesy cars here, you can jump in a courtesy car and within three minutes you're at Walmart, your drugstore, everything you need-Applebee's- everything is right here so you can walk to anything you need.

                                             You can come here to fly and you don't even need a rental car. You can basically walk to everything you can get it and it's laid back here, it's a friendly atmosphere, a nice facility for Plymouth being a small city, it has one of the nicest small airports that you will ever see anywhere and six, this wasn't the case seven or eight years ago before Dave Lattimer this airport was drying and blowing away and right now, everything in here is rented and when I came here five, six years ago, it was all empty.

                                             I'm like hey, can I rent one of those offices upstairs and Dave was like "have at it" rent the whole thing. "You want to clean it up, go ahead." And I was thrilled. This whole entire upped level, there was nothing here. Nothing. So I just go up there and pick whichever office I want? He's like "they're all open." And I went down and picked one on the corner with nice big windows, looked out over the ramp. The place was drying up, blowing away and when Plymouth and the mayor and the aviation board, and Dave Lattimer have done with this airport is absolutely amazing.

                                             People don't always understand why an airport is important to a community. And it is important because people come in, they go to the restaurants. They come in and park here and go to Notre Dame for games because there's overflow that comes down here when South Bend's too busy. There's all these reasons why we have an airport, why we need an airport, why they put the money in the airport and the general public doesn't always understand. Everybody's always like "why are we spending all this money on an airport? It's Plymouth." It brings money in, it bring people in. It brings people from New York City, Las Vegas, and Texas.

Lance Easterling:               US Virgin Islands.

Kenny Keller:                      You guys wouldn't be here if we weren't here.

Lance Easterling:              That's right.

Kenny Keller:                      Well, you have been a blast. CT was fun. He was quiet.

Lance Easterling:              Once you get to know him though, you can't shut him up.

Kenny Keller:                      Just a little harder to get anything out of him, but you've just been no problem and it's been a blast. Thanks for jumping on camera last night and today.

Lance Easterling:              Sure. And I'll be back to do some more training.

Kenny Keller:                      Awesome.

Lance Easterling:              Thanks a lot buddy.

Kenny Keller:                      Thank you.

No. 3 New Commercial Helicopter Pilot HOGS Member Interview

Let Helicopter Online Ground School help you with all of your ratings! We have four FAA certified courses, Private PilotCommercial PilotInstrument Pilot, and Certified Flight Instructor. We have a bundle pack called Professional Pilot Lifetime Membership, which includes all this for life.

Any course completion will automatically award WINGS phase credits and you are on your way to satisfying the flight review requirement.

Questions? Get a hold of Chief Pilot Gary Cleveland

[email protected] 

574-767-1797