Our Most Prepared New Helicopter Student Ever
Jul 09, 2018Our Most Prepared New Helicopter Student Ever
Dean Seymour: ... I'm like, "That makes me look pretty good."
Kenny Keller: Well, and you don't know, but you're live right now on YouTube.
Gary Cleveland: Well, there you go. You could put that segment on "Build Your Own Business".
Kenny Keller: There you go. Kenny Keller, Helicopter Online Ground School. Dean, one of our ground school members, just got here a few minutes ago. Gary Cleveland's getting ready to do a flight with him. I just had to turn the camera on, because one of my first videos seven or eight years ago was "Show Up Prepared For Your Helicopter Lesson".
We knew Dean was coming. We knew he had ground school, but we didn't know to the extent of how ready he was. Gary and I were outside when Dean pulled in and he starts telling us about arrow, and what else was he telling us about? Arrow and ...
Dean Seymour: Weight and balance.
Kenny Keller: Weights and balance, and he's telling us all this stuff and we're going, "How many hours do you have?" and he goes, "One," so not only does he have a good grasp on the knowledge, I'm going to share with you what he brought with us. Here's just down the hall in Gary's office. You can see the old green screen in the background. There's Gary's office. There's all of his books.
Here's a better shot. This is everything that Dean brought with him, and I'm going, "Holy cow! Somebody listened to my videos," and it's awesome because I'm going to roll at the end one of my, swear to God, first videos I ever made was "Show Up Prepared For Your Helicopter Lesson". I'm going to roll it after we get done here, and I got to do this quick, because they are getting ready to go fly.
But, literally, someone listened to one of my videos, because everybody always shows up, a lot of times they've got 20 or 30 hours, they're ready to solo and they still don't have their books, and they haven't been doing anything. So, he has the record now. Dean has the record for showing up more prepared than anyone I have ever trained in 15 years.
I just showed you the pictures. I mean, the guy's already got the knowledge, been going through the videos, has all the books and everything he needs. Man, he starts doing lessons, whether he flies here or in Minnesota where he's from, or anywhere, any flight school's going to be happy to have him walk through the door. He's got everything ready to go. He's already got ground knowledge. He's the perfect student.
I'm going to hand this over to Dean and let him share whatever he wants to share with us, but just, I said, "You guys got to go on camera with me," and he grinned and said, "Yeah, why not? I want to see it." Just give us a brief description about anything you want to tell us about yourself, or ground school and traveling here today, anything you want to share with anybody watching.
Our Most Prepared New Helicopter Student Ever
Dean Seymour: Again, as Kenny said, I'm from Minnesota and I just happened to find him online, and just looking through and trying to find something on helicopters, and the biggest thing that I found out is that I can relate to what Kenny says. He makes it simple, easy to understand. Another thing is too, he said, like in his videos, be prepared. Have your books. Study.
That's the biggest thing is to study. If you don't study it just takes you longer. My wife can contend to this as well, is that I spend hours at the kitchen table reading, listening to Kenny's videos, going over, and over, and over again, and I don't know it all. I still have a lot to learn.
Kenny Keller: You've got a good grasp, though. A really good grasp already.
Dean Seymour: It's been a pleasure just being here so far. It's going to be even funner when we fly with Gary, and to me you can't beat what he's put together, not in any way, shape, or form. I had looked online with other places, too, but Gary just sort of hits home when it comes to teaching, so that's all I have to say.
Kenny Keller: Awesome. Thank you very much. You got anything you want to add, Gary, or you want to get flying? Just give them a little bit of something. Your impression of walking in, how's the student.
Gary Cleveland: It gives me goosebumps to see him show up with ...
Kenny Keller: Right.
Gary Cleveland: He's going to be a pleasure for anybody that teaches him. He's already got a ton of knowledge. We went over just a few things that I like to go over even before an intro flight- dynamic rollovers, settling with power, LTE- and he knows the stuff already. We're going to go out and see how his flying is and I'm anxious to be one of his first instructors. This is hour number two of dual frame, so maybe we'll see him back here to train with us later on.
Kenny Keller: Awesome. Well, that's all I can say. Show up prepared. I'm going to roll that video here in just a second. We got to get a big old handshake here. Thank you for traveling all the way from Minnesota, and thank you for showing up and being the most prepared. This is now the most prepared student I've ever had in 16 years officially, right here.
Now we're going to roll the video I made seven years ago, one of the first ones about showing up prepared for your helicopter lesson. You can make fun of my green screen and my audio and video quality from seven years ago. Thank you for coming.
Dean Seymour: You're welcome.
Kenny Keller: Another big handshake. Here you go. Yeah, we're moving right along here. I'm going to back up just a little bit here, and this is going to be something for you guys that have already been flying that's going to be more obvious. I actually shouldn't say that, because I had a guy show up that was a commercial pilot wanting to do a CFI check ride, that's where I'll go with the story.
I had a guy who I helped to get his commercial. He calls me up, "Hey, I want to do my CFI." I said, "Okay, great," so we make a date and a time. He comes and he walks in, and he sits down at the table and he looks at me. I kind of look around and I don't see a book or a bag or anything. I'm like, "Hey, how are you doing?" "Good," and we start talking.
I said, "So, you're ready to do your instructor rating?" and he said, "Yeah." I said, "Okay, well, where's your bag?" and he's like, "Oh, what bag?" I said, "Your bag that you're going to carry your stuff in." "Oh, well, I don't have one," and I said, "Where's your Rotorcraft Flying Handbook? Where's your FAR/AIM?" "Oh, well, I think I got the Rotorcraft Flying Handbook in the car. I'm not sure where my FAR/AIM's at."
This guy was going for a CFI. He ended up getting it and he did good. He was a sharp kid and he did great, but I had to back up. Here's a guy at a commercial level going for CFI who didn't show up ready to go. What I'm going to show you here is a good friend of mine, when I started flying 15 years ago, gave me this cool bag.
This thing's traveled with me all over the United States, been on tons of aircraft, and it even survived the helicopter crash I was in. Got tossed out onto the ramp and we'll tell a little more on that story again later, but there's a cool chip in here I'm going to tell a story about, too, about something I'm going to redeem back in Cleveland at some point.
The point I need to make is you need to have a bag. You can start out in the beginning, it can be a small bag. As you continue through the training you're going to realize you need something bigger, and something even bigger, and if you go to CFI, CFI check rides, instrument check rides ... I can remember my examiner saying when I showed up for my instrument check ride after I was already an instructor ... I walked in with all this gear and he says ... He just laughs and says, "That's the way a CFI check ride and an instructor check ride should look like."
Our Most Prepared New Helicopter Student Ever
So, bottom line, from the start of your training get yourself a decent bag that you can carry your books in. Get yourself a marker, some pens and pencils, a decent tablet, a decent notebook. We'll be talking more about notebooks later, but the point of the story is when you go to your helicopter lesson have your stuff with you, always have it in the car, and don't just cancel your flight, "Oh, the weather's bad. I'm not going." Always take your bag with you.
You go to the airport and you take the time, you've got the appointment set up. You get there and the aircraft doesn't start, or you guys find something on pre-flight and you can't fly, you can go in and do ground for two hours. What happens? The dude shows up, you can't fly, "Well, hey, let's do some ground. Do you have your stuff?" "Oh, no. I left it at home."
Any time you go fly, take your bag with you, get what you need, and always have it there, because we all know ... I shouldn't say we all know, that's why I'm doing this ground school. A lot of it is in the 10 years I've been teaching I've taken care of a lot of people that maybe didn't get the best instruction somewhere else. So, the point is instructors don't make you do ground. That's why I'm here. I'm here to help fill that void.
So, get yourself a bag. Show up for your flight lesson. If the weather's bad, don't cancel. Go in for your flight anyway. The weather's bad, you have a maintenance issue, do ground school. A little bit of what 10 years of teaching has really taught me to really push people to do. Stay tuned and we'll see you on the next one. Thanks.
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Our Most Prepared New Helicopter Student Ever
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