Part 1 Meet HOGS New Chief Pilot Gary Cleveland

Oct 14, 2018

 

 

Part 1 Meet HOGS New Chief Pilot Gary Cleveland

Gary started with me back in 2012 when he began flying, I was launching helicopter online ground school. He actually started before I launched so as Gary was studying for his private I gave him a thumb drive with a power point with 330 slides on it, and Gary would use that to study as he was doing his flight training. We did maybe a total of five hours of ground school for his private, cause when he would come in and sit down, I would test his knowledge, he's knocking this stuff off and I'm going, "Man where did you learn all this stuff?!" and he goes, "Your presentations."

                                             So Gary used my original training launched back then, five years ago, over five years ago now. And he just went through the power points over and over and over. And we did no more than five hours of ground for his private. We've done the same thing for his commercial and his CFI the last five years. He uses my presentations, now he uses the videos, still studies the far aim, still studies all the books you have to have. But in his own words he would read until he would get tired and then he would go to video so he wouldn't have to read and he would just watch the videos over and over.  

                                              Gary has been with me from day one to now as my main student using all of our training and so Gary knows, helicopter online ground school better than anybody on the planet because he is on the outside. Well he's on the inside now, but being someone who has been using the training over and over and over it's hard for me on the inside building it, I'm not the person outside consumer the information to learn. So it works out that now as Gary's retiring from his career shortly in a few weeks to go to work with us full time, this is common knowledge, no secret.

Part 1 Meet HOGS New Chief Pilot Gary Cleveland

                                             He doesn't have the date ironed out for sure but he's going to know very soon when he will be here every day full time. It's going to be a big deal for us because Gary's going to be full time helicopter online ground school helping to answer customers, help me do videos, help do live events like we're doing today. It will be the biggest leap forward with helicopter online ground school. There's a lot of things I promised in five years, I haven't always been able to deliver everything as quickly as I would like to but I've been a one man operation and the last six or eight months I've had Steve that's running cameras over here helping me, organized Hogs inventory, the content, and we have everything now inventoried times categories, videos, we have it all in a document that anyone can look at. With a team of us now, we can pull up an old power point, revamp it, make it new or make it better with equipment we have now, we shoot it, put it on the hog site and bam, new content for our members. 

Part 1 Meet HOGS New Chief Pilot Gary Cleveland

                                             He just came back from vacation. We've missed him a couple weeks he's been gone because even though he's been part timing it when he's not full time on duty, not having him, just not having him for a couple weeks was odd because I'd been counting on him for a lot of things so it's nice to have him back. We'll get to the privileges and limitations shortly after we cover a couple things. 

Gary Cleveland:                 Well I grew up right here in Plymouth and went to school here. Went to the United States Air Force. Did six years as a security policeman. Then I came back to my home town and I got on the police department and I've been there for 24 years. A lot of hobbies and interests to include, scuba diving, mountain biking, jeeping, off road type stuff. I'm married with three daughters. One's living in Australia with her biology degree from Purdue. One just joined the Navy and she's in basic training. And the other will be going to the junior high this year, she's excited to be in the junior high now.

Rachel:                                No I'm not.

Gary Cleveland:                 Yes you are. Excited for the supplies and school clothes shopping anyway. So that's my story and now I'm going to retire and work full time with Hogs and I'm excited about that. No more shift work and doing something I really grown to love. I met Kenny when I did a helicopter ride at a festival and after that I used him and his information, didn't use him in a bad way I guess. I used your information and your knowledge and your aircraft and here I am today as a certified flight instructor. And I still enjoy it. So I have Kenny to thank for it all.

Kenny Keller:       Well we're thrilled to have him and I want to do something else before we get started with the privileges and limitations. I have my helicopter training notebook that I made all those years ago. It's how I got through my ratings, I've used it as an instructor and just through a weird way I started using it to train as an instructor. When I failed my first check ride I was overwhelmed so I created this notebook before I went back to retest.

Part 1 Meet HOGS New Chief Pilot Gary Cleveland