Today was the first ground school for the 2600 introductory helicopter lessons that we sold through Groupon. Fifteen students showed up somewhat bleary-eyed at 9 am. Contrary to dire predictions at the instructors’ meeting last night, nobody fell asleep and in fact people seemed enthusiastic about learning all of the new material. A young motorcycle-riding kid was overheard to say “It was pretty technical, but I found the explanations very interesting, even the physics.”
Our 25-question graduation exam turned out to be a good screening tool. Three students got more than 7 questions wrong and we sat down with them for an additional 45 minutes to address their points of confusion (two of them were non-native English speakers). After that everyone was signed off and all but two were able to fly this afternoon (the weather happens to be perfect today).
The instructors in the helicopters report that these are among the best-briefed intro students that they’ve flown with. The customers, debriefed after the flight said it was “awesome” or they were “addicted” or they wanted to continue all the way to a career as a helicopter pilot (admittedly that guy came in with the idea in the back of his head).
We are, of course, right now seeing the eager beavers who did the reading and immediately registered for ground school. But so far I am encouraged.
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