A Few Questions

[Cole]

Keep in mind that getting a spot might be tough, look into some schools. Heres some links, theses are my top list, and since you seem to like the R22/44 series, a couple of those aswell.

 

Dont be afraid to fire them all an email. One that came really highly reccomended to me is the first one. One I was told to stay away from was Helicollege, however I also have a few contacts that graduated from their and seem to be doing quite well, so youll have to judge for yourself.

 

Koetenay Valley Helicopters

 

BC helicopters, featuring our very own 412D

 

Chinook Helicopters, featuring H56

 

Valley helicopters

 

RH22-

E&B helicopters- AS350_Matt will be training here as of next week (Congradulations again Matt) and can probably tell you alot about the school and the prices etc.

 

Okanagan Mountain Helicopters-Decent school, search the forums, lots on this school and its instructors

 

Heres the one I was told to avoid, the reasons were that compared to other 100H pilots, the people trained at this particular school could not handle the helicopter as well as others with the same hours. The standard of knowledge and proceedure was not "up to par" with what the other schools are putting out. AGAIN, this is hearsay, take it with a grain of salt, and make your own judgements.

Heli-College

 

What I know about each school:

 

KVH

-High time aircrane pilot as the instructor

-Flight test and written exam done at the minimum time available for sevral reasons (as I see it, that would bring some stress off of the student as they can focus on learning to fly for a living, not for a textbook.)

-Very high test marks coming out of their students

-Students have shown excellent skill to various pilots that I have talked to

-train on the S300, with a 206 available for a mountain course etc.

 

BCH

-High time class 1 instructors

-Many aircraft, you probably wont see many schedualling conflicts because of that.

-Very good pilots coming from here as well according to yet more pilots

-S300 as well

 

Chinook

-High time class one instructors (also with a crane pilot, thats something that seems to stand out for me... dont let that make up your mind)

-206 available for tailor made training

-good training area (same as BCH)

-BH47

 

Valley

-Friendly honest people (from what I could tell)

-Close to rocks, good location

-BH47

 

E&B

-RH22/44

-Decent pilots, good marks

-Like I said, Ill see if I can get Matt to chime in on this one

 

OKMH

-RH22/44

-Decent instructor, from what I hear hes very demanding, so that one would definately depend on what kind of a learner you are

-High placement rate (mind you, every school will claim this)

-Good test marks etc.

 

Anyone else feel free to speak up.

This is basically what ive learned, and heard about each school.

 

Hope that helps.

Cole

[Cole]

Forgot to mention this one (sorry Ryan)

 

Coast Helicopter College

- Not affiliated with HeliCollege

- Very good instructor

- 206 available

 

Now go do some reaserch. :up:

[matt_as350]

Yes, I am indeed training with E & B in Campbell River, starting on Monday.

 

E&B uses R22, R44, 206, 206L, 407 (Their entire fleet, but the training machines are the R22, R44 and Jetranger)

 

Training packages can be done how you want them to be with regards to splitting of time between the 22, 44 and Jetranger.

 

All the E & B trained Pilots I have that are working in the industry are top notch pilots. If you have access, I think it was a article on the R44 in Vertical, E&B's Owner and CFI were talking about training on R44, very informative article.

 

If I remember correctly:

$430 per hour for R22

$660 per hour for R44

$900 per hour for Jetranger.

 

All In All looking forward to training.

 

Matt

[Curt]

Hey I cant tell you how much i appreciate all this information this is more then i could have ever asked for. but no one else should worry about me, its time i took this info and hit the books for my self.

 

Once again i wanna thank you guys for helpin me turn around and thanks for all the great info.