Purdue Flight Training

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GUNIT

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Hey guys,

Well, I'm all settled in at Purdue and will begin classes on Monday. I was thinking the other day how a senior I met on here last year really helped me out with all my questions about the university and I've realized now is the time to pay it forward. I am going to make a sort of running commentary (blog) about my training here at Purdue to hopefully help other prospective students.

Just as a background I'm from Boston, MA (lets go Pats), so naturally Indiana is very very different. Thus far I'm not too fond of the state itself, but the Purdue campus is like a city on its own and the people are great. It's incredibly wierd for me to see how nice people are. I'm waiting for someone to tell me to get the hell out of the way.

Dorm wise, McCutcheon is pretty nice now. They replaced all the furniture and added air conditioning on the guys side. Girls side still sucks.

My first flight out here will be on Tuesday. More to come then...
 
Day 1: The first flight slot I had I met with my instructor and we just went over standard Purdue procedures and the outline of the commercial I flight course. It entails 50 hours, about half dual and half solo. We went out and he showed me their warriors. They are all in great shape and incredibly clean. Cockpit wise they have 1 Garmin 430. I should be going up dual on thursday and solo saturday (weather permitting).
 
Welcome to Purdue!

Join as many clubs as you can and try to get to know some people outside of aviation. I believe shortly there should a fair where all the clubs get out and show what they have to offer. There are TONS! Take advantage!

Also, don't be that kid that brings his headset to every class. Honestly, no one really cares if you're in the flight program -- it's just another major and treat it as such.

If you do that, you'll get a lot more out of the Purdue experience.
 
Day 1: The first flight slot I had I met with my instructor and we just went over standard Purdue procedures and the outline of the commercial I flight course. It entails 50 hours, about half dual and half solo. We went out and he showed me their warriors. They are all in great shape and incredibly clean. Cockpit wise they have 1 Garmin 430. I should be going up dual on thursday and solo saturday (weather permitting).

That's too bad man. Here at UND our Warriors have 2 Garmin 430's. :D
 
so naturally Indiana is very very different. Thus far I'm not too fond of the state itself, but the Purdue campus is like a city on its own and the people are great.

I'm from NY, and yes, Indiana does suck.
 
Welcome to Purdue!

Also, don't be that kid that brings his headset to every class. Honestly, no one really cares if you're in the flight program -- it's just another major and treat it as such.

If you do that, you'll get a lot more out of the Purdue experience.



hahaha, don't worry. I only lug my flightbag to my flight slot and back to the dorm that's all. Otherwise I'm all about the backpack. Right now I'm doing the whole rush thing so we'll see how that works out.

anyways, onward with the blog;

Lesson 2: Today we actually went up. Since I came in with my private it was essentially a checkout flight. Went up and did private pilot maneuvers using purdue's procedures. Stalls, steep turns, slowflights, emergencies, landings and takeoffs.

Lesson 3: Today was ground just taking the presolo written exam and the presolo x-c exam. They're basically intended for student pilots but you have to take them before you take a purdue warrior up solo.

Lesson 4: Went up solo in the practice area to do private pilot maneuvers. It gets incredibly busy in the pattern when something like 14 aircraft come in all at one time. Not to mention the tower controller was working ground as well and I believe lafayette tower has no D-Brite in the tower. impressive.
 
and it continues:

Lesson 5: This was an intro to commercial maneuvers. We did Chandelles, Lazy Eights, Eights on Pylons, Steep Spirals, and power off accuracy landings. Chandelles, Lazy Eights, and steep spirals didn't seem too bad, however, I still need to get my head around the whole concept of pivotal altitude on the eights on pylons. Power off accuracy landings are just going to take some practice.

Lesson 6: This was an out and back solo x-c to Bloomington, IN. I believe it was roughly 60nm, so pretty short.

Lesson 7: This was a sunday slot. This means that I had a 6 hour block starting at 7:30 and ending at 1:30. I flew a solo x-c KLAF-KAZO-KDAY-KLAF (Lafeyette, IN - Kalamazoo, IN - Dayton, OH - Lafayette, IN). This one was long. 4.5 in all. However, I did have a real good time and the weather was fantastic. Still some ground fog up north when I departed, but visibility was great and there wasn't a cloud in the sky. The air was also smooth as silk.
 
Lessons 8-14?: anyways, sorry about the lack of posts here. In the past week or two I had a discussion session, and have been going up on local solo flights practicing comm maneuvers and recently finished my solo x-c hours for the semester. Also recently took a few planes into Midway VFR with a couple other guys. That was great!
 
Recap: Alright. Well, I'm done with my solo cross country hours for this semester. You get 12.5 solo x-c per semester in AT243 or AT248. I did mine LAF-BMG-LAF, LAF-AZO-DAY-LAF, LAF-VPZ-LAF, LAF-LOU-EVV-LAF. They were all pretty good, except evansville kind of sucked. There was really NOTHING going on there, but nice pilot's lounge at the FBO. Lately I've been going up dual to knock out some of those hours, mostly doing commercial maneuvers. I feel like I've been sucking at them, but my CFI always says good job, so apparently they can't be that bad (or so I hope).

Also have started doing my solo time at night. I used to be afraid of flying at night, but I love it now. It is so much cooler and smoother. Awesome!

Anyways, I posted some pics from the trip up to midway. They're in the pics from the road forum, check it out!
 
Kalamazoo, IN

Gee, I always thought Kalamazoo was in MI, aka MICHIGAN! Right on Hwy 131 just south of Grand Rapids....but then my XC (back in the early 60s) was Purdue, South Bend, Muncie, Purdue....all thank God in Indiana!

IFR...I Follow Railroads.
 
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