Abe's Hangar: May 2012

I have been very busy with work and studying that I haven't been able to post in a while. Even though I'm not sure anybody reads this, but it will be a good memory for me in the future.
The second week of May I was done with my 50 hours of XC flights.. well actually I did about 47 hours so I have 3 extra hours for any emergencies (checkrides far from home or extra training). This is definitely the funnest part of the ATP Airline Career Program.
Usually how it works for a fast track student is that they will pair you up with someone for a week and a half or two weeks and you'll be doing your XC flights with that person. For me it was quite different and I think it was better. Since I am self paced, scheduling needs to check my availability and they will try to put me with another cross country student during those flights and for that reason I flew with 7 different students from PDK, LZU, BWG and FXE who also were in their XC phase and It worked pretty well. It was pretty cool to learn about other students on these cross country flights, their different personalities, learn their stories and their future plans as soon as their earn their ratings.
I visited several cities like Tampa (KPIE), Daytona (KDAB), Jacksonville (KCRG), Concord, (KJQF), Indianapolis (KEYE), Meridian (KMEI), and Knoxville (KTYS).
The only problem is that if you are going to fly from PDK; most, if not all of your XC flights are going to be out from LZU.. why? it could be because of student availability to pair you up with, or airplane availability. It sucked for me because I had to drive 1:30 hrs to get to LZU and a couple of times we would not be able to depart because of wx below minimums. Even though I flew with a student from PDK, they made us takeoff from LZU and both of us complained and the reason dispatch gave us is that there were no available airplanes for us at PDK.
By visiting other schools during my XC phase I would highly recommend Daytona, and Lawrenceville they have the best facilities on the SW. PDK has a very old simulator or I would say, very limited.. you cannot fly from the right, you are flying a Seneca instead of a Seminole. Other facilites have much more better FTDs than PDK. Another thing about PDK is that I only flew 1979 models. I had the chance to fly the 2000 Piper Seminole only once during my cross country but if you are going to PDK expect to fly 79 models. Ask that question also.
ATP just ordered Piper Seminoles with G500 and delivery started last month, If I get a job with them I really hope to be instructing in one of those :).
Why I love PDK? It is the closest facility from home and you will get good airport operations experience for communications and situational awareness, it has lots of runways and taxiways and it gets veery busy.
But that was during my XC phase in May 2012; PDK is now growing. We now have 3 instructors instead of 2 and the place is getting too small for all of us. Maybe when you read this it is not the case anymore; but do your homework and ask questions when contacting ATP.
Also my second instructor got married and left ATP.. which I still don't understand. My dad told me to accomplish my goals first and then think about marriage but anyway..I am now with my third instructor for my commercial training. He has plenty of experience and a near perfect passing record.
I took my commercial written test last weekend and scored a 96!!! I definitely recommend the Gleim book, read it from cover to cover about 3 or 4 times.