Who Needs a Fall Break?

Over the weekend of October 5-9, students at Purdue University were able to enjoy a peaceful and relaxing fall break and return to their home towns. It may not have been as peaceful as many had hoped since Purdue lost to Ohio State that Saturday, but that is beside the point. When mostly all 40,000 students left the University, a few stayed behind because of obligations they had to complete. One of the groups that I am talking about is the Purdue University Flight Team. The regional competition for the flight team is quickly approaching the last week of October and fall break was the perfect opportunity to get some solid practice in before the event.

The team met and practiced Monday and Tuesday from eight in the morning until two in the afternoon and some even flew into the evening. While classes are stressful enough for college students, this puts that term to a whole new level. Each day the team met in the morning at Purdue’s airport and took five Piper Warriors and a Cessna 182 to Delphi Municipal Airport. Most of the practice was spent at this small deserted airport, but it didn’t take long until the peaceful field turned into a busy formation of small airplanes.

Spot takeoffs and landings were a big part of the practice as well as the message drop event. Flour was laid in a line across the runway to give the pilots a clear view of their aiming point, and on the grass strip next to the paved runway; two barrels were placed on opposite sides of the field as a target for message drop. It was now time for the airplanes to fly and it had to be done in shifts since there weren’t enough aircraft for everyone on the team to fly at once, nor did the airport have the capability to have all members flying at the same time. Three airplanes flew a left pattern from runway 18 and used the runway to practice six power on and six power off landings. At the same time there were two airplanes flying a right pattern around runway 18 except they used the field next to the runway for their low pass. As planes were constantly taking off and flying low dropping objects out of the air, many spectators came to see what all the excitement was about. Some general aviation pilots were even confused when coming in to what they thought would be a routine day at the small airport.

All together the two days of strenuous practice for the Flight Team was a complete success. The pilots became comfortable with their events and the amount of air traffic in a close proximity. There are only a few more weeks until regionals for the team and by the time October 30 hits, they will be ready to show all other schools what Purdue flying is all about.