Training in Indian air Force, sounds quite interesting. And since the day when I knew that I would be doing my training in IAF Chandigarh, I was excited, waiting for the day to come because there are fighter aircrafts, radars etc.(as previously known) at this place and secondly the beautiful city Chandigarh.
The majors were over, some grades were out & some yet to be displayed and in all these events the long waited day finally came when I reached 3BRD(Base Repair Depot) on 14th May 2006 after a long and nice seven hour journey with a lot of enthusiasm, excitation and expectation. I was allotted a twin sharing room. My room partner was manoj singhal. After having lunch & a nice sleep we went to explore the city and for our disappointment found that the city goes to sleep around 8:00p.m. We are a total of 9 students- 4 from IIT Bombay doing their B.Tech in Aerospace engineering and 5 from IIT Delhi(including me) doing our B.Tech in mechanical engineering except me as I am from Production & Industrial engineering.
To tell you something about 3BRD I must say that it’s a maintenance depot where overhauling(assembly & disassembly) and testing & servicing of helicopters(basically Mi8 & Mi17 i.e. cargo and not the fighter aircraft) is being done. Assembly of Mi35 helicopters which come in knockout condition from Russia is also done. I can’t tell anything more about the technical aspects as I am working in a defense organization and I have to abide by its rule of not leaking the secrets out of the camp area.
Training started from the next day, which was basically related to the introduction to IAF, 3BRD and Officers officiating our training. The presentations & lectures told us about the history of IAF, its structure, branches, packages etc. and most importantly the security rules & regulations and the dress code that I have to strictly follow. There was a meeting with AOC(Air officer commanding) R.K srivastava relating to the training and basically for a formal introduction. But I still did not know that what my training is all about except the fact that it was divided into two parts, the first half been the Observational training for a period of 4 weeks and in the later half I have to do a project.
After all the introduction the observational training started and now I had to visit various labs, hangers etc where the overhauling & servicing of various components & subcomponents is being done and was supposed to understand the working. The various places that I visited are Mi8, Mi17, Mi35 hangers and Avionics lab(which include instrument, fuel components, communication, fire equipments and many other labs).It was a totally new experience and I must appreciate that I have learned a lot about various components & system of the flying machine such as engine, transmission system, communication system etc. I should also tell you that I had a dream of sitting in the cockpit(on pilot seat) and this dream was fulfilled here giving me a lot of satisfaction and joy. And the feelings that I had while standing on the roof of the helicopter are not possible to describe in words, it was just an out of world experience. For your information Mi35, the only combat helicopter is wonderful both from outside & inside and it can carry a lot of arms & ammunitions to destroy the enemy.
But there are some problems that I am facing. The most important is the food that I can’t eat due to the lehson put in it which causes disorder in my stomach and make me to barf. And another is the transportation problem. As IAF can’t provide us vehicle and we don’t have it, so if I had to go to market then I have to walk for many kilometers in order to reach to bus stop and even after this I am not sure whether I would get the desired bus or not.
To conclude I would say that this one week was full of new experiences and knowledge. I have learnt a lot just in one week only and hope to learn a lot more in the future. And I will give my best to explore this place and gain as much knowledge as possible from here so as to make the best possible use of this opportunity.
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