Definitely harder to get home more than once or maybe twice, unless you live close by.

For brevity I won't give a day-by-day, but it's an 8-week program, with 12-14 days off spaced throughout the program. Several of those are single days off. A couple of 2-day off periods, which aren't always on weekends.

You'll get off 4 of the 6 days of the pre-oral and oral exam part of training, which could be 4 contiguous days off, but it could just as easily be 2 off, 1 on, 1 off, 1 on, 1 off. That just depends on your particular schedule, since they depend on examiner availability.

The "done by lunch" thing definitely didn't happen during class days. It certainly could on the procedure trainer or simulator days if you have the crack-of-dawn slot, but that's about it. Maybe an hour or two early on some days if we made good progress, but that's the most I saw.

If you're close enough to bring a car, definitely do it. It will make life easier.

As Proximity said, newhire pay varies by how many days are in the month, but figure average 88 trips-for-pay at $67.32, equaling $5924 a month, plus 14.2% ($841.21; next year's number) going directly into your 401k from the company. No per-diem hurts, but it'll get much better once you're out there flying.