read the post below if you haven’t already by clicking here or scrolling down…it’s awesome!

Today was a relaxing day of just waking up late, eating some good food at Islands (Maui Burger + Loaded Fries and some sweet water) and heading down to Fashion Valley to return some goodies. We met up with Marella at their house in Fashion Hills and headed to the mall right after just for a little bit. I never knew that the Apple Store was that busy. It’s ridiculous! At least I know that they have plans to make the Genius Bar much larger in the anticipation of more customers after their initial batch intel co branded computers.

I bought a new pair of Khakis from Banana and figured that’s all I would need for my Mom’s party and indeed it was! There was a lot of food and dancing (Adelle and I chose not to partake in the latter ^_^) Pictured above is: me, Adelle, Taylor, Jorene and Mom. Good times. Now, the dilemma is where or what to do tonight for New Years!!! It’s crazy that its already here. NUTS!

I wanted to take Adelle to Rei de Gado in Downtown, San Diego and my friend Anh also wanted to hang out, so I made the best of it and combined the two. Ang was hung over like crazy and he needed food badly. I even called in for a reservation, but the service was just horrible. They didn’t have our reservation and we didn’t get seated until another 20 minutes later. After that, it was more than 15 minutes before we got our drinks and even then it was just painful to watch other people get refills while we haven’t even gotten our first cup! We were all definitely just not having a good time or enjoying the restaurant in general. The food was good, but the waiters were absent from their duties. To say the least, one of the skewers fell on Anh’s face and we only got a free dessert from it. I mean, it hit his eye pretty hard and I thought with all the events leading to that, we should have at least got comped. We ended the day though on a good note with him showing me his new Ecco (not Marc Ecko) snow shoes that he bought for his stay at Boston and that we would hang out again sometime later. Sorry that it was such a crappy first time there guys! On to the next part of the day…

The last few days have been me lingering on the idea whether or not I needed some new luggage for my frequent traveling. I went to the luggage store at Fashion Valley a couple of days ago to find out that Tumi was having a sale. Now, the only dilemma was deciding on what kind of design I wanted; duffel shaped with extra compartments or the traditional style. Of course, there was gray and black too. Tonight as I was looking around, I noticed a guy around my height looking at the same kind of bags. His mom, dad and wife were also helping him decide. I finally noticed that it was none other than Drew Brees! Starting to turn red and sweat a little, I just walked off to another part of the store trying to tell Adelle that it was freaking Drew Brees! She didn’t hear me the first couple of times and asked, WHO?” in a loud whisper. It finally sunk into her head and she was telling me that I should go over and say hi. She even just started to follow him around the store trying to pretend to look at little pens and stuff. She definitely wasn’t as embarrassed as I was. I didn’t know what to do. For those who do not know who Drew Brees is, he is the #1 Quaterback for the San Diego Chargers.

Well, to make my star struck stupidity story short, I called Jojo and he told me that he wanted to talk to him and that I should hand over my cell phone to Drew. I was just so freaking nervous. I didn’t even want to ask for his signature either. After talking to his wife for a little bit (asking advice on which bag to chose) I calmed down a bit and finally when they were checking out, I asked the store clerk for a Sharpie and politely asked Drew to sign my luggage. I think that I might have even said, “Do you think you can sign my bag for me?” I sounded like such a dork. He even turned a little red because I don’t think that he has ever gotten such a request before. I told him to sign it large and he did just that. Check it out! Now, any suggestions on how to protect the signature? And yes I’m going to use my new bag. I just hope that no one takes it away!

Weather wasn’t the best, but my co-pilot definitely was. Being his first time in a single engine aircraft, I thought that he did a good job of helping me out with checklists and going over different procedures. I decided that we could take off VFR to Ramona from Palomar airport and once I got in the air, I noticed that the haze was just too constricting. We did a little maneuvering around Escondido, but nothing too intense and decided to stay in the pattern at Ramona. I completed 4 touch-n-gos and we got on our merry way. It’s great to give someone their first flying experience.

Afterwards, I headed north to get out and high just under the Class Bravo airspace and decided that we would ask for flight following to Montgomery Field, but ATC offered an IFR clearance. WX was reported as skies clear with haze, so I decided that I might as well get an approach in. I love flying the mountain ranges around socal, but it definitely can be kind of scary. I was approaching rather close to a mountain waiting for my vectors inbound to intercept the final approach course and right at the last second before I was feeling uncomfortable, they turned me in. Wasn’t that great of a landing, but still good. We stretched out for a while and I filed for an IFR back to KCRQ.

That entire flight went by really well and at 4000, we could see the haze layer and I thought that it was choice that I got the clearance. Got a full stop ILS 24 into KCRQ and coupled the auto-pilot for almost the entire way, but I just couldn’t get the Glideslope to work properly. I disengaged it 4 miles and 1500 feet above the runway and made an AWESOME landing! I kept the noise wheel up until the next taxi way. Show-boating you might call it, but it was damn smooth.

I got to meet the aircraft owner (a doctor of course) of N440JP and spoke to him a little. I wish that I could have flown with him and learned that he pre-ordered a DA42. That’s the new multi-engine aircraft from Diamond Star that just debut this past month. It would be amazing if I could fly that plane sometime soon. I might not even have to go to China to instruct anymore if I chose that path.

12/26/2005 [.5 actual instrument / 3 approaches]
IFR to KRNM / TEC Route SANM8 and SNMA10
KCRQ –> KRNM –> KSMO –> KCRQ

Flying to Ramona was great and with my IFR clearance to 9000 feet, it was executed with ease. The approach was rather harmless with a few clouds in between the airport and I. I did a lap in the pattern perfecting my procedure even more. I still have a lot more room to get better, but I can feel how much I have grown with each landing.

On the way out, I amended our previous IFR clearance for departure from KRNM to KSMO with FSS. I did forget to post an alternate but using a TEC route, I was unsure on the certain procedures. I definitely have to reacquaint myself with those things. I filed an IFR Flight plan anyways, with the route identifier for my course, but I wasn’t sure how to treat it. I mean, forecasted weather was okay and everything enroute wasn’t going to be too bad and a TEC route is an IFR clearance anyways. I definitely was just completely unfamiliar except with the language that I read in the Jeppesen Manual the day before.

Flying along the way and out of Ramona, Jojo sat in front and while we were going through a cloud, I could see that he was pretty tense. The entire flight was chill and I got to play around with the autopilot for the first time. I got the handle on it real quick and we were on our way to SLI. Of course, approaching the LA area, I noticed that there were some pretty big clouds and that we were going to be taken right into them. It started to drizzle a little and while in the cloud, we experienced some light turbulence. It shook the airplane pretty hard and I even broke a sweat, but it was no problem. I disconnected the aircraft just to reengaged myself and “feel” the plane. Flying throughout the Santa Monica area was a little disconcerning on my own and being in the clouds, I definitely was making sure that all ATC directions were going to be clear of anything and everything. I didn’t break out till about 800 MSL and 1 mile from the airport. I even briefed that it would be a circle to land, but when tower told me I was clear to land, I thought that I could make it. Cutting the power to idle and just slipping to lose altitude didn’t get me down and I informed them that I was going to execute a go around. Being very kind, they told me to circle south and enter a left downwind. I guessed that knew that I was unfamiliar. I wasn’t sure if that was already understood being that the approach did call for a circle at 680 MSL. But I made a good decision to go around and felt pretty good about it knowing that I was far from stabilized. I mean, I was really high!!! On the initial approach, I got a NAV flag on my HSI but proceeded because I was now using my backup OBS 2 which I had already tuned and identified prior to the approach just in case. FAR 91.187 basically told me that I should have informed ATC immediately when I had that outage, but I didn’t know that until just this afternoon reviewing for my ATP. The approach in was no problem and we had an awesome lunch at Typhoon. I was excited for myself. I built a little bit more confidence in that I successfully completed my first TEC route but the hardest part I knew was yet to come.

Prior to even departing KSMO, I called up and went through the routing to CRQ with FSS and they were a huge help in helping me navigate on paper the exact routing. I spoke to Andrew on AIM and he told me what it would be like on the climb out and with all those instructions I thought that I was going to be overwhelmed. To my surprise, I found myself repeating the instructions no problem with only one confusing detail. I thought that I heard “left turn to 270 on climb out,” but departing 24 I knew it was a right turn to get to 270. Tower corrected my read back and I was on my way. It was a little fast but ATC was pretty quick on getting me to my intended course. We climbed out west then eastward into a clearer sky with fewer clouds than on our initial approach into the area and both my passengers fell asleep rather quickly. We had a nice 30 knot tailwind increasing my groundspeed to 160 knots. It was an easy ride home and this time along the entire route, we had little to no cloud obstructions enabling us to sight see and relax a little. You can tell that the flight was great because my passengers didn’t wake up at all until we were 2 minutes from the Final Approach Fix into KCRQ. I woke them up with a breifing from the cockpit. (this is your Captain speaking thingy, ya know?) Yeah I’m a tool, but I like to think that I am practicing. It was a great day of flying. I definitley wish that I had a chance to fly everyday and just build up time like this. I feel that it is really valuable in the overall learning experience of being a pilot.

I executed a total of 3 approaches and logged .5 actual instrument time. I also bought the Jepp plates which I definitely appreciated much more than the NOS version charts. Erasable highlighters are the bomb too!!!

Well, Jet Transport Class is over and I have to say that we’re off to a good start! A great start actually after a rough commercial multi-engine conclusion. I scored a 98%, I should have finished at 100% but I caught myself in a word game and changed my answer. Oh well, now on to San Diego! I can’t wait!

I just wanted to relay this post! I wasn’t able to view this on television until the highlight reels were being aired, but I was listening to it and watching it on the NFL live gametracker. You have to listen to both! They vary so much…just listen!

Turner 83 yard TD run

6 players to the Pro Bowl. That’s right, you don’t hear anything about the “other” guy. Oh yeah, and by the way, congrats to Mr. Shawne Merriman for being voted to the Pro Bowl!!! May he bring the Chargers Defensive good action for years to come!

off comment note: I have my first CAPT 500 series final in about 14 hours. Goodnight!

Already? Yeah, already. We just finished our presentation concluding our piston phase at CAPT. We are also coming up on our first 500 series final this Thursday afternoon. Should be great! Guess what, we aren’t even completing the course work till tomorrow afternoon. I can say that I have a pretty good grasp on things, but still have yet to ‘master’ them. I have to admit, that I find myself really excited and motivated to be learning completely new systems. I’m loving it! April 7 also just keeps popping in my head.

Congrats to another 2 of our CAPT cadets that have a start date of January 3rd at Pinnacle Airlines. They graduated about 2 weeks ago and were notified on the same day of their interviews that they were hired! Amazing news for the program and its future! I’m glad to part of this new era of pilot training.