Rolls-Royce RB 211-22B-02 High Bypass Turbo Fan.

Not in stone is it yet, but as of today,the date stands to be Friday, April 7, 2006. Start buying your plane tickets now folks! I will hopefully have finished my DC9 Type rating with the 25 hours initial operating restriction type certificate along with all my current ratings. It’s going to be a fun and arduous next three months but I’m looking forward to it. This is where it counts!

And we still aren’t going to make the playoffs! Isn’t that just the rub! I have never been so excited over a win, but still with last week’s disappointing play calling, the season might as well be worthless. I hope that I can just bite my tongue and wish for the best, but to have the Steelers lose as well as the Jags and we win the last two…its going to be a tough one. Beating the Colts was freaking awesome! I wish that I had watched it, but it was pretty good on radio and internet. Wasn’t that bad at all. I guess that I might have to succumb to DirectTV NFL pass next season if things doing get better.

Go Chargers!!!

Now on to studying a lot! I got a final on Thursday as well as a Weather Presentation. Can’t wait for this week to come to an end.

This is a picture of us in Jet Transtion Class Day #2. Expect us to either start to lose a lot of weight and gain large bags around our eyes in the following months. We already have out next week panned out for us with a final exam prior to us leaving for Christmas Vacation. Yipee!!!

We are all officially three stripers as of this morning! Congrats Forrest!

(from left to right, back row: Ryan Nay, Forrest Foust, Greg Farlow, Kevin Lubic front row: Kurt Buffington, Laura Pigott, Elijah Nicolas, Manoj Osuri)

This is probably one of the greatest links in regards to “flying through” a jet engine. It is a flash animation and I want everyone to check it out! http://www.rolls-royce.com/education/schools/journey02/flash.html

Well, today was the first day of Jet Transition. More specifically, we actually started CAPT 502: Jet Transport Systems. It is official, I am almost there. I can’t see the light just yet, but supposedly, I have about another 120 days of the CAPT program remaining which includes the Christmas break and weekends. It’s all so surreal. That means that this blog is almost 1 year old. Laura and I were remembering when we first met which was just about a year ago from this week at our initial interviews. It’s amazing to see how far we have come in the program.

My class, AB05-01, has been combined with AB05-02 along with two other students who started at the Commercial level. That brings it to 8 of us all in all. It’s going to be a great class I know it! Laura, Manoj and I have decided that we would wait to ask for our three stripes until our other classmate finishes. We are just a crew like that!

Driving to Daytona is just going to be a pain now since that we will have to leave approximately 45 minutes early to find parking and walk to class. And then when the Daytona 500 and Bike Week come along, its going to be such a mess. I do look forward to the King Air Simulator, but more so, the MD-90. Some words of encouragement from Mr. Dan Barnes (a Jet Instructor Pilot), “Our job is to try to kill you everyday, but your job is to prevent just that from happening.” Good stuff eh? It’s going to be an exciting time.

Well, after yesterday’s accomplishments, Manoj, Matty P, Laura, Greg Farlow and his wife Stephanie, and I decided to head out to Cancun Lagoon where they have flip it Tuesdays. Let me explain. Every time you order a drink, the waiter comes by and tosses a coin in the air. One side is labeled, “FREE,” while the other is just plain. If it lands on the “FREE” side, then your drink is absolutely free. No gimmicks! Of course, the entire first round with the bartender tossing the coin up wasn’t free, but then after we sat down and got a table, I intervened with the waiter and asked if I could flip it myself. I managed to flip it and scored drinks for all of us. The waiter and I became good friends just as I was finishing up my 3rd beer. Yup, you heard it, I drank more than my normal one and half. I ended up having 4.5 beers (my shirt kind of got a quarter of that half) and a shot of something that Laura got. I kept on flipping some good stuff. I think that all in all, we had four beers each, if not some of us even had 6, and our tab came out to be… $3.71. Yeah you heard it! Freaking three bucks! That excludes the first four that we had to pay for at the bar prior to sitting down. But seriously…that place was fun! I know that I had a lot of fun. Here a picture of me, Manoj and Matty. I’m actually hanging on…You guys remember the UPS man on Mad TV?!!? Yup, that was me… and Jojo and Anh, I was once again running around the car! It was great times! Look at my eyes, they are actually wide open!!!

Yeah that’s right, I am now an official Commercial Multi-Engine Rated pilot with Instrument privileges. This is Mr. John Castronover to which I had the opportunity to have for my FAA Designated Examiner. He was by far, one of the most experienced pilots that I have flown with. From all his various type ratings to years put in with Eastern Airlines and retiring with his last leg in San Diego, I had a good chance to see how happy ones life can be in aviation as well as how bitter one can feel about certain airline companies.

Well, not to brush my nose off or anything, I was given one of the best compliments I have ever been given in my aviation career. “Elijah, you had the plane eating out of your hands. You are definitely one of the best students to come out of here. Your commanding presence in the aircraft is definitely what will make you well qualified to sit left seat.” Okay, so yeah, I won’t let it get me cocky or anything, but to have a 33,000 hour pilot say that to me, a 231 hour pilot, really makes me feel all warm and fuzzy inside. I have no other way of putting it. It was great and I felt good about the entire ride. The confidence factor and the lack of anxiety (well, not as much as I normally do) really helped me out a great deal. Whatever the next picture with me will be will have me standing with 3 stripes! Bring it on Jet World! Yeah, no time to break people, I have jet class day 1 tomorrow!

I was able to not only finish my in house oral exam and the checkride but the Adv. Meteorology course today! I didn’t do as well as I would have liked in AWX but I was able to score above a 90%. Very low in my books, but hey, I completed all three qualifying events in one day. Take that for some thought.

Tomorrow morning at 0900 EST, I will be beginning the DE (Designated Examiner) Oral Exam and Checkride. To be a Commercial Multi-Engine Pilot or not to be…that is the question. Stay tuned!

If all goes well, I will be making the transition to jet systems very, very shortly! I also go home next Saturday!!! Not this upcoming one, but the following on the 24th. So you know what that means, I don’t have any time to buy presents because I’m booked till I leave. Sorry guys! Definitely next year when the inflow starts happening again!