Random Saturday in Daytona Beach

So, I woke up today learning that my Charger hat sold on eBay for just about what I paid for which was good. I wanted to ship it out today but I woke up late and the post office closes at 12:00 pm along with UPS stopping at 13:00. I didn't wake up that late, but I wouldn't have time to get ready and head to Palm Coast. It's about a 15 - 20 minute drive to the PCP.

After I did that, I cooked a good breakfast meal. I had rice, Vienna sausage with some Montreal steak seasoning along with scrambled eggs with onions, green onions, pepper, and salt mixed in. I have to say that I was even impressed with how good it tasted! I just might do that again tomorrow.

Then, JZ (Jon Zimmerman) came over and all three of us (Matt included) headed to Daytona to go hit some golf balls at the Daytona Beach Public Golf Club. I did okay, but wasn't consistent. I was using an old school wooden driver that they had for those without clubs. We then hung around for a bit and I found a place in Port Orange with a batting cage. We headed there and on the way saw a good place to eat. Or what we thought we be a good place. Here's a picture of me in the batting cages.

After finding out that we we were not that good we left and headed to that place that looked pretty interesting. Oh yeah, I was able to bat lefty pretty good tonight too. Much better at hitting left handed with the fastballs than the right. This picture is me hitting righty.

We got a little lost along the way, but managed to find the restaurant that looked like it was in the middle of a bayou or something. Before we entered through the chain link fence, a gentleman that looked like Rip Van Winkle greeted as he walked out of the place. I mean, his beard long and white. I passed by a Red Ford Ranger with an awesome American symbol. Check it out! Gotta love the Daytona Beach!

Flying last night at Savannah was pretty fun too. I landed straight in for Runway 36 and then made a left turn to join the left downwind for runway 9 with an MD 88 following in close. With him following me, I made a very short approach as what tower advised me that I do. After doing a quick touch-n-go, tower then told me to make a right turn and join the right downwind for 36. We did a go around, because there was another plane on final for 9 and the two runways intersect. I actually went around because my instructor pulled a fuse that indicated our landing gear wasn't functioning properly. It was convenient. Of course, tower then told me to turn left again for 9 and the last one, we headed back for 36. It was some awesome pattern work at KSAV. I loved doing that. I was a little confusing at first, but I was able to tune in both ILS freq. and switch between the two on every approach. We fueled at Signature FBO which was great. The iced tea, hot cocoa, little indoor putting area and couches were great. We even got .75 cents off with the Embry Riddle discount. Along the taxi way were 4 harriers and when we were preparing to leave, we saw a C130 taking off. It was a good night. Here's the picture of the runway layout.

a party without me

Hope you are all ready to party like ROCK STARS because we are rollin out in the biggest Limo Bus in San Diego to celebrate me & Vince's engagement! The party will be RAGING with over 80 ft of black leather couch seating, a 42" plasma, a stripper pole and most importantly.... a BATHROOM! We will cruise the city and make stops at our favorite beaches. Charging all night is priority so make sure you BYOB and BYOW!!! No charge for the limo bus...just pitch in for the driver's tip $5/person. Please let us know asap only if you can DEFINITELY make it as seating is VERY limited. Hope to see you there!

So, this is the evite for my godson's engagement party! Look at what I'm missing! This is ridiculous! Take lots of pictures Vincenzo! That sounds like so much freaking fun!

Opa Locka

This was my first flight to the area of Miami and I have to say that it is damn busy. There are so many lights around that its really hard to find and distinguish an airport. The only way I was able to find the airports were by spotting the aerodrome beacon but even that didn't help me orient myself for a VFR approach around the runway.

Gas prices are pretty steep these days. We filled up at $3.99 at the self serve as compared to $5.65 at the FBO (Miami Executive). Of course there was no Belgian Coffee or leather recliners to sit on, but hey, got to save the school some money and be wise about things right? I filled up the Seminole and got ready for my flight. Taxiing was fun as it was my first large airport to 'wander' around. I mean, the instructions were pretty simple, but I really had to mentally be aware of where I was on the map while moving on the ground. I wish that I could just taxi around large airports with different instructions to help myself learn how to navigate larger areas. I'm looking forward to going to Savannah, Georgia tomorrow.

I climbed to 8500' for my cruising altitude and was able to maintain 155 ground speed. On the way back home, I had a chance to skirt a cloud layer while on a local IFR clearance at 6000 feet. That was awesome because we just kept popping in and out of it at that altitude. I also got to see a rather long streaking shooting star! That pretty much topped off the trip. I did try to take pictures and stuff, but my point and shoot can't handle the longer exposures like an SLR.

I landed pretty smoothly at X47 which reminds me that I heard another pilot at Opa Locka tell the tower to, "Clean up the grease on the runway." I just thought that was waaaay cheese. For those who don't understand that lingo, greasing it means touching down at an optimum setting. Another way to describe it would be a 'feather-like' landing. It does feel good when you touchdown and barely feel the wheels touch, but come on, that's just cheese. Of course, if it was his friend or something in the tower, that would be more of a camaraderie type deal, but no. =)

VFR Night flying

I have to admit that everytime I get to fly around a large populous area at night with clear skies still excites me! I sit there and just realize that this is really what I want to do. Its amazing to fly over Downtown Orlando while trying to find the stupid airport beacon and runway identifier lights. I voluntarily turned off the map screen on the Garmin 530 (GPS Map system) so that I can just level up my night vision skills. It was awesome how situationally aware I was. I skirted around town at about 1400 feet which is right under the Bravo air space around that area and headed towards a good 45 entry for a left downwind for runway 7 at Orlando Executive Airport (KORL). As we got closer, we could see the airport lighting system for Orlando International Airport (KMCO). Its awesome just 'noticing' these things. The lights really kind of distract you more or less.

Flying back to Flagler, I did some commercial steep turns (not to PTS standards) and executed an awesome emergency descent. My landings (I did 6 in all) were awesome! I was feeling each one of them compared to the other night. These were definitely comparable to my day landings. I also asked to land at Flagler twice at night because of how different the environment is without lights and with the shorter, narrower runway. I transitioned accordingly and successfully executed both of them.

Tomorrow night, we're going to head to Opa Locka which is just north of Miami. I'm definitely looking forward to that flight because I have never gone south of Vero Beach. Miami, here I come!

Rod Machado and Me!

Today was President's Safety Day at ERAU - CAPT. We had a great talk from the Main Campus Safety Advisor, the President and Vice President of ERAU, Our Executive Director and Safety Advisor and Mr. Rod Machado himself. For those who may not know him, Rod Machado is a well known pilot within the GA (General Aviation) Community and is a big contributor to the overall awareness of aviation in the public sector. He is also a motivational speaker and has authored many books on "How to Fly" type scenarios.

Rod Machado spoke for quite a while today emphasizing on different aspects of complacency. The five different points all basically came down to asking yourself: What am I going to get out of the situation? In other words, if you are iffy on executing your flight, you should maybe just stand down and wait out the weather. Or if anything, just try to make a decision that you'll be better off with by staying in your realm of comfort

The rest of the time, there was a huge emphasis on safety. CAPT is a young program but with the culture that it posses, we have a bright future. So far, we have flown approximately 15,000 some odd hours, approximately 2 years and 3 months, and have been accident free. We are looking to keep that tradition going.

Of course, as you are reading this, you might ask, what I am not flying. If you aren't, just look at the time. I'm suppose to be in the air practicing night landings in the PA44. (It's 2006 EST) We have two front converging and they just felt like placing themselves right over my area. So, the minimums went down below our standards for dispatch and we were put on hold. Again, putting what Rod Machado emphasized today, we felt that it wouldn't be a good idea to go flying because of how we felt about it in the first place. I call up Gainesville Flight Service and they weren't too keen on VFR or even IFR (winds at 6000 were around 60 knots out of 270) and cloud coverage was just all over the place with embedded thunderstorms. Not a fun thing to fly around especially without any weather data on board. So, we made the decision to just wait it out till tomorrow night. It should be nice.

Adelle went home this morning. I had to take her to KDAB around 500 EST which was great fun. She spend the night before flying with Manoj and I. Last night we flew around and did night time maneuvers for the first time in a while in the PA44. Emergency Descent was fun along with the Commercial Standard Steep Turns. I fly second to kind of give Adelle a heads up on what I would be doing come my turn. She clasped my hands for some of the maneuvers but relaxed after she got use to it. It was fun sitting in the back of the Seminole just her and I. We never got a chance to fly just the two of us in the back of a small plane. Of course, I was still acting as pilot monitoring and made my necessary call outs so Adelle and I didn't speak to each other that much. We did an approach in KSFB (Sanford Executive, Orlando) followed by 3 stop and gos.

Now, when it came around to my turn, I got ready to go and after the first take off made a turn to stay in the pattern. It was great flying at a towered field again, at night, but I was definitely not ready for it. I haven't flown like this in quite a while so I was making myself really alert and trying to stay on top of things. All three landings at KSFB were okay, but not to my day standards. The ground would always just pop up out of nowhere about 2 seconds prior to me expecting touchdown. I could never get use to it. On the way back home to Flagler, I once again tried to settle it down slowly, but because the change in the sight picture, I wasn't ready again and still landed okay, but not to my standards of feather like. I have a lot to work on, but the next few lessons are on night proficiency. That hopefully will take care of it. Till then!

Adelle is / was here...

So, Adelle got a chance to come over for the Halloween Weekend. This basically marks the beginning of when we went out for the first time. No, it wasn't us on a date, but more like a "casual" outting to a club called E-Street in Downtown, SD. It was for the Halloween Special. And yes, I have never gone back since then. At least I think I haven't. And yes, it's pretty not that cool. Instead, this year, we went to a place called Mai Tai's in Daytona Beach, FL. It's the PB Bar and Grill equivalent but much smaller and a lot more guys! I mean like 90% men! Not fun either, but hey, what can you do? I have Adelle here part of the time. She came with to the graduation ceremony of some friends from the CAPT program and a night flight in the PA44. We also went to Jacksonville and spent some time walking around the St. Johns Mall. Actually, we spent quite a bit driving around trying to find the place. I eventually ended up near Craig Airport. (that's about 20 miles or so north of where we wanted to go) We also got some nice chat time in and mostly just a bunch of "hanging out" time at home just relaxing like what we use to do in SD. I'll miss ya babe!

*who are those two guys trying to mack on my girl?

Waffle House

Today finally marks the end to Adelle's little fantasy of waffles at the Waffle House. Definitely not that great at all. I don't even recommend eating there really. It's okay, but nothing short of what I couldn't do. I mean, eggo waffles taste better! Oh well, it was the experience that we were after. There was also this HUGE fly buzzing near. I mean, it almost looked like a bumble bee.

Tonight should be the first night flight in the PA44. We are in N926ER, again. If you don't remember, its the plane that had the mold issue going on and crews getting sick. The last time I flew that plane, it wasn't that bad at all. I mean, the weather was a little colder than normal so that probably helped with the smell. Usually on the hot days, 926 smells the worst. Adelle is thinking of coming tonight, but we'll see how the plane is prior to taking off. Maneuvers should be fun. I've never done them in the PA44 at night. I'm definitely looking forward to the flight.

GO CHARGERS!!!

Personal Record

So, if it isn't weather, its resources. It's not the lack of instructors at CAPT, but the lack of multi-engine aircraft. We have 4 PA44 and 3 of them are still down. So, yeah, I didn't fly again today. This will be bordering a record of how many days I haven't flown.

Graduation of a class that I actually knew took place today. The catering was better We'll see how things go! and the keynote was very informative. It would be nice to get a transcipt of the speech. We also got new CAPT hats. They don't look that great, but they were free (in some weird sense if you don't include the huge tuition). Looks like there is good news all around with the various airlines working with CAPT. Once again, excitement is in the air.

Adelle is here on a short trip. I'm excited that we get time to hang out.

Busted again

I was a little surprised to get canned tonight. Once again, another PA44 was downed for maintenance or whatever. So, Manoj and I are beginning to truly get the feeling of not flying everyday. It's not that bad, but I mean, I could be using my time here to be working or studying whichever. It just feels as if I could be using my time more wisely and I'm not. Yeah its my fault but I just don't want to exert myself too much before a flight.

Adelle is coming over tomorrow early in the morning. She's taking the red eye from SD to LAX to ATL then down to DAB. It's going to be a long flight. But she's a trooper. I can't wait. I do have a night flight in the evening which will dappen the mood, but it should be a lot of fun.

Good flying

Today was a good day in N926ER. I have to say that I was a little hesitant in flying that airplane because of what Laura told me last night. To sum up that experience, she didn't feel that good at all. She basically threw up afterwards and the rest of the crew got sick. I'm not sure, but the smell inside the aircraft is quite rancid. So, after eating a huge lunch, Manoj and I were a little scared of feeling sick ourselves. We had weather on our side today because it didn't allow for the smell to heat up. Instead, the cold weather helped out a bit in keeping it down. We flew around for about 3.7 hours total and got a good lesson in. We start night flights tomorrow along with steep turns and other maneuvers. That should be fun.

Should I get my CFI?

wake up call to no plane

I had a feeling that I might need two alarms for the morning, so last night, I set one at 5:40 AM and the other at 6:20 AM. Did that work? Nope... Instead Manoj gave me a, "Where are you?" call around 7:30 (I just got up like 2 minutes before) and notified me that we were on standby waiting for resources. Of course when I say resources, its none other than the PA44. Three out of our four were down and one was out. We stuck around for our instructor who then just told us to go home and wait for a call. We got one, but it was the news that we had been cancelled. Oh well!

Adelle is ocming this Friday! I do have night flights so that's going to stink up the night time events, but the morning and afternoons should be fun! What do you want to do babe?!

uneventful...

I have to say that the past two weekends that I have had a chnace to relax by going out have been both huge, major busts! I mean, I don't expect anything anymore of Daytona Beach, but at least some gratifying notion of social life would help out the demeaning character of this hell hole. Whew...that was a mouthful.

Well, looks like Hurricane Wilma has come and gone. It's a good thing I guess. I got a free hour in the DA40 and I'm ready to leave whenever another storm hits. Come to think of it, the season is slowly but surely almost to and end and without any harm to my residence. Is this just a quirky notion that I should sell the house before some devastates my neighborhood? *Ummmm*

I walked outside today and the weather is amazingly frigid. I mean, it was if I was standing in some snow in Big Bear! It was nice. I almost had to get a jacket for the 2 minutes that I was outside checking the mail. I'm loving this. Good thing for cold fronts. ^_^

Sad day...

Well, the pressure was on and the Bolts weren't able to pull through. We had a good rally and tried to help LT break the record but with no success. I never thought that I would ever get emotionally over football, let alone the Chargers, but damn, I was really mad. In every game that we have lost, we have lost with the lead in the 4th with the opposing team making the winning drive within the last few minutes of the game. It was an absolute disaster! I remember watching the pregame and every player on Phillys team was asked how they were going to stop LT. They did their job and quite well too. I rememeber that they were also talking about how LT needed a new name, I was thinking that Jojo's name of Boltron be a good one, but now, I just don't know. (check out his icon)

So, after waking up to the Chief Flight Instructor of CAPT giving me a call to give us a heads up on Hurricane evac, I ended up going back to sleep because he said we were okay. So of course, I started to continually dream about evacuating and the procedures involved. It wasn't pretty...the dreams I mean. It was restless sleep so I just decided to wake up and get going on my new big breakfast ordeal. I woke up to Jeremy making some Chocolate Chip pancakes. They were awesome. I even went back to my old school ways. I had some with syrup and some with butter and sugar. I actually preferred the latter. I guess that I was just accustomed to being not able to have syrup as a kid. It was a great childhood. I miss it!