The last few days surrounded by friends and hyped up kids have left me in no position to post here at all. We celebrated Xmas yesterday evening with mindless shredding of wrapping paper.

To summarize the things I got:

Remote Controlled helicopter that I can’t get to fly straight

Legal copy of Firefly

A real dartboard to replace the sorry excuse of a big toilet roll with numbers painted on its end that I bought in Walmart

Various garments with not-so-bold statements printed on it.

I take great pleasure from being with my friends again, and even if some are not currently in my area, I’ll meet ‘em again someday. Now, I’m being called by a 11 year old that demands to play a friendly game of poker.

I’ll be taking off for BIKF in Iceland in few hours now, and will land around 0610Z on the 21st. I have never been able to sleep in that flight but seeing how I stayed up all last night I say I’m bound to doze off at some stage. Even if I don’t, I have a backup plan in the form of hours worth of anime on my DS Lite.

I’ll leave Mick, my Irish roommate, behind as he’ll stay here over the holidays. The best x-mas gift I could find for him was a couple of patches of bubble wrap that came with some stuff I’m supposed to bring home. His joy knew no limits as I gave him a third sheet I stumbled upon just now. I think I’ll just give everyone I know some bubble wrap for x-mas. Seems like a thing everyone can enjoy.

Again, congratulations to Chris and Zoe which became parents last night. A healthy boy and his mother are doing well. Head over to their blogs linked below for pictures and such.

Anyways, I’m off, I’ve things to do before Mick drives me to the airport, and I’ll try to keep you people posted on my trip home, even if I meet the readers of this excuse for a blog on daily basis.

I urge everyone that have the slightest interest in the stuff I’m actually doing over here to read the latter paragraph of the post below and watch the video.

Last few days have been dull and uninteresting, really. I haven’t even flown for almost a week, spending days at the gym once in a while and watching anime. It’ll change soon though, I’ll be going back to Iceland over the holidays to meet the friends and family. For those that want to reach me, I’ll be landing the morning of the 21st. My cellphone should be on and running around noon so feel free to call or leave a message, I’ll get back to ya. Don’t be offended if I don’t answer though, it’s an overnight flight and I’ve never been able to sleep aboard Icelandair flights.

Right now I’m trying to find the best video format to run on my Nintendo DS Lite, so I’ll be able to enjoy some inflight entertainment.

Oh and big grats to my friend Chris in Seattle and his lady Zoe, at this moment they’re about to become parents. Last thing I heard from Chris he was about to take a nap, something I suspect he will not do for the next decade or so. Best wishes to the trio, and I do hope mother and baby will do well.

I finally made the solo flight to Orlando Executive today. 1.3 hours flight, flying N1525F again. I followed Interstate 50 from Titusville all the way into Orlando, but the radio was quite busy so it took me some time (and a 360) to get in proper touch with Tower. I was worried about entering the airfield, with light winds around 040, I’d go straight in the way of departing traffic of runway 07. And airspace class B surrounding the airport wasn’t helping either. But besides some hesitation in communication, everything went smoothly as I joined left downwind and followed some fixedwing (skywagon?) and was,then put down as #3 after a Cessna on long final. There was some more fixedwing behind me so I had to make a nice final doing about 50-600 knots, flare and just touch the runway with the skids just in time before Tower told me to depart without delay. Rest of flight was smooth and uneventful. Besides some slow guy taxiing to park in front of me back at KTIX. Can’t blame him though.

Check out this video I bumped into on YouTube, it’s a 1st person view of simulated engine failure followed by a fulldown landing with the engine idling throughout the exercise. It’s performed on my training airport (Spot 2 in 36 configuration) using one of the helis I fly. It’s a good insight into some of the stuff I do for training, although in my case we recover in hover instead of making a fulldown landing. Bit I’ve done those a few times before. (Clarification: I had nothing to do with this particular video)

Another day, another damn cloud in my way. Most flights were canceled due to low cloudbase, especially in the morning with an overcast in 400′ and 2SM visibility. It improved as the day passed, but not by enough.

Things could be worse though, A big section of Washington state is without power due to that big-ass storm over there now. Chris is up there and he hasen’t been on MSN all day, which is highly unusual for him, so my guess is that he got hit by the blackouts. Hope he’s allright over there.

Another thing that I’d like to mention regarding to this storm, a widespread panic in the game society. Valve’s Steam servers are in Seattle (I think) and with the blackout, they’re all out, leaving thousands of gamers unable to play the games supported by Steam. Including Red Orchestra (Personal favorite) and the all-too-well-known Counter Strike. Man, I wonder how many OMG-shouting 12 year olds are glued to the weather channel right now.

I’m not booked for a flight over the weekend but maybe I’ll try Orlando Executive again on Sunday. Come in when it’s still and quiet, hm? That’s always nice when entering new waters. But I’m taking tomorrow off, I’m sick and tired going early to bed so I can show up for a flight that’s most likely gonna be canceled.

I finally managed to fly another GPS approach for 09 in KTIX yesterday, after a couple of failed attempts. Nothing extraordinary. Todays flight, x-c to Orlando Executive (KORL) was canceled due to low cloud base - I’ll give it another shot tomorrow afternoon but the forecast isn’t looking so good. I’ve never been to that airport and I always get a bit nervous, with unfamiliar runways and procedures and all…I need more experience with dealing with those.

I’ll post some other stuff later today. I believe Chuck Norris is about to kick some nazis around on TV.

N20938, IFR ship. Practice area 4, shared with R22 N7031G as listed below. Dual flight, w. foggles for majority of flight time. Heading tracking and scanning. Rate 1 turns. Steep turns. IFR Autorotation entrance (wind @ 040, heading 180, mistake turning right misjudging wind as coming from 360). Attempted a GPS Approach to runway 09 back to KTIX but was unable to establish communication with Orlando Approach for vectors.

And a minor rave: Damn I hate those old E2 compasses. And I rarely use the term hate, those things really get on my nerve for some reason. I’d prefer…what are they called, those that display the entire 360 dial and spin it so your current heading is on top of the dial, a vertical card compass? If anyone knows please leave a comment.

Edit: VFR flight in the afternoon canceled due to rain and vis.

I was surprisingly fresh and focused after staying up all night watching dots on my clock and anime. Focused, sharp, impatient even but not too much. It’s a state of mind I like even if I’m serious by heart, at such a moment a smile is not far away. We flew another instrument flight today, which I wouln’t get too deep into, I’ll explain later. It was mostly flying in circles without looking outside, fly all with the instruments onboard. We tried contacting Orlando Approach which handles most of the organized traffic in order to make a special training approach back to the airport (a GPS one for the record). Due to the coverage of the Approach, it’s not uncommon at all hearing only their side of an conversation, with other aircraft being so far away from us and all.

There was a R22 from our school in our training area, that announced they were gonna make the same type of approach about 15 minutes before we did. 31G was its callsign I believe. After lengthy time of checklists and radio mess, we tried contacting Approach but within the minute we heard them respond to 31G, but we never heard the 31G side of the chat. About 15 minutes after we tried to contact the Approach, they were still sorting out 31G for their approach and hadn’t even started dealing with us. At the time we heard “*sigh* OK, 31 Golf, Orlando approach, What exactly do you want to do?” we figured out that either we said screw it and went back the normal usual way. We were shutting down when 31G finally came in for landing. What the hell they did remains a mistery to me.

I plan to break this blog up to two categories. Like my friend/admin says those stories are meant to come from the skies themselves, so from now on I’ll sort my posts into three categories. Mindless raving, flight, and combines (still working on the names of those). The previous posts have mostly been of the Mindless (or somewhat mindful) category. My next post will be flight. This is pretty much mixed, ’cause it’s alot of yada yada in it but it’s about flying. So stay tuned!

The UPS man is becoming a daily visitor. A certain someone is going nuts ordering things online and having me dragging the goods back to Iceland for the holidays.

Last time this happened I was meeting my brother in NY for his part of the marathon there.  I brought a gigantic suitcase of the size of roughly 2′x3′x6′ absolutely stuffed. My personal belongings composed of few pair of boxers, socks and a toothbrush were crammed in as filling. People on the streets of Manhattan made comments about the vast size of the container I dragged around, including the possibilities of using such thing as living habitat. I ran into trouble at both airports, both ways, at the shuttle in Orlando International, both ways, both taxis I took in NY, the hotel I checked in…plus getting the damn thing in and out of my car of total of 4 times (for I stayed few nights in Orlando for my finals there), and on top of that various run-ins with people just having a problem with my bag…about 23 “things” happened to me that would’ve never occur if I hadn’t had to carry the damn thing around in the first place. Plus of course the oversize/overweight charge but those that ordered the damn things can eat that.

I’m leaving the damn bag in Iceland. Not giving the opportunity for people to try this again. Then again, my sis brought back an Aeron chair that almost costed my brother-in-law an eyeball, so that’s their argument that I should stop my bitchin’ and just get over it.

This thing will happen again though. And it’s gonna be huge. Icelandic law says you can ship a container of household and belongings if you’ve lived more than a year outside the country, no taxes or anything. My sister filled hers with grills and other nonsense when she moved from Boston, and the same thing will happen to me. I’ll abuse this thing as hell though myself, like the rest, bring back a nice flatscreen HDTV or something…man. I’ll need an industrial grade voltage converter to run my applications when I get home. That is if I can afford buying things to ship home but hey.

Dayum. I woke up after 2 hours of sleep. Again. I thought I was finally passed that. Damnit, I need my sleep! I have an IFR helicopter booked for 9 AM, guess it’s better than a VFR one ’cause I have to wear foggles for the instrument practices. (Foggles: Fogged goggles so you can only see the instrument panel in your helicopter - from the people that brought you sporks!) It’s easier on the eyes.

My roommate threw out that 6 feet floor lamp that I stole somewhere over a year ago and never got to work. Replaced it with some fancy $12 one from Walmart. One with those colored light bulbs that bugs can’t see…looks like my beanbag’s on fire when that thing’s on.

I installed World of Warcraft again, partly to remember why I stopped playing the damn thing but mostly ’cause my best friends brother bought him a copy and I wanted to help him out. Good stuff, doing stuff you like with the people you dig.

What kind of post do you expect from 2 hours of sleep? Screw it, I’m gonna go get something to eat and either watch anime or stare at my binary clock until I go flying or I pass out, whichever comes first.