First of all, my brother was here. Just for a day though, he was at a conference in California and landed in Orlando around 10 after 3 connected flights from CA to Las Vegas to Dallas to Orlando.

First order of buisness: Go flying. (Excluding Lunch and Bestbuy.) Flew with him to Melbourne after a briefing and introduction to the aircraft. A little before takeoff a what I suspect a controlled forest fire was started 5 NM southwest of the airport which created a few problems for helicopter traffic, with the smoke rising to at least 3000′ right in the path of the preferred entrance/exit routes for the school aircraft. We kept our distance of course, but were close enough to take good pictures of the area on fire.

Melbourne tower but us on taxiway Kilo for out touch’n'go, which is north of and parallel to runway 9L (and 9R for that matter) to give way to a Piper Cherokee on final for 9L. Usually MLB dosen’t put helis on Kilo unless you announce you’re a student pilot. Just for treats.
Smooth flight, although we didn’t find any alligators at St. John River as I promised. Just not their season nor their part of the day.

Oh, and my roommate bought a Xbox 360 last night, so after I dropped my brother off at the airport for his flight home (after just 6 hours) I went and bought Gears of War. Yes I’ve played it before but only in splitscreen dual mode.

Lastly, I’ve got written exams coming up, another attempt at my JAA ATPL(H) GNAV and Flight Planning so no flights till those are over. Prolly not alot of posts either. I’ll post some of the pictures my brother took once he sends em over.

I flew 3 flights today, all VFR X-C for total of 4.1 hours.

First one was to the South, open farmside area with various ranches and such. First waypoint was supposed to be a ranch but I never found it. Neither did I find the private airstrip that was supposed to be next to it. Maybe, I dunno, maybe because I had to use a 10-15 years old map with handdrewn points of interest? It’s supposed to look like a JAAA VFR chart but they seriously need to update this. Hell, there’s a runway missing on one of the airports! Flew few circles around the area before I gave up and vent on towards Tedford, small private strip that I like to use, but I know the owner of that land isn’t so happy with people coming into land just like that.
Second one was to the west, over to Orlando, always fun to fly over urban areas. Except finding forced landing areas in case of an emergency. Went first to an abandoned private field halfways towards Orlando, called RYBOLT. Pain to find, cause the once paved runways are all grass now, but the runways themselves are slightly discolored so I managed to find the field and touch down. From there I went to Orlando Executive, Class D airport in downtown Orlando. Fairly smooth, but just on the other side of the highway was Orlando International, Class B airport. Big whitebodies commercial airliners, you get the idea. Wanted to stay the hell away from their airspace.

Those flights were both solo. The 3rd was dual, night flight. Getting my hours up to be certified to do solo nightflight. Went down to Melbourne following the I-4 and back same way. Made an ILS approach to TIX runway 36 but we lost the glideslope just after the Outer Marker so we used the PAPI to guide us in. The same thing happened to Mick, my roommate, during a checkride, most likely the same aircraft.

I think I’ve never flown for as long in one single day so I’m not surprised being a bit tired. I’ve no flights tomorrow so I can sleep out, but my bro is dropping by for a day on Wednesday and I’m planning to take him for a flight. Take him down to Melbourne so I can log it as C-X and then to training area Alpha, see if we can spot an alligator on the riverbank or something.

PS: It was damn close to freezing this night. Temps were around 4° C at sunrise. 1st day in FL that I had to wear a jacket all day long (plus it was freezing up where I was flying).  I put on a hat due to weather. You that met me last xmas know what hat. One of the instructor claimed that he liked said hat on me. I like that hat.

I’ve flown 3 flights since I got back to the US. One ILS Approach dual under the hood to KMLB which is about 27 NM South of KTIX, 1 X-C VFR solo also to KMLB, and today, one X-C VFR to New Smyrna, KEVB, 32 miles NNW from my airport. The last 2 VFR Flights were done without any major planning, but navigating with reference to terrain features only and using GPS as reference. I haven’t done this before with the exception of local flights to and from training areas but I’ve had no problems with the navigation in those flights.

I’m putting my logged hours into Excel to get a better overview what I need to complete for my JAA CPL checkride. Not too far out now.

from roughly half of my blogs readers (of total of two), I give you my Closet Comp.
I hope my landlord dosen’t read this, I doubt she’d like the idea of me taking the wardrope doors (which you can spot behind the desk, matching colors) off like that.

Also, I gotta go, have a flight to New Smyrna to take care of.

Resting my feet up to the wall the last few months while computing has left a very noticeable black spot on my standard white painted wall. This I discovered when I moved my computer (and comp. desk) from the living room to my bedroom’s closet. Sounds strange, yes, but it was hardly being used, and once I took the doors off it was perfect for a desk plus the benefit of getting a whole new wall to use.

I usually rested my feet either on top or around the small bass box for my rarely used 2.1 system, leaving a odd looking white square in the middle of a black stain next to the floor. It’s black ’cause I wear black socks almost all the time. And that’s ’cause I own pretty much only black socks. Fits to the pilot outfit.

To make the whole thing fit into my room, I had to rearrange the entire thing. I’m still finding place for the various stuff I’ve been picking up around the apartment but I’ll finish that tomorrow. I must say I am very satisfied with the room and setup, but the wall is empty on one paticular location, where I had the shelves. I need to invest in a poster, maybe I I’ll get myself one of those…those…one of those Half-Life 2 posters with the citadel on it and a combine soldier standing in front of it? They don’t make those anymore? Damnit!

It’s 4:18 and I’m tired after carrying stuff around. Gonna get some sleep and all that, and I’ll post a pictuer of the new setup tomorrow, kay?

My alarm clock woke me up ’bout 2 and a half hour ago. Having only 3 hours of sleep after losing myself writing late-night blog post (it’s coming soon, stay tuned), I started the day with a healthy dose of hallucination. Plus some dreaming. Something about a spider made out of human flesh and bones, 3 storeys tall terrorizing my airport. Something really stupid.

Got the same routine every time the clock went off: The alarm scared the shit outta me, I hit the snooze button, opened my eyes, discovered that my pupils had their own free will so the room appeared to be blinking, felt dizzy, closed my eyes again and rolled on my other side. I managed to gain enough consciousness on the 5th buzz to turn the damn thing off and roll myself out of bed.

Once I got down to the airport, just over an hour ago, I was relieved not seeing any signs of a monstrous man-spider-thingie, but somewhat saddened to find out that my booked heli was down for maintenance. Engine and rotor RPM indication wasen’t coordinated, plus excess vibrations. I turned down an offer for another flight later that day ’cause with this amount of sleep I knew I’d be useless in the afternoon.

On the way home I accidently hit the left aft window button . Couln’t get the window back up, looks like the motor’s busted. I can hear it spinning and all but the window isn’t connected to the damn thing anymore. Probably a pulley that’s broken, I’ll go now in the afternoon, check with my ever-so-helpful car dealer Larry, see if I can borrow some tools to rip the panel off the door and confirm the motor’s useless. Then I’ll order a new one from eBay. Shame, that’s the only window motor I haven’t replaced yet. Driver window motor got worn out early last year and around the same time some moron tried to break into my car by pulling down both windows on the right side. See, those motors use a wire that runs over a pulley, and if the glass is forced down the pulley breaks so the glass *should* just fall down under its own weight, but either there’s some backup system that holds the window up or just something that jammed the glass ’cause it only went about 1/3rd down.

Aanyways, put some WD-40 on couple of rusty hinges on the front doors and some more on those slots for the other car windows, the rubber stuff that holds ‘em in place. Lots of friction there.

Gonna take a nap. Or do something. yeah. tired.

I’ve flown 2 flights since I came back. Out of…6 planned. Mostly due to weather. The first flight was a shot at Melbourne ILS, first time I’ve flown to another airport using instruments. The other one was earlier today, a VFR crosscountry to Melbourne, solo. What made this crosscountry flight diffirent was the fact that I did no major planning before, just followed roads and such till I got there. And I saw a bald eagle. Saw him in a bit much detail for my taste, but not too close.

I have another crosscountry tomorrow, and I think I’ll do the same this time. It’ll be my 2nd flight to New Smyrna but shooting the unmistakeable landmark of Highway 95 takes me right there. The bit that worries me is communications though, I need a real headset soon, some things are still blurry to me.

I better go to bed, I plan to get up in 6 hours so I’ll be getting out of bed in about 7.

My XP finally crashed after a long time of being way too funky. I’m running on a Vista beta build 5728 at the moment, trying to get things to work till I get my hands on a working copy of a OS install disk. See if I can…uh…perfectly legally…get my hands on a Vista when it’s released to the public…

First flight’s tomorrow. 1400 hours.  Gotta dig up my pilot shirt and all…

More than 7 hours of flight, and about one hour waiting for my roomie to come and pick me up (Thank you Mick, now enjoy the fish I gave you) and I’m back at the ol’ comp back in the quiet Titusville (with only one driveby at the next complex)…

I miss the old place already.

Great rush to pack all the things I got around, heading to the airport in an hour. I’ll drop a line when I’m back in ol’ Titusville, FL. Take it easy.