Saturday, May 27, 2006

Free light show

"66366, miami center squawk 3014, turn right heading 360 to join victor 3 northbound..." was all I heard as we departed Ft Pierce last night and was met with a tremendous light show at our 12:00 and 20 miles over the Melbourne VOR. Miami Center informed us of an area of severe to extreme weather over the airway we were to fly. I replied with...."roger that center, we are looking at it.....we'd like to go gps direct to a fix and then on to gainesville for an approach and then to jacksonville Craig municipal for a full stop." This took us west of the storm and gave us a great show as it passed us off the right wing.

Lat night was my first timebuilding flight in the Duchess--BE76. What a sweet airplane. We went to Gainesville for the ILS and low approach, then we went to JAX-Craig(kcrg) for the vor rwy 14 approach. Then on departure from CRG we picked up clearance and shot approaches at Daytona, Titusville, melbourne, Vero beach, and then back at Ft pierce. It was a hell of a night. Even had a door pop open on our takeoff roll from ft pierce. My door----unnerving to say the least and resulted in an aborted takeoff. 5.1 hours total in the airplane....today is a day trip...probably to Key west, and then maybe back up for Fuel and then north to shoot approaches at Titusville-Space coast so i can get a look at Kennedy Space center.

My MEI checkride is scheduled for Tuesday. I still have a written to take for the CFII(instrument instructor) and most likely the checkride for that around June 7 or so. Anyways, I feel absolutely comfortable in the new airplane now. It was tough for about the first 2 hours, but I got the hang of it pretty quickly. The Duchess is a very forgiving twin, and flies great on one engine.....is a breeze to land as well.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

good to see your still able to keep us up-to-date on the blog with all that flyin you doin! great stuff!

Anonymous said...

Lake Okeechobee, but close enough.