I've had some interesting flights over the last week. We had a fantastic night flight up to Melbourne for more ILS approaches, the first of which was pretty interesting. The runway in use was runway 27L but the ILS was only for runway 9R, which is the other end of the same runway. Since we were only doing an approach and turning away at the threshold instead of landing, they allowed us to do it, while a regional jet was simultaneously doing a visual approach (and actual landing) at the other end of the runway!

I've also been up to Titusville, where the controller in the tower was a very nice man with a very coarse Souther accent (Y'all come back now, ya'hear?).

The stage check didn't go as well as the night flight beforehand, mainly because it was in the middle of the afternoon and it was very convective. It's very easy to maintain your altitude within 100ft when the air is very smooth at night, but when you are flying from 500ft per minute downdraft to 500ft per minute updraft, it gets much harder. But I managed to fly the approaches correctly so I am on to stage III which is the final part.

At this point I just about know all of the syllabus, I just need to get more practise and to work on things like maintaining that altitude. Hopefully tomorrow I will be flying a long cross-county flight that is one of the requirements for the rating. I'm planning to fly to St Petersberg (Tampa) then to Orlando Executive, and back to Fort Pierce. The route takes in some busy airspace close to Tampa International and Orlando (MCO), so it should be a good experience. And the route goes over Disneyworld!