I'm currently sitting by the pool in the appartment complex, with an ice cold coke, working on my sunburn. I like wireless internet! I have been working, doing practise tests ready for my FAA written tomorrow. I'm not too worried about passing or failing, but I want to get a high score to hopefully make the oral quizing part of my checkride shorter.

I've had some great flights this week. I finally flew and actually landed at an airport other than Fort Pierce on Tuesday. It was 'Space Coast Regional' at Titusville, very near to the NASA facility at Cape Canaveral. Apparently you have a great view of the shuttle construction building and launch pads, but we were in solid IMC for most of the way! At last some more actual instrument flying! It was a very smooth flight, apart from one grey cloud which got a bit bumpy. We shot the ILS, landed, then ducked into the FBO for a minute, then headed back to Fort Pierce for a localizer only approach (the glideslope is still out).

Then on Wednesday we did the long cross-country flight thats required for the rating. We flew over to St Petersburg near to Tampa International. We did a VOR/DME approach there in very tightly controlled airspace, then took-off again towards Orlando Executive. Tampa ATC gave us radar vectors to fly right over the top of Tampa International at 3000 feet and my instructor let me take my foggles off for a quick peek. It's a huge and very busy airport, so it might seem strange that our little duchess was set right over it, but all the big planes are landing from one end and taking off at the other, so the air directly above is the most empty bit of sky around.

We climbed up to 7000 feet for the flight over to Orlando, and with a hefty tailwind at one point we have a 176KT groundspeed. Thats 203mph! It was dark by the time we flew over Disney, but we could just make out the Epcot dome, before we were again routed directly over Orlando International and around to Orlando Exec. We stopped for a minute at an FBO there and I bought a coke at the machine before we flew back to Fort Pierce. Total time for the round-trip was 4 hours. A $760 Coke!

That water is looking pretty good right now, maybe I'll go swimming..