on the way to St. Petersburg to pick up a friend stranded there by Hurricane Frances...here is a beautiful thunderstorm just east of Orlando.

The white buildings in the middle of the picture is Disney...couldnt get much closer because the deviation we made due to the earlier thunderstorm...

Me with a rare view of Disney...

I wasnt current at the time, so I couldnt act as PIC but my roomate had a broken foot so I came along to fly and he came along to act as PIC.

I believe it was a 2004 Cessna 172S model...badass avionics, uplinked weather information, all transponder encoded traffic was displayed along with our flight route...coolest plane I've flown in a long time.

The approach to Albert Whitted airport in St. Petersburg took us right over the pier...how sweet was this...

Me with my headset hair, back safe and sound in New Smyrna Beach, FL

My buddy took this picture of the right engine on a USAir Dash 8 he was flying.

First Officer Steve Garin...

Central Park...

Ground Zero...who ever says there is a no fly zone over it is retarded...obviously.

downtown NY

Laguardia at 75 feet...

Avionics of the Beech 1900...

This is why pilots do what they do...for these views.

Go Steeeeve...

My hometown airport, Wilgrove in Mint Hill, NC. 2700 feet long, 36 usable feet wide, trees one end, power lines at the other...mason jars and 60 watt light bulbs for runway lites which turn off at 1am, and no rotating beacon. Night landings are a wee bit butt puckering...

Wish there was less haze...but you get the point...the best sunsets happen in the air.

One of the theme parks...not Disneyworld, but Universal or Islands of Adventure or something like that...when I figure it out I'll change this caption

This is obviously the water park...whatever they call it in Orlando

OK after flying over every badass theme park in Orlando I really really wanna go to all of them
And BTW, whoever says there are flight restrictions over major attractions are idiots. Disneyworld is the only one with a flight restriction...that only goes up 3000 feet and like 1 or 2 mile radius. I guarantee someone could crash a plane into Disney before a F-16 shoots them down. These restrictions are stupid and annoying.

OK so Peder and a couple friends decide to fly from Daytona to Naples, FL to get a costume at a costume shop. A two person horse costume. I tag along even though I have my Taliban Airline Pilot costume all ready to go, because I want to go to Michelbobs (www.michelbobs.com) for their world famous ribs. Yes, these are the best ribs in the world bar none, and the restaurant is like 2 feet from the airport. Soooo good

Well me and Lucas...the most experienced pilots in the group, didnt fly...we just sat in the back and tagged along. But maybe we should have cause the pilots didnt seem to be very serious about flying.

Inflight uplinked radar, real time transponder equipped traffic information, kinda like radar but not...real time access to text weather reports...autopilot...in other words badass...but the plane was kinda slow.

These are the pilots....biting the airplane....hmm maybe they shouldnt fly on the way back.

Success! We are at the costume shop. www.masqueradeinc.com
Peders getting out of the car the airport lent us through the window since the door was broken. Dukes of Hazzard style.

So when I saw this fireman hat I had to get it for my roomate, who's going as a fireman. There is the webmaster of the costume shop on the right...he says he's gonna put our costume aquisition story on the website...we'll see.

full rack of world famous Michelbobs ribs for each of us. And a beer for me. Ended up eating a rack and a half and I was full.

ohhh it was so worth it...

Steve Garin's Dad landing a UsAir Airbus A330 somewhere overseas without flaps, only leading edge slats were working.

He asked for the equipment just in case

perfect ending.

The new Diamond DA20, 2 seater, 135 HP, center stick control. 135 knot cruise at 6 gallons per hour. Sweet sweet plane.

70 degree bank, no control input. Totally trimmed out, neither me nor the factory rep has touched anything in about 4 rotations. This plane is ridiculous easy to fly.

Garmin 1000 Multi Function Display. This thing is more powerful than most airliners avionics.
This one is in a Diamond DA40, similar to the DA20 but with 4 seats.

This shows the calculated range, automatically factoring fuel burn, wind speed, airspeed, ground speed, throttle/mixture settings, allowing you to fine tune RPM/Manifold pressure/mixture settings to get the range you need. Its oblong due to the wind direction and speed (you go further with a tailwind per gallon...) I cant even begin to explain how badass this is.

Landing 25R at Daytona International

Landing at PGV...video courtesy of Scuba Steve.