Long time no see! (Photos to be added soon)

Well the last time I updated this was the 29th June so this will probably be a long update so make sure you have some time spare. I'll add the photos soon as they are all over the place.

Casting my mind back, the weekend of the 4th July was great fun. My friends and I ran down to Marko Island which is a town just south (1hr) of Naples and hired a couple of big Pontoon boats then made our way to Key Waden which is a white sand sandbar just by the opening to the Gulf.  It is only reachable by boat so we both raced off taking different routes as we couldn't agree on which was best. Our boat was the first to arrive which was odd as we went the long way around and the other boat took a shortcut. Anyway the sandbar was packed, which wasn't surprising considering it was a lovely sunny day, clear blue sky and nice clear warm water. We eventually found a space big enough to squeeze both boats in just as a cell phone rang! It was the other boat, they were stuck on a sandbar en route, after a while of moaning they managed to get free and come and join us. 

We spent the rest of the day lounging in the warm waters and on the beach before heading to Kaspers for a BBQ. Its 7:55 we are chilled out at Kaspers then I realised the fireworks start on the beach at 8:15pm after a load of messing about trying to organise a group of half drunk guys we were on our way. The fireworks had started and we were watching them as we drove into town. Town was packed with cars but no people, cars had just stopped everywhere and it looked like something out of a horror movie where the people had just vanished! We too found a random patch of grass and dropped the car and headed to the beach (and huge crowds). The fireworks were very nice and even for a little show was bigger than most you would see back home in the UK. We then fought our way back to the car but seeing as we were passing our usual bar we decided to stop in (it would be impolite not to). When we normally go to Paddies there are so many NAC pilots that we normally takeover the entire place. Tonight there was a bigger crowd of us than usual but there were even more Americans so we were a minority for once but this meant we got to chat to a lot of interesting people and our group didn't leave for home until 7am the next morning! 

Since my parents last visited they had fallen in love with Naples and as usual when they visit somewhere they like they spent time looking at properties (nothing normally ever comes of it though), I got a call from a realtor telling me about a short sale property that was a good deal and could I come and look at it in half an hour (on a Friday night) as its expected to sell fast (and it really did). This was on a Friday night so I went and looked at the place not wanting to like it as I had already seen a place I liked more, I pulled into the gated complex and it was like entering a little model town all the houses were identical little white buildings with perfectly groomed grasses and lakes etc.

I had a look around the house and apart from needing painting it was lovely by Monday we had bought the house and I was looking forward to moving in!

A couple of weeks later Mum and Dad came over to visit and help me move into the new home, they decided the Sebring which is now called BoB (Bucket of Bolts) had to be replaced with something more permanent and reliable, Dad spotted a nice little 4x4 online before coming out here and on his first full day of being here we had a nice new car!

September 6th 2009

Today's the last day before my actual ATPL exams and am getting nervous as due to moving I haven't done anywhere near as much study as I would have liked. The exams are held up in Lakeland which is about a 3.5hr drive North of Naples. My friend John and I were sharing the trip and the hotel in order to save some money. The next 4 days are a blur of me studying, trying to sleep and sitting the exams. When all was done I was certain I had passed 5 of the seven exams and thought I had scraped 2. Now all that I could do is wait for 2 weeks to get my results. On Monday the next set of 7 subjects start so no rest for the wicked!

September 23rd 2009

I have been told the results of my exams are in but the school wont give them to us till the end of the day as we may be distracted by our results. That's just great! Tempt us with the details of the one thing we really want to know and then refuse to tell us as the results might distract us! What genius thought that one up? Needless to say we got almost nothing done that day as we were all pre-occupied with waiting for our results! Time seemed to drag on until the end of the day when the Chief Ground Instructor came down from his office to give us our results. I had passed all seven with a 93% average and was over the moon.

Onto the next exams, it is now the 31st of October and I am getting ready for the final seven then I will be finished my ATPLs and will be coming home for Christmas. Cant wait! 

It’s Groundhog Day all over again

I have just started week 7 of my ATPL ground school and have settled into the routine quite easily. Get up, go to school, study, come home, have dinner, study more, go to bed and then start the whole thing all over again. It feels like Groundhog Day all over again.

The ATPLs which are 14 subjects, two modules each, lasting 12 weeks, are whizzing by. I’m already on week 7. In just over 5 more weeks I will have my first 7 exams, after which I have 2-3 days to forget everything and start again with the next 7 subjects.

That being said, the last 2 weeks has been a nice change due to the family visiting. Before they arrived I was worried because they are visiting for 3 weeks and I have no idea what there is in Naples to keep anyone occupied for that long but they are managing nicely.

While I was in class my family busied themselves with Segway tours around Naples, Kayaking around the mangroves, trips to the wildlife parks and beaches. Oh and almost forgot; my sister’s mantra "shopping, shopping, shopping". Ok for Mum and Ash but I hate shopping but at least managed to escape it this time.

Free from school I flew the family up to Venice (Florida) in the Cirrus for a nice lunch on the beach at Sharky’s, all the time having Ash and Mum moan about the risk of thunderstorms, which I was well aware of having lived in Florida.

We all got back to Naples safely and there was no sign of those nasty thunderstorms. Only problem was while away the Air Centre had closed and I didn’t have the gate code to get out so we were locked in the airport. After a few minutes of wandering around the airport in the extreme heat we managed to get someone to open the gate for us.

The following day I managed to half drown everyone when we took out a motorboat for the day. Everyone had just dried off after a nice swim and we were now racing along one of the high speed waterways.

The sun was shining then whack! I hit a wake from another boat moving fast in the opposite direction which caused a large wave of water be thrown into the air. Unfortunately as they say what goes up must come down so it proceeded to drop “Splash”. Everyone was once again soaked and looked like they had just gotten off of a water log ride at a theme park.

Now for the bad news, last week I turned 26!! Unfortunately I’m in the middle of assessments so had an exam on my birthday but was treated to dinner at a very nice restaurant in Naples called Tommy Bahamas.

While here my little sister even got up the courage to take a trial lesson which quickly became 2 as she really enjoyed it. No doubt it won’t be long before she starts to train for her private licence.

My car has continued to amaze me with the number of strange sounds and faults it can come up with. To add to the existing I now have a strange buzzing noise and chirping coming from a slipping belt, that combined with the bangs from the exhaust which broke free of its mountings (now fixed) and its practically musical, like a mobile version of the musical “Stomp”.

My housemate has also given me some interesting news, he has run out of money and forgot to renew his visa so is effectively being kicked out of the country. He leaves on Friday 3rd July.

I’m looking forward to the 4th of July (Independence Day). For those that don’t know its a big national holiday, celebrating of all things, getting rid of the British (I’m going to be popular that day!) The Americans celebrate it with free beach parties, fireworks and laser light shows which should be fun. So as long as I put on a silly accent and eat cheese with everything I should be fine.

Much to do about nothing

Having finished my Instrument Rating I have a few days break then start my Airline Transport Pilots Licence (ATPL). The ATPL is a must have if you wish to fly large carrier airliners or be able to charge money for working as a pilot.

The course is a total of six months. It is broken into into 2 modules each lasting 3 months and covers 7 subjects in each module. This means one thing, 14 more big and heavy books to read.

This all starts on Monday so I'm sure I'll give you more details then but for now it means I have a couple of days rest, calm before the storm if you like.

Unfortunately due to money being tight there is very little I can do on these rest days because most things cost too much. That said today I had to do something as I'm going a little stir crazy at home (having done all the cleaning and ironing) and from the sounds of things so are my colleagues on the course. Initial ideas were to drive to South Beach in Miami but after 2 of the guys got very very drunk the night before and were not able to stand until late afternoon the next day that idea has been shelved.

We ended up going to a crazy golf course followed by the Cheesecake Factory and finally rolled to the Irish pub to sit outside and relax.

The crazy golf was good fun and is certainly different from any I had played in the UK with its waterfalls, caves etc but I was satisfied with my final score and coming a close second out of the 4 of us that went.

I love the Cheesecake Factory, the food is always great but the portions are just stupidly large, no wonder half of America is obese if this is their normal portion size.

The portions are so huge that I could imagine them doing some sort of charity advert. "Just donate $16 dollars and we will donate one main portion to the feed somewhere obscure appeal, that's enough to feed a small country for 1 year".

I struggled through my main but couldn't believe there were people sitting across from us that had managed starters, mains with sides and desert!

All of us thoroughly stuffed we decided to go and relax on 5th Avenue (the main high street in Naples) at the Irish pub called "Paddy Murphy's". This is the typical hangout for most of the students and instructors at the flying school and within about 20minutes our numbers had swelled from the original 5 of us to 25+.

Because I was driving I wasn't drinking just sitting back relaxing joining in the conversations. Then it struck me, when growing up my mum always complained to my dad that if they went out with flying friends the conversation would be solely dominated by flying and she would be bored stiff. I had always found the conversations intriguing even if I had not fully understood them at the time but today here I was doing just the same thing as my dad and couldn't help but think how bored my mum would have been had she been here (but I was loving it).

Instrument Rating Exam

Its the 19th May I'm tucked up in bed, fast asleep and enjoying the last hour and a bit before having to get up and get ready for the day ahead.

Today is the day of my final instrument flight exam, the flight is booked for 4pm, in preparation for the exam as usual there is some forms and paperwork to be completed. Unfortunately the paperwork is booked in for 10am which was the only free slot left so I'm going to need to get up at 9am at the latest, nerves have kept me awake for most of the night but I'm finally asleep and so was going to rest as much as possible to be ready for the exam.

7:45am RING RING! My cell phone goes off, rudely awakening me from my sleep. I look at my phone and see its the Air Center calling. Trying to snap myself awake so that I don't sound like I have just woken I answer the phone. A voice drones, "Good morning Mr Knight, we have you booked into do your exam at 4pm this afternoon would you mind coming in to do the paperwork before then?" Trying (but probably failing) to sound awake and as polite to the person who had just abruptly woken me to tell me I needed to do something that I already had booked to do, I informed them that it was already booked said goodbye and forced myself to get up. If I went back to sleep now I would probably sleep through my alarm.

The paperwork takes about an hour but is eventually signed off ready for this afternoon all I have to do now is wait. I decided not to go home but to stay at the Air Center as there were thunderstorms in the region and I wanted to keep an eye on the weather to see if I would actually get to do my test, it didn't look promising. The weather did slowly get better as my nerves rapidly got worse.

An hour before I'm due to fly the examiner pokes his head around the door and asks if I fancy going a bit early. The next hour was surprisingly relaxed, Steve (the examiner) would ask me to demonstrate something then would pretend to look back at his newspaper. The reason I say "pretend" is when I glanced over I noticed the page he was supposedly reading was a big advert with very little text on plus the fact that the paper was upside down was also a give away. Everything seemed to go well apart from the 2 instruments that failed on me while flying. After landing Steve informed me I had passed! I felt as if a great weight had been lifted and spent the rest of the day grinning inanely.

A long way from here to there, longer if you dont have your papers

A fortnight ago I came home for a brief break. The flight home was the most uncomfortable flight I have ever been on; because I was traveling on concessions and the plane was fully booked so I was given a crew jump seat. A jump seat is a temporary chairs that fold out on an aircraft for the crew to sit on. Imagine sitting on one of those old wooden benches the school gym used to have and you have the idea of how comfortable they are, now imagine sitting on it for 9hrs! Arriving back in the UK felt great I was back where the English people were not some oddity that stick out due to our accents (most anyway) it had a real I'm home feeling to it, I found it funny how everyone was telling me how great and warm the weather was at a sunny 18'c as I was shivering after being used to 28'c.

After 24 hours I realised I was missing Naples but just wished I could just somehow fit everyone into my suitcase and take them with me. The first few days I spent seeing friends and with Loren visiting London etc then off to Devon to spend time with the Family and play on the boat.

All too soon the 10 day visit was over and it was time to head back to Florida. This time the aircraft was empty and thus I got a very nice seat and the flight went smoothly, once we landed I texted my housemate who was picking me up from the airport to let him know that I have landed so should be out soon (or so I though).

I was first off the aircraft and one of the first to customs, I was called up to the desk as normal to give my fingerprints and passport checked etc as normal. The customs agent looked at me a little odd then asked me to go wait in a queue at the other side of the room, took my passport and docs, slipped them into a red folder and handed them to another office to be whisked away! I didn't know what was going on but I have been through enough airports to know this isn't normal.

Once my special queue had a few more people in it we were all led off to a holding room full of people (mostly Mexican and Hispanic) and heavily armed officers and were told to find a space to sit and wait until we were called. As in the US embassy all cell phones, PDAs and laptops were banned so I couldn't even let my housemate know what was going on. Still not knowing what was wrong I was left to wait in this room for 3hrs until I was eventually called to an interview room.

I was then informed to my surprise that my VISA had been automatically canceled as I supposedly hadn't turned up to my course when it started which was a surprise to me. The officers then asked me to prove I had turned up and that the system was wrong. This seemed simple enough with the things I had on me so I pulled out my new FAA pilots licence which I had gained that at Naples Air Center, I also had several docs that had been signed and dated by the school owner just days before I had returned to the UK and photos of me being at the air center etc but the officers claimed that none of these things proved anything as they could all be fake!

I suggested they call the Air center to confirm it with them but by now the air center had closed for the day and everyone had gone home. They then tried to test my knowledge on my training which went fine except I cringed when I herd myself answer the question "What do you plan to do with you licences once you have finished your course?" with "I plan to bomb around Europe" Bomb! not a good word to use at an airport in America but apart from another odd look they took that no further.

As I was taking my foot out my mouth I was then informed that they will shortly pick one of three options to decided what they would do with me:

1. If I could prove that I had been training and the system was wrong then they would let me into the US with no further issue.


2. Charge me $500 cash for a 30 day pass which would allow me to get the paperwork sorted


3. Deport me back to the UK and ban me from having a VISA for 5 years!

Obviously I wanted option 1, Option 2 wasn't really possible as I don't carry a spare $500 cash with me and option 3 would have ended my training as I must have a VISA to train.

I gave the officers the numbers for everyone I knew in Florida as they needed to get hold of the school owner and i figured someone must have the owners number. I watched with baited breath as the officers slowly work through the numbers most only going to answering machine. When they ran out of numbers they said that's it and started trying to decide option 2 or 3. Tapping away on their computer suddenly the phone rings, its Nicki the owner of the flight school who confirms that I had turned up and sent a fax to confirm this in writing. I was finally free to go, the time was 8:10pm, I had arrived at 3pm, at this point I'm exhausted and very hungry just another 2hr drive to get from Miami to Naples and I'd finally be home!

Im back safe and sound now ready to get back to my course but have just found out it had been delayed 2 weeks!

Like taking a sip from a fire hose

Well my instrument training is nearing completion and I have been studying like mad to ensure I'm ready for my final exam. Today I took my Stage 3 oral exam which is quite a tough test as the examiner can basically ask you anything about instrument flying down to the minutest detail. I have been studying for my Instrument Rating (IR) for 4-5weeks now trying to learn to fly the procedure, learn the rules and regulations and all the other info that makes my IR book total 3" thick. Then one of the instructors told me an analogy for what we are trying to do on this course. He said "its like trying to take a sip from a fire hose!" and to be honest that's exactly how it feels.

The sheer amount of information that you have to take in over such a short periods of time is astounding and requires hours and hours of study and even then you'll have only learnt enough to pass the test but that is barely scratching the surface!

Stage 3 of my instrument rating focuses on cross country flying using only instruments to work out where on earth your going and wearing the silly looking foggles to stop you looking outside. This was the next step but also meant the moment had come to start my Cirrus training. The Cirrus is a new and high tech aircraft with all the bells and whistles. It isn't cheap to fly but it is a lot of fun and it is a lot faster. The conversion onto the Cirrus consists of 12+hrs of flying over 2 days (Which when your learning is very exhausting). The Cirrus is taught by Richard Gentil (aka Stevie Wonder) who is the owner of the flight school, Richard is notorious for the tricks/pranks he plays on the students so I found out as many as I could before flying with them so most would backfire on him.

The one trick I missed was what I have dubbed the Stevie Wonder moment, normally if i need to do something or change something you can hand the controls back to the instructor, make the change and then take control again. While flying Richard took my foggles off me fiddled with them and gave them back asking me to put them back on. I said "sure, you have control" next thing I know the Cirrus is banked about 60 degrees to the left and diving away. What the hell! I take the controls back and Richard with a big grin proceeds to do his Stevie Wonder impression.

This is his way of teaching the students to us the Autopilot when we need to be hands free but at the time I didn't find it funny.

The final Cirrus flight is my Long Cross Country, the weather was looking bad for the flight, predicting heavy rain, extreme thunderstorms and hail (Not something I want to be up in if I can help it). Speaking with Richard he believed we could get around it so once setup we set off. In actual fact the weather wasn't as bad as forecast and we were able to get around it, plus I even had some time to take a video and few photos for you to enjoy:

My favourite of all the photos taken, is the one above (click on it to enlarge). This isn't Google Earth, you are looking at Universal Studios Florida, straight down the right wing of the Cirrus (Stevie Wonder in control while I took the Photo)

Sunset on Cirrus.

MultiFunction Display showing the Weather (Outbound)

Sea World Orlando

Orlando International Airport

NASA Rocket Assembly building

Inside the Cirrus

Left below = Richard Gentil (AKA Stevie Wonder). Right Below= Proof of reaching 200kts

Now full from Richard buying me dinner in Gainsville we are on the way back and the weather is worse but bearable, aided by Richard piping music from his ipod into the Aircraft's radios. As you will know if you have read my previous posts, I love flying at night but this night there were Thunderstorms. I had never seen lightning quite like it skipping from cloud to cloud, repeatedly looping down and up back into the cloud and giant forks of lighting exploding through the sky. It was a great sight to see if not a bit nerve racking as this was my first time flying through a Thunderstorm.

Landing at Naples and the rain was pouring down and I was soaked, Richard drives a motorbike so was due to get soaked too but I kindly gave him a lift. When he jumped into the car I had Stevie Wonder ready on the radio to tease him with! It was a fun night

Study, Exam, Study, Exam

Yesterday I took my Stage II instrument flight review and oral test and passed. The pressure is now on, in order to come home I must pass all exams and check rides first time and in the minimum amount of time in order to be finished on time.


With so many exams I haven't really had time to do much else but study but managed to get some photos and a couple of videos for you guys.

BBQ's with house mates followed by a game of volley ball in the pool. Well done to Mig and AL for passing their CPL.




Back to the Beach
Today I have been studying on the beach (plus improving my pasty white tan) then watched the the sunset so took some more photos for you.

Here is a mix of pictures taken at the beach. I went for a swim and found that the water has now warmed up and is a nice temperature (but still very, very salty). Unbeknown to me my housemate took a photo of me studying on the beach! (Not impressed but it is proof I was studying).



Take a look at the pier during sunset compared to a photo of during the day and you'll notice it is really packed with people. Everyone comes to see the sunset which is a nice thing to see but what I don't understand is why the Americans clap once the sun had fully set! Why? Does it have variations on its setting performance? If its a bad performance does it shoot back into the sky and want to try again? Is it me?