Hi everybody! I hope all is going well with you. I have had a great few weeks since I last wrote for you—busy, but fun nonetheless! From schoolwork, to flying, to the Wings and Waves Airshow, it certainly has been a good month.

One thing that you will find about Embry-Riddle when you start classes is that the work comes in cycles or “waves,” at least for me. You will find periods of time where the workload is very light and there is not much going on at all, and then all of a sudden you will have tests and papers and other things all come into play all at one time. The best way to handle this, I have found, is to plan ahead. Use a planner and take advantage of those periods of light work to get ahead so that when the assignments do start piling up, you are already ahead of the game. As I write this, I am in one of those periods where assignments are piling up, but, by thinking ahead and getting some other assignments done early, I can better manage everything going on.

But, hey, you don’t want to hear about that! You want to know what’s going on in Daytona Beach and at Embry-Riddle, so let’s get into it.

A large portion of my time, since I last wrote, has been spent with clubs and activities. At the beginning of the semester, the Legacy Walk (a large pathway in the middle of campus) is lined with all types of different clubs and student organizations in hopes of recruiting new members in a large Activities Fair. At the beginning of the semesters, all of the clubs want to meet at once, which causes a few scheduling conflicts and lots to do! Of course, as the semester continues, this settles down a bit. This has prevented me from doing all of the things I usually do on the weekends, but now that everything has settled down, I am sure I will get some more interesting stories for you!

One thing that I did with some friends one weekend was the VIP Tour of the Daytona International Speedway. You may or may not know that the speedway is about a mile from the campus, just on the other side of the Daytona Beach International Airport. At the Speedway is an attraction called the Daytona 500 Experience, and it offers a bunch of different tours and activities. However, once a month, they offer the VIP tour which takes the guests everywhere, including in the towers, infield, the exclusive “Daytona 500 Club,” and all the places usually only the drivers can go. Particularly with the track repaving project still underway, it was very interesting to be able to see things close up. From the viewing towers and VIP lounges, I found it interesting that Riddle was clearly visible, as was the ocean and coastline 3 miles away. It was really a great experience and I would recommend checking it out.

You probably heard that Riddle hosted the Wings and Waves Airshow this past weekend in Daytona Beach. Over 20 different exhibitors attended, including the Canadian Snowbirds, the F-22 Raptor Demonstration Team, the GEICO Skytypers, and more. While I was able to experience the airshow from the beach as a spectator on Sunday, it was on Friday and Saturday that I was able to see it a different way. In my previous writing, I mentioned about my interaction and employment at home in Airport Operations.Here at Riddle, at the Daytona Beach International Airport, I am also involved with the Operations department. The task of monitoring all of the parked planes for Wings and Waves, coordinating where they would park, when they would depart, which runways and taxiways would be closed, etc. was the responsibility of airport ops. I was on the airfield with ops on Friday and Saturday helping with these things. I was able to talk to the F-22 pilots and Snowbirds a lot and even got to look around all of their aircraft. It was definitely an awesome opportunity. On top of all of the activity going on at the airport with the Wings and Waves Airshow, three charters came in to Daytona on Saturday. One charter was an Allegiant Airlines McDonnell-Douglas MD-82, and the captain was nice enough to let me and an operations agentride up in the cockpit as they repositioned the plane to the gate to pick up their passengers. As I write this, 3 F-16’s are departing the airport over my dorm room, heading home after the airshow. It was a great weekend and I look forward to the next airshow in two years.

Other than everything I’ve mentioned, not all that much else has been going on. I have been continuing my flight training for my instrument rating and anticipate a checkride for that in early November. I am looking forward to going home in a few weekends for fall break. It will be nice to go home for a weekend and see my family and my dog!

I guess that’s about it! As usual, don’t hesitate at all to ask me any questions! Talk to you soon.
Pete