Paris > Amsterdam

Just Departed CDG bound for EHAM. Climbing through 16,000, at 285 kts -- VS is 2200. Looking good. It was pretty windy upon departure though. Takeoff required a lot of rudder input. Just thought it would be nice to catch up. I'll let you know how the flight went after landing.

Me again -- I guess I couldn't wait till landing. Currently cruising at FL300 in my Air France A320-211. I'll be descending in about 8 minutes, so it's all looking good. Cruising speed is 0.74 MACH. I have winds 127/19.

WHEW! What a blast!! That was by far the most difficult approach I've done. You see, they vectored me for a VOR/DME approach into Schipol's runway 24. Now I haven't done this before, so I tuned in the VOR, and set my course to 240. I never use my GPS system in flight, however, this time, I felt I had to for safety reasons. The radial outbound from the VOR was 270, and it slowly turned left until I had to arch the plane over with 3 miles to go before landing. How am I supposed to know what the outbound radial is in the first place, and when to start turning towards the runway. This time, I was lucky. Although it was grey and rainy, I saw the runway during my approach, and knew when to turn. How would I know otherwise. Also, vertically, I was in bad shape. It took some effort to get the plane down to the glidepath after I was on course, but I did it without dropping the nose below 1 degree. All in all, it was a nice flight, however, if I plan on doing this again, I want to do it right.