MEADVILLE, Pa. -- Teachers sometimes ask students to write about what they did during their summer vacations.

If all goes as planned this week, 12-year-old Vicki Van Meter will be able to write what it was like to pilot a single-engine airplane more than 3,000 miles across the Atlantic Ocean.

The straight-A student who just finished East End Elementary School would become the youngest female pilot to complete a trans-Atlantic flight. She's scheduled to take off today from Augusta, Maine, and hop-scotch her way to Europe via Newfoundland, Greenland, Iceland, Scotland and England.

Not bad for the 5-foot-3-inch, propeller-thin youngster who started taking flying lessons in the fall of 1992.

She'll be accompanied by a flight instructor because she cannot get her pilot's license until she's 16. But she will be doing all the takeoffs, landings, communications, fuel calculations and navigation by herself. Vicki has racked up about 140 hours so far in her aeronautical career.

Her parents, Jim and Corinne Van Meter, say their youngest child has always welcomed challenges and that this one is just the latest she's faced on her way, she hopes, to becoming an astronaut and flying to Mars.

When she successfully completed a cross-country flight from Augusta to San Diego in September, she was asked what she might do next. "It might have something to do with the Atlantic," she replied.

But now that this trip is near, isn't she nervous?

"No," Vicki said sitting at her dining room table last week. "It's a great challenge, but I'm confident I can do it. I'm excited. It's going to be real fun."

She has only one real worry about the flight -- boredom.

"Over water, there's nothing to look at," she said.

She left Port Meadville Airport about 11 a.m. yesterday and landed at Augusta State Airport after a flight of about four hours. She flew the whole way and said the flight in the Cessna 210 she has named "Harmony" went smoothly.

Right before she left, Vicki was given a pair of 50-year-old silver wings by Gordon McConnell of Conneaut Lake, a World War II bomber pilot.

"I flew across the Atlantic with those wings, and they've always brought me good luck," said McConnell. "When I was shot down over Austria, the Germans wanted to take them from me, but they never got them. I've carried them with me ever since."

Vicki pinned the wings on immediately. She was already wearing a gold luck charm given her by another admirer and a necklace from her grandmother.

So what might she do for an encore if she completes this flight?

Well, she and her family would just like to catch their collective breath and relax.

With the exception of $2,050 donated by Meadville classmates, neighbors, friends and supporters, her parents have spent more than $40,000, including some of her college fund, to help Vicki realize her aviational dreams. No corporate sponsors have been involved to date.

"Some people may think we're loaded (with money), but we're not," said Jim Van Meter, one of approximately 35 stockbrokers in the town of 14,000. A former pilot, he sold his plane to put his wife through college.

Corinne Van Meter is a former elementary school teacher who quit work to raise Elizabeth, 18, Daniel, 15, and Vicki, whose intensity her mother marvels at.

"Vicki has an incredible ability to focus on a goal and accomplish it," Van Meter said. "She's still a little girl in many ways, but when she puts on a flight suit, it's like turning on a switch."

And she doesn't talk much about her aerial accomplishments.

One of Vicki's sixth-grade teachers, Diane Dowler, said during a pre- takeoff community celebration yesterday that Vicki was "very humble. The only way we can find out anything is if we ask."

A trip with her family to the Meadville airport in September 1992 led to Vicki's first flight a month later in a Cessna 150, a two-seater. "I liked the feeling of being up there, of looking down at my home and the restaurants where I eat," she said.

Asked if her parents have pushed her to attempt the cross-country and Atlantic trips, she said no and volunteered that this isn't the first time she's been asked that question.

"This is something I want to do and my parents have been very supportive," she said.

Indeed.

In addition to the financial support, the Van Meters have also invested a lot of time in Vicki.

When the local flying school closed, her father started driving her to Columbus, Ohio -- a five-hour trip -- Friday evenings so she could fly on Saturdays and Sundays. Her three instructors there have more than 80 years combined experience.

Vicki will make the Atlantic trip in the Cessna 210, a single-engine six- passenger plane with a cruising speed of approximately 180 mph. She plans to arrive in Glasgow, Scotland, on Tuesday. She'll then fly to London, Brussels, Paris and Frankfurt.

She and her instructor, Curt Arnspiger, a veteran of trans-Atlantic flights, flew to Augusta Tuesday to have the rear seats removed and an auxiliary fuel tank installed.

The extra fuel may be necessary if she can't land at a fog-prone airport in Greenland and has to fly nonstop from Goose Bay to Iceland, a distance of about 1,500 miles, mostly over water.

She will wear a one-piece neoprene survival suit designed to keep her warm and afloat in frigid waters for 24 hours. The plane also has an inflatable raft and other survival gear.

Vicki prides herself on flying manually and doesn't use any automatic pilot features. In February, she helped Arnspiger fly to Newfoundland, Greenland and Iceland.

"It was real fun," she said, a phrase she frequently uses.

There was little media interest when she took off from Maine on her transcontinental trip last year. But when she landed in San Diego, she and her parents were overwhelmed with requests for interviews. Her feat was noted on national newscasts and she was a guest on several talk shows.

She accepted an invitation to visit the Johnson Space Center and Space Center Houston on her way home. She sat in a space shuttle simulator and successfully landed it on her second try. In another simulated exercise, she repaired a satellite in the manned maneuvering unit.

Vicki also received a scholarship to the U.S. Space and Rocket Camp in Huntsville, Ala., and a sky-blue flight suit with a NASA patch on the right shoulder.

When she accompanied her sixth grade class to Washington, D.C., last fall, Vice President Al Gore gave the group a special tour of the White House. Gore sent her a letter last week in which he praised her "determination and initiative." He also asked her to carry "a message of goodwill" to everyone she meets.

She plans to do that with an All-American smile, literally. Vicki had her orthodontist install red and blue bands in the braces she was already wearing. She has also learned some French and German for the trip.

Vicki is an admirer of Amelia Earhart -- the first woman to fly solo across the Atlantic in 1932 -- but emphasizes that she isn't flying the same route taken by the legendary aviatrix. Earhart flew from Newfoundland to Ireland in 14 hours. She was lost in the Pacific in 1937.

The Van Meters will follow their daughter across the Atlantic in a twin- engine plane chartered by the British Broadcasting Corp., which is making a documentary of their daughter's flight.

Cheering Vicki on from the homefront will be her siblings and maternal grandmother, Betty Loboda, a former weather observer at the Allegheny County Airport, which is where she met her late husband, John, an air traffic controller.

Vicki's parents sat down with her earlier this year and, her mother said, ''reviewed all the risks involved because there is a chance that the plane could go down over the water. Vicki said she understood.

"I'm concerned about her, of course, but I have faith in her ability and I have faith in God," Corinne Van Meter said.

Jim Van Meter agreed. "I, like my wife, believe she has guardian angels looking over her."