The nasty black hole

1RTK1

1RTK1

Pattern Altitude
Joined
Sep 10, 2014
Messages
1,509
Location
Central Left Coast
Display Name
Display name:
Ralph
I fly from an airport in the middle of nowhere. Last night I decided to get back in currency for night flight. Only 2 of the landings I made of 6 I consider acceptable. My patterns were off, down winds to long most of the time, even when I said I would shorten them up on the next round. Sometimes rounding out a little high sometimes lower than I liked. Had a couple of firm landings but nothing that would loosen any fillings.
Sooooooo
Today I decided to take a safety pilot up and run pattern A (or is it B) under the hood, some of the pattern is flown off heading and some off timing (picture below). Right towards the end I saw my vacuum pump go TU, the needle slamming over caught my eye. Found out the DG will last for 5 minutes or so and the AH a little less..
All fun none the less

AC6A0338-5A99-4DE4-B407-F93EBAEB779E.png
 
Last edited:
I got night current again about 3wks ago and was doing clunkers. I always find myself flying about 5mph slower at night for some reason.

From your plot it looks like you do T&G's at night...maybe I am reading that wrong and disregard.

I have forced myself not to do night T&G's. Not sure why, just don't feel comfortable doing them during the day either unless it a 5k or longer runway. Add in the critters. Yesterday (day time) coming back from a pancake breakfast I saw a Coyote so its that time again and another reason I don't like night landings, let alone T&G's.

Sorry to hear the vacuum pump failed.
 
My night landings were full stop.
The picture above is an IFR flight training pattern.
My distance judgment was not what it usually is/was for my airport. The black hole affect never seemed to give me any grief in the past but it did last night.
Things break at least pumps are that expensive
 
My vacuum is fine but my DG knob that you push in to align with the compass no longer pops back out. Airplanes....
 
The past couple flights I got in late and my landings were after dark. I actually think my landings were softer than in the day, the reason I think is during the day time I cut the power over the numbers and let it come down like a brick while at night my landing lights are pretty dim so i kept power in all the way down until touch down so the ground wouldn't come up so fast.
 
A pair of G5s will sort out that vacuum problem. My vacuum pump was removed last year and I have zero regrets.
 
I would like to dump the vacuum system but I haven't decided exactly what I want to do to my panel. I would like to have an RV-10........
 
Had my pump fail too once. Got my dad all excited about a trip down to the keys for some conch chowder and we get everything packed up and away we go. At about 1500 ft I notice the horizon is just free spinning. Aborted and returned to the field, found that the pump had actually sheared, nice and clean.

It's one of the flights I regret the most because I haven't been able to get my father back down there since and I've tried a few times. That really would have been a fun trip.
 
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