Struggling with night landings

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DaveInPA

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Dave
Im a relatively experienced pilot - 550 hour commercial pilot with IFR and 200+ multi hours - I fly about 100 hours a year so I consider myself pretty proficient and somewhat experienced.

I rarely have been flying at night and lately my missions call for it with my family so I’ve been practicing night landings now it’s fall. I’m sure a big part of the answer is I just need to do it a lot and I’ll eventually get the sight picture. Wondering if anyone else really struggles(d) with the timing of the round out and flare height. I’m tending to fly into the runway and then flaring very abruptly. So I guess I’m thinking I’m higher than I am.

any tips , tricks, or sage advice?
 
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The landing light illuminates the runway relatively close to the airplane. This draws your focus to the illuminated area of the runway which is closer to the aircraft than where you usually look during a daytime landing. If this is what is happening, try moving your focus back down the runway where it normally is during a daytime landing.
 
“The round out and touchdown is made in the same manner as in day landings. At night, the judgment of height, speed, and sink rate is impaired by the scarcity of observable objects in the landing area. An inexperienced pilot may have a tendency to round out too high until attaining familiarity with the proper height for the correct round out. To aid in determining the proper round out point, continue a constant approach descent until the landing lights reflect on the runway and tire marks on the runway can be seen clearly. At this point, the round out is started smoothly and the throttle gradually reduced to idle as the airplane is touching down. [Figure 10-6] During landings without the use of landing lights, the round out may be started when the runway lights at the far end of the runway first appear to be rising higher than the nose of the airplane. This demands a smooth and very timely round out and requires that the pilot feel for the runway surface using power and pitch changes, as necessary, for the airplane to settle slowly to the runway. Blackout landings should always be included in night pilot training as an emergency procedure.”

Otherwise, night landings are almost the same as day landings, only darker.

See if u can map out 3 local airports with different length/width runways and hopefully different lights and bounce around from one to the other one night until you’ve figured it out.
 
Practice practice. I did 8 airports one night and that really helped.
 
Try practicing without the landing light, it will force you to look down the runway and feel yourself sinking into the lights. Can also do them like a soft field landing, round at a bit high and carry some power into the touch down.

Brian
CFIIIG/ASEL
 
Jason Schappert from MZeroA always says “A perfect landing begins with a perfect pattern.” If you feel that the night landings you struggle with are pattern work, I would suggest picking a FAF for an RNAV approach and instead of just flying the pattern, go all the way out and intercept glide slope at the FAF. This will put you on a proper approach angle and minimize the variations between pattern descents at night.

Now that you are flying a consistent approach into the runway, you can use the other tips above: turn off the landing light, focus down the runway, try a soft field style touchdown, etc.

This method is not a long term solution, but may eliminate enough variables to solidify the last piece and work backwards from there.
 
At night your peripheral vision is sharper than the frontal view. Pay attention to what you see out the side window (without turning your head), and turn off the landing lights if necessary. My night landings are usually better than day landings.
 
flyingpreacher said:
Jason Schappert from MZeroA always says “A perfect landing begins with a perfect pattern.”
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I would have to disagree with that. Flying the pattern is only beneficial to help keep you stabilized and sequenced. After awhile, you should be able to have perfect landings from any type of approach entry.
 
RyanB said:
I would have to disagree with that. Flying the pattern is only beneficial to help keep you stabilized and sequenced. After awhile, you should be able to have perfect landings from any type of approach entry.
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I understand the whole pattern & stabilized approach thingy but I have heard a rumor that some pilots actually fly straight in landings. Is such a thing true? How can that happen if they aren't flying a perfect pattern? :dunno:

sarc/
 
RyanB said:
I would have to disagree with that. Flying the pattern is only beneficial to help keep you stabilized and sequenced. After awhile, you should be able to have perfect landings from any type of approach entry.
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Obviously, there are varied approach entries, and Jason isn’t saying otherwise. His point is that if you fly inconsistent approach angles, and never get the same look at a landing twice, it makes it much harder to get consistent results.

If you make your base and final turns at the same altitude and airspeed each time, you get much more consistent results. That’s why I suggested that he try on glide slope from a FAF, because that eliminates some of the variables in that stage of flight and will give a more predictable frame of reference leading up to the landing.
 
I don't fly much at night as I fly singles, but what helps me is to essentially ignore the area illuminated by the landing light and judge my descent by the runway edge lights looking far down the runway like a daytime landing. Of course it's hard to ignore the patch lit up by today's super bright led lights. It was almost easier with the old halogens because when the runway lit up it was time to flare.
 
Larry in TN said:
The landing light illuminates the runway relatively close to the airplane. This draws your focus to the illuminated area of the runway which is closer to the aircraft than where you usually look during a daytime landing. If this is what is happening, try moving your focus back down the runway where it normally is during a daytime landing.
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This is a good idea but with one caveat. When landing at night you must remember that the runway lights themselves are elevated above the runway. They create a visual plane that is about one foot above the runway surface. This leads to a tendency to flare and actually land on that elevated plane which results in a hard touchdown. Focusing far down the runway helps with most landings.
 
Repetition and training my internal sight picture is the only thing that works for me. I fly at night as little as possible.

BTW - do you have an O2 system? If so, breath as much O2 as you can when flying at night - it helps your night vision.
 
I haven't made a night landing since training, so take this with a grain of salt (plus a lick of lime and a shot of tequila), but my PPL DPE made a suggestion I'll share. We were talking about when your night currency has expired and what's required to become current. I haven't tried this, but it seems to make sense.

Try going out near sunset, but before dark, and start doing practice landings. Keep it up until you're landing in the dark. This will let you adjust to the different sight picture gradually, and you'll adapt as necessary, a little bit at a time.

If you try it and it works for you, let us know.
 
Half Fast said:
I haven't made a night landing since training, so take this with a grain of salt (plus a lick of lime and a shot of tequila), but my PPL DPE made a suggestion I'll share. We were talking about when your night currency has expired and what's required to become current. I haven't tried this, but it seems to make sense.

Try going out near sunset, but before dark, and start doing practice landings. Keep it up until you're landing in the dark. This will let you adjust to the different sight picture gradually, and you'll adapt as necessary, a little bit at a time.

If you try it and it works for you, let us know.
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This is how my CFI introduced me to night landings, and it seemed to work pretty well. "Finding" the runway surface wasn't that difficult, but night landings were a lot more like a soft field landing than a short field one.
 
Half Fast said:
I haven't made a night landing since training, so take this with a grain of salt (plus a lick of lime and a shot of tequila), but my PPL DPE made a suggestion I'll share. We were talking about when your night currency has expired and what's required to become current. I haven't tried this, but it seems to make sense.

Try going out near sunset, but before dark, and start doing practice landings. Keep it up until you're landing in the dark. This will let you adjust to the different sight picture gradually, and you'll adapt as necessary, a little bit at a time.

If you try it and it works for you, let us know.
Click to expand...

I've done this technique many times and is useful when I am rusty with night landings.

Remember, only those T&Ls done 1 hour after sunset can be counted toward night proficiency [61.17(b)] and "night flight" can only be logged after civil twilight ends, usually 30 minutes after sunset.
 
DaveInPA said:
Im a relatively experienced pilot - 550 hour commercial pilot with IFR and 200+ multi hours - I fly about 100 hours a year so I consider myself pretty proficient and somewhat experienced.

I rarely have been flying at night and lately my missions call for it with my family so I’ve been practicing night landings now it’s fall. I’m sure a big part of the answer is I just need to do it a lot and I’ll eventually get the sight picture. Wondering if anyone else really struggles(d) with the timing of the round out and flare height. I’m tending to fly into the runway and then flaring very abruptly. So I guess I’m thinking I’m higher than I am.

any tips , tricks, or sage advice?
Click to expand...

One thought - Get two hours of seaplane training and focus on glassy water landings.

Second thought - get some tailwheel training and focus on wheel landings.

Both of these require you to “feel” for the runway and should help at night.
 
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