Well, I made an honest mistake.
Typical preflight procedure involves a look on Aviation Weather .gov followed by a call to 1800WXBRIEF to confirm the information that I viewed and get informed on the things I missed (ie., NOTAMs).
I was watching the weather most of the afternoon as several spotty showers and storms were popping up across the area. I could see that they were all dissipating, so I went ahead and did my usual preflight weather scan, but because it was a last minute idea, I just took off for the airport without giving a call to the briefer, so I missed the NOTAMs.
To make a long story short, I lost track of time and ended up getting back to my home drome at last light. I keyed the mic five times to activate the pilot controlled lighting and thought that it was odd that I couldn’t see the runway lights come on. Repeated the exercise a second time and got the same result. It wasn’t until I was on a tight downwind that I was able to see that only half of the runway edge lights were illuminated. There was still just enough light to make a safe landing but it was dark. Had it of been any darker I would’ve had to go to another satellite airport and call it a night there.
Anyway I got down safely and all is well, but I was thinking to myself, ‘why didn’t I know about this beforehand?’ Dumb me realized that I forgot to check the NOTAMs which said:
REDL Out of Service (and gave the date)
Check your NOTAMs!
Typical preflight procedure involves a look on Aviation Weather .gov followed by a call to 1800WXBRIEF to confirm the information that I viewed and get informed on the things I missed (ie., NOTAMs).
I was watching the weather most of the afternoon as several spotty showers and storms were popping up across the area. I could see that they were all dissipating, so I went ahead and did my usual preflight weather scan, but because it was a last minute idea, I just took off for the airport without giving a call to the briefer, so I missed the NOTAMs.
To make a long story short, I lost track of time and ended up getting back to my home drome at last light. I keyed the mic five times to activate the pilot controlled lighting and thought that it was odd that I couldn’t see the runway lights come on. Repeated the exercise a second time and got the same result. It wasn’t until I was on a tight downwind that I was able to see that only half of the runway edge lights were illuminated. There was still just enough light to make a safe landing but it was dark. Had it of been any darker I would’ve had to go to another satellite airport and call it a night there.
Anyway I got down safely and all is well, but I was thinking to myself, ‘why didn’t I know about this beforehand?’ Dumb me realized that I forgot to check the NOTAMs which said:
REDL Out of Service (and gave the date)
Check your NOTAMs!
Thanks for the reminder. A last minute call to 800wxbrief is my routine for Notams and TFR's, just takes a minute or two. But I have sinned before and not done it on what I considered to be a routine flight, like to the home drome.
