Landing at night- Lown Wing

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thehulk06

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Thehulk06
Landing at night- Low* Wing

Not sure it matters about high or low wing. But landing at night has been my biggest weakness. I have only done 15 night landing and they were all with a CFI. For some reason my depth perception is off about 5 feet which translates into a rough landing because I land flat, late on the flare basically.What techniques do you guys use for night landings?
 
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Have you started right after sunset, while there is plenty of light to make day landings, then continued touch 'n gos into the full hard dark so that each landing is slightly darker than the previous?
 
nosehair said:
Have you started right after sunset, while there is plenty of light to make day landings, then continued touch 'n gos into the full hard dark so that each landing is slightly darker than the previous?
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Yes, and the transition landings are nice, however at pitch black they start to become harsh.
 
I used to sit at the airport at night and look down the runway or taxiway and try and judge the height of the runway lights. Then I would use that as a reference for about where the runway is and flare to stall for a nice smooth landing (usually). It is different for everyone, and practice is ideally the best way to get better.
 
Re: Landing at night- Low* Wing

thehulk06 said:
a rough landing because I land flat, late on the flare basically.
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I'll let ya know as soon as I solve this problem during full daylight!

My night landings are actually more consistent than my daytime landings! I love going out and "flying by the lights" with a good vasi at night and see how well I can recover from a screwed up approach. For me I seem to focus better at night.
 
Theboys said:
I'm guessing your changing your focus point at night.
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I believe your correct. I guess i dont exactly know what to look for. I try to use the same style that I use during the day, but its got me off about 5ft in depth perception.... was considering keeping everything the same except start my flair 2-3 seconds earlier then what I normally would. I would rather not compensate though. I want to get it right!
 
The Airplane Flying Handbook has tips for night flying and has landing techniques and what to look for. Maybe it can help
 
Dual night landings are trivially easy.

Approach the runway as normal. Wait for instructor to flinch. Flare. Land.
 
Jesse, get you some LEDs and you don't have to land at night anymore.
I feel guilty logging them as night landings now. :)
 
I had the opposite problem though. I was flaring too late. Dangerously late in one case.
I am up to a hundred or so night landings so it is not an issue before but what I did and you should do this.

Fly to Alliance when wind is out of the south. Request 18L
It is like 11k feet and lit up like a christmas tree. It is long enough that you can practice just flying level over the runway until the plane quits flying.

Look out at the end of the runway and let the plane settle.

This will give you a good sight picture for where you are relative to the ground when the plane is a few feet off the ground.

Go do that

and then go to your home field and do what the other poster recommend; starting in the evening and flying the pattern until it is darker and darker.

Do that and I bet you will be fine.
 
This is alliance at night (FYI not my blurry ass video.)

 
AggieMike88 said:
Ummmm... Requesting 18L at KAFW isn't going to happen. That runway doesn't exist.

Now if you substituted 16L and 34R with your suggestion, you have a winner.
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I drink a lot when I am flying and things get a little blurry.
 
Drop acid preflight, that way the runway lights come up to meet you and provide a path to the threshold.
 
SixPapaCharlie said:
Jesse, get you some LEDs and you don't have to land at night anymore.
I feel guilty logging them as night landings now. :)
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+1. I used to flare late.

With my teledyne alphas, the runway is so lit up my landings have improved drastically. I can't wait until the new Whelens are out and we get some pireps from early adopters.
 
At my home airport there was no night lighting in the early days. When you were scheduled to be back after dark, the manager would go out and hang a lantern battery light on the fence at each end of the runway.

We entered the down wind over the factory a mile from the airport (always brightly lit) then turned to a heading of 050 magnetic. Get down to 200 agl and wait for your landing light to make the STOP sign at the intersection glow back at you.
At that point you looked to your left just before you passed over the stop sign, located the two lantern lights and turned to line them up. Then just clear the lantern light (and not so incidentally, the barbed wire fence) and reduce throttle as you descend into the bottomless black pit with only the feeble lantern bulb 3500 feet ahead of you. Hold the flare and sooner or later the ground would find you.

Then the fun began - a sod strip in the middle of farm fields and you hold your flashlight out the side of the pilots window to try and find the taxiway.
"Why not use the landing light?" you brightly ask.
Well sonny, wipe the back of your ears, you are still wet. These were real airplanes. You know, the kind with a tail wheel. When you taxi the landing light illuminates the moon, but not the grass.
The final part was getting in your car and fetching the lanterns. And lord help the hapless pilot who forgot to retrieve the lanterns (and turn them off)
 
It's probably because you look to close ahead of you or to the sides for judging height. Try looking at end of runway lights, hinge on that, and let your peripheral vision give the height information.

It's just like trying to hover a helicopter if you've ever tried that. If you look to the ground or too close, you're alway going to be behind and adjust late. You end up chasing it. The trick is to look far out and fix on a point. Same principle here.
 
SixPapaCharlie said:
Jesse, get you some LEDs and you don't have to land at night anymore.
I feel guilty logging them as night landings now. :)
Click to expand...

After making my share of no landing light night landings I put an LED in the nose and HIDs in w/new wingtips. It's a lot like daylight landing now...
 
During the day what do you use to determine flare? The height of the horizon in the windshield? The side windows? Peripheral angles? The runway lights can provide all of these references, you just have to interpolate the lines from the dots. Personally I look straight forward and use peripheral out the sides, even if I can't see over the nose, I look through it.
Where the eyes go, the body will follow and take any machine it's operating with it.
 
Night landings get easier if you get the runway lights turned down to minimum. The windshields in most airplanes are at least lightly scratched or dusty or crazed, and the light from runway edge lights scatters when it passes through and confuses your irises and they close, making the dark runway surface hard to see. My landings improved enormously when I discovered that clicking the runway lights down (ARCAL at an uncontrolled field) made the surface visible with the landing lights.

The tower at a controlled field might turn them down for you.

Dan
 
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