Night X-C

[DutchessFlier]

Been a while, what with schedules and WX complicating things this summer. We have had a pretty good window the last few days for flying, and it seems that everyone is trying to catch up with their lessons, etc. 71D has been busy, and is coming up on her second 100hr since becoming part of the flight school fleet (the first check was when she was put into the fleet this spring). Only real current MX issue is my pulling too hard on the parking brake handle a few flights ago and managing to pull the cable end fitting out of the ratchet mechanism (isn't it great to break parts on your own plane)

Saturday night we did my night dual X-C from POU to BDL. I set up my flight plan to follow a route solidly flying over airports, for which there was no direct routing at all. We flew POU to DXR to OXC to 4B8 to BDL. There are no real checkpoints to use at night in Western CT if I was to try and fly that route direct POU to BDL VFR. Besides, I wanted to make sure that I could see the checkpoints. The flight might still be on flightaware. I learned alot during this flight. The controller from NY, when we gave her the route for flight following, asked immediately if this was a training flight LOL.

It is alot more work to see the panel in the night lighting than during the day, and I had to concentrate on not spending too much time inside the plane working the flight navigation log. I tried to use the exterior scanning techniques I learned before and to get as much info from the instruments as possible in as short a time as possible.

Seeing ground references points and navigating was alot more complex at night than it was during the day. The airport beacons were absolutely the best checkpoints I had to use, and alot of the visual information, to me, seemed to get lost in the light pollution. Especially approaching BDL, the lights from the area surrounding the field were making it tough to see the beacon, and if it were not for the 430, the planes landing in front of us, and having another set of eyes in the plane with me, it would have been hairy.

Things also seem to go alot faster at night than during the day. I missed my TOC checkpoint and turned very wide of the location and about a minute past the ETE. This put the rest of my times off and my CFI allowed me to cut some of my heading turns during the rest of the flight a bit short to make up the difference. But if this was my checkride, it might have been cause for concern by the examiner. As we approached the class C for BDL, things got very very busy on the radio, and I did get behind the comms because I lost a call from the controllers in the chatter and noise. I managed to handle the frequency changes pretty well. We vectored into the approach behind an American 737, set it up, landed at BDL and then left back to POU.

The G430 is an amazing thing, and I was not very good at working the system while flying the plane. My CFI and I talked alot about that after the flight on Saturday, and yesterday afternoon, he had me come out for ground work. We pulled 71D over to the hangar and hooked her up to the GPU and I spent about an hour working through the COM and NAV control knobs and chapters/pages in the system. I can't thank him enough for doing this for me..I am just getting comfortable now with the system. I am amazed at the capabilities that thing has, and am only scratching the surface with now. I have to work with the 430 sim on the computer for a while as well.

Back to POU, we flew a direct route to the IGN VOR, and I was practicing cross navigating using both VOR's and tracking the heading against the GPS. Ah yes, the biggest mistake I almost made was setting up to land at POU (which is now an uncontrolled airport) directly into final for rwy 24. I did the frequency change okay to the CTAF, called my positions, started a descent way too far out and got lower than I should have been. When I was reminded about how I NEED to enter the pattern , I realized that I screwed that up pretty well. Lets just say that a combination of turning the 45 degree entry too soon, setting up my downwind too close to the field, and not being stabilized in my base and final, I decided to go around...good choice. My CFI took the plane, and cut across the field to the southwest, gave me back the plane and I did the pattern again...this time it went pretty well, but the landing flare was way too high. Not a soft landing...I find it harder to judge my distance above the runway at night. Perhaps I should have turned the rwy lights to medium rather than high.

We are going to do at least another dual X-C day flight to hone some skills and get more practice in before I go out on the solo X-C. I will keep you all posted as the lessons continue. Thanks again to my CFI for being the awesome pilot and teacher that he is.

Your thoughts, ideas, comments are always appreciated.

 

[MikePapa]

I don't know that ground reference points are more complex at night, but they are considerably different. When you are in high density population areas it can get complicated, but when you get away from the big cities I think it gets much easier. Naturally the waypoints you use must be different. Even big lakes are hard to spot if there's very little moonlight. You have to look for the dark spots with lights surrounding it.

You can match up the shape of lights of small towns pretty closely with your sectional, and you can see them from many miles away.

There's a few extra hazards associated with flying at night. Besides the obvious engine out problem, most inadvertent VFR to IMC accidents happen at night. If there's any clouds at all and you don't have at least half a moon that is not obscured by higher clouds, staying on the ground is worth considering if VFR is the only option. If you fly on a moonless night, clouds are almost impossible to see. However the traffic is less, you can see it farther away, and it's just more serene flying at night. In the summer around here, it's not as hot or bumpy either.

 

[BigAL]

Great write up Dutch! Enjoyed reading and hope to hear more soon. Thanks for post'n!