June 2006 Archives

So, one of the things I have to do, as a step of getting my private pilot's license, is a 100 mile night flight. That's a minimum, not a maximum. This is with my instructor, not solo (apparently, there are no solo night requirements for the license; any solo night work I do will be after I get my licenes).

Destination: Chico. Bonus destination: Red Bluff. (It happened to be fairly close..). Pilotage was not going to get us far, as you can not see the terrain at night. You can see the twinkles of cities; and depending on the highway, you might see that.

For the night flight, I had permission to depend on radio aids; that is, tuning to VOR radio stations to determine my position relative to those stations, and using them as my way points. My route followed I5, which is a fairly busy freeway, even up north. This would help me keep track of where I am should my radios fail. (The route direct to chico would have had me travelling a big giant void).

Weather Saturday night was great. Cool on the ground; hot as heck above ground for the first 1500 or so feet. Then cool again at altitude. Clear skies and great visibility. (Cool is relative. It had been 108F that day..).

Lessons learned on this particular trip:

• USE the checklist for landing. Don't run it from memory. In my final landing of the night, this bit me - I have the DAYTIME landing list in my head perfect. ... However, at night, it helps to turn your landing light on. It helps you judge where the ground is, and when to flare. I flared late and we hit a bit hard :(. On the bright side, I'm supposed to practice landing with my landing lights off.. this counts!
• My favorite light is no longer in stock at Frys. Grr. I need a few of them. Super bright white, and a pretty darn bright single led red, single unit. I remembered to tape the one I have on the white side, so I don't accidentally use it. That would kill my night vision.
• My instructor was playing with the white light portion of my LED flashlight. He could see the ground from several hundred feet in the air. It could make a useful backup light should my landing lights fail. Not enough to see usefully, but to help gauge the ground level.
• The chart is freaking impossible to read. In particular, you can't make out the magenta or yellow on the chart under red light. I think next night flight around, I'm going to photocopy the chart so I have a black and white copy with me, and see if that helps with contrast.
• My VOR work (using radios for reference points) needs improvement.
• I need to more carefully look at the terrain around airports before flying there. Parts around Red Bluff were pretty black and unlit, and we had no moon, so I had no depth perception of the surrounding area. I had to modify my pattern approach accordingly to stick to the area that was definately not hilly. Instead of entering on a 45 to the downwind, I entered almost directly on the downwind direction itself.
• Wow, that heat saps the heck out of climb ability. I think I need to add some padding to what my book says about times and distances to climb on a hot day.

All in all the trip was fairly uneventful. Things were peaceful. With no moon out, there wasn't much to look at other than the pattern of lights from I5 and the occasional city. I don't think I'd do this again for pleasure - nothing to look at.

On the flip side, I didn't have any orientation issues that can be associated from night flight. Due to lack of things to look at, night flight can be close to instrument flight. You have to trust your instruments a lot more and your visual reference a lot less.

Finally, first solo flight! It was slated originally for Sunday (all my cross country stuff is currently slated for Sundays); however, the weather was forecast to be too windy for my endorsement. A plane was available to do it Saturday; I went ahead and took advantage of it. Even still, wind was borderline - by the time I had the plane preflighted, and started listening to the weather, the wind was gusting more than allowed. An hour wait later, and I was off.

My first solo "cross country" was fairly short distance wise, and to an airport I've been to before - Modesto. (Nice folks there!). Drawing on my previous trip there, I rerouted things such that all the distinguishable landmarks would be on my left, where I have much better visibility. Checkpoints would include my usual Franklin Field (it just happens to be on both sides of the map; and the map stops a mere 12 miles south of my home airport before needing to be flipped over); Flagg City and Lodi (in particular, interstate 5 and highway 12 area); then outskirts of Stockton and the i-5/205 (to SF) junction; final leg would be aiming directly at the Modesto airport. Everything went to plan, and my arrival time was off by a minute.

Returning was much more direct; Modesto to the right edge of Stockton; a few degrees to the right to go just barely over Lodi (to avoid any skydivers at Lodi Skypark); and direct to Franklin and Sacramento. I must have rushed through the plan on this one as my angles were dead on even with wind correction but my times were way off. I also had difficulty opening my flight plan on the ground over the radio - Rancho Radio doesn't pick up pilots on the ground at that location. The tower staff were kind enough to phone it in for me. My instructor told me later that for Modesto you have to open your flight plan once you're in the air.

A minor bit of amusement was just before I reached Franklin on the way back home .. Norcal Approach advised me to descend immediately from 4,500 to 4,000.. "because the plane behind you is a lot faster." That's the sort of instruction you act on immediately, then read back the instructions they gave you for confirmation. Since I was close to my descent point anyways, I requested permission to descend all the way down to 1000 feet, which would get me out of the way of any other heavy aircraft who were heading to Sacramento International.

Still on the todo list: one long cross country solo (probably to Chico and Redding); and one night long cross country with my instructor. Apparently I don't do night time solo until after I have my license.

Thursday was my first night flight. It was spectacular. All around me, the cities were lit up like they had Christmas lights all over. Visibility was great - from Sacramento, I could see the lights at Lincoln and Auburn while flying at 2000 feet. Airports were very distinguishable with their beacons running, occasionally pulsing a bright white or green.

Airport lighting is kinda interesting. Look for the gap where you think the airport should be, and where the beacon claims there is an airport. Switch to the right communications frequency, then tap the transmit button a number of times. Depending on how many times you tap it, the lights will light up at various intensities and stay lit for 15 minute. All the lights - runway, approach, taxi, etc. Runways that used to belong to the airforce are particularly impressive with their size and quantity of lighting.

My instructor says landing at night is identical to landing at the day. Technically, he's right. Same air speeds, engine speeds, attitudes. That said, when you can't see the ground, there's a bit of a panic that runs through one's head. You have to put a fair bit of faith into the hands of the people who designed that airport, and the charts around that airport.

One item that helps is that some airports have lighting systems that will let you know if you're on the right glide angle coming into the airport. The lights are all red if you're coming in too low; and all white if you're too high. Half red half white means you're on the right path. The number of lights and positioning of such vary with which system is used, but the basics are the same. They are actually very low tech - they just have blinders on them such that you can only see the light if you're on the correct glide angle. For more information, see the VASI entry at Wikipedia.

At the end of training, we received clearance to circle around downtown Sacramento once. Sacramento's skyline is much more findable during the day than at night, as it turns out. At least from 2000 feet, it is not super impressive :-). It was still a neat experience and on the list of things I wanted to do once I got my license. So, we snuck this in a bit early :)

No solo crosscountry (in the skiing sense, as one friend put it) flying today. The windows picked up too much; that if they weren't favoring my direction, I'd have a tough time getting the plane on the ground. We'll try again in a couple weeks. We'll also start doing night flights then.

As to being hoodwinked.. we made use of the time we had in the plane to catch up on a few things. More hood work (that is, wearing a view-limiting device, so all you can see is the inside of the airplane and not the outside). We started off with the normal change course and altitude stuff (as tho I am requesting help from air traffic control to get back out of the clouds). After that, we did high and low speed stalls - bringing the nose up the airplane so high that the wings stop producing lift. Stall recovery is a bit more exciting when you can't see anything outside!

No lessons next weekend, as I'll be flying in something much bigger and much less fun to visit friends in Virginia..