First night flight post ppl
19 Dec 2006After about 2 months of not being able to go flying, due to me getting ill & then the weather playing up, I went up with an instructor to go on my first ever night flight, it was very strange having to give the aircraft the usual pre-flight check over using a torch! We got in, lit up the panel & taxied out to runway 13, takeoff was as normal, although everything looked a little strange, because instead of the usual fields, there was black, with the odd patches of light for towns and the odd car headlight moving on its own in the middle of nowhere.
For this flight we were doing circuits, and once I got to the point where I was going to turn downwind, I checked out the window over my shoulder to see the runway (like normal) and all I could see was just the lights of Plymouth, couldn’t make out the airport at all even though we were less than a mile from it!
I turned downwind anyway as I knew we would be at the right spot, called the tower as usual with the downwind call, then followed the circuit roughly as normal, the main difference being that I was flying headings instead of visual reference points on the horizon.
As we turned crosswind I still couldn’t see the runway until we were nearly at 90 degrees to it, and we were still very high - usually it’s easy to judge your rate of decent with the runway clearly in view, but feels a little daunting descending when you can’t see it!
I got it turned onto final and sidesliped a little bit to get down to a more reasonable height, then did a steep approach to 13, which worked quite well until it came to actually landing, I just didn’t flare much at all and hit the ground reasonably hard, all wheels together, not enough to bounce the aircraft, but certainly one of the worst I’ve ever done, (not a surprise as the approach wasn’t the best), once on the ground, got the flaps up, power on and lifted off again.
The next circuit was not as bad as the first one, seemed to remember everything again (all the checks & how to fly!) the approach was a lot better, still flew further on base than normal before seeing the runway, and ended up a little right of the centreline, but it was ok. The landing was a lot nicer than the first, though still some room for improvement. It’s certainly true what they say about a stable approach setting you up for a good landing!
Next time around, it’d become a little more normal, circuit was good, and the landing was very good, wheels touching down gently. And so on the next circuit, we did a landing with the landing light switched off! It was a little bump because it was hard to tell how high off the ground we were when you’re just descending into blackness after crossing the threshold, only with the runway edge lights for any sort of reference outside, but it wasn’t too bad as my instructor was guiding me a bit on that one.
We then went around did another one, where I did the landing completely unaided this time, it was smooth! We than did a flapless approach which was a little strange as when we levelled out onto final we were way out to the right, enough that I wanted to turn left to correct for it, but my instructor was not worried and told me to continue as normal I was surprised how it turned out, we actually ended up almost straight down the centre line without seeming to do much even though we were at quite an angle to the runway, that landing was very good (flapless always seem to be!) the next two circuits were normal ones again, and both quite good.
We landed on that second one, and then taxied in through B and shut down. Very good flight but I was surprised that night flying was done almost completely on instruments rather than by what I’m used to, looking out the window, as I don’t have any kind of instrument rating, and still won’t even after actually getting the night rating.