Bright Lights of the City at Night

Flying in the Bay at Sunset...now I wanna do it after the sun goes down.

Tonight, Bradley and I rented our two aircraft (I flew my Warrior and he flew his Diamond Star) out of Palo Alto around 6pm and did our three full-stop takeoffs and landings one hour after sunset to renew our night currency. I haven’t started a night flight in over a year and half, and yes, the thoughts of my previous experiences were clearly etched in my mind. But surprisingly, it went very well.

I spent most of the week catching up on some Flight Training magazine articles that addressed night flying, key tips, as well as reread the section of my book, The Two Musketeers, that detailed my experiences while earning my license. All of that review helped a great deal. I knew that my mind would play tricks on me (and it did), and I knew that I needed to make sure I didn’t allow my landing nemesis to resurface at night. Outside of doing a go-around on the first landing attempt, the rest went very well. Yeah, I may have approached and crossed the threshold higher than normal, but I’d rather that than the opposite. My primary focus was to try to fly the approach as I normally would during the day…hit my 80kts & 800ft on downwind, 70kts & 700ft on base, and setup nicely for final (that little trick came from my experiences flying with Patrick in his Warrior…thanks dawg!)

The sight picture is obviously different at night during flare but the good thing is that I’ve learned the muscle memory with the Warrior. And as a result, though each of the approaches were flown more white on white, than red on white, I was able to settle it down with a little more than a kiss on the runway. I loved it!

Now I can look forward to my next mission…taking a Bay Area Tour at night. This thought has been in my mind since I spent an evening in SF this past summer peering out at the Bay Bridge at night. I think it would be a smooth, quiet, and scenic ride to see the Bay Area at night. I can’t wait…but nonetheless…I’m now night current and even more confident as a pilot.

So who’s coming with me?