November Night Flying
Night flying
Yesterday, my roommate Bradley asked me about renting our aircraft this week in the evening and spending time in the pattern completing our night time currency. He’ll fly a C172 out of West Valley Flying Club at Palo Alto Airport, I’ll fly the Warrior from Advantage Aviation, and we’ll hang out in the pattern together. Technically, I’ve haven’t been night current since I received my license back on July 5, 2008. Honestly, night flying is not really my thing…I hate preflighting in the dark and I don’t like flying when I can’t see the terrain, since that limits my choices in the event of emergency (something you always have to think about as a pilot). But a few weeks ago, after flying during the day at Palo Alto Airport, I spent the evening hanging with a friend in SF near the Bay Bridge and thought to myself, I’d love to take a Bay Tour at night. It would be so beautiful to do. So to do that, I need to renew my night currency (three full-stop takeoff and landings at night).
Well in honor of my upcoming night time dip around the pattern, I thought I’d share an excerpt from my book titled, The Two Musketeers, that highlights a crazy experience I had while working on my pilot’s license in 2008. And even given this previous experience, I’m looking forward to a little November night flying this week. Enjoy!
Excerpt from The Two Musketeers:
“We headed out to the airport around 8:00p, so we had enough time to checkout the aircraft and prep before the true darkness fell. And this was helpful to me, since though the aircraft are similar, the C152 had a few subtle differences. Not to mention, this was the first time I’d have to preflight an aircraft in the dark (something I did not enjoy). For the most part, the preflight went as usual, until we entered the aircraft. I needed a bit more extra time to get adjusted to the aircraft since some of the instruments were in a different configuration than the C150 and the airspeed indicator was in knots and not miles per hour. In addition, I needed to adjust to the sight of taxiing an aircraft in the dark. All these little nuisances were little by little adjustments that I had to make on the fly. And one concern that I had was taxiing and taking off on an open airfield at night in the middle of summer, given the tendency for deer and foxes to congregate around the airfield. But I have to say, the weather that night was perfect and we were the only people on the airfield, so I felt like the airport was mine.
We intended to get my bearings at the airport by practicing a few landings, so I could adjust to the feel and speeds of the aircraft, in addition to the different sight picture of night flying. I called for my departure, taxied on to runway 27 and pushed the throttle forward for takeoff. The aircraft accelerated smoothly just like the feel of its control, and around 50 kts we’d begun to leave the earth. Not soon after climbing through 100ft AGL, I heard a loud noise on my left side and looked over to see that the pilot side door became ajar. Surprisingly, I didn’t panic but I was startled a bit. Fortunately I caught the issue before it became worse, since I’ve been told that aircraft doors are incredibly difficult to close once they became ajar due to the wind flow around the aircraft. Then another problem popped up. After climbing a bit more, we began to hear a loud squelch through the intercom. And even after fumbling with the volume, squelch, and other intercom settings in the aircraft we couldn’t get rid of the noise. So here I was in a different aircraft, flying at night, with a door that sometimes pops open and an incredibly annoying sound blaring through my headset. Needless to say, these issues didn’t add to my comfort during this flight.”
To read more about a crazy night that only became crazier, visit Jarard.com – The Writer and send a request for a copy of my book.