Night Flying

Once again sorry for the delay, and I know that I've already apologised for before for the long break in my blogging! I do have quite a few posts to catch up on, however as the titles suggest, I will be talking about the absolutely spectacular night flying.

Sunset prior to my first night lesson

In the Oxford programme, you do 3 hours of dual night flying, 1 hour and a half of which is cross country, and you also get 2 hours of solo night time which is just flying in the traffic pattern with a minimum requirement of at least 10 landings.

The first lesson I had was a dual with my instructor which teaches flying circuits. I learned how to look for certain visual reference points at night, for example; light signals from airports and how to notice airports in cities. My instructor also made a big deal over night vision, and made sure that I dimmed the avionics as much as possible, even shining a torch inside the flight deck is potentially dangerous because it takes a long time for us to adapt back to night vision, and that's not something to want.

The first thing that struck me was how different everything feels and just how much extra care you need to take. Even with the taxi, I had to really concentrate to keep a visual of the centreline. The actual flying is very alien at first, everything that I was used to using as visual reference points were pretty much non existent, and you have to quickly get used to where certain lit landmarks are. Landing was very interesting too, the papis are evermore important on final approach. When I came to reducing power and flaring for touch down, it felt so different compared to the visual reference that I was used to during the day.

The lights over Tucson

The first landing I made at night was of course atrocious, afterwards that I started getting used to it pretty well. I ended up doing a couple of normal landings, then a couple of glide ins and flapless landings. The next lesson was a night cross country to Tucson International airport. The route I planned was out to the north of Falcon Field, then south with a transition over Phoenix Skyharbor airport. The transition looked incredible, seeing Skyharbor below along with Downtown Phoenix was really something. The rest of that navigation flight was so intense, I found it challenging to read the map and even controlling the lighting from my torch just to be sure that I didn't blind myself or the instructor! The approach to Tucson went quite well. It was the first time I had ever landed at an International airport so it was a great experience to be able to see what it was all about.

Stop at Tucson International

The last two flights I had at night were solo circuits. It was so much fun and I remember how enjoyable my old circuit lessons were. I practiced pretty much all the different kind of landings that are expected of me. My second night circuit was particularly challenging because of the winds becoming stronger as I flew, but as you can see, my heart is still beating!

Short final into Falcon

Night flying is something I'll always remember, and I was honestly so sad when I tied that aircraft down after the last night circuit, knowing that I won't be doing that for a while. It was just such a humbling moment as I saw the city lights tilting towards me as I got higher, looking out into the horizon and just see a carpet of what looks like a million fairy lights. Night flying has to go down as the most memorable things to date since I started training.