Flightblog

Lesson #20: Flight by Reference to Instruments & Night Flying

Man, this was a FUN one! Just when I was starting to get sort of bogged down with flight planning, compass deviation and studying for the written test, we got to have a little fun.

Fletch and I planned to meet at the hangar around 4 o'clock to go for an evening flight and get some hood work in. We took off about 4:30 and headed for the West Side, Lahaina. On the way over I lost my engine (you do realize by now that 'losing my engine' means SIMULATED, don't you?) and had to set up an emergency landing in a conveniently huge, plowed sugar field. I hope if I ever do lose the actual engine, I have such good options for an emergency landing site.

My approach and procedure work through the engine out exercise were flawless and we would have had a nice landing in the dirt. At about 125', Fletch gave me the throttle and we climbed out, continuing on to Lahaina.

As we rounded the corner at MacGregor point, Fletch pulled out the Foggles and the world outside the cockpit disappeared. It was a shame too, since it was so gorgeous outside: sunlight streaming through low clouds to bathe the West Maui Mountains in that soft, orange afternoon glow. Oh well, I'm a pilot...I have this cool instrument panel to look at, who needs scenery, right?

Turns, heading holds, climbs, descents...even steep turns. All under the hood with no visual reference of the outside world, just the instruments. I've been reading ahead into the instrument pilot textbook and am loving it. They break the instrument scan down into your attitude and power instruments, then further into pitch, roll and power instruments. It's really neat seeing the relationship between all of the instruments and how you can use them to precisely pinpoint where you are, where you want to go and how to get there...all without being able to see anything but the inside of your white colored glasses.

I'm looking forward to the instrument rating already!

Out of the corner of my eye, I saw ocean and in that brief moment, caught a whale spout in the sea below. I took off the Foggles and told Fletch I was 'going visual' to get a closer look and there below us is a pod of humpbacks, playing in the ocean! The bigger one was rolling over on it's back while the smaller ones flipped their flippers and breached, sending great sprays of water into the air. We descended to 800' and I practiced turns-around-a-point with the whales as my reference. Flying constant radius turns around the pod of whales below. It was really spectacular and something I'll never forget.

After a few turns and taking some pics, we climbed back to 2500' and it was about sunset. I put the Foggles back on and we continued to fly around a little, then Fletch started giving me vectors to Kahului.

'Right 2°, fly heading 185°'

'turn left heading 110°'

'descend and maintain 1500''

'turn left heading 020°'

'go visual'

And there was the airport. In the dark. Tower sent us around for a right downwind to RWY 20 and we came in on final over the ocean, dark waves lapping on the beach beneath us. All the runway lights were on and as we got lower it came into view in the bright landing light on the front of the plane. I flew a great approach and waited to flare...too late. WHAM! We hit a little hard. Fletch says it happens to everyone their first time at night. I guess the reduced peripheral vision makes you feel a little higher than you really are. Whoops.

We taxied to parking in the twilight and secured the plane. Fletch drove us over to Pinata's where we had a couple of combination plates with iced tea (note to self: do NOT drink iced tea in any quantity before getting in an airplane unless the airplane has a potty) while we waited for it to get good and dark. We got done about 7:30 and it was BLACK as midnight out there. The moon wouldn't be up for a few hours so we had some time to get some really good night landing experience in.

Back in the plane and we did my required 10 night take-offs and landings. 3 were to a full stop and all of them were great learning experience. My first trip around the pattern I flew a little too tight a pattern and had to fly a steep final to make up for it, that's no good at night. After that I relaxed and used the engine and flew big rectangles around the runway. We did 5 and then took a break and just went and flew over Kahului and the harbor and out toward Waihee where the lights ended. It was beautiful, seeing the mountains barely with the stars behind them.

As we finished up with 5 more landings Fletch let me learn. He made me land with no landing light. Not so bad. Then he made me land with no landing light and no cabin lights, YIKES! Talk about dark! No instruments, no artificial horizon or airspeed indicator...just a barely perceptible horizon where the stars and ocean meet until you turn downwind to base and the mountains obscure the sky and it just goes ALL black. That was eery. I just flew the sounds and control pressures I know and was maybe a little fast (who knows, we never saw the panel) but still had a fine landing. On the last one we called the tower and got them to turn off the runway lights.

'OK, but landing is at your own risk'

Uh...right, so who's risk is it at when the lights are on?

When we turned onto final there was no runway. Just a big, black hole in the ground outlined by little blue taxiway lights. I aimed for the center of the threshold end and flew right down the pipe to somewhere near the touchdown zone. As we got to 40 or 50' the landing light illuminated the numbers and we were maybe a little off the centerline but not by much. Nailed it on the touchdown markers and that was it.

Night landings done.

2.1
12 Landings

Posted by johnpeace at February 10, 2004 08:55 PM