Night Rating

Groping in the dark 11 Dec 07

The Night Rating begins with a brief (in a brightly-lit room, great for the night vision) about how to fly at night and the benefits of a warm sweater (nope, forgot that) and a red-light torch (nope, don't have one of those either).
Feeling useless, I trundle out to the aircraft (bugger me, it's cold out here) and after a Transit check we hop in and I can't see a thing. How the hell are you meant to do pre-flight checks in the dark? Out with the torch, fumble around between the coat and the torch and the checklist. It feels awful, very unnatural. Got to get better at this.....

Struggle through the checks, start the engine, get clearance and taxy out. Can't see the taxiway centre-line, wobble about and make it to the Hold. Line up, and give it some wellie. The runway lights begin to resemble the A40 street lamps past Northolt at 100mph, at 75Kts we unstick and....suddenly everything disappears.

Quick, to the Artificial Horizon-mobile, Robin! Bloody glad I've done some Instrument flying, you suddenly lose all visual references. At about 700ft it all starts coming back as you gain some perspective and you can look outside again. Quick check: are we shiny side up? Check. Are we vaguely on the runway heading? Check. Are we in balance? Check. Are we stalled yet? Nope. Well that's a relief, because for a moment there it was total instruments. Phew. Note to potential night flyers: try it with an Instructor first!

Depart to the North, the world looks beautiful from up here, and it's very smooth. Every other plane for miles around is hugely visible (red to red OK, green to green OK, red to green or green to red bad); navigation is pretty easy (M40 is here, Banbury is there, that black hole is Cornbury Park...).

An interesting effect: we appear to be drifting sideways. I assume we really are, until we turn relative to the wind and it still does it, so it must be because I am sitting to the left of the centreline of the aircraft. One to watch.

So we bimble around for a bit and it's all pretty easy until my Instructor says we'll do a PFL. Down we drift, trimmed for 75Kt, two stages of flap, in to wind and headed in to an area of blackness. He says you can try the landing light if you like, but if you don't like what you see he suggests you turn it off again......

At 1,500ft we throw it away and head for home. I spot the green airfield beacon from a good way away, aided by my friend the ADF, but we can't see the runway from the side for ages. A fairly neat Overhead Join then a normal (surprisingly normal) circuit and a demonstration of what the runway looks like from first too low, then too high before we initiate a go around and a circuit to land. And landing's the trick, at night.

Get it lined up and trimmed for 75Kt, then he takes over for the landing, which I have to say I would have hammered. The "feel" is quite different to daylight landings; I feel we are still about 10 feet in the air when the mains touch. Weird, and will take some getting used to.

Clean up, taxy home, very difficult to find the parking spot in the dark, nearly murder the marshaller with the prop (get out of the way you silly bugger!), shut down and debrief. Good start, and I'm booked in for the next 20 Monday nights: 4 to learn to fly in the dark, then 16 to polish up my landings.......

More fumblings in the dark, lose both pen and aircraft keys, feel hugely disorganised. I will be better organised next time.

Homework is to plan a Banbury-Gloucester-Oxford trip, so I can't have been all bad, though....

Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark 11 Dec 07

Now we need to do a VFR night navigation: out to Banbury, turn left, head for Gloucester, then come home. This has to be done VFR, so back to the whizzwheel and drawing lines on the map. Glad I haven't entirely forgotten how to do this.....

It's a beautifully calm but very cold evening as we pre-flight the aircraft, fill up with fuel and take-off. A moment's switch to Instruments as we climb out, start the stopwatch and head for Banbury. I seem to have got the wind calculations right as we arrive over the M40 junction right on time, turn left and head out in to the countryside.

It's absolutely beautiful out here, the lights from all the towns and villages twinkling in the darkness. We can see for huge distances, identifying masts 50 or 60 miles away. We trim the aircraft out exactly on heading, at exactly 2,500ft and 90Kts and concentrate on accurate nav. As the minutes roll by, FREDA checks come and go, and the glow from behind the Chilterns caused by Cheltenham and Gloucester grows. We talk to Brize Radar then Gloucester, top the ridge and within a few minutes have identified the town, the airfield and the surrounding traffic. For once my Nav is spot-on and we turn in the Overhead and head for home.

Over the ridge, back in to the darkness, back to Brize who don't want to know us so we change to Oxford Approach, who have changed the runway to 19 right hand, a configuration I've never seen before, because normally that side of the airfield is the Dead side, being over Woodstock. Mentally shake the Etch-a-Sketch and imagine an Overhead Join backwards and inside out... OK, we can do that (in the dark as well). Descend to 2200ft airfield QNH, aim for the landing numbers, once over them we descend in a neat turn to be at 1500ft QNH over the take-off numbers and slot neatly in to the circuit, where the fun starts.........

Now we must do night touch-and-gos, in an unfamiliar circuit pattern with, as it turns out, a decreasing number of aids. The first couple are normal landings which, staggeringly, I get spot-on and smooth. After that, it gets a little more difficult. First we try it without the landing light (well, that makes very little difference, as it turns out), so we try without the PAPI approach angle lights (well, I never use them anyway so that one's OK) and finally he turns out all the lights and puts the map in front of the instruments: "total electrical failure", he says. Er.......

It is possible to land a PA-28 at night, with no instruments whatsoever, but it is very scary. I find the trick is to listen to the wind noise around the aircraft. More by luck than judgement, I manage a reasonable approach and landing.

All evening, some girl who sounds about 12 has been chasing us around the circuit in a Cessna 172 doing some private training; now she sits right on the tail of one of our other aircraft on Final, and gets a serious bollocking from the Tower to the point where she is told in no uncertain terms to exit the circuit for a while. Quite right, too.

So, we do a quick taxi to the pumps and I'm just mentally winding down when my Instructor says "right, go off and do one on your own". I'm not quite expecting this, I suppose in the back of my mind I assumed that at some point I'd have to night fly alone, but not tonight!

So, he hops out, I taxy out, backtrack, power check, take off and start the circuit. At which point the Tower clears a business jet for a straight-in approach, checks that I can see him and asks me for an orbit. A night orbit, ay? This could be interesting. Stick to the rules, keep the speed up, right hand circuit so right hand orbit, lose the runway half way round, a moment of panic, but keep on going round until I'm heading North again, but he's still only just passing me so I'll extend North and give him plenty of room to land, slow down and leave the runway, and for his wake turbulence to dissipate.

By the time I turn for the runway I'm in a completely different position from any of the night approaches I've ever done (I later discover that this is precisely the scenario that resulted in the original power-line strike that put the aircraft out of action for so long). Oh well, wing it again....

A nice long, steady approach, the Tower clears me for landing, I fly some of the approach hands off it's so smooth, gently down to my aiming point, watch the end of the runway float upwards and flare.... gentle arrival on the centreline, roll out, taxy in and shut down.

It's cold putting the cover on the aircraft, and I'm absolutely shattered. But what a fantastic day's flying.

Ice Ice Baby 16 Jan 08