I had another night flight with John this week. In order to be a private pilot, I need 10 night landings and a 100-mile night cross-country flight (with an instructor). So you can expect a few more posts on night flying.
One of the interesting things about this flight was that John wanted to “hood” me. I also need three hours of instrument flying for my private pilot license, and one way to do that is put a hood over the student’s head and make him/her fly by instruments.
In John’s view, this is better done at night because he (the instructor) can keep a better watch for other aircraft. In my view, if I’m going to be flying at night I want to enjoy the night flight, and having a hood over my head is not the way to do that. So we were a little at odds with one another.
Fortunately, we couldn’t find the hood, so it was moot.
Anyway, we took off OK, and once again I was struck by how cool it is to see all those lights spread out beneath you as you climb.
The last time we flew at night we flew at 1,500 feet, and I was concerned the entire time about having no margin for error. So this time we climbed to 4,500 feet and hung around that alititude.
Once again we flew up to Oceanside, and once again we flew out to sea once we got there. And once again I experienced tremendous vertigo at certain points…mainly when we turned back towards the shore. At one point it was so frightening that I actually said, “John?” I was just so lost in the universe that I needed to know he was still there. He knew exactly what I was experiencing, and he replied, “It’s OK. I’m here.”
It’s really hard to describe what it’s like to be looking at instruments that are telling you one thing, and physically feeling as though you are doing something else entirely, and mentally not being able to process anything. The one good thing was that because we were at 4,500 feet, I didn’t have that horror of going past a point of no return that I had had at 1,500 feet the last time we flew.
So we did that about five times. Each time I got a little bit better, but I’m here to tell you that I do not like it. I think it’s one of those things that you need to either expose yourself to it routinely in order to maintain some sort of control over, or avoid assiduously and pray it doesn’t happen. And probably staying exposed to it is the saner course of action. So I guess this is part of my future in flying.
We went back to Montgomery with no problem, and then landed three times. The landings weren’t quite as good as the last time I did a night landing, although that was more of an approach issue rather than an actual landing issue. In all three approaches I misjudged the end of the runway by a substantial margin, and had to feather the throttle to reach the threshold. I think in all three cases I turned on to final at such an off spot that I never cleared my mind enough to look at the VASI lights. That is to say, I was so low at that point that I became immediately focused on mitigating it.
One reason I had such a problem on the approaches is that Montgomery has what’s called a displaced threshold. That means that you can’t land at the end of the runway; the threshold (where you can land) is “displaced”, or several hundred yards farther up the runway.
What this means is that when you are approaching the runway on the base leg, you can only see the red lights marking the runway, and you position yourself based on that. Well, the displaced threshold is marked with green lights, and you can’t really see those until you’re well into the descent.
In any case, it was just something to account for in the future. And that aside, the actual landings were all pretty good.
And to really top the whole thing off, the almost-full moon was out and it was a gorgeous night to fly!
Wind, Sand, and Stars 