Last weekend, I got a chance to fly again—this time I wanted to work on regaining my night currency. In the US, you’re not allowed to carry passengers at night unless you’ve completed at least three takeoffs and full-stop landings at night. The FAA defines night a couple of different ways, but the best is the period beginning one hour after official sunset and ending one hour before official sunrise. Sunset at Bridgeport a week ago Sunday was 1734h (5:34pm).
While I’ve flown at night a few times in the past few months as PIC, it was always with an instructor on board. Since getting the medical certificate sorted out in September, I hadn’t done my night currency yet—and July 2007 was the last time I flew solo at night. So it was definitely time!
I wanted to transition into the night landings, so I headed out to the 182RG at about 4:30 and did a very thorough pre-flight, ensuring that everything was working, including all of my nav, position, taxi, landing and strobe lights. I also set up the cockpit just right, including having my headlamp and at least 3 other flashlights within easy reach—you can never have too many flashlights handy when flying at night!
I fired up the plane at about 5pm and proceeded to do 7 landings as the sun set. It was a crystal clear evening—not a cloud in the sky and a beautiful sun setting red in the west. Towards the last of the 7 landings, as I made the right turn onto final approach for runway 29, the skyline of Manhattan was silhouetted beautifully against a red backdrop—gorgeous! Although it was a beautiful sunset, it was still windy up there, with a significant crosswind—again almost 40-50 degrees off the runway heading and a stiff 12-18kts. Good thing I had practiced crosswind landings last weekend!
At about 6pm, I made a full stop and taxied back to Three Wing and shut the plane down so that I could stretch my legs and wait for full (and legal) night to fall. At 6:30, I headed back out, did another walkaround pre-flight and ensured all of my flashlights were handy and started the Skylane back up. By 6:45, now fully legally night, I was back up in the gusty air.
What a gorgeous view at night—all the lights below, traffic moving on I-95 and the Merritt, heavy jets making their approaches to Kennedy and LaGuardia….But flying the plane was first priority and heading out into the inky Long Island Sound while on the downwind leg to runway 29 was a bit disconcerting without the visual references. You pay a lot more attention to flying by the numbers, and referencing the instruments (attitude indicator (artificial horizon), altimeter, airspeed), particularly when the airport is behind you out of site.
The strong crosswind wasn’t helping much, but I made three stop-and-go landings and then a final full stop landing and none of them were too ugly. The landing light playing across the runway really shows you how much you can bobble with the wind though!
I went home feeling as though I’d been through a couple of rounds in the ring because of the wind, but also feeling good about regaining my currency and getting some solo night time in.
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