I Own The Night
My Thursday less was canceled due to weather, but it was moved to Saturday and in this lesson, I embarked on my first night time work. We stayed local, but I got a chance to land at a bunch of different airports in the area this evening.
We started by doing two touch-and-goes at McKinney (TKI), then took a trip over to Addison (ADS) and performed a land and taxi-back, then we transitioned Class Bravo airspace to get to Dallas Executive (RBD) then on to Lancaster (LNC) and then Rockwall (F46), for a touch-and-go at each, then back home to TKI for a full stop. In all, 1.5 hours of time and about 86 nautical miles with the longest leg being LNC to F46 at 25.5 nm. In order to qualify to be a cross-country flight, one leg must be at least 50 nm.
The purpose of this lesson was to get used to what it's like to fly at night and to get in as many landings as possible. I am required to do 10 takeoffs and landings and 3 hours of night work along with a 100nm cross-country flight. Normally my CFI will have the student try a few landings without the landing light on (it's a little bit harder to see the runway as you land). I my case, I did all the landings without the light because it was not working. So I got a lot of practice trying to sense where to ground was as I was coming down on the runway without the benefit of seeing the runway until the very end.
Click here to see my route, McKinney Airport is at the top of the chart.Tomorrow I go on my night cross-country from KTKI to KADS to KDUA (Durant, OK) to KTKI. I am required to plan the part from ADS to DUA and show my instructor and we're going to try to do this with a minimum of GPS work.
Next lesson: Sunday, March 9.
