An element of my training that had until now been overlooked was my night flying. There are several night flying requirements in the Private Pilot curriculum including: 3 hours of required night flying, 10 take offs and landings to a full stop, and a 100 nm round-trip cross-country. This lesson was to be my night cross-country to Crossville (CSV). The plan was to split the night flying into two lessons. This would consist of the cross-country and as many of the landings as we could get in. The next night flight would be to round out the hours and do some VOR work. Also, I was supposed to file a flight plan for the trip to Crossville.
I filed the flight plan making sure to leave enough cushion to allow night to legally set in. I preflighted the plane taking advantage of the last bits of light and got my stuff ready for the flight. I made sure that both flashlights were within easy reach and stashed some extra batteries in the pocket with my sectional. I didn’t want to be without light when I needed it. The plan was to open the flight plan in the air and then close it before commencing the night landings. To that end, I went ahead and switched the clock in the plane over to UTC so that time off would be a quick glance away. It was at this point, that I realized that all I really knew about the lights was that I shouldn’t use the strobes on the ramp and that the switches turn the lights on. Having never flown at night, I always just turned on the beacon and the position lights and left it at that. Now I knew that I was reliant on lights to tell everyone where I was and I wasn’t sure what to do. A quick question and we were good to go. It would become obvious later that I was going to need to revise the checklists, because the lights are only mentioned once in the entire thing and that means that I routinely forgot what lights to check and when (mainly the landing and taxi lights).
My only other night worry was navigation related. I knew when planning the trip that it was going to be dark and I tried my best to pick checkpoints that would be lighted. In the end, some checkpoints were hard to see including my first one. We discussed this and Josh pointed out some checkpoints that might have made better choices and then we focused on opening the flight plan. We were far enough out that we weren’t in the airspace anymore so it was no problem for us to change over to FSS to open the flight plan. In the interest of gaining the most from the exercise, I pretended we didn’t have two radios and asked for a temporary frequency change. It was granted, we talked to FSS, and they opened our flight plan without any problems.
We trucked right on to Crossville, which was pretty easy to find. My later checkpoints worked pretty well, so I wasn’t surprised at where the airport was. I was however surprised by the wind they were reporting; it meant I was going to be doing crosswind landings my first time in the dark. I’m not talking a slight wind either, we were indicating 210 and tracking 225; that’s a 15° crab angle. Fortunately, I was in tune with the plane and I could feel the crab, so I knew what I needed to do and when. Unfortunately everything seems faster at night, so I was constantly fighting the urge to slow things down. Once we had the field in sight, I called FSS and closed the flight plan.
I made several landings. The first was mediocre (by my standard) and featured a slight bounce, but I was trying to carry a little speed all the way in to compensate for the crosswind. I slowed the plane and taxied off the runway to come around and go again. I have to do taxi-backs or stop-and-goes as these are night landings and must be made to a full stop. We elected to use the taxiway just in case someone showed up and it was a good thing; not 2 minutes after touch down, another 172 showed up.
After admiring a Skymaster on the ramp, something about the taziway took me by surprise. It looked like cars were driving toward us on the taxiway. After about 2.5 seconds of alarm and slight panic, I realized that there was a road that made a turn almost right at the fence and as a result, the cars appear to be on the taxiway. We took the runway, taking care to radio our intentions, and took a lap. We were nearing the middle of the last half of the downwind leg when the second 172 indicated he was entering downwind. This meant I had an audience and traffic with which to deal.
My second landing was much better, but I transitioned from a crap to slip too early earning a cautionary warning from Josh. Slips with flaps aren’t “recommended” according to the POH. I was still trying to get a feel for night landings at this point and this was the only instance where I let the appearance of speed make me do something dumb. Interestingly, the other 172 (a straight-tail) seemed to be going much faster and he was doing touch-and-goes.
We took the runway after he was clear and followed him around the pattern. We were debating whether he would stick around or leave, so we were holding off on deciding whether this would be the last circuit at CSV. He called closed traffic and we decided that we’d head back to TYS after this one. My third landing was better still with a perfect crab and slip technique. I was pleased. We taxied around, called our intentions to depart to the east, and we were off.
On our way to TYS, we amused ourselves with VOR navigation; I find it pretty easy. I had mentioned that I played with VOR navigation on my long cross-country, so Josh had me just replicate what I knew so far just to verify my technique. After that, we discussed some rules of thumb and tracked the radial home.
My fourth landing at TYS was good. It wasn’t busy so getting in was pretty easy. Thankfully, there were no airport police waiting to do a runway inspection, so all I had was aircraft lights and 9000 feet of runway lights. Since traffic had picked up on our way in and there was a line of outbound traffic, after I put it down we taxied to parking. Next week, the plan was more VOR navigation and finish out the night landings.