Fly by Night

It's time to rake up some night hours! I was excited about this flight all day. I met the CFI at the airfield and he says we're going on a mini cross country. To Schole's Field in Galveston, then to Brazoria, then to Wolfe field. Nooo! He mentioned how he took someone up before on a night flight and they flew to Wolfe field, which is a grass field. He said they circled around it, and it was dark there. He said his other student was circling but getting higher instead of lower into the field like he wanted because his student was afraid of the black hole there. Well now it was my turn to enter the black hole. I put together a quick flight plan for the route he described, and went to www.aopa.org to download and print kneeboard formatted sheets for each airport. The CFI told me he was proud of me. He was always impressed that I did that without being told to. It goes back to when I did the practice cross-country on my flight sim to see what I needed on a xc flight, and that was something I found out I needed. That was re-inforced on the two xc flights I have done so it has become something that's just part of preparing for a xc flight.

CFI went over some things that would be different about a night flight. Including bring a flashlight. I hadn't even thought of that one. I figured there were lights in the plane. Apparently not enough, and he says it's a possibility they could go out. So I'll have to add a flashlight to my flight bag. As I taxi'd to the runway I started to turn on my GPS. CFI said I won't be using that tonight... aw man. I didn't plan it this way when I scheduled the flight, it just happened - there was a nearly full moon tonight, which looked awesome from the air, and of course helped with seeing. So I followed the Galveston VOR to Schole's field. I was hoping it was a controlled field so I could practice more at a controlled field in preparation for my long xc flight. But it turns out Schole's tower only operates from 6am - 6pm. My route took me right into final, and I was preparing for awkward maneuvering to enter the pattern 45 degrees towards the downwind leg. CFI said there's no one in the pattern so it's ok just to enter in on final. Interesting - I didn't know that. So then I descended to the runway outline of Schole's field. I came in a little slow, but it was a landing we could walk away from and use the plane again. We taxi'd off and went around to the start of the runway. There were barricades blocking my way onto the runway. I asked CFI about them. His strategy seemed to be to ignore them. We set up the VOR nav for the next leg, taxi'd around the barricades (if he says so...), entered the runway and took off into the wild black yonder. I could see what he mentioned earlier - that the ships in the ocean looked like stars and that it becomes hard to see the horizon. On this flight, however, with the moon out you could actually make out the horizon, and the real stars were not as bright as the ship lights.

We went on to Brazoria. There were not many landmarks I could use along the way. So it was good that I had the VOR to follow. I found that at night I seemed to want to yaw the plane to the left. I paid extra attention to the VOR, CDI, and the artificial horizon. I saw from the map that Brazoria was just a couple miles SW of Angleton. So I looked for Angleton when the time was came for me to be near there. I saw a mass of lights. CFI and I looked for the airport. But when it seemed we should be almost on top of it, we saw nothing. Then he spotted it about 5 miles to the right. Galveston's VOR should have led me right to it. I'm not sure I trust Galveston's VOR. See my previous post for the reason why. I'm not sure what the mass of lights was. It wasn't on the map. So we turned to Brazoria, which turned out to be a right hand pattern, and landed. I came to a full stop and took off again.

I would be using Houston Hobby's VOR to get to Wolfe field. At first I went east of my route to intercept the VOR heading. Then I turned to my planned compass heading, and soon found myself far to the right of the VOR heading. I went left of the heading for several minutes to intercept it again. What's up with that? Well we made it over to the black hole. Once CFI keyed the mic several times the runway lit up and it wasn't black anymore, and I didn't feel any fear of flying near it. I thought we were just going to fly around it. He wanted me to land there. He says it's alright I've been there before. Yeah - that was during the day. This is much different! We landed. Landing on a grass field just feels so odd. Especially with this field. It's raised in the center, which means you're tilting to the left if you're left of the center. Or maybe all grass fields are like this to keep the water off. We taxi'd back to the start of the runway, but instead of taking off again he wanted me to park the plane by the hangar. We both got out, and he pulled out some keys and opened the hangar. Apparently he comes here a lot. Inside there were many planes. It was a very cool feeling to see all these planes there in a dimly lit hangar at night with no one around. It was like that Nissan Enjoy the Ride commercial where this kid finds an underground garage full of an impressive array of cars. Only there was an impressive array of airplanes in here - including one of my favorites. A yellow biplane. I have always loved these planes and would kill to fly in one. Someday... someday... So then CFI opens up a C172 and starts trying to remove a GPS from its yoke. He says it's half his since he went in on it with someone else. Ohhhh... so that's what's going on. He wanted to come here and pick up the GPS and I'm his chauffeur LOL. Well that's fine. I'm having fun.

Then we get back into the plane and take off. I put a notch of flaps in for a short field take-off. We haven't built up much speed by the last half of the runway, and the plane is veeeerrrry slowly rising. I'm not even sure if it's completely off the ground. We're on the verge of stalling it when it does leave the ground. We milk the flaps up and are passing over houses just 50 feet above them. Finally this thing gets in the air. He says I can use my GPS now to get back to Pearland. So I turn it on, and fly towards it. We continue to follow the route on the GPS and seem to have difficulty spotting the runway. Then we think we see it, but it looks like there are 2 runways. Pearland just has one (well it has another one, but that's just a grass runway running parallel to the other one). I check the GPS again, and it says we are RIGHT OVER PEARLAND! I strain to look straight down and I see it in the dark. The airport we thought was Pearland was actually Ellington. I thought Pearland would have been a big enough airport that its runway lights would have been kept on, but apparently not. CFI keyed the mic several times and the lights came on. I landed on the runway, and CFI said I outdid myself on that landing.... Cool :)

That was 1.9 hours of fun. Flying at night was a bit more difficult than during the day (especially landing on grass fields) but it was so fun. I had a great time. For the remaining lessons towards my private pilot's license I will be landing at Houston Hobby (a big-ass Class B airspace airport) and Houston South West (a class C airport) in preparation for going to Easterwood airport (class C) in College Station for my long distance solo cross country flight. Then I have to do another night cross country (tonight's wasn't long enough to qualify, it was more to get used to flying at night), and rack up some instrument time. Then I will be ready for my written and oral test. Woohoo!!!