Dan’s Pilot Times

This past weekend my wife was out of town for a spa trip with one of her girlfriends, so I had some time to myself. Considering I hadn’t flown at night in probably over 5 months, I figured it would be great time to get current on my night takeoffs and landings (since I’d have to do those solo before taking passengers up at night anyway).

I headed to Westosha on a beautifully calm and clear Saturday night. The night air was crisp and the new moon allowed the stars to shine very brightly. Of course, this also meant that pre-flighting the plane was a little more difficult and tedious as everything had to be done by the light of my flashlight. I forgot how difficult it can be to check the airplane and read the checklist in the dark of night. Even once in the plane, things are a notch more difficult. Just goes to show how important it is to properly prepare beforehand.

The flight went great. I first headed up to Burlington (BUU) for a change of scenery and knocked out 2 full-stop landings there. I then proceeded over to Kenosha (ENW), since I always need a little more practice with communicating with towered airports. I had my Mio C320 personal GPS device and the airplane also had GPS to help me find my way. I must admit, I’m pretty happy with my C320 and the NavGPS software…it worked like a charm and jived 100% with the built-in GPS of the plane. It is great for situational awareness. That being said, I realized a pilot must take the data these devices provide at face value. For instance, the tower told me to report out 1 mile right base of the landing runway. Of course, the GPS doesn’t measure distance from the end of the runway, it measures from probably the airport center. That being said, when I reported to the tower 1 mile out (according to my GPS), I was probably 0.5 miles from the end of the runway. And as usual with night flights, distances are hard to measure visually. Needless-to-say, I had to perform a side slip to lose altitude quickly enough to land near the end of the runway. It was good practice, though, as I hadn’t had to perform a slip in some time anway.

After Kenosha I headed back to Westosha and tied up the plane. I completed 4 full-stop takeoffs and landings, one extra from the required three to keep me legal to take passengers up at night for a while. I can’t wait to take Lisa up at night again; it’s so pretty and peaceful with all the lights. I logged 1.1 hours of pilot-in-command flight time.

This past Monday night I had an extended night flight – completing my 3-hour night flight requirement as well as a night cross country flight.  My plan was to take us from Westosha up to Hartford (HXF) – 50.2 nautical miles away – and back.  Since it was night and didn’t have the luxury of a lot of land-based visual landmarks, I decided to fly through the Burlington VOR and use it as my main navigational aid. The flight up to Hartford went very well, hitting my checkpoints right on time and landing at Hartford with no problems.

On the way back, we were making great time and my CFI asked if I felt comfortable making a detour to log more night flying time since he was apparently very confident I could navigate and pilot at night.  (This was were my flight got very interesting and fun.)  I, of course, said “sure!” and we decided to fly into Milwaukee’s General Mitchell Airport (MKE)!  I was super excited as this would be the largest airport I’ve flown into.  I called Milwaukee approach and had them vector me in for a landing.  They gave me the appropriate headings and altitude and I proceeded into the large Class C airport.  Upon getting closer (and listening to the other traffic/planes landing/taking off from Milwaukee) I realized air traffic control was holding a FedEx 747 for me to land.  It felt pretty cool knowing that big jet was waiting on me and my little Cessna!  The runway (Runway 19R in this case) was absolutely huge (almost 10,000 feet long)!  Needless-to-say, we had clearance for a touch-and-go and had TONS of room to complete it (probably 3 times if I wanted)!

After Milwaukee, we skipped over to Kenosha (ENW) to kill more time.  I’ve flown into Kenosha before during the day, but at this time of night the tower is closed so it was basically a huge uncontrolled airport!  It was weird to be putzing around the fairly large airport (especially compared to Westosha) with NOBODY around.

After Kenosha, my CFI asked if I wanted to land “somewhere cool”….and as always, I had to say yes.  He said we were heading over to Camp Lake (49C) which has no landing lights, only a reflector system.  The airport would be impossible to find at night if my CFI hadn’t been there tons of times of before.  He pointed me in the perfect direction and eventually I saw a glimmer of one of the runway reflectors from my landing lights.  I plopped the plane down on the turf runway and even saw a coyote run off as we came to a stop.  It was VERY odd but cool to land at such a seemingly remote/dark airport…kinda scary even!  After turning around and taking off again, we knew I had enough time to finally head back to Westosha.  The last landing of the night went great and it was the end of a very fun night!

This lesson/flight I logged 2.2 hours of night flight time.

The wind was nuts on Saturday morning. When I woke up for my lesson, I was hearing the wind howling around my house and rattling the siding a ton. As such, I figured we may scrub the flight, but after txt’ing my CFI, his response was “My grandma flies in wind worse than this, and she flies a cub!” Once I saw that, I knew it would be a fun and exciting day.

Open arriving to Westosha, I checked the weather reports and saw we had winds 20 knots gusting to 30. If I was flying solo, I doubt I would have flown in such winds, but my CFI said it would be great practice. The takeoff was quite easy as the wind was mostly straight ahead. We flew over to Kenosha Regional Airport (KENW) which this was my first towered airport experience. It was a little intimidating with the fast-talking controller over the radios and I needed my CFI to “translate” and repeat almost everything he said slowly…but I managed. After approaching, we were “clear for the option on Runway 24.” I repeated back the orders and proceeded to make one of my best landings to date. We did a stop-and-go and went around a handful of times, practicing many different variations of landings: flaps, no-flaps, simulated engine failure, too high, too low. Overall, I was VERY satisfied with the quality of all my landings, and my CFI concurred. I was stoked.

Then, my CFI called the tower again and requested if we could go up and visit. We spend about 20 minutes up in the control tower, which was also a first for me. It was pretty slow that day (because of the wind) so there wasn’t much action up there, but it was neat to see how they work and the tools the controllers have at hand.

On the way back to Westosha, my CFI yanked out the throttle and said “we have engine failure, where you gonna’ land the plane?” I was surprised but calmly looked around and saw we had plenty of good farm fields to land on for this simulated off-field landing (another first for me). I picked a field and proceed to glide to base and to final. We were descending and I thought after I was lined up, he’d say “good job” and we’d be done. But we kept descending to (what seemed like) only 200 feet above ground before putting back the power and climbing away. I was seriously thinking we were actually going to land on this farm field! After that, we finished back to Westosha where I somehow managed to land in an absolutely crazy crosswind.

All in all, an incredibly fun and challenging lesson. I logged 1.7 hours of flight time.