Night Rating: Part 1 (Night Familiarity)

The night rating is one of the easiest ratings to add to a license, so as winter is now well and truly here and any hope of farm strip flying would now be the reserve of the incredibly lucky or foolish (generally I like to think I’m neither of those).  Seems like a good time to go get another stamp on my license 🙂

Why get a Night Rating?

Everyone’s reasons will vary, I’ve already given one of mine above but here’s a few more:

  • Escapism:  Want to escape into that childhood fantasy of getting into a bomber and taking off in search of finding a dam?    Just turning a Cessna 172 on at night with a red torch in hand is fun.
  • November – February in the UK:   It’s typically damned cold at 8:30am, during my training I quite enjoyed taking a broom to an aircraft’s wings on several frosty winter mornings.  However, if you’ve done it three or four times, you’ve probably done it enough.   Flying later on in the day is typically warmer (but not by much).
  • If a city looks nice during the day – it looks better at night.
  • You might not want to do loads of night flying, but from October-Feb, a flight taking off at 2pm is going to be at risk of coming back in the dark and if you have to divert, then what?   A night rating will keep it legal.

What’s involved in getting one?

No exams, just five hours of flight training, to include:

  • Three hours duel instruction
  • One hour (at least 27nm) Navigation
  • 5 solo full stop landings.

For more information, see the CAA website.

Lesson One:   Night Familiarisation

To get used to the essentials of night flight:  From airport lighting and how taxi speeds will appear very differently (out of the front window you’ll feel you’re going slow, now try looking left!).  To what cities look like and gain an appreciation of just how far out you can see at night.  A town you wouldn’t normally see straight after take off in the day, can be instantly visible at night – which can be disorientating.

Now technically I’ve sort of done this lesson before, but that was so early into my PPL training it’d be good to repeat it.

Satisfactory handling, must learn to land before continuing.

That is what I’m told it says in my training record for that first night flight – gives you an idea of how long ago it was!   Since then my landings have come a long way.

Checklists at night

Pilots love check lists, if you don’t I’d suggest strongly that flying isn’t for you – checklists, charts, plotting routes and manual calculations are all part of the ground fun that should be an aid to building the anticipation of next going flying.

Checklists in the day are one thing, at night with torch in hand, an array of instruments & switches before you.   It doesn’t get much better, at least not on the ground.

The Route

The plan was a pretty leisurely local area flight, we’d take take-off and then turn around to fly north to Newmarket.

From here we’d do an orbit of the town, before heading back to the airport.   Ask them for a zone transit (to allow us to fly through their aerodrome traffic zone [ATZ]), to get more familiar with the lights of the airport and when you can/can’t see them.

Head north west towards Bar Hill, getting familiar with the A14 at night and then turn it around and come back to Cambridge for a few circuits and get familiar with landing it at night (remember the last time I did a night flight I’d NEVER landed a Cessna 172 – I’ve done it hundreds of times since, but this would still be the first time an instructor had ever let me land it at night).

……even when you have your license, the first times can just keep coming.

Clear Skies – amazing views & almost incredible distances.

No sooner had we took off, you could immediately see Newmarket and the A14 leading the whole way.   I did find myself feeling a little unsure of what I was seeing and where things were for sure.   When you have the background noise of a Cessna 172 engine and you’re so used to seeing the day time landmarks etc.   It suddenly is a bit weird for example to not be able to see the wind farms to the east of Cambridge, but instead be able to see the bright lights of Newmarket & the runways of Mildenhall / Lakenheath.

Some great views of the town centre while orbiting, at only 2,500ft I sort of wonder how it looked from the ground 🙂

Sandy Transmitter Mast

Sandy Transmitter Mast

Heading back to Cambridge Airport we were cleared for a zone transmit, not above 2,500ft, as they had a fast jet coming in at 3,000ft.   Suddenly 2,500ft ceiling sounded very wise, the last thing we need is to go arguing with a fast jet – the approach speeds of a light aircraft flying at 115+ MPH and a fast jet doing 250+ MPH alone will make your mind boggle.

There is a big transmitter mast near Sandy, in the day it’s quite impressive to fly past (and will make you think twice about any low flying ideas you might have!).   Normally you cannot see this mast until you’re within a few miles of it.   However, at night because it’s over 300ft above ground level, it is lit by a red beacon light.   This makes it visible from Cambridge!  (20 miles away).

Heading north to Bar Hill we could hear on the radio that another club student, also getting their night rating, clearly had an instructor on-board who liked the idea of the route we were doing and was copying us.  Normally you wouldn’t know, but they also had to get a zone transit to follow us.

On the way out I got some top tips on just how dark the dark parts of the world were and a reminder on the idea of trying to land at an unlit runway was just going to be impossible.  You can really see why, from 2,000ft you just have black and bright light.   Who knows what is in the black parts – sure it could be a field, it could also be a house with its lights turned out!

Coming back to Cambridge:  Engine Failure

The plan was to come back to Cambridge and do a couple of circuits.  We joined the circuit and followed a PA-28, which rather tediously seemed to then go and do the worlds largest circuit!  🙁   As we were number two I had to entertain trying to follow them round, they were so wide that their base leg was pretty epic and to try and give them some time on final I told my instructor I was deliberately going to extend the downwind leg.

As I turned onto final, I was pretty pleased with how well my separation plans had worked out.   There was no reason they wouldn’t be able to land and taxi clear and then we could get clearance for our touch and go.   What could go wrong?

Cambridge Tower:  We’ve had an Engine Failure on the runway.

You’ve what!?!?   On the what?!?   How the what?

Go Around

It was followed by an immediate call to go around from ATC, the training drilled into me, kept me going here – but my brain was still racing to figure out what had happened to the PA-28.

They were landing, in fact they HAD landed!   So how had they had an engine failure?   Is that even possible?   Like I said, you can have first times – even after you have your license.

Whatever the cause, they were stressing air traffic control out, you can understand why.   They now had their only runway blocked by a plane, with two Cessna’s destined for Cambridge in the local area and a fast jet a few miles out.   Now this is a fully fledged & night licensed airport, so they can shift a plane – but having to, while managing a load of other circling planes isn’t going to improve their day.

Best theory in our plane was that they’d landed, brought the throttles back to idle and the PA-28’s idle setting had been set too low and this had just let the engine stall.

This theory was, very likely, soon confirmed as while we were getting back on to the downwind leg for another go as if by magic the “failed” engine had been restarted – bet that did wonders for their avionics 😉

Landing

I don’t mean to sound grumpy about it, but their little antic on the runway cost me a touch-n-go, so I would have rather they not have had the issue.   Sometimes these things can’t be helped though and one day it might be me having the awkward moment, so I try to sympathize.

Got a nice approach, brought the Cessna 172 down over the threshold and touched down just past the numbers so I was pretty pleased with the landing.

Still a bit unfamiliar with the lights leading off to the taxiway, it’s one thing to know the theory, it’s another getting real experience, so a few words of advice for where to turn off and some local knowledge that ATC wouldn’t ever ask me taxi past Charlie as Delta isn’t lit.

Nothing significant to be said in the debrief, think all in all the instructor was generally happy with my flying.

Next lesson would focus on landing the plane with various failures, both at the airport and within the plane.

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