First Night Flight -- i have seen the light, sorta...
Posted: Mon Dec 22, 2014 11:07 pm
Hey All,
First night flight tonight (or in 20 years as PIC). I try to do the Focus Flights daily... even if I am late...So today it was KOXR - KRNM. Lots of fun (take THAT B transition (!))... A/P and GPS sure makes life easy. Relatively uneventful save for the landing and this is why I post...
I have Real Terra Haze installed and have really loved it. But tonight, using whatever the default setting is for RTH, I belatedly realized that I could NOT see the field! All the terror of the real world lost at night scenario crashed on me 3 nm from the field. My handoff from APP to Tower saw my altitude and pattern fall apart as I scanned outside the cockpit and could see nothing resembling any airport I ever flew to at night. I thought, "Is there pilot controlled lighting? How to I key the mic?" I had the beacon and continued around using it as a guide but that only got me 20-30 degrees of lineup. I stopped myself about 600 AGL and said "STOP" this approach - go around, CONFESS your situation, figure something out...I would have been hurting in the C-152 25 yrs ago but as I calmed down I realized - seriously I have a moving map GPS onboard even if I don't know how to call up and activate a GPS or ILS approach I can get close enough with that... Calm down...lets do this again...on my next orbit of the field I managed to barely make it out at about 500 agl and 3/4 mile.
Bad WX? Poor eyesight?? No -- this time RTH was trying to kill me! It made the airport lights incredibly dim on the setting it was on. I manipulated the sliders on the ground and did some fam flying offline...the lights were now so bright they burnt my retinas. Perfect
Todd
PS Shed a tear for me that my random and frustrating BRAKE LOCKUP issue keeps happening to me randomly on landing...brake/s locked on landing rollout. I skittered across A5 off 27 and was ...stuck again.
First night flight tonight (or in 20 years as PIC). I try to do the Focus Flights daily... even if I am late...So today it was KOXR - KRNM. Lots of fun (take THAT B transition (!))... A/P and GPS sure makes life easy. Relatively uneventful save for the landing and this is why I post...
I have Real Terra Haze installed and have really loved it. But tonight, using whatever the default setting is for RTH, I belatedly realized that I could NOT see the field! All the terror of the real world lost at night scenario crashed on me 3 nm from the field. My handoff from APP to Tower saw my altitude and pattern fall apart as I scanned outside the cockpit and could see nothing resembling any airport I ever flew to at night. I thought, "Is there pilot controlled lighting? How to I key the mic?" I had the beacon and continued around using it as a guide but that only got me 20-30 degrees of lineup. I stopped myself about 600 AGL and said "STOP" this approach - go around, CONFESS your situation, figure something out...I would have been hurting in the C-152 25 yrs ago but as I calmed down I realized - seriously I have a moving map GPS onboard even if I don't know how to call up and activate a GPS or ILS approach I can get close enough with that... Calm down...lets do this again...on my next orbit of the field I managed to barely make it out at about 500 agl and 3/4 mile.
Bad WX? Poor eyesight?? No -- this time RTH was trying to kill me! It made the airport lights incredibly dim on the setting it was on. I manipulated the sliders on the ground and did some fam flying offline...the lights were now so bright they burnt my retinas. Perfect
Todd
PS Shed a tear for me that my random and frustrating BRAKE LOCKUP issue keeps happening to me randomly on landing...brake/s locked on landing rollout. I skittered across A5 off 27 and was ...stuck again.