Very first night landing

The downwind leg is ending and it is time to turn base. I was a little bit in a hurry to check something at night. When I was flying on the simulator, i was always easier to line up the plane when the lights around the runway were on. Would that translate the same way in the reality? I will know that for sure pretty quick! Time to check how the simulator rates compared to the real thing!
Looking at the runway to line up, I came to realize that the centerline is not lighted! This means that I have no direct visual clue if I’m lined up or not. TI then remembered the words of my instructors to look down the runway and after a few back and forth between the front and the runway, it became fairly easy to realize what my position was and how far from the center I was. On the video, we can clearly see that I had started left of the centerline and brought the plane back on center despite not seeing the center. Actually, I think having done all these night landing will helped my regular landings.

One particularity of night landings is that the perception of distance to the ground is wrong. Most of the time, we are much closer than we think we are. My instructor warned me about it on approach and I thought I was ready but you can see and hear my instructor pulling pretty strongly on the yoke as we are coming close from the runway.

As you have heard on the video, I really got surprised as I was thinking I was doing a correct approach.

Would the second landing get any better?

Having past the surprise of the first landing, we came back back for another landing. The good thing about not having any wind and no one in the pattern is that we actually did not have to redo the complete pattern and as soon as we had taken off, we turned 30 degrees of center to the right until the proper altitude and then started to turn base immediately. This allowed us to do landings every 3 minutes instead of every 10! It gaves me also the opportunity to land with a displaced threshold every other landings. On the other hand, I’ve started to confuse on which runway we were landing resulting in some hesitation during the communication: “Is it 18 or 36 this time?!”

Here come the second landings and I’m prepared. Will I do the round off at the right level this time?

Ok second landing was not perfect and Michael had to get on the yoke to get the plane's attitude right! Third time should be better.

Third time is a charm! Right?

We are restarting the procedure and this time everything is coming more smoothly. Some verbal guidance from Michael to make sure that I was performing the right action and I was able to bring the plane down on the runway by myself! Another small victory!
 


On the video above, you probably noticed that the runway is not as bright as in the two previous videos. Also, there is a lot of clicking noise. The explanation of these two elements is fairly straight forward! Lighted runways have 3 different intensity: Low, Medium and High. The first two videos shows the runway lighted up with high intensity lights while the one below is only a medium intensity. The clicking noise is due to the activation process of the lights. First you have to know that the airport is not permanently lighted at night. Only the beacon is on. So there is a need to turn the lights on! To make that happen, there is actually a fairly neat technique that consist of simply clicking your microphone 3, 5 or 7 times within 5 seconds to turn the lights of the runway and taxyway on. The number of time conditioning the intensity. So the clicking noise that you can hear in the video are simply Michael trying to get the lights back to high intensity...

Fourth time

As a good practice, I have adopted the fact that I should not stop after the first time I’m capable of doing something right and I should do it a second time to remove the chance factor out of the success. So here is another landing at night.
 

Fifth time: Why don't we turn the landing light off?

Having successfully landed the airplane properly twice, we had to perform the next exercise. It is still about landing but this time without the landing light. That means, total darkness as far as the runway is concerned. In the video below, you  will see that the numbers are completely invisible and that you don’t see any detail of the runway.
 

Did you notice? Michael had to get on the yoke again because I was getting too low once again! Not having the lights really makes the evaluation of the distance to the ground difficult.

Sixth time: Was it luck before?

This landing is still without the landing light on but this time, Michael did not have to touch the yoke and I was able to land properly by myself.
 

Seven's time: time to go back home!

Ok! Enough flying around for the day. It was time to put the plane down and go home. Last landing of the day, we turned the landing light back on, landed the plane and headed to the garage.

Conclusion

Flying at night present its own challenges but it was overall a lot of fun. I have to admit that my body was more sensitive to the movement of the plane, which is a good thing but also a bad thing because it can induce some bad feeling that are not backed up by the instruments. The lack of visibility has created a challenge that I was not really prepared for: trying to evaluate the altitude and where the ground is actually was difficult and I had to repeat the exercise a few time to be able to start getting a better feeling about it.

Overall, I’m very happy of that flight and can finally add another CPC completion in my log book.