Getting the Most Out of Time Change Flying

With night now falling "sooner," it is easier for flight students to log those precious hours of night experience required for pilot certification. (In the summer months, you are often out past midnight.) This is why the savviest flight instructors will urge their private and commercial applicants to get their night flying done now before winter weather with low clouds, snow, and ice make that unwise.

According to the FAA, night is defined as the “time between the end of evening civil twilight and the beginning of morning civil twilight, as published in the Air Almanac, converted to local time.” This means we can start logging night experience one hour after sunset to one hour before sunrise, so check the time of sunset in your part of the world when you get your weather briefing.

Night VFR seems like an oxymoron, because landmarks are difficult if not impossible to see. However, you can see the outline of cities due to the lights on the ground, buildings, and homes, as well as freeways and highways. You will learn about what constitutes dark night conditions—basically it is how much (or little) moonlight is present. For this reason many flight instructors schedule night flights during the full moon for maximum illumination.

Lights, both exterior on the aircraft and interior in the form of panel lights and a flashlight, need to be in good working order. The light in the cockpit must have something other than a white lens because white light destroys your night vision, which is very dangerous.

Pilots should use a flashlight with a green amber, blue, or red lens. These colors protect night vision. There are some aviation flashlights that have multicolor lens options in addition to the white light. I am partial to the green lens—you'll find out what works best for you.

Night experience requirements vary per certificate. Since federal regulations require that to qualify for the private pilot certificate, the applicant must log at least three hours of flight, and that experience must include 10 takeoffs and landings to a full stop, with each landing involving a flight in the traffic pattern at an airport, along with one night cross-country flight of more than 100 nm.

Keep track of those metrics carefully. You do not want to be the private pilot applicant who shows up for a check ride missing a few takeoffs or landings, or is 0.1 nm short.

There are some pilots and instructors who try to complete the three hours and the requirements in one night. There is no regulation against this, but if the flight student starts to fatigue, their ability to get much out of the lesson will wane, and it becomes "check-the-box" instruction, although the hours do go in their logbook.

For private pilot applicants, the cross-country flight is often a repeat of a flight the learner did in the daytime with their CFI. This helps cut down on student anxiety so they can focus on skill building.

If the aircraft is equipped with VORs, ADF, and GPS, these tools can be used in addition to pilotage and dead reckoning for the night flight.

Use of the GPS is fairly simple—input the flight plan and activate it, and stay on the magenta line. The ADF, if you have one, will point to the nondirectional beacon it is tuned to. If you know where the NDB is located, you can determine where your aircraft is.

This can also be done with VORs, which are much more common. One of my favorite techniques is to have the learner tune in a VOR and, as they fly the route, note each radial as they cross it as a means to maintain situational awareness.

Because you usually cannot see clouds at night, more attention must be paid to the weather forecast, especially visibility and temperature and dewpoint spread.

If the latter converges, you can expect fog. If the lights start to get rainbows around them or the lights on the ground as seen from the air start to get hazy then disappear, mist and fog are forming.

If the CFI is instrument current and proficient, the airplane is equipped for IFR, and there is an instrument approach at the airport and the weather is above the approach minima, it shouldn't be a problem. But if all these criteria are not met, both you and your CFI better have a contingency plan.

When I do night flights, I make sure to be in an aircraft equipped for instrument flight. This came in handy one night when as we flew the return leg of a cross-country flight patches of mist and fog started to obscure the lights below.

We obtained flight following to take us from Arlington Municipal Airport (KAWO) to Pierce County Airport-Thun Field (KPLU) in Washington state. The flight plan had us flying east of Interstate 5 and outside of the Seattle Class B airspace. However, the air traffic controller was a friend of mine and recognized my voice on the radio. She offered us a Class B clearance to bring us down the center of the Bravo—a much more direct route. 

We gladly accepted, and flew home right over Seattle-Tacoma International Airport (KSEA). The Seattle VOR is located at the airport, and the student tracked the radial directly to the station and then the 160-degree radial from KSEA to Thun Field.

We could see pockets of fog forming and, as a precaution, I loaded the RNAV approach into the GPS then pulled the ILS approach into King County International Airport-Boeing Field (KBFI) out of my approach binder. I knew from training and experience that KBFI had the lowest IFR minima in the area. If we couldn’t land at home, that was our alternate airport.

The controller let us know the airport was 3 miles ahead and instructed us to report the airport in sight. We acknowledged the instruction, and a few minutes later I reported the airport sight. Our clearance was terminated, and we were told to squawk VFR. This clearance was acknowledged, and the controller replied to me "Good night, Meg!" As my learner chuckled I replied "Good night, Mom!"

The fog swallowed the ramp 10 minutes later. The learner was positively giddy after the experience. Not only did he complete the night flight requirements for his certificate, he also received the Class B endorsement. Not a bad night's work.