Night Rating

I thought I would write a little piece on my night rating and how it’s going so hopefully someone else who is looking to do it will have a good idea what to expect.

Basically I had been waiting 3 weeks to have the weather good enought to fly, when I was working it was a cold crisp frosty night, when I am on my days off it was low cloud & vis, particularly frustrating considering I only work a 3 day week. Anyway I was booked in Thurs & Friday this week just gone, Thursday came along, my instructor had said that he was waiting for someone else to land so they can give details on the vis, anyway it was not good enough, so here I am checking the metoffice for Friday’s weather, and it looks ok. My instructor wanted me to meet him at the aerodrome anyway so he can brief me even if we did not fly, after reading through the T.Tom manual a few times I felt quite confident. Friday afternoon came and was met with more disappointment by the METARS & TAFS for Filton, I still went to the airport anyway. My instructor started on a brief of what we were to do including a/c familiarisation, emergencies, the nav ex, circuits, weather etc, he did a diagram on the board of a plane with MSFLAP writen in the plane and asked me what it was, I was a bit puzzled to start but then worked it out to be MasterSwitch, Fuel, Landing Light, Anti Col. Pitot Heat, basically the switch panel in the Warrior, he said to remember this mnemonic incase we had an electrical & light failure. My instructor decided we could do some circuits with the weather as it was, so once we were happy we went to the aircraft, we sat in it and to be honest I was feeling a little apprehensive, he explained to me to get a feel for where everything was incase of the failure, so I double checked I was happy with everything, anyway we were cleared take off 09, so we had a long backtrack to the 09 threshold with im explaining again the various taxiway & runway lights etc, he was to demonstrate a circuit then it was down to me to take over, off we went, rotate, look to instruments, 8 deg nose up and balance, once we hit 300ft look for visual cues then into the racetrack type circuits in operation at Filton, we had a fair bit of crosswind from the right so a bit of compensating needed. i was more impressed with the light show I was subject to and this guy’s flying skills than the details he was passing, so I asked him to complete another circuit and I would take over after. Once we touched down for the 2nd time it was up to me then, 8 deg nose up at 60kts, balance, trim and look for visual cues outside, climb straight ahead to 1,000ft then turn through xwind to downwind at 1500ft, 1.2DME past the ILS 09 was time to turn in and decend, I was amazed at how hard it was to spot the runway from above until we were turning onto finals, anyway, a turn onto finals reveals I am a tad high, so power back, nose down, trim for 75kts, luckily I had the PAPIs as a guide, 2 whites, 2 reds and trimmed at 75kts descending at 400fpm we are spot on, as we get over the threshold it was amazing how you could not see the surface of the rwy, down we went, rwy edge lights level with my elbows, time to roll out level, lights level with my ears time to flare and let the a/c kiss the rwy, down we were and then back up again, we did a couple more then he started to introduce some emergencies, off with the cockpit lights, i could JUST make out the ASI and altimeter, managed to fly the plane nicely onto the runway with no lights at all, next was runway light failures & simulating limited rwy lights, off with the PAPIs, round we went and it is odd how you can get disorientated without the PAPIs, but again managed to grease a landing, I think I’ve found my niche here, forget the day landings :), next we did an approach without PAPIs & centrelights, again a different perspective but again a good approach and landing which I was pleased about as I had not flown for about a month. He then switched on the cockpit lights fully just to show how much you cannot see outside with them on, it was quite startling to say the least. The most noticable was that all the towns looked so so mch closer than they actually are, it’s like towns miles & miles away you can reach out & touch.
Next installment is Tuesday night, weather is looking ok so fingers crossed.

Dean