How many of you fly at night regularly?

gismo said:
Well if you got up early enough you could have gotten the night takeoff in too. :D
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You'd think so, but this far east in the time zone I don't think it's possible to get the plane out of the hangar early enough even in the dead of winter. The FBO opens at 7am. I guess I could have them take it out the night before, but I'm pretty anal about making sure it's tied down if I leave it overnight anywhere (and never leave it out if there is any chance of bad weather).
BTW have you ever seen a pilot logbook that had a column for night takeoffs or any other way to conveniently log them? I haven', nor have I seen night takeoffs logged in anyone else's logbook. How do you do yours?
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I haven't, but I think they exist. I just write "night current" in the remarks column on any date within the last 90 days when I've flown at night and have at least three qualifying TO's and L's since that date. (BTW, I log IFR currency the same way). In theory, anyway. Usually I just do a 4th TOL if needed, and log 4 landings and "night current".
I'm surprised that PPL training for night flying doesn't include some basics regarding flying instrument procedures VFR. It wouldn't be that difficult to learn how to do that, especially for GPS approaches.
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As you probably know, I think VFR pilots should have a lot more training at instrument skills than most of them get. I also think the more tools they have in their bag from the IFR world the better they will be, all other things equal, so I'd be all for that, on a voluntary basis of course, as something encouraged by CFIs but not required by regulation.
 
Jaybird180 said:
It's possible to takeoff during the day and land at night. For that scenario the landing doesn't count toward FAA night currency.
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Wait what?
If I take off at 7PM and land at 3 AM it doesn't count toward currency?
 
gismo said:
I used to think I kept night current (at least through the colder half of the year) just from the flights I made. But the actual requirement is logging 3 takeoffs and landings performed between 1 hour after sunset and 1 hour before sunrise. In my case I had no trouble getting in the 3 landings during that time period but I found that I rarely started a flight an hour or more after sunset.
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When I do pattern practice, I typically start about an hour before sunset. I do as many circuits as I can and continue through dusk. That way I let my eyes adjust naturally and let the sight picture work itself out. In this fashion, I'm comfortable getting myself back into currency if I let it lapse. Obviously, I continue through the night until I have at least 3 good ones.
 
Just looked and I've got just over 2,000 hrs, just under 13% at night, all in singles. I love night flying - smooth, easy to see traffic, and a great way to be all alone enjoying the privilege of being able to fly.

That said, it does carry increased risk. I won't fly over mountains at night (I live in WY) unless I'm following an interstate; likewise I won't fly in IMC over the mountains with bases lower than the rocks. My main precaution is to have a GPS with a good database of roads, a current terrain database, and an easy shortcut to view that particular map overlay TRACK UP. Flying airport to airport in WY is kind of not realistic; there aren't many. There are, however, a lot of roads, dirt or paved.

On the other hand I'm sitting in the Turks & Caicos Islands, having just flown back partly IMC in a single from St. Kitts, so overwater in a single doesn't worry me. But just in case I have a Mustang vest in easy reach, raft, ditch bag, VHF, PLB and survival gear in a bundle beside me. It's a risk too, but sometimes things worth doing carry risk that can be mitigated. At least a bit.

Whether it's worth doing is up to you.
 
Jaybird180 said:
When I do pattern practice, I typically start about an hour before sunset. I do as many circuits as I can and continue through dusk. That way I let my eyes adjust naturally and let the sight picture work itself out. In this fashion, I'm comfortable getting myself back into currency if I let it lapse. Obviously, I continue through the night until I have at least 3 good ones.
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You ought to get pretty good at pattern work after more than 2 hours of landing practice. :yes:

If you start an hour before sunset, you'd have to make 3 takeoffs and landings starting 2 hours later to become night current assuming it was at least 90 days since your last.
 
gismo said:
Well if you got up early enough you could have gotten the night takeoff in too. :D

BTW have you ever seen a pilot logbook that had a column for night takeoffs or any other way to conveniently log them? I haven', nor have I seen night takeoffs logged in anyone else's logbook. How do you do yours?
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Mine does. I finally got incredibly sick of saving every flight in my eLogbook and then writing that in the paper logbook later. The eLogbook takes way more meta data than a paper one does so you can come up with basically whatever you want from that. My paper logbook finally got to where it was 2.5 years behind my actual flying. I was literally looking at spending a week trying to catch my paper up. The geek in me wasn't OK with that so...

The other night, I bought some stickers, and tweaked the reports in LogTenPro quite a bit to be what I want. Now I just "print" a sticker that's the same size as my logbook and stick that in there for each page and sign it. I keep "blank" stickers in the back of hte logbook that fill an entire page as well. If I need someone to sign something I can just stick a blank one in and have that page be written in pen then pick up the next page with the laser printer again. I suspect it's going to work really damn well.

The cool part is that I tweaked the report enough that it looks basically exactly like my previous, in pen, logbook pages (with the additional of a few things I wanted).

Not traditional, but I figure mechanics do it with stickers these days, I should too.

Really easy to do this sort of thing with LogTenPro because you can create your own custom reports in HTML/CSS.
 
jesse said:
Mine does. I finally got incredibly sick of saving every flight in my eLogbook and then writing that in the paper logbook later. The eLogbook takes way more meta data than a paper one does so you can come up with basically whatever you want from that. My paper logbook finally got to where it was 2.5 years behind my actual flying. I was literally looking at spending a week trying to catch my paper up. The geek in me wasn't OK with that so...



The other night, I bought some stickers, and tweaked the reports in LogTenPro quite a bit to be what I want. Now I just "print" a sticker that's the same size as my logbook and stick that in there for each page and sign it. I keep "blank" stickers in the back of hte logbook that fill an entire page as well. If I need someone to sign something I can just stick a blank one in and have that page be written in pen then pick up the next page with the laser printer again. I suspect it's going to work really damn well.



The cool part is that I tweaked the report enough that it looks basically exactly like my previous, in pen, logbook pages (with the additional of a few things I wanted).



Not traditional, but I figure mechanics do it with stickers these days, I should too.



Really easy to do this sort of thing with LogTenPro because you can create your own custom reports in HTML/CSS.
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I wondered how the hell you were going to catch up years in a single evening. Haha. I should sit down and do the same...
 
denverpilot said:
I wondered how the hell you were going to catch up years in a single evening. Haha. I should sit down and do the same...
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If you have LogtenPro, look in the reports part, and they have templates for most of the popular logbooks. You can copy one of those templates (they're a folder in ~/Library somewhere) into the custom reports folder and then modify the HTML/CSS however you'd like.
 
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