Night Time Flying Tips

Well, at this point I have approximately 12 hours left to meet my minimum of 40 hours in the cockpit. At that point, I'll be eligible to take my checkride. My instructor feels that I can do it in 40 hours, though the national average is 55 hours. As a personal goal, I'm going to shoot for 40.

So far, we've covered:

the traffic pattern
power on/off stalls
slow flight
steep turns
short-field take-offs and landings
slips to landing
go-arounds
navigation via dead-reckoning and VOR
tower/radio communications
and misc. ground training on airspaces, weather etc...

I've learned a lot. All of which will be used in preparation for the next and last big milestone - night flying.

Night flying is a brand new animal. In the dark, you look like you're going slower than normal and pilots tend to speed up when they don't need to.

Depth perception is also very poor at night. Dim runways might give the illusion that the runway is farther away than it is. Bright runways might give the illusion that the runway is closer than it actually is.

You also have an issue with finding a new airport for the first time at night. Street lights can look like a runway and many pilots have come in for a landing, only to find no runway waiting for them.

One trick to night flying is to use your peripheral vision. Because of the way rods and cones work in our eyes, looking straight at an object in the dark actually gives us less detail than if we looked at it from the side.

Some things are good at night though. For one, there is less air traffic. For another, aircraft are required to use lighting which actually makes them easier to spot at night than in the day.