fly by night

Sweet! I've been waiting for a chance to use a blog post title that was both a play on words and the name of a really good Rush song...I never thought I'd get my shot...

Anyway, to business:

Would you like to know what flying a plane at night is like? Get into your car and drive down the darkest street you can find. Good. Now turn off your headlights. Now imagine that your car is 2500 feet above the ground and has wings, and there you have it. That's what flying at night is like. The first thing that went through my mind as the wheels lifted off the ground at 5:20 p.m. on Wednesday the 23rd was, "WHERE THE HELL'S THE GROUND, FOR CRYING OUT LOUD?!"

But I'm getting ahead of myself. Let me begin at the beginning.

It was supremely odd to be standing there at sunset, on the wrong side of the locked airport doors, the cold wind forcing even me to zip up my jacket. I'd never been at the airport at that time of day. The sunlight was on the wrong side of the sky. Moreover, the runway and taxiway lights were all on. The runway's were a piercing yellow, but the taxiway lights were a soft dark blue. They were very easy on the eyes, and felt sort of friendly-like. Sounds ridiculous, doesn't it? Taxiway lights can't physically be friendly. They're just lumps of glass and filament that give off radiation in the visible spectrum. To lend an emotional quality to this action would be anthropomorphizing. But they seemed friendly, nonetheless.

I still couldn't believe I'd made it this far. Three hours of night flying, and that was that. I could take my written, oral and practical exams, and with any luck, pass them. Then I'd officially be a licensed, card-carrying pilot. But I also wasn't fully processing what I had to do. I would be FLYING at NIGHT. No lights, except a few small ones in the cockpit, and some on the ground, maybe. That fact really wasn't registering with me.

By and by, Harold and Debbie pulled up, and before I knew it I had the book in my hand and Harold and I were walking across the ramp to N42126. It was surreal. The sun had set. The day was fading fast. The runway lights kept glowing, as did the floodlights on the hangars. The rotating beacon was up and going, too, sending a beam over our heads at regular intervals like a lighthouse.

"Whoa, how cool is this?" I effused to Harold, shallowly. "The lights are all on!"

"Oh, I know it," Harold replied, as he was wont to do.

This would prove to be a night of firsts. We quickly preflighted the plane. The only thing we did differently was to visually check all the lights. Harold reached in and flipped them all on so I could see if they were working. We did the landing light first. This was the big, circular, yellowish lamp at the front of the plane. It shined straight ahead and down, performing the same function as a car headlight. It would allow us to maneuver more easily on the ground, and also SEE the ground as we were coming in for landings. Then there were the strobes and navigation lights: the flashing, blinking, glowing bulbs at the tips of the wings. Those were working just fine. There was the beacon (the red light on top of the vertical stabilizer, supposed to be on at all times to let people know that the airplane is running), and the taillight (just behind the beacon, at the rear of the tail fin). It's not really called a taillight. It's called something else, like a following light or something. It's there so any planes that are directly behind you can see you. Same function as a taillight, anyway.

The lights checked out, and so did the rest of the aircraft. After starting up, we headed for the fuel pumps. And so we arrived at the second first (does that make any sense?). Yep, I was about to refuel the plane for the first time. I taxied a few hundred yards north to the pumping station, got on the yellow line that encircled Pump 1, and stopped abreast of the fuel hose. (The landing light helped a lot.) Ordinarily, I'd just stood and watched as Harold filled the plane up from a tank in his truck. I'd never used the airport fuel pumps before. As with most things aviation-related, there's a trick to it.

• STEP 1: Take the grounding wire and clip somewhere onto the aircraft. The steel tie-down ring on the wing strut works just fine. (Grounding wires safely discharge any static electricity that builds up in the airplane. If you don't ground the plane, and the static charge builds up, and a spark goes off when you're fueling...well, that can be nasty.)
• STEP 2: Step over to the pump controls. Push a few buttons: what kind of fuel you want, payment option, payment amount (if applicable), then slide your card. Yadda, yadda, yadda.
• STEP 3: Grab the stepladder and set it up next to the wing. Take the fuel pump nozzle off the hook, reset the fill counter, rotate the nozzle head so you're not twisting the hose, climb up the ladder, take off the gas-cap, stick the nozzle in, and let 'er loose. CAUTION: The pump does not automatically shut off when the fuel tank is full. And the fuel really comes ripping out of that hose. Make sure you're careful and keep an eye on things so you'll know when the tank's getting full.
• STEP 4: Replace gas-cap, step off the ladder, and move to the other wing. Repeat step 3.
• STEP 5: Replace gas-cap, step off the ladder, and clip the nozzle back onto the rack. Step over to the pump controls again, finish the transaction, and get the receipt (if any). Roll up the fuel pump hose, automatically if possible. Unclip the grounding wire and roll that up, too. You're good to go!

Sound tricky? It wasn't really. You just had to be sure, Harold told me, to reset the fill counter after unclipping the hose nozzle, or else the whole thing would wig out. As mentioned earlier, you also had to be careful not to overfill the fuel tanks. That would've been difficult enough in the daytime. At night it was impossible to tell when the fuel level was getting near the top, except by sound. (You know how the churning and gurgling sound of a liquid steadily ascends in pitch as it rises to the top of a container? I listened for that very carefully.) Without visual cues, I had to stick my finger into the fuel tank to assay how near to full the tank was becoming. Not that I really minded, of course; avgas is inoffensive stuff. It won't eat your fingers off. It's dyed blue and smells a bit funny (Allison compared it to paint thinner), but it's harmless.

Despite these hardships, the task was accomplished without explosions or (excessive) spillage. We put 26 gallons in, 13 in either tank. Then we clambered inside the plane, fastened our seat belts, put on our headsets, and taxied out for real.

And then, there came a third first (?!?!). The wind had eschewed its usual direction and was blowing out of the north at 5 knots. That made it just windy enough to warrant taking off from runway 36 instead of runway 18. Just to clarify, runway 18 and runway 36 are, in fact, the same runway. They just point different directions. Runway 18 points south (180 degrees on the compass rose). Runway 36 points north (0 on the compass rose, but since you can't put "0" at the end of a runway, it's 36 instead, for 360 degrees). If you've ever, by any chance, peeked out the window of an airplane as you circled an airport and caught a glimpse of those two big numbers painted at the end of the runway, and wondered what they were for, now you know. They are named for and indicate the heading a plane would follow when taking off or landing (minus the zero at the end).

At Apple Valley, pilots take off and land on runway 18, mostly; that is, they take off to the south, and come in from the north. That's because the wind usually blows from the south around here. That's not an accident. Airport runways are usually constructed according to the general wind direction in the area. It's good sense: you'd naturally want to take off and land into the wind (which generates more lift for your wings, because there's more air moving over them). When the winds are calm, you can take off from whatever dang runway you please. When winds are 5 knots or higher, however, you want to take off from the runway that's pointing into the wind. And, since the wind was coming from the north, that naturally meant we'd want to use 36.

Now, I've never taken off from runway 36 before. Nor landed on it. Two more firsts. Here's the picture. So far everything's been a piece of cake. We're on the ground, there's lights everywhere, the landing light's been limning the way ahead perfectly. All is well. Now here comes the acid test. The plane lifts off the ground. Suddenly we're climbing through a sky devoid of light but for the skeletal remains of the sunset, and the first elusive stars.

"WHERE THE HELL'S THE GROUND, FOR CRYING OUT LOUD?!"

There was nothing below me. NOTHING. Just a black void. If I was afraid of heights or the dark, I'd probably have turned into a shivering, palpitating lump of jelly right then. When we got 500 feet off the ground, Harold instructed me to turn crosswind. I could now see a few lights. There were a few houses out there, and the big limestone quarry in the next valley over. But those were still only tiny islands of light in a sea of tenebrosity. I looked ahead and could just barely see the Granite Mountains, a swathe of blank darkness against the purple star-lined horizon. They seemed terrifyingly close in their indistinctness. Needless to say, I didn't need any urging to turn downwind, away from them.

I wasn't scared. I had suddenly realized the full extent of the task ahead, that's all. Now I knew what I was up against. Up until this point I had been like, Well, yeah, okay, I'll be doing the same thing I always do, but, you know, in the dark. I had received my wake-up call. I was going to have to make some adjustments in my thinking here.

I took stock. The dashboard lights were woefully inadequate to the task. My night vision's not the best, but even so I could barely make out my airspeed and attitude indicators. That would be a problem, but I figured I could work with it. A little creative squinting would do the trick. As for actually landing in the dark, well, I'd cross that bridge when I came to it. I looked up.

The entire valley was filled with light.

The lights of Apple Valley, Victorville and Hesperia were laid out beneath us like the fields of a fluorescent farm. Up and to the left I could see the scattered pinpricks of house lights in my neighborhood in the foothills; the distant twinkling of the Mountain High ski resort, way off in the San Gabriel Mountains; and of course, the enormous grid of streetlights and stoplights in the town directly below. It was an awe-inspiring sight. I'd seen cities from the air many a time, but never this well. Nor had I ever been flying myself over them. This was something new, and it was something else.

We practiced eight touch-and-go landings that night. It was a bit rough at first—I bounced the plane down hard a few times (because runway 36 actually slopes up and meets you, okay?!). Moreover I just wasn't adjusted to landing in the dark. That big landing light helped, but I was still having trouble gauging the actual distance between me and the ground. First I'd flare too low. Then I'd flare too high. Either way, there'd be quite a jolt on landing. Descents were a bit nerve-wracking, too. I looked out of my window once a quarter-mile from the end of the runway and saw the roof of somebody's house just 100 feet below. I was so close I could've read the number on their mailbox, if they'd had one. That woke me up, let me assure you. I didn't look down again.

Eventually I got the hang of it. Tonight Harold and I did an hour-and-a-half cross-country flight to General Fox Airport in Lancaster. I'd been there before, too, but in the bright day. This time we were navigating solely by GPS. When we took off the sky looked like this:
 


But by the time we'd made it to Fox, touched down, taken off, and turned back east again, my view resembled this...


...only darker. That beat-up old 1974 Cessna doesn't have as good panel lighting as the one in this picture does. Creative squinting, creative squinting. The moon was nearly full, and cast a soft blue light (like the taxiway lights) on the sleeping Earth. The evening was hazy; that combined with the blue moon-glow and Palmdale's plentiful streetlights made me feel more like I was piloting a submersible over the sunken-but-thriving city of Atlantis.

We detoured around Victorville because there was an Air Force C-17 practicing landings there, but the rest was simple. We descended slowly over the familiar, warm valley of light, entered the pattern, and landed safely. We taxied to the hangar this time instead of the ramp (Harold was going to replace a cockpit gauge over the New Year break), climbed out and rode back to the airport building. The taxiway lights still glowed their cheery blue.

There's pros and cons to flying at night, just like anything else. The best part is that you can see other airplanes. It's a lot easier to spot traffic, thanks to strobes and beacons. Landings are trickier and navigation can be a little nerve-wracking, but all in all, I enjoyed myself immensely during my three hours of night-flight.

Take it, Geddy.