Yours truly, with Cherokee 29'er Hotel at Oroville Municipal Airport
A few caveats on night flying. Most pilot fatalities, I have read, occur on take off and landing. This is due primarily to pilot error. As I mentioned earlier, I pre-flight my plane with a flashlight; even though, I have had a habit of topping off the dual tanks to the 'tabs,' I still would visually check the check to be sure the avgas is where I visualize it to be-- actually at the tabs. There is no room for error.
There is an AOPA Air Safety Foundation report about a very short night flight by a pilot flying a Cessna 150; an accident occurred on final and the pilot who survived reported that "the fuel gauges indicated 'a little less than full' on the left tank and about 1/4 on the right fuel tank." His engine failed on landing. A post accident report by the Federal Aviation Administration inspector revealed "only a small amount of fuel remaining in the tanks."
The question that comes to mind is whether this pilot had visually checked the fuel levels by flashlight before taking off. Read the report for yourself to determine where this pilot went wrong.
Now, should you be flying deep into the night, especially if you know you are an early morning person?
My answer to the question is yes!
From my prior blog, you should already know that I am an early morning person--meaning I am most alert in the early morning hours from 3 AM and that my energy level begins to level off around 3 PM and then shifts to a somnolent stall, precedent to falling asleep, at about 6PM.
So how it it that I am taking off on a 4- hour interstate cross country flight at 9 PM one February evening with 30 mile an hour headwinds?
Phantom Falls on Table Mountain, a few miles Northeast of
of Oroville Municipal Airport, Courtesy of Ben Sheriff Photography
Consider these circumstances. I had been living in the Sierra foothills and my plane had been tied down at Oroville Municipal Airport. At this time, I was checking out a job opportunity up in Eugene, Oregon some 500 miles north. After the deal was sealed, I decided to take up temporary digs with a friend in Lane County. My new business associate, on the other hand, owned a Piper Cub and offered to fly me down to Oroville so that I could relocate 29'er Hotel up to Mahlon Sweet Airport; Eugene is a beautiful community-- the crown jewel in the Oregon 'Emerald Empire'-- and that is where I intended to reside for at least a year.
Our plan was for Leon, my new business associate, to ferry me from Mahlon Sweet to Oroville at sunset (a four hour flight) where I would hop out and rev up my plane and the two of us would fly back together as wingmen. We planned on taking off from Eugene at 4:30. The weather was clear and there were moderate tail winds. Leon, who runs a construction company, is a competent pilot and his high wing craft is a very reliable workhorse that was used to train thousands of World War II American pilots. (It reaches a maximum speed of 87 MPH but with tailwinds we were averaging close to 110 MPH.) Our flight was smooth and as I recall we made a fuel stop along the way.
We took off from Oroville for the return trip at 9:15 PM when it was dark; we flew in tandem all the way back to Eugene. By now headwinds had increased to about 30 mph: this meant that my cherokee was flying about 80 MPH (at best economy of 7.8 GPH) and the Cub was doing about 60 MPH. Amazingly enough, even though I was flying faster, I could see Leon's wing lights all the way back to Eugene. The nice part is that we were able to maintain radio contact with each other all the way back.
Of course, I had written down my visual checkpoints on my flight log grid. We followed Route 5 all the way from Redding North to Shasta Lakes, past the noble and majestic 14, 142 foot Mount Shasta (a magnificent, elegant white clothed lady reflecting the moonlit night), Weed, Yreka, past the Siskiyous into Ashland, Oregon, then Medford, Grants Pass northward to Lane County--then finally Roseburg, Cottage Grove and my destinatio Eugene.
(The cities and towns are backlit like sparkling diamonds clustered along a delicate sinuous necklace caressing the ephemeral, yet eternal raiment of the earth)
We landed within minutes of each other at Mahlon Sweet Airport and finished tying down about 2 AM. (I called flight service to cancel my flight plan!)
A beautiful, safe journey....
So, the obvious question is why and how I undertook a night flight that began so late at night?
First off, I was keyed up well in advance about bringing my bird up to Oregon...So, I made sure to get plenty of rest in anticipation of the the night flight. Of course, I had my waypoints and alternate airports clearly demarcated in advance.
Next, I was flying both ways with a very experienced pilot with several thousand hours of flight time; in addition, we both were tuned to EFAS or enroute flight advisory service for up to the minute weather updates and pilot weather reports (pireps)
Lastly, the events described in my earlier blog about nearly falling asleep at the controls at 5:30 PM occurred some months later....so I had yet more insights to gather about my natural body rhythm.
I hope my blogs about night flying have been helpful. They are rooted in my own live experiences.
Please, email me comments and experiences-- similar or otherwise-- you might have had.
Perhaps, together we can organize a VFR pilots' chat room on night flying.
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