My instructor was right, night flying is really neat! And way less hot. For anyone else planning to land at Air Park, here's a tip: the runway lights will turn on if you click the mike ~7 times and hold each click a half second. So not too fast. We had to do a go-around to get the lights to finally turn on. It was unnerving to get down lower than 1,000 feet with the lights still off.

Another tip: make sure your windshield is clean during the pre-flight check. Left over watery iced latte is not recommended to clean the windshield. :-) Having a clean windshield makes night vision a bit better.

Instrumentation practice paid off in this lesson. I really had to trust my instruments more then any other lesson. Lowering the nose for a landing didn't look or feel the same as in the day so I had to focus more on my altitude indicator for a reliable judgement.

We did pattern take-offs and landings at a small strip called Northwest which is, heh, northwest of the metroplex. My landings were survivable but not inspiring. I was happy with only one landing. The others were rough.

We also toured DFW airport flying over it at 3500 feet. In the above picture, you can see DFW runway as the strip of lights with red at one end in the middle of a large dark area, sort of middle of the picture. If we had had enough fuel at the beginning of the lesson (damn the man who didn't fill the tank!), the original plan was to practice landings at Lovefield. I'm real disappointed that it didn't work out. Maybe next time!

No more flying this week or weekend. I have ground time on Saturday then wait my turn again next week to fly.

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