Most private pilots are fair-weather flyers. They only fly when conditions are perfect; sunny, warm weather, and not a cloud in the sky. I, on the other hand, like to get out in all sorts of weather. I have flown when it's cold outside (18 degrees for example), rainy, at night, and when the ceiling (a continuous layer of clouds) is only 4000 feet high. My most favorite time to be in the skies is when the weather is picture-perfect but you can't always be guaranteed that the your picture perfect day won't end up turning into a mess of clouds and haze. When that happens, it sure is nice to have experience in those kinds of conditions. So today was basically one of those days. I was sitting at work today wondering when I was going to get the chance to fly again. The weather forecast was calling for rain for the next several days so my only chance to get out this week was today. So I checked the forecast for today. It wasn't a very good outlook: Mostly cloudy with a 40% chance of rain. At first, my thought was to scrap the idea but, I thought to myself, what a good chance it would be to sharpen my skills and get more comfortable with flying in less-than-perfect conditions.
I flew from 8:00-9:10 pm. This gave me about a 40 minutes of daylight and 30 minutes of night flying. When I started the weather actually didn't look too bad. In this picture, you can see I-75 and Dayton Wright Brothers airport.
The weather started looking worse after about 20 minutes, but fortunately the bad weather seemed to be contained to a 10 mile long stretch positioned parallel to the direction I was heading so I wouldn't need to go through it. I kept a watchful eye out for anything else that could cause me to have to change course or head back, but everything else was just normal, dark, low clouds.
As night started coming in, I flew to Springfield-Beckley municipal airport. The weather had seemed to mellow out a bit again and the late evening sunlight almost pierced through the clouds just before sunset.
I made a few night landings to record in my log book (sorry for the fuzzy picture but it's hard to fly and steady my camera). Afterwards, I headed back to Dayton Wright Brothers, landed, and put the airplane back in the hangar. I had not only gained some more night experience, but am I getting more and more comfortable with flying in less-than-perfect conditions. I am proud to say that I am not one of those fair-weather flyers!
- Flight Info:Visibility: 10 miles
- Ceiling: Broken at 6,000 ft. Overcast at 7,000 ft.
- Route of flight: KMGY --> KSGH --> I19 --> KMGY
2 comments:
Fuzzy, but that's an iconic shot of the approach lights. Is that MALSR?
It's similar. I beleive it's actually an ALSF2 lighting system. It is a fuzzy shot but it's difficult to get a steady shot.
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