There's always one more detail

This happened over a year ago, but it's a good story. And, this blog is about flying, computers and Things They Don't Tell You.

I was getting ready for my night cross country flight as one of the qualifications for Private Pilot. I'd done a fair amount of dual instruction time flying after dark -- especially in the Winter when I leave straight from work and it's dark by the time I get to the airport and fully dark by the end of pre-flight.

The night x-country is with an instructor, but I knew that he was there to quiz me and evaluate me, not to lead me by the hand. He chose an airport I'd never visited before, but I chose the route and did my homework -- knowing the terrain and obstacles, knowing the radio frequencies, lighting, approach patterns and dimensions of the airport, and making sure I had a flash light, a backup flash light and even a glow stick.

At night you rarely have to worry about turbulence unless there is a front moving since the sun isn't creating any updrafts, but of course, you can't see all the visual cues you can in daylight. I thought I'd be clever and wait for as close to the full moon as I could get with light winds and clear skies.

Flying at night with a full moon overhead isn't like daylight, but it's still pretty good visibility when your night vision kicks in. I flew down from my homebase at FSO to BTV to pickup my instructor and go over my plans with him. I give good flight plan, so that wasn't an issue, but BTV being a Class C International airport as well as an Air National Guard base has a lot of lights. I knew it was going to be a few minutes before my vision adjusted.

After take off and leaving controlled airspace, it was still dark. But by this time, I was demonstrating how I could follow the highway below, the VOR stations and my Garmin GPS (296) to stay on course and find the gap in the mountains that leads to Rutland. Rutland airport is more or less surrounded on three sides by hills and mountainsides -- which were effectively invisible at night. There were a few cell and radio towers with beacons that I could see and steer clear of, but mostly it was a matter on lining up with the runway on the open end and then offsetting just enough to fly the pattern and trust that a mountain hadn't been snuck into the pattern when no one was looking.

The one part of my flight plan that the instructor changed was getting more fuel before we left BTV. Since I knew the FBO was open late at BTV, I knew I could get fuel there about anytime I would be flying, and my dinky home airport has a self-service pump for avgas usable 24x7, I just assumed that I could get some more fuel and stretch my legs at Rutland, but not true. You can get avgas most anytime at small and big airports, but Rutland is in between and they just close up after business hours and there's no way to get fuel. On the plus side, while waiting for the fuel truck at BTV, we saw a pair of F16's take off with full afterburners at night, which is even cooler in person than in the pictures. Those concentric cones you see in the phots are really there and are just these bright blue standing waves that don't move so much as throb with power.

So, we just stopped at Rutland long enough to review the trip down and change out the prep paperwork on my clipboards and flew back to BTV. Because of the winds, we took off straight and over flat Rutland suburbs -- no hills to worry about. The flight back was easy even with the GPS turned off. The only issue came when we got into BTV airspace. I mentioned the lights before ... it was like a sea of lights. There were just too many, all different colors and I just couldn't pick out the smaller runway Approach assigned me.

I really missed my 296. The Garmin aviation GPS units will, when zoomed in enough, display runway centerline extensions which lets you line up even when you don't have the runway in sight, or in this case, identified. Later I found out that the Tower can brighten the runways lights if you know to ask them. The instructor helped get me oriented and we landed, I dropped him off and left again to get back to FSO, tie down the plane and eventually get home and to bed.

I followed the GPS home to FSO and clicked the mic seven times to activate the runway lights. I flew a normal three-sided pattern which is great for getting a better feel for your height and distance from the field, and especially useful in rural areas like this to make sure there weren't deer loitering on the runway.

I landed fine and was tying down my plane in the dark, dark apron when the moon rose.

I'd done all my flight planning and chosen a clear night with a full moon, but forgot to look up when the moon was rising.