First flight and continuing my learning.

I took Matt one of the guys I work with up for a flight a couple of weeks ago, we took the Diamond, just on a quick trip over to Sandtoft for a spot of lunch. It was quite an uneventful flight, the weather was closing in, but thankfully the Diamond has twin Garmins so things went well.

While at the school I booked the next phase of my flight education, that being my first night flight. I don't intend to fly at night as a rule, but I think it will be handy incase of emergencies, ie I return flight takes longer than expected as I don't have to worry too much about landing before Sunset and providing I close to my home airfield it won't mean that I will get trapped somewhere.

I must admit I was quite nervous when I arrived at the school, can you guess the first thing that I forgot? Yep a torch, how do you check a plane in the dark without one? Luckily the plane (a PA28) was parked near the terminal building so there was plenty of light to do the check out. After a quick brief with Christian, which was quite interesting we went out to the plane and off we went.

Flying at night is very different, the actual flying is the same, although you rely on your instruments more as you can't see the horizon. The height thing is also very deceptive, we flew around the Doncaster/Sheffield area at about 3,500 ft, but it didn't feel anywhere near as high. The views are amazing, seeing the towns/cities all laid out in front of you lit up, the glow of them. You can see other planes so much easier, their lights twinkling away.

Its not until you start looking around that you realise how dangerous it technically is. As Christian said in the brief, if you have an engine failure, where do you land? The glowing yellow/orange (the towns) or the black bits, which could be hills, forests etc.

I'm really glad I did it asI have been having a bad time at work as I recently took a permanant job and I'm not sure it was the right descision. The night flying really helped take my mind off it, I've booked all the rest of my lessons as you only need 5hrs flying time. Once I've completed the night rating I'm going to do the IMC rating and then think long and hard about maybe doing my ATPLs (commercial license).