Back in Corpus

Thank goodness I made it out of the desert!

I finished my last Precision Aerobatic solo... which was incredible and definitely one of the best flights I had. I did develop a difference in fuel weight between my two tanks due to what I imagine was some sort of blockage in the line and left uncorrected, it would have developped into an emergency. However, I caught it in time to balance it out and continue the flight.

I knew it was my last solo, so I did all the maneuvers I could think of (within regulations for solo flight...). I finally nailed them and was hitting all the parameters. My last loop was perfect.

Now I'm back in my own apartment, with my own car (which still works), with my own TV, enjoying the cable and electricity that I've been paying for and seeing all the friends I'd missed.

I've had two flights since they flew us back in a Navy 737 a week and half ago. They were "Night Contact" flights or flying at night using "visual reference." In general, not unlike sailing at night, it involves using different lights and land features to navigate through the area.
The biggest challenge is flying the landing pattern. Normally I fly a pattern not unlike a high school race track with one of the straightaways being the runway and the other being at 800'. There's no difference at night except I have to use the lights on the ground to judge my separation from the runway and turn towards final. In addition to looking totally different, night vision reduces the ability to judge distances. I also find that although the lights are easy to see the black space between them is empasized, which makes it difficult to judge just exactly where the ground is. When I turn final all I can see are the different colored lights and again, that black pool between the lights. The contrasts are hugely striking and they help me line up but I don't know when to flare for my touchdown until I can actually see the runway. That happens only when I get low enough for the landing lights attached to my main gear to illuminate the runway. Then about 3 seconds later I flare and touchdown and hopefully a reasonable rate of descent.

I'm reading a novel by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, the author of the children's book, "The Little Prince." He was a pilot between the World Wars and many of his novels were about aviation. The one I'm reading is called "Night Flight" the only reason, aside from the title, why I mention it is that his description of the way the lights look from the air is pretty incredible. He writes of how the lights on the ground are answered the glowing dials in the cockpit. I definitely noticed the contrast and when I turned down the lights as far as I could stand it, it was almost as if the black starry night was competely wrapped around me.

So flying at night is definitely my favorite time to fly, it's a lot of fun.

Since then I've been studying pretty hard for Formation Flying. I have a wingman and we're going to go through a sequence of maneuvers together as soon as we stop getting cancelled for weather.