Flight Time–Titusville

Today I planned a flight with Gage. Gage is an intern who is currently working on my team and is interested in becoming a pilot someday. We had been trying to fly for a week, but each day, the wind gusts were above my comfort level – especially when considering taking a passenger along for a first flight. The winds were normal today, but there was still the threat of an afternoon thunderstorm.

After work, I stopped at Subway to get something to eat, then met Gage at the airport. The skies were dark, so we waited to see how things would look at 7:00 pm, while I ate my chicken wrap, and we discussed various aviation topics. I realized that I left my iPad mini at home, but there was no time to go get it. We would have to do this flight the old-fashioned way – by tracing our position on a paper map.

By 7:00 pm, the sky looked good, so we decided to go fly. After the pre-flight, we taxied to Runway 14, passing by the Commander that is always parked on the ramp. To my surprise, someone was there, but we didn’t have time to stop and talk.

We took off and did a downwind departure to the north. I turned left a bit to give myself time to climb before reaching the Melbourne Class D airspace. I leveled off at 3,500 feet and we cruised north along the Indian River. The sun soon dropped below the storm clouds to the west. The air was very smooth and calm.

As we approached Titusville, I tuned in the ATIS to get the active runway and began to descend. We landed on Runway 18, taxied back, and then departed the same runway.

It was now after 8:00 pm and sunset was around 8:35 pm. I am not night current, so I needed to make sure we were back on the ground either before that time, or within 15 minutes past it. We flew directly to Valkaria and made it before sunset. While descending, I clicked the radio transmitter five times and the Valkaria airport came to life with all of the lights turned on.

After topping off the fuel, we taxied back to the hangar. By now, it was getting pretty dark. This was good, because I wanted to see what the instruments looked like in the dark. It turns out that several are nearly completely unlit. If I want to fly at night, I will need to bring along a red flashlight.

Flight Time: 1.6 hours
Total Time: 599 hours