Flight Time–Night Currency

Since I was already at the airport, after returning from Keystone Heights, I decided to stick around and get some night flight time. To be current to fly passengers at night, you must have three landings to a full stop at night within the preceding 90 days. The last time I flew at night was back in July of 2008, as part of the requirements for my Commercial license. I was planning to have an instructor fly with me this time, but instead, I refreshed my memory about the various illusions and physiological effects that can occur at night and decided to go solo.

I've been wanting to do this for a long time, but I was uncomfortable with the lighting on the Cherokee. In my opinion, the interior lights were not bright enough to read all the instruments, and several of the instruments were not self-lit. To help with this, I bought a head-mounted light with both red and white lights. I knew I'd be able to see everything I needed to see with this light.

For currency, the landings must be one hour after sunset, so I hung out at the hangar and waited. Sunset was at 6:30, so I figured I'd take off a little before 7:30, then fly around until 7:30 before starting my landings.

As I was doing my run up, another pilot turned on the airport lights by clicking his push-to-talk button five times in succession. Valkaria lights up very nice, so I had little issue finding my way to the runway. I was in the air at 7:15. I turned west, crossed the interstate, then headed towards Lake Washington, being sure to stay outside the Melbourne Class D airspace. I tuned in the Melbourne ATIS to get the weather details. At 7:30, I contacted Melbourne Tower and told them that I was inbound for a full stop landing. I was told to enter a left base for Runway 9L and that there were two planes westbound. I acknowledged the pattern entry and reported the two planes in sight. The first landing went well, and I was told to taxi back to Runway 9L. After taxiing to the runway, I went through the takeoff checklist again, then requested take off, staying in the pattern. I took off and turned downwind. Abeam the number, I was cleared to land on Runway 9L. As I was turning base to final, another plane was cleared to take off on Runway 9L. I could clearly see this other plane and thought it very strange that Tower would clear it to take off in front of me. I asked if I was still cleared to land and was told that I was already cleared and that I had already responded. I just wanted to hear him say it one more time and I also wanted the pilot holding short to know that I was planning to land in the next 20 seconds. The other pilot remained behind the hold short line, and I landed safely. I repeated this one more time, for a total of three landings at Melbourne. On the final take off, I was told to follow the river to the south until leaving Class D airspace.

I tuned to the Valkaria common frequency and listened for other traffic in the area. There was a plane coming in from the south on a long 45-degree pattern entry and another on a practice instrument approach from the northwest. I announced that I would follow the plane on the long 45. The pilot doing the practice approach went missed and departed to the west. The pilot I was following was doing a full stop landing, so I extended my downwind a bit to give him time to clear the runway. I was back on the ground at 8:20.

I'm happy to report that the lighting in the Cherokee is more than sufficient. The only issue I had was reading the checklist, but that was easily solved by turning on my headlamp.

The flight track is shown below.

Valkaria to Melbourne to Valkaria

Flight Time: 1.3 hours
Total Time: 696 hours