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Jerry's 64th Lesson: Just Gadding about at Night

We'd had no luck getting our long cross-country together; the weather was crappy, and I'd gotten sick. Not very sick, mind you. Just one of those low-level infections that makes your throat hurt a bit, and the rest of you tired. So we arranged to do a night flight, and finish up my night dual requirements.

Even today, I'd had some doubt about making it: the day started off with a visit to the dentist, a cracked filling, and a session of drilling :-(. But as the day wore on, first the novocaine wore off, then the tooth stopped hurting so much, and by 5:00 or so I was feeling OK.

Stopped by the Togo's, ordered a sandwich with more meat than I'd eaten the whole previous week. Got it "to go" zipped out to SJC, parked on the field, and enjoyed the airport ambiance while I ate :-). My instructor drove up just as I was finishing the Meat Monster.

The sun went down as we were preflighting the plane. Strange things started happening around the airport. First somebody took off funny: the airplane was weaving and porpoising through the air instead of doing a proper climb. Finally he straightened it out. Whew.

Then somebody taxied by at thirty miles an hour! Where's a cop when you need one? I checked the sky: "Nope, no full moon...."

We had our preflight discussion:

"Now's where I get to fix all those bad habits you picked up flying solo"

The game plan was to fly over to Reid-Hillview( RHV ) airport, do some touch & goes if they'd let us, then come back to SJC. I did all the ATIS-Clearance-Ground-Tower radio work, and pulled us onto the runway:

"OK, Jerry, show me some of that pilot stuff!"

That first takeoff went very nicely. As you may remember, I've had some problem doing takeoffs from a full stop: upon lifting the tail, the nose would sort of get out of control, bobbing up and down. This time, the nose stayed well under control: I kept the tail off the ground, but low. It was a nice takeoff.

We headed out to RHV over a city carpeted with lights. The sky was completely clear - a beautiful night for flying. SJC handed us off to RHV, we did several touch & goes at RHV - it was no big deal. Although he did coach me a bit on the flares. And I did touch down mains-first one time :-(.

One thing he kept after me on was the runway centerline. I seem to have a tendancy to be left of center all the time. He'd prefer me to be right on.

On some of the landings, he turned on the landing light for me - this produced an interesting effect: you could see the propellor turning, because the light lit it up from the back. That was fun. What wasn't so much fun was that the ammeter would peg on the discharge side when the light was on.

On the last circuit at RHV, he suggested going down to South County

So he taxied the plane out to the fuel island. Good thing he was there: I was totally lost. Taxiing around a strange airport in the dark is really not my idea of fun. We fueled up and got out. The runway turned out to be totally somewhere else, than where I expected it to be :-).

We headed south. He cranked up the SJC localizer on the radio. The OBS showed that we were several degrees to the right of it, which was fine by me. South County showed up, I pressed the mike button seven times... and *poof*, the airport lit up like a christmas tree! Neat.

We crossed the field at 2000 feet looking for the windsock. Well, I did see it. And I THINK it was pointing south. That was good enough for him, we used runway 32.

We did a couple landings there. I missed half of my uncontrolled-airport calls. Oops. He chided me gently.

Then it was time to go home. I pulled the airplane up at Vy to get us out of the valley, and visible to Bay Approach. Did a single ascending 360 to get us to 2500' or so, got the SJC ATIS, called Bay, and came on in. He complemented me on my flying:

"Solo flight has done you good, Jerry. Your flying has gotten very smooth." I basked in the glow :-).

Now we got the biggest surprise of the evening: there was no airport! Well, none that we could see, anyway.

While we were gone, a cloud bank had come in RIGHT OVER THE AIPORT BUT ALMOST NOWHERE ELSE at 1000'. He took the plane. He overflew the field at 2000', saw the runway through the cloud, and with the tower's permission did a left 360 around the cloud down to pattern altitude, and came right in to land under the cloud, free as a bird. And VFR all the way, too.

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