Since l haven’t really flown much in the last two weeks, let’s start off with one of the most recent cross country flights that l undertook. That was a night flight from my home airport to Hickory, North Carolina (KHKY).
When most people hear the term “cross-country” , most of us think of going maybe from the East Coast to the West Coast or to some exotic destination across the globe. That’s not entirely the case!
Since l am a “GA” pilot, whenever l hear this term l think of a flight that is more than 50nm ( 1 nm = 1.82 km ). One of the recent “cross-country” flights l took was to an airport near Hickory, North Carolina (KHKY). This flight was to fulfill one of the requirements of a commercial rating that l am currently pursing, and the flight had to be over 100nm and at night. It was decided almost instantly, that we (me and my CFII) would fly to this airport, and you couldn’t ask for a better night to fly in.
The flight was pretty smooth both going and coming and some of the sights along the way were simply spectacular to witness. The picture below was one such image that was captured.
Views like these continually remind me why l like flying so much. And believe it or not, the best time to go flying is at night. The weather is generally calmer and that makes for an awfully smooth ride.
The only real adventure came as l landed at Hickory. Unknownst to me at the time, l performed my first “black-hole” landing on RWY 19. I wasn’t told that l did this until after we were back on the ground at our home airport. You may be wondering.. What exactly is a black hole landing? It’s a landing that isn’t performed in the best of lighting and more often than not, is a landing where you cannot see the runway until you are either very close to it, or right over it. Was it scary? No not really. Heck, l never even considered anything out of the ordinary until we landed back at my home airport. (That’s how landings are suppose to be 🙂 )
Let the next adventure… Or in this case, be posted!