The days are getting long and that means sunset is later in the evening. A few days ago, Steve gave a route for Srinath to plan his night cross country trip. We were to leave Livermore for the Sacramento Executive Airport (KSAC), then Rio Vista (O88) followed by Kingdon (O20) and back to Livermore. We created a cross Cross Country Flight checklist as a PDF document with form fields and used this cross country trip as a trial subject. Anyways, we are now set with all the details and Srinath even received a full weather briefing through 1-800-WX-BRIEF. We were to meet Steve in the hangar at 8:30pm right around sunset. While night flying hours can be logged beginning with civil twilight, we were going to take off an hour after sunset.

Earlier this evening, Srinath had an appointment with the AME in Pleasanton to apply for a third-class medical certificate and it went pretty smoothly. It was a big relief!

We got to the hangar a little early and started the preflight checklist. When we flew a couple of days ago, we noticed that the landing light was not working and it had been placarded. It would be interesting to land without landing lights nevertheless Steve cleared us to go flying that night. We spent a good bit of time reviewing the planned details of the cross country trip with Steve. I set up Foreflight on my iPad so I could follow along the planned course.

Night flying is very different. First of all, there was no ATIS, no Ground or Tower controllers – it was past the operating hours – so we announced our intentions to Livermore Traffic on the CTAF. There were very few planes flying around at night and those that were flying could be spotted by their position lights. Depth perception wasn’t the same as while flying during the daytime. Thankfully this was a full moon night and the landscape was lit quite well. Watching from the back seat the moon rise over the horizon was quite a feeling. Photography was difficult due to extreme low light conditions. The GoPro picked up city lights but the rest of the time during our cruise it was pitch black outside and very dim inside the aircraft. The two massive towers (roughy 2050′ tall) northwest of Lodi stood out like sore thumbs.

Sacramento Exec airport was at first a little hard to find because it was engulfed by the city lights. There was another pilot announcing his intentions to take off from the airport while we were on the downwind leg. This landing turned out very smooth and we taxied off the runway to pause and regroup for the next leg to Rio Vista. En route to KSAC, we saw O88 to the west of the two massive towers so we simply looked for its airport beacon as we took off from KSAC. As I followed along on Foreflight, we basically tracked over the deepwater shipping canal. Suddenly we heard a high pitched sound and for a few seconds we were trying to figure out what was wrong. The terrain was almost pitch black so emergency landings would be impossible if needed. Thankfully it turned out be just a radio problem and we were able to resolve it quickly.

O20 Kingdon airport was almost impossible to find. It took quite a while to locate the airport in the darkness (see video). The airport didn’t have a beacon and the lights when keyed with the mike stayed on for just a couple of minutes. Srinath looked at the freeway and correctly guessed that we were almost overhead of the airport. Keying the mike proved it and we had quite a bit of altitude to lose. So we circled over the airport watching for any signs of winds as we shot for Rwy 30.The runway edge lights were placed quite far apart and that make it even more difficult to stay in the center of the runway. Finally the last leg back to Livermore was quite uneventful.

Here is the foreflight tracker. http://www.foreflight.com/s/track/1430886307-780FAB33-6427-4269-95FE-3B853966A072/