Prima Nocta

By lex, on October 7th, 2011

It’s not like I don’t like flying at night. After all, my logbook reflects over 800 hours of nighttime operations over the last three decades or so. The air tends to be less turbulent when the sun goes down. Traffic is easier to see and avoid. And it’s important to have the capability to fly as and when the mission requires it.

It’s just that, over the last ten years or so, the mission hasn’t required it. There was no dogfighting to be had in the front seat of a 150 HP Varga at night. And any cross-countries that I needed to take tended to neatly fit into the daylight hours. Especially in that there are significant terrain variances in the Sandy Eggo area, and the potential to blunder into something immovable is non-trivial, especially when you can’t be bothered to file a flight plan that takes into account minimum obstacle clearance altitudes for en route legs, and minimum sector altitudes when in or about an airport. Nor was the equipment that I’ve been flying recently equipped with radar altimeters, and – even when equipped with terrain aware GPS devices – did they necessarily have the kinematic potential to climb above that red blotch on the display. Visual flight rules requires the airman to see and avoid. Fundamentally, you can’t avoid what you can’t see.