I got my fix tonight. The withdrawal pains are gone for now. I arrived at the airport at 4:30 after work today. Civil sunset was at 4:37. Once I got the KR out of the hanger and preflighted her, I climbed in the cockpit and started the engine. What a sweet sound that was. It had been 9 days since I last heard her purr. By now it was beginning to get fairly dark so on went the nav lights, strobe lights and cockpit lights. I called up the control tower and asked for taxi to the active. Upon reaching the active, I was thinking I would stay in the pattern since I had not done any real dark night flying in some time. I announced ready to go along with my intentions and I was cleared for takeoff. Wow, it was pretty cool as the runway lights began to flash by and I rotated and climbed into the darkness. I was given right traffic pattern and made the turns to get on downwind. A Citation called in for landing and I was asked to extend my downwind and would be instructed when to turn base. I responded that I would like to extend the downwind right on out of their airspace and off into the darkness I went. I climbed on up to 3,000' and played around about 10 miles out. The lights of Milwaukee were absolutely beautiful. After about thirty minutes of sightseeing I called in "10 out north inbound for landing". He instructed me to report 3 mile final. I could no longer see any ground below me, just lights as I returned to KUES. The runway looked so small way out there in front of me. I noticed my heart was beating pretty hard. Must have been the adrenaline of making this dark night landing. It was pretty cool how the runway began to grow and the runway lights got brighter. Then I noticed the VASI and that I was seeing all red. I was 1.5 miles out and 500'. There goes the heart again...beating pretty hard. I stopped my decent till I had white over red and dropped the belly board and started getting her down to 75 over the numbers. I rotated and greased her in for a smoothie. True dark night flying is different and takes getting used to all over again. I will have to work on those decent to landing slopes. Other than that it was a YEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE HAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA flight.
Mark Jones (N886MJ) Wales, WI USA E-mail me at [email protected] Visit my KR-2S CorvAIRCRAFT web site at www.flykr2s.com
