Night Cross Country

I don't think that I will ever be a big night flyer, but flying was sure fun last night. We got to do a lot of new things, see some new sights and even got scolded by air traffic control. In the process, my night flying requirements were met as far as the FAA is concerned.

Rob had me plan a flight from St. Pete/Clearwater (PIE) to Venice(VNC). There is a training requirement for a night cross-country flight of over 100 nm. Whitted is only 43 nm from Venice, so we first flew to St. Pete and did some full stop landings before heading to Venice. We got in trouble at St. Pete.

The tower had us landing on 35R, which is a 9700 foot beast of a runway that the big boys use. At sea level in cool weather the 172 needs about 550 feet to land. My landings were very good last night, but in the dark and at an unfamiliar airport, I missed the first taxiway off the runway on my first landing. We had to motor down the runway a good distance before coming to the next taxiway. On the second landing, Rob decided to fix the problem. After all, he used to work at PIE and was familiar with the place. So I land and am motoring down the runway looking for taxiway "G", golf for you pilots. Rob thinks he spots it and jams on the brakes and turns for it. Bad news, golf is blocked and we are now turned ninety degrees to the direction of the runway. Rob simply completes a 360 on the runway and heads for taxiway "F", foxtrot. About this time the tower controller comes on the radio: "54666 did you just do a 360 on the runway?" I'm laughing and not about to answer him, after all it wasn't my 360. Rob tells him that indeed we did a 360. "Well don't do it again." No crap, we don't usually do 360s on runways.

We got clearance to taxi back to 35R for another trip around the pattern. This time I managed to find taxiway "M", mike, where we did a 180 on the taxiway, with permission, and departed for Venice. I had informed ground control that we were headed for Venice, which could involve transiting Tampa's class B airspace and control came back with a laundry list of instructions which went something like this: "Cessna 54666, taxi to runway 35R and hold, contact tower on 128.4 when ready, left turn to heading 270 on departure, climb and maintain 1600 VFR, squawk 0123, contact Tampa Approach on 119.65 after departing the area." That was a little more in the way of instructions than I was used to, so I had to ask him to repeat. Rob was a bit surprised that PIE ground did all that and had expected to simply depart to the west and request the class B transit with Tampa.

We followed the instructions and after leaving the class D airspace contacted Tampa approach. They told us to climb to 3500 feet and turn to heading 180. This class B stuff is easy, as long as you do what they say. After a few minutes, Tampa approach told us to fly direct to Venice, which took us over my house, and Sarasota International (SRQ). Sarasota International is less than a mile from Sarasota Bay, and Venice Municipal is on the beach, so we were following the coast south. It was beautiful, peaceful and very different from day flying. We had requested flight following, so Tampa informed us of traffic a few times. Once we had Venice in sight, I informed Tampa and requested a frequency change to Venice's ASOS. Tampa cancelled flight following and told me to squawk VFR.

I screwed up my first approach at Venice. On my turn to final, I lost sight of the runway and then picked up the wrong set of lights coming out of my turn. I ended up too high, so we went around. This time I flew the pattern nicely. Venice is an interesting airport. For one thing, it's on the beach. For another, the taxiways don't paralleled the runways. They mostly run around the perimeter of the airport. That means if you want to taxi back for departure, it seems as though you're driving through the boonies. I'm glad Rob knew his way around. I had an airport diagram, but in the dark, I would have been lost.

After departure from Venice, I contacted Tampa approach again. They cleared us through Sarasota's class C and Tampa's class B airspace straight to Albert Whitted. I was sort of liking this class B thing, but Rob told me it could be different during the day. Sometimes they're busy and might tell you to call back later or avoid their airspace all together.

Back at Whitted, Rob killed the landing light while I was on final and made me land without it. That's not a lot of fun. It's hard to see unlit asphalt at night, but the landing was not bad. Next week I'm going to put in some simulated instrument time and we're going over my log book to make sure we have not missed any required training. There's not a lot left. My GPS ground track is incomplete. Not sure what happened, but you can still see where we went.

Happy New Year!!!

lesson 23

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Statistics

Dual Instruction Time: 21.0 Hours

Solo/PIC Time: 13.0 Hours

Landings: 121