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There's quite a strong low pressure system sitting off the southeast of Australia at
the moment there are two weather fronts associated with it which is going to dump
some pretty nasty weather over us first front has just gone through now and we're just on
the back end of it and the second front is going through tomorrow which is Friday
as I record this and the reason why that's so relevant is on Saturday I'm doing a flight up
to Wollongong and back again to go up to the aviation museum there at Shellharbor airport
but I'm coming back probably at night time and I might be coming back with passengers
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Pilots if we want to take passengers flying with us we need to do at least three takeoff
and Landings in a 90-day period now if you've watched the channel for a while you'll know
that I do fly quite often and I have actually done that but the difference comes when it's night time
if you want to go flying at night time with the same recency requirements Supply but those three
take off and landings they all have to be done at night time and I haven't done enough night
takeoff and landings if I have to bring passengers back from this flight on Saturday so this little
window between those two weather fronts this is probably the only chance I'll get to go out at
night time build back my recency so I can fly with passengers at night if I need to [Music]
[Music] so what we decided to do Stevens in November Bravo Alpha behind me that's
the piper seminal myself in Echo Yankee's early we're both going to be in the circuit
now to get our Knight currency back again but you might be thinking it's light this isn't a
Night Flight well yeah you're right what we're going to do is a few circuits first of all just
as the subs going down and then the last three take off and landings they'll be at night time
okay when the southern Runner Bay received Oscar request taxi 35 right four circuits
there's also something very magical about being at the airport of this time of day because no one
else is here there's one aircraft Just landing in the distance but apart from
that it's myself and Stephen the people in the tower and we've got the whole place to ourselves
okay Do my quick lineup checks I checked the fuel pumps are mixer goes full Rich flaps the
set instruments are all looking good switches my peter Heat's going to go on when I enter the
runway my transponder is set and my yoke I give it a full and free just make sure that everything
out on the wing is looking right when that's all done that's my lineup checks I go over to tower
frequency and I'll tell them I'm ready Yankee Zulu is ready holding Point Alpha four seconds
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is available fuel pump will keep on like a right turn uh
leveling off at a thousand feet power comes back
number two
I've got Steven in sight over there to my right and then I'm looking to make
my bass turn I haven't been cleared to land yet so I'm just gonna keep
approaching the runway and wait for town to tell me when I'm here to Land
but that's all right
my first the speed looks good no more pitch adjustments just playing with the power
comes off nice flare
bam let's go away and if we go again and there you go that's what a circuit is
like in a series SR22 well that's what my circuit is like in the series SR-22
thank you whenever I post anything online about flying at night or I talk to other people about
flying this single-engine aircraft at night time sometimes I'll get the comment oh I'd never do
that in a small plane I think night flying is actually a lot of fun and I don't do it enough
I think it's really good for your instrument scanning procedure it's really good to sharpen
your takeoff and Landing skills and often at night time there's less traffic out there to get in your
way and quite often the weather can be a lot calmer as well I also am very fortunate to fly
an aircraft which does have a parachute system on board which gives me a lot more confidence
flying at night time and my night flying is a little bit Rusty and that's why we're doing
circuits just to kind of practice my skills and get me used to flying at night time again and we
kind of went we went round and round quite a few times before the sun slowly started to set if it's
slowly getting dark enough for us yeah slowly I'm getting dizzy though yeah I think I'm only going
to be a couple more but we'll see how quickly it gets stuck yeah but then the sun eventually
did go down and we could officially start to log some actual night takeoff and Landings
foreign
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foreign [Music]
taking off in between myself and Stephen so I'm just giving him a little bit more room
by doing a slightly wider circuit on this one but he's rolling on the runway now and
I'm just about to turn on to final so there should be plenty of space in between us you
should get a clearance delay at any second game the one good thing about flying here at moorabbin
is that the tower stays open until nine o'clock tonight nine o'clock local so we should have
tower control for our circuits now some of you may like that some of you might not but
just my style of flying I actually much prefer having Air Traffic Control here just helping
with separation and letting us know where the traffic is all right we're officially night time
well actually we've been officially night time for a little while now so the circuits that
we're doing now are all counting okay Yankees a little clear Touching Game clear Touch and Go
and now we have Bravo Sierra Victor in front of us as well so just going to keep an eye on
it here because I think I'll slow quite a long way down because he's also stopping stopping
Echo Yankees early downwind touch and go okay follow the Cessna mid base they are
for a full stop got the traffic inside we'll follow here uh we may need to go
around here okay clearly going around myself up that's good practice as well to be honest
to get a go around in as well there's a chance we could have made it but why not
practice that whilst we're out here want more to go and then I'm current again for
taking passengers at night time 500 feet caps is available let's make this the best
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one of the things that genuinely is considered to be one of the harder things about flying at
night is taxiing try not to drive into the grass where are we bravo bravo yeah
I think we time those circuits just perfectly for fun night [Music]