Night Cross-Country (XC) - Dual - 9/30/2002

Monday, 9/30/2002
approx 7-10pm
99348 1.1 Hobbs
Jeff - Dual Night

Night Flight XC
Asked Jeff for a longer/more complex night-XC, so we went to Salinas: SNS.

This was part-routine, part-lots *lots* of vectoring by ATC, and parts VOR tracking to
fly direct to SNS.

Overall - my 2 full stop night landings were much easier than on the first night flight.

Tried following the ILS for OAK 27R, but read the vertical indicator (horiz bar) wrong, and got
way high, but still landed and taxiid off on Golf.

note: I want a GPS for serious night flight - maybe for simple jaunts to APC or LVK it's ok w/o them... but
expect to follow highways etc. and be comfortable with the area.

Night this time was really nice - only problem was holding altitude - need to rely more
on instruments.

ATC vectors were soo frequent/far off course, that my XC plan was nearly useless. Except for
VOR freqs/idents, and the mental work of pre-flight planning/familiarity with the city outlines etc,
didn't follow much of the plan.

Highways are easy to see. Airport Beacons still hard to see, but much easier this time.