Night Flight

The allure of a regional airline is not for everyone, and for some a spot in the right seat of a 50 seat regional jet cant come soon enough. I am one of those folks who is stopping to catch my breath along the way. I am enjoying every minute of every flight that I take with my students and using every opportunity I have to impart my knowledge upon that particular student. I have been teaching for a couple months now and it has been an absolute blast. I learn something new every time I fly, and I still believe that I learn more than my student does each flight…believe it or not.

Last weekend was a long one. I flew with a student up to Frederick (KFDK) to do some landings and work on some maneuvers. We were north of FDK and had to pay special attention to the airspace around P40-President Bush’s special use mountain cottage airspace. After experimenting with some engine out procedures and a quick touch and go we headed back to JYO. We were southbound into the ADIZ at 2500 msl and treated to a spectacular sunset over the blue ridge mountains.

We taxied in and parked in a transient spot. Requested fuel and went in to finish our flight planning for the night flight that we had planned to York PA.-THV. I used the opportunity to teach my student about night flying, traffic scanning at night, vor navigation, and flight following. We found the airport no problem, and his flight planning worked out nicely. We did a couple touch and goes there and discovered that there were no taxiway lights. So, finding the turnoff of the runway was a real challenge. We headed back to Leesburg at 4500 msl. Tracked the FDK vor and then checked in with Potomac to get our code back into the ADIZ. After some runway confusion about which was in use we entered the left downwind for runway 35 at JYO. Nice landing late at night and a perfect end to the day.

I am headed to Florida to build some multi time in May, and when I get back Ill be at 600 and 100 multi. Those are mins for a lot of regionals right now. I am tempted to start applying but I think I want to teach for at least a little while. Who knows. I guess its probably better to get that seniority number and move forward. Really exciting fun stuff.