Sounds not unlike an experience I had a few years ago doing a favour to Whirylbird, whose C150 had just come out of maintenance (I believe that her syndicate changed maintenance company shortly afterwards).
Identifying a well lit airfield, and joining in the dark with existing traffic there wasn't too difficult, the bit where my buttocks started to clench was putting the flaps down - they unsurprisingly didn't, which however did surprise me at the time since for some reason that just hadn't occurred to me up to that point, despite appropriate load shedding and (just in case it was working) squawking radio failure. I was surprised and relieved to discover that I could do a flapless landing in the dark on a 600m runway that I'd not landed on for several years - in about 1/3 of the available length!
Out of interest PilotDAR, whilst it obviously came off okay, are you still convinced that landing at your badly lit home strip was the best option rather than diverting somewhere with better lighting? (Assuming that you had somewhere)
Originally Posted by tacpot
I also keep a couple of those light sticks that illuminate when you break them. They have a integral hook that allows you to clip them onto just about anything on the cabin roof. They provide a gentle illumination for over an hour, and the batteries can never fail...
What a damned good idea, I keep some for camping but for some reason it never occurred to me to keep one or two in my flight bag.
G