Night flying-count towards PPL?

[Slopey]

I was under the impression that you couldn't do the night flying until you'd done a certain amount of P1/ut time under the PPL syllabus - obviously, you'd need to be able to go solo! (however there may be no requirement).

Aside from using lit structures or roads for night VFR nav, it's not much different with a better instrument scan required - take offs can be interesting when it's pitch black with no visual cues.

But night flying is great fun - quieter, smoother mostly, and visually stunning - nothing like landing on a nice big runway with all the lights on - very cool!

[Robbo0885]

Thanks for the info all. I am wondering when talking ot my flying club if I will be able to do the night flying as part of PPl, or like somoen else said, perhaps they will not allow me to do it as part of PPL and get the rental prices out of me!

Thinking about it actually, can a flying club say that they will not train you in night flying as part of your PPL? If you want to do it, and they have the instructors, can they say no and make you wait til post PPL?

I guess if youre doing a PPL they are only required to teach you the mandatory syllabus?

[Major Major]

I too enquired about this but haven't got anywhere. It might be that Barton shuts at sunset (which is virtually mid afternoon at this time of year) so it's more hassle than it's worth.

I'm half tempted to see if I couldn't go with a different flying school to do my night rating, even though I'm just a stude.

[S-Works]

It's not a night rating. It's a night qualification. The last night rating was issued over 6 years ago.

Oh my god, I have become Mike Cross................

[Lasiorhinus]

If your flying school 'refused' to train you for night flight in order to squeeze more revenue, I'd be rather tempted to take ALL my business to their competition (and let them know why, too). You're the student, you're the customer.

bose-x, my licence shows a night rating - but I live a very long way away from you!

[S-Works]

Robbo however is not a long way from me and as a student he will be doing a JAA license which has a night qualification not a rating. Old CAA had a night rating.

My link to LASORS cleared showed qualification.....

[Squawk7143]

Night Qualification

Robbo0885,

For what it's worth...You could go and insist that you do your NQ during your PPL . After all it's a minimum of 45 hours for a JAR FCL SEP (A). In the final analysis I am sure your club will be happy to let you burn hours doing so if that is what you say you want to do (it's your money after all) . Then if you fail your skills test at 45 hours because your PFL's were not up to scratch or your glide approach was mince you have no room to complain.

I completed the syllabus for PPL in 40 hours. I used the 5 remaining to practice diversions , PFL's and steep turns for my skills test. I did this not because my skills were poor but because the objective was to get a PPL. I did the night qual immediately after.

I guess the choice is yours, if you are confident ( and some folks are ) then go for it...if not.......but the club will get the money one way or the other if that's what they are about.

[BackPacker]

Squawk, you make it sound as if things are mutually exclusive: you either train for the NQ or the PPL skills test. But that's simply not true.

I did the dual part of my NQ as part of the PPL. Bunch of circuits followed by a very long x-country flight (total flight time a little over three hours as I recall). During the flight, over some uninhabited terrain (no lights) and with some rain clouds around, I regularly had to use instruments just to stay level. We did some touch & gos at major airports (I did my PPL in Florida), it was the first time I ever flew in class B, several parts of the flight were done using radio navigation, and crossing the Orlando CTR was done using radar vectors. Other than fuel burn/endurance/w&b/weather/notams and the initial leg, the flight was largely unplanned, making it a continuous diversion exercise. ("Okay, where are we" "Right here" "Okay, now take me there and give me an ETA" etc.)

All very useful stuff to learn/practice/experience, even in daytime. Glad I did it.

And arguably, you could even practice stalls, steep turns, PFLs etc in the dark.

[Robbo0885]

Steep turns in the dark? Sitting at my desk here I felt as if i just dropped 300ft just reading that!

My thinking was I can only get to my club on a Sat really, and if weather is naff, thats it for that week. Doing flights at 7 or 8 on weeknights, although dark, I would treat them as normal hours, doing circuits, glide approaches, flapless, practicing just like if it were daytime. (I may draw the line at steep turns in the dark, however!)

I am thinking it is a way to expand the possible hours I can fly in any one week over winter, getting me up to speed that little bit quicker for the PPL skills test.

Incidently, how many hours instruction do you typically get before you are flying solo to practice? I am at 18 hrs now, and have 1hr solo over 2 flights. I have just finished PFLs and my first trip to another airfield for circuits (short field essentially). I'm not sure whats left to cover, other than Nav which i havent done (but sitting exam next week) but surely the rest of the time to 45hrs is not just me flying solo?

[gcolyer]

I am not sure you will find an average time to solo. It varies from student to student, school to school, insturctor to instructor...blah blah blah.

I solo'd after 9.4 hours. And I remember I was packing my pants right up until I started my take off run, after that procedure kicks in and youre off.

[BackPacker]

Steep turns in the dark? Sitting at my desk here I felt as if i just dropped 300ft just reading that!

Ah, forgot to add a little power to your desk, and pitch your chair up a bit, surely?

Seriously though, the only significant difference between steep turns in the dark and steep turns in daytime is the lack of a good horizon, so you've got to determine bank angle from the AH instead of by looking outside. But even in daylight you will need the altimeter to determine whether you're losing height or not. No different in the dark.

The things you need to be more careful about are stalls. When you don't have a visible horizon, perform a fully developed stall and mismanage it, you might end up in a spin. Not good.

And if you do PFLs at night, well, realistically it's not going to accomplish much with regards to training. For safety reasons you've got stay above MSA or be absolutely sure there's no unlit tower or something in your path. And since you can't see hedges, barbed wire, ditches and so forth in the dark (unless there's a good moon), where are you going to go? But that question needs answering regardless of whether it's a practice FL or a for-real FL in the dark.

[Slopey]

You could also take your Skills Test earlier if you were ready for it. It's possible to take the test anywhere after 35 hours iirc (might be wrong on that, but it's definately possible). Then you can build up to the 45 required for licence issue any way you want - NQ or just solo flying.

Robbo - yep - once you start going solo - provided you've got enough dual hours in the book, it's mostly solo circuit training, then your solo xcs which you (might) fly with an instructor first to show you the route.

Once you've gone solo you can expect your 'accompanied' time to drop to about 30% of the hours remaining.

Get ready to love doing those circuits!

[IO540]

On a slight tangent, I would strongly advise anybody doing the PPL and the NQ to make sure they have the required logbook entries for the FAA PPL too.

This is easy to do; you just structure the flying a bit differently and do some real night cross country flights with the instructor.

The details are in the FAR/AIM.

Make sure the appropriate flights are annotated accordingly in the logbook and signed by the instructor.

One day you may be grateful for this free piece of advice

[Gertrude the Wombat]

The idea of flying at night when I don't have any instrument qualifications is deeply unappealing to me. Inadvertant flight over cloud, inadvertant flight into cloud, and so on.

So I'm doing the IMCR first.

And in fact I'll be doing quite a bit of the IMCR training at night, the 4pm slot being by far the easiest for which to book an instructor at weekends!

As a result of which experience I'll be in a better position to decide whether I actually want to do the NQ at all.

[IO540]

The idea of flying at night when I don't have any instrument qualifications is deeply unappealing to me

I agree entirely. To me, this is a great inconsistency and I think the only reason the GA scene gets away with this (or occassionally not, see Kennedy Jr) is because very few plain PPLs fly at night anyway and when they do they pick the earliest possible time that enables them to collect the 3 logbook entries And it's not really dark then. Also, in much of the UK, there are lights on the ground.

[S-Works]

I love night flying and have always done it long before becoming IMC and then IR rated. I agree marginal nights without an Instrument qualification should be avoided. But on the crystal clear winter nights that we get where you can see for a hundred miles I still find the experience as thrilling as the first time I did it. These nights there is no need for anymore than the basic instrument skills we teach to do the transition on take take off.

[Gertrude the Wombat]

Steep turns in the dark? Sitting at my desk here I felt as if i just dropped 300ft just reading that!

I've just done my first night flying ... which was an IMC lesson covering recovery from unusual attitudes with half the instruments covered up ...

Not fun.

Interesting. But not fun.

[MikeJ]

Gertrude,
Just out of interest, since you cannot see anything outside the cockpit during IMC training, including that wonderful exercise in recovery from unusual attitudes on limited panel, how is it relevant whether its black or white out there?

[Gertrude the Wombat]

(1) It's not true that you can't see anything. Even with all the hoods and googles etc there are still external cues present in the form of lighting levels and so on that you perceive from the corner of your eye.

(2) It seems to be relevant to the instructor!

(3) And there's always the consideration that if the fan stops at night you die.

[Carvair]

Yes, it will count towards your PPL. May not improve navigation, but will certainly improve your landings!