Quick Flight

Well, the weather was looking hopeful on Saturday evening so I headed out to the airport for an evening flight. It's not getting dark until 8pm here now, so I had rented the Diamond DA-20 once again from 6 'til 9pm.

I departed northeast from KDWH, and headed over the Woodlands and just south of Lone Star Executive (KCXO). The ride was smooth, thanks to the cooling air, and the light Diamond soon reached 1,700 feet (to remain under the Houston Class B airspace) and accelerated to 125 knots. After Lone Star, the class B airspace begins to rise up until it dissapears entirely about 10 miles further on, so I climbed up to 5,500 feet and flew over the Sam Houston National Forest until crossing the shoreline of Lake Livingston, a large reservoir.



It was only another 15 minutes or so to Lufkin from here, so I pressed on and began a 500 fpm (feet per minute) decsent as instructed by the GPS. This set me up for a nice left downwind for runway 15, and I touched town uneventfully and taxied to the ramp.



With sunset minutes away, I didn't linger on the ground for too long, and instead took off to head back towards Houston. It's always great to see sunset from an aircraft, and I made a touch and go landing at Livingston. By the way, I should point out that a touch and go is a landing where you touch down, but then immediately go flaps up, and throttle full for an immediate takeoff.

I turned right to leave the airport area to the South, which took me immediately over the lake again, where the was the odd boat cutting through the water.



By the time I had reached KDWH, it was 30 minutes after sunset and pretty much dark. This makes the landing a little more difficult as your depth perception is poor in low light conditions. This means you can't see how high you are above the runway, which calls for a slightly different landing technique. I basically set up in a nice glide to the runway, and then once I think I am within 10 feet begin a slow flare that slows my descent yet further, and I hold this until the wheels touch the ground.

One thing to be very careful of is to not to decend too low on approach. For this reason airports usually have some type of indicator that will give you a visual indication of glideslope angle. At Hooks on 17R it is a series of 4 lights on the right of the runway. All white means you are too high, all red means you are too low. I followed it down with 2 red and 2 white which means you are on glideslope.

As I had not flown after dark for some time, I made this landing a touch and go, and went around in the pattern once more. The second landing was executed with no problems, and I asked the controller to make the next one a full stop. I was cleared to land on 17R, and I called it a night.

Great fun, and a great aircraft to fly.

Labels: flying

posted by Sam @ 6:45 PM