6 airports, 14 landings, 1 night. It may sound like the tag line for a new movie but it isn’t. I decided that it would be the best if we did my night hours in 1 sitting to avoid having to fly so late since it doesn’t get dark until about 9 now that it’s Summer.

We took off from Van Nuys before the sun went down and flew to Riverside via Hemet (another uncontrolled airport). Once we landing in Riverside, we got out and stretched our legs before the night fall. Just as we got into the plane the tower announced that they would be closing. We took off from Riverside and basically landed at every airport in the nearby area. Most of the airports were uncontrolled at that time. We landed at 6 different airports to a full stop then started heading back to Van Nuys. On the way back, we called Burbank tower for a landing and were cleared. We made 1 landing then went around for a second. In the pattern the air traffic controller said there was a heavy plane inbound for the intersecting runway and that we would be changing runways to be #2 behind the heavy…flying with the big boys!

We made our landing, takeoff, then went back to Van Nuys. We were just shy of the requirement so asked for a closed traffic take off and were notified that we were passed the hours that closed traffic was allowed. We made a normal takeoff and did a couple of maneuvers outside of the class C airspace then came back for a full stop landing, parked, and called it a night.

Though the scenery was amazing at night as if someone had turned the night sky upside down, it is also pretty scary. I could see how flying at night could be close to IFR since terrain can’t be seen. It will be something that I will put off until I have some more hours to my name.

I logged 4.4 hours.