Flight# 22

The FBO closes by 5 pm. So, we couldn't get the fuel truck to fill the tanks prior to our cross country night flight. There is a self service AvGas station within the airport. I used my credit card and filled the tanks myself! This is different from filling gas for your car. You have to attach the ground cable to airframe first before you start fueling.

We called Flight Service (1-800-WX-BRIEF) to get a standard briefing for our route. We decided to request for flight following once in the air from Orlando Approach instead of filing a flight plan. You got to plan every thing ahead for night flying. Several radio frequencies like, Approach control, source and destination's (AWOS and CTAF), VOR frequencies along the way so that you can intercept different VOR radials to find your location on a map in case you are lost!

After plotting the route on the Jacksonville sectional chart from KGIF to KOCF, we measured the True course heading of 340 degrees. Magnetic course is 340 + 5 degree isogonic deviation near KGIF. The FSS briefer told us that wind was 10 kts from 110 degrees. Which means, there will be some right quartering tail wind. With the wind correction angle, the magnetic heading comes to 355 degrees. After taking off from Runway 5 around 8 pm, we headed towards 355 degrees. Our altitude was 4,500 ft KGIF to KOCF and 5,500 ft from KOCF to KGIF. For VFR flights, above 3,000 ft, the altitude needs to be odd thousands + 500 ft when flying magnetic course 0-179 and even thousands + 500 ft when flying 180-359. On the way back, we could see Orlando to our left and Tampa to our right. We also saw the Disney fireworks far away. It was fun to turn on Runway lights and change their intensity using the mic button with Radio tuned to the CTAF frequency.

We received flight following from Orlando Approach who then handed us off to Jacksonville Approach after a while. On the way back, Jacksonville Approach and Tampa Approach handled our flight following. Bill pretty much handled these communications with the approach controllers. We had to squawk the code they give us in the transponder so that they could monitor our flight path. At night, Runways appear much higher than the true elevation! After landing on Runway 5, I got to practice a few more Take offs and landings flying around the pattern in the night. Since we were running low on fuel, we called it off for the day after 8 take offs and landings. The strong cross wind made these landings difficult. It was midnight by the time I reached the room. I need to be back at the airport by 8 am tomorrow. My total Hobbs time for today was 7.6 hours! This was almost close to the combined time of my first 10 flights!

The Hobbs time of this flight was 3.1 hours. Cumulative Hobbs time: 23.7 hours.