The 'wannabe' pilot's journal - Chapter 4: Night Rating

It’s been a while since my last post, so I figured it was time to write another chapter in the Wannabe Pilot’s Diary.

In the previous chapters, I described the process of obtaining a private pilot license with a rating for single-engine piston aircraft under visual flight rules (VFR). However, that rating doesn’t include night VFR flying. In other words, 30 minutes after sunset, the aircraft is grounded and stays grounded until 30 minutes before sunrise the next day — legally, you’re not allowed to fly beyond that.

Luckily, there’s the option to obtain a Night VFR rating, which requires additional certification. Of course, to have that rating added to your license, you need to complete additional training — five hours of flight training preceded by six hours of theory.

To begin night flying training, you must hold a valid flight crew license and a valid medical certificate. And around €1,300. Flying, unfortunately, is expensive.

As already mentioned, the first part of the training is ground school. The first thing you’ll learn is when night flying officially begins — or legally, when daytime ends. Night flying begins 30 minutes after sunset. Weather apps now display the exact time of sunset down to the minute (just add 30 minutes to that). In more technical terms, night flying starts after the end of civil twilight — that is, when the sun is 6 degrees below the horizon. The same goes for morning hours — night flying ends 30 minutes before sunrise, which is the start of civil twilight, i.e., when the sun rises past 6 degrees below the horizon.

© AvioRadar – Waiting for sunset on the apron has a special kind of feeling 🙂

Don’t be fooled — even though it’s night flying, you still need to meet “VFR minimums,” which include a minimum horizontal visibility of 5,000 meters, a minimum distance from clouds of 1,000 feet, and, depending on airspace class, maintaining visual contact with the ground.

The theory portion also covers many other interesting and important topics, such as the lighting layout on aircraft and airport surfaces (apron, taxiways, runways), effects and illusions caused by flying in darkness, night navigation, how to adapt your eyes to night conditions, and so on.

After theory comes the five hours of flight training, which includes a portion for airwork, landing practice, a cross-country flight that requires leaving the vicinity of the airport, and solo landings. In Croatia, as you might guess, it’s a bit tricky to find an airport where you can do night flying. LDZA (Zagreb) is too expensive, sports airfields (if operational) have no lighting, and other civil airports have limited working hours that restrict flight availability. Luckily, my school managed to arrange full-night flying at LDRI (Rijeka Airport) — the airport was closed to everyone except us. Talk about VIP treatment! 🙂

When flying at night, it’s crucial during preflight to avoid looking directly at the flashlight you’re using to inspect the aircraft. Ideally, you’d use a red LED flashlight for the preflight check, but honestly, a classic white light illuminates what you need better — just don’t look straight into it. It takes the human eye up to 30 minutes to fully adjust to night vision, and a single glance at a light source can ruin that in an instant. When setting up the cockpit, pay attention to panel lighting intensity to avoid excessive contrast between instruments and lighting. The white needle on instruments can disappear if the lighting is too strong. The popular “red dome light” illuminating the panel is perfect in this case, as is a red reading light, if your aircraft has one. Basically, keep cockpit lighting to a minimum, use red lights as much as possible, dim your phone screen, etc. You get the point 🙂

My practical training began with airwork — the same exercises as for the PPL checkride (steep turns, stall recovery, coordinated turns, etc.). The maneuvers are done entirely by instrument reference, and you should look outside as little as possible. The tricky part is that you have no visual reference during maneuvers, so your brain starts playing tricks on you. I had never experienced even the slightest vertigo in a plane before, until a 45-degree steep turn where I glanced outside — pitch black through the windshield, no visual horizon — your balance center gets confused because the instruments (and your body) tell you that you’re banked at 45 degrees in a 360-degree turn, but there’s nothing outside to confirm it. After a few more turns, you get used to it, and after about 15 minutes of exercises, everything settles into place.

During landing practice, it’s important to “get a feel” for how the runway rectangle should appear for a proper approach. PAPI (Precision Approach Path Indicator) helps, but if your instructor is serious about good training, they’ll request the tower to change lighting setups for every landing — turning PAPI off, turning off the centerline lights, approach lights, etc. Landing with PAPI is pretty straightforward: two white and two red lights are ideal; more red means you’re too low (4 red = you’re dead), and more white means you’re too high. If PAPI isn’t available or is turned off, you need to develop a sense of proper glide path. At most airports, you can ask the tower to adjust lighting for training needs, dim or brighten it as needed.

My night cross-country was actually a bit eerie. You leave the airport and city lights behind and, in my case, fly over the sea. Suddenly, everything is black — you can’t distinguish land from sea, or tell whether Učka mountain is ahead or just flat terrain. That’s the moment you rely on your preparation and route planning. Once you get your head around it, the spooky feeling goes away, and night flying can be more beautiful than flying by day. My landing took place just before sunrise — the sea turned a dark blue (as opposed to pitch black before), and seeing dark blue water, city lights, and the airport in front of you… it was stunning. It reminded me why I fly and why I love flying.

After the exercises, route, and traffic patterns, it’s time for a short check — solo maneuvers and traffic patterns. When flying night circuits, it’s crucial to identify illuminated visual references, monitor wind carefully, and apply wind correction angle (WCA), because you don’t have the same visual overview of the runway as during the day — you can drift much further than you realize. Also, pay close attention to lights (landing light in particular) — if you forget to turn it on, you won’t notice until you’re just a few meters above the runway. Running the checklist is extremely important in these cases — not only can you make landing harder for yourself (possibly requiring a go-around), but landing lights also signal your intentions to the tower and other aircraft and help make you visible on the horizon.

To sum up, night flying is something special — different from day flying. Having a Night VFR (NVFR) rating gives you more freedom in planning, as you’re not limited by daylight hours. And in the end, just like with all piloting: if you’re not enjoying it, you’re doing something wrong 🙂

Fly safe!