Scudrunners

black night landing

A "black" night landing is defined as a landing
without any lights.

No landing light, no runway lights.  Completely
illegal, and like the 0/0 landing, you should learn
how to do it, because sooner or later you will
have to do one, if you keep flying long enough
in someplace as desolate as Canada.

You lose your electrical system, how are you
going to activate your ARCAL?  If there isn't
a towered airport within your fuel range that
you can bomb into NORDO (they're going to
love you for that) that has lights ...

How are you going to safely get onto the ground?

Ask your baby-faced 300hr FTU instructor to
show you one.

From a systems perspective, you are one
POF away from a bad experience.  And good
luck with a handheld.  With that stupid rubber
antenna, which is mostly a load to avoid frying
the final output stage, you will have difficulty
tripping the ARCAL squelch which I have seen
airport operators set very, very tight to avoid
activation by aircraft at other airports.

What are you going to do - fly inverted at low
altitude over the ARCAL antenna at night in
the dark, madly clicking the mike button on
the handheld?

The reason two stage amber disappeared from training is because there is some actual work involved in fitting the amber screens in the side windows and the windshield.

Work.... flight instructor....

Chuck:  I used to do that with PPL students and if I recall SCUDRUNNER was one of my victims..and in a Fleet Canuck with no brakes on the right side.  I actually simulated a GCA with me as controller from the right seat.  All this under the hood with only basic panel.

We would do a No Compass approach to touch down and the victim had to keep the aircraft on the centre-line until at taxi speed at which time he could remove the hood.  We would edo take-offs under the hood as well.

Barney

There were many times , while based in Zweibrucken, Germany, that I ran a/c right to touch down during periods of O/O fog conditions.  If that driver of Old Shaky had called Zei radar on 344.0 we could have put him right on the runway with no sweat what so ever.

Frequently Zwei was the last base on the continent to go WOXOF bur when it did we were busy recovering other peoples aircraft.  Five years over there and nearly 10,000 GCA runs and you new when to call touch down.

I had a helo with min fuel miss two approaches because the pilot would not trust me below 200 and a half then flame out on touch down on  the third try.

On another late night recovery a Nord Atlas with a load of paratroopers on board and WOXOF landed min fuel then had to pull the mixtures on the runway because he could not see to taxi.

It was a terrific experience, one that very few people get to experience and very rewarding as well to know that you earned your pay.

Barney

Colonel Sanders wrote: But Chuck - aren't you worried that if the wx
went to shit and you were forced to do a 0/0
landing that TC might send you a registered
letter afterwards?

I mean, wouldn't it be better to crash and die
than to hear from Enforcement?

ICAO Annex 2 - specifically:-

2.3.1 Responsibility of pilot-in-command

The pilot-in-command of an aircraft shall, whether manipulating
the controls or not, be responsible for the operation of
the aircraft in accordance with the rules of the air, except that
the pilot-in-command may depart from these rules in circumstances
that render such departure absolutely necessary in the
interests of safety.

I've often thought that it's too bad that TC couldn't put some sort of actual IMC requirement as part of the instrument rating, but then I thought about winters in Canada in aircraft with no de-ice equipment and realized that it probably wouldn't work too well.  Maybe they could do it as a trade off of hours sort of things as an incentive to do some of the instrument training during a time of year when ice wasn't a issue.  Like require 5 hours of actual, but if you can't do actual, then you need to increase the current simulated by another 5 or something.

There are two reasons apart from ice that instrument students don't get cloud time and that's because (a) the school doesn't allow it and (b) the  instructor isn't confident enough to do it, and frankly, (a) exists because the school is aware of (b) being true.  It comes back to the big problem in the industry of low time inexperienced pilots being the ones that teach new pilots.  That being said, I have no idea how you could even start to fix that without financially crippling schools and clubs - the cost of an instructor with thousand of hours real life experience would have to be way better than a "regular" flying job, because most people at that stage don't want to go back to sitting right seat in a single and not touching anything.  (Or maybe I'm letting my personal feelings show - been there, done that, don't wanna do it again).

Sorry to drift from the thread topic, just venting and also I want to encourage all instrument students to find an instructor to show you some IMC.  I'm not saying to ditch your current instructor, just try out someone else who will take you in cloud for a few approaches.  Also, I DON'T want to encourage you to try and talk your current instructor to going in cloud if he doesn't feel comfortable with it - that's just a recipe for disaster.

When we had a new F/O hire I used to ask if they had any cloud time, but found out I didn't need to - I could pretty much tell the first time we got into serious IMC...  I think that there's some psychological thing that happens when you realize that you can't just toss off the hood and go "Oh, there's where I am!"

Flying by the use of the instruments and following an IFR flight plan is way, way easier than flying VFR.

To be truly comfortable I need to be in IMC conditions from lift off to IFR minimums because it is just so easy to do it that way.

What are the primary disadvantages of VFR, that you are thinking of Chuck?

VFR requires you to not only monitor the inside of your airplane you need to also keep the big picture outside navigating and looking for other traffic.

Conversely when flying by reference to the instruments everything is in the same field of vision.

As to navigating it is very simple you follow a highway in the sky and generally are in radar contact with ATC to make it even more simple.

And another comfort factor being in IMC is you have your own block of airspace to protect you from running into another aircraft.

All in all the comparison between the two is night and day as far as simplicity goes.

Anyone who tries to tell you learning IFR is difficult is either bull shitting you or are not competent them self.

The industry makes money trying to make the easy look difficult.

does closing your eyes for landing constitute zero zero landing  ;D

To be able to land on the runway you need a nav aid that will fly you to and down the runway, the ILS localizer does this quite nicely.

In an emergency situation the GPS will at least put you close if not on the runway.

The ADF will at least let you touch down on the airport under control but it is very inaccurate both distance and directionally.

So.

I'd rather end up under control at touch down on an airport rather than off the airport.