"NW_PILOT" wrote in message
...

Yep, it was a real Erie feeling like the feeling I got my first time in
actual IFR what was even weirder it was so calm it did not even feel like
we
were moving just standing still in the black open space. I had the
airplane

I'm a low-time pilot (~220 hrs), recently instrument rated. I've only truly
scared myself a few times in an airplane, one of which was my first night
flight a few months after getting my private. It was a crystal-clear night,
early fall in New England. It had been six months or so since I'd flown at
night, first time solo. I took off, and within about a minute got that
"ohmigod I don't know wtf I am" feeling. I fly near Boston so there was just
a carpet of lights everywhere below me. Very pretty actually. After a few
nervous moments I said, "ok, relax, you've got 4 hours of gas and the
plane's A-OK." I bumbled around until I hit a major highway, followed that
to another airport, then was able to orient myself to get back home, which I
did within about 30 minutes of taking off.

I'll confess that I haven't flown at night since then. I decided I would
wait until I got my instrument, and that I'd go at night on IFR flight plans
for a while until I felt more comfortable with it. Just haven't had time
since then but I should do it while it still gets dark nice and early.

Oh, and did I mention the landing light burned out? Luckily I'd gotten a
floatplane rating about a month earlier, so I just went into "glassy water
landing" mode and did a power-on approach. My field is lit up like a
christmas tree at night so it actually wasn't so stressful.

I was lucky enough to have a CFII who really liked instructing in the soup,
and near Boston it comes around pretty regularly. One of the other times I
got good and puckered up was about 25 hours into my IR, we went into the
scud and I got good and spun. He liked to keep the AI covered most of the
time, and looking at the DG and TC spinning and banking I just couldn't
figure out left from right. I could feel our airspeed and G forces building,
and after we turned about 270 degrees, he looked over and said, "boy, you're
sure confused," and within about 15 seconds had us back on course &
altitude. ATC didn't even mention it.

-cwk.