Melbourne FL airport -- approach

P58 Baron
"Jim Macklin" wrote
in message news:t%Jtf.38733$QW2.32700@dukeread08...
| On more than one occasion, on a moonless night, over
| sparsely populated areas, with lots of stars in the sky
and
| a similar number of lights on the ground, with those
lights
| reflecting on the windshield, you can lose all visual
sense
| of right side up unless you fly by the instruments. This
| was a real problem on night coming out eastbound from
Denver
| Stapleton (long time ago, single pilot demo flight in a
| pre-84 P68 Baron). It was totally clear, visibility was
| over 100 miles and even though I was IFR, I was being
given
| traffic at all altitudes, some was participating, some had
| transponders and encoding, some didn't. I tried to hand
fly
| the departure for about 3 or 4 minutes. It was very
| difficult, since ATC was forcing me to look outside and
| there was nothing outside to see but aircraft lights
above,
| below and level, all moving. Finally learned to turn the
| autopilot ON and let it do the flying while I looked 90%
of
| the time for the traffic, and monitored the AP with quick
| glances.
|
| You get the same loss of visual reference over water with
| just a few stars and boats on the water. [JFKjr may have
had
| this problem]
|
| There is at least one area in NW Arkansas that has a radio
| warning about rising terrain.
|
|
| --
| Merry Christmas
| Have a Safe and Happy New Year
| Live Long and Prosper
| Jim Macklin
| "Grumman-581"
wrote
| in message
...
|| "George Patterson" wrote in message
| news:kFotf.2261$uv.1145@trnddc06...
|| Distant lights on the ground often create a "false
| horizon" at night.
||
|| I was flying back to Houston from Oshkosh a few years
| ago... I was somewhere
|| over Arkansas at the time... The lights on the ground
gave
| me the impression
|| that there might be mountains around there... I was on
| flight following at
|| the time, so I asked what the maximum height of the
Ozarks
| were around
|| there... The controller informed me that I was nowhere
| near the Ozarks and
|| there was no mountains that would be at my altitude...
| Very strange visual
|| effect...
||
||
|
|