I had planned a night flight Saturday. Just looking outside in the early afternoon, it was perfect, not a cloud in the sky, just blue. As I did my preparation, I saw that the weather was supposed to deteriorate around 4PM. I thought this was a bit conservative but just to be safe, I would have a clear and a cloudy plan.
I was off to the airport around 4. Yes sunset was 6:05 PM so night started at 6:35 but I had work to do before I could have fun. My plan was to clean the plane, well some of it. I have been cleaning the plane in phases. The process of washing and waxing is a lot more labor intensive on the Baron so I have been lazy and just doing small parts over many days. So far the fuselage including the belly, the horizontal tail and the left wing top have been completed. I have noticed that CC always shows up for rides but seems to be busy during the waxing times.
Getting to the hangar I decided to clean the bottom behind the engines. This is where the oil and exhaust stains form so not my favorite part. I did manage to put off the grimy work by bringing my label maker and finally labelling my screw collection. So after procrastinating a bit, it was onto the creeper to degrease and then destain the bottom. I use a cleaner wax which seems to do a nice job rubbing off the exhaust stains but its a lot of dirty work.
I took a break to look at the weather and it had gotten worse than forecast. This was sort of cool as I was happy to get some night IFR practice. I filed a flightplan TAY KLCQ EPXOM. EPXOM is one of the dog leg fixes for the GPS32 approach so that would set me up for a return home.
After lots of scrubbing, the sun set and I had the guys come out and add some gas. Since we would be IFR, I wanted more reserves. We ended up landing with just over four hours in the tanks but extra gas is only a problem in the rarest of circumstances. We had a really cool departure to the West. It wasn't very low over the field but to the West the bases were around 1300.
We departed runway 5 with a turn to the West, we were initially held to 2000 but were soon cleared to 4000. We had left a dark and grey world and coming out of the clouds we broke into the fading light with the beautiful colors of sunset. As we cruised along above the layer our light faded and we were truly in the dark. Over Lake City it was mostly clear but we could see layers back to the East.
Heading home we pondered our options. The field was calling 2300 so that should mean an easy visual but the clouds to the West were all much lower, around 1300. The other factor was the winds. They were gusty, 040 at 12-20. My preference was runway 5 but the 32 approach does not allow circling at night. This is because of some really tall towers South of the airport. There is now 5 approach also because of those towers
Thinking through all this our plan was to shoot the 32 approach and if the weather was good, we could cancel IFR and make anormal VFR approach to 5 and if not, take the challenging cross wind to 32. While I thought the VFR option would work, a King Air had recently departed and reported the bases as 1300 but he had gone West. My local knowledge said that the clouds are often better East of the Airport than the West.
We were cleared for the approach outside EXPOM and crossing descended to 1900. The beach was clear and on the dogleg I could see the end of runway 32. The tower was still reporting 2300 right over the field, it was looking good. The only issue I had were some small low clouds I could see between me and the airport.
We were transferred to tower and started tracking inbound from JEVAG. The low clouds slid past us and as we reached the FAF, I could see we had good visibility and cloud clearance all the way into the field. I had the runways and those pesky towers in sight so I canceled IFR, squawked 1200 and was given a landing clearance for 5. As you can see from the last blurry picture, it was a weird hazy type of night. Using 5 made the landing easy and we soon had the plane in the hangar.
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