I have been flying a good bit lately. Over 20 hours in July and will do that again in August. That said I had a run of almost 40 hours of day VFR flights. While these flights are keeping me proficient in some areas, I have had less instrument time and no night. I did complete an IPC in late June and flew an IFR flight on Monday.
Monday I had run down to the mechanic to diagnose and fix some minor issues. One issue was my right pressure pump, it looked like I had a leak in a line. We checked the most obvious place at the pump and it was all good. Most of the lines are buried in the plane and require removing the interior to access but the regulators are behind the engines and after opening 2 panels I found the culprit. It was quickly replaced and after adjusting the heater Iris Valve Actuator I was done. This flight was good weather but at least I practiced the instrument procedures.
I had been doing well on Night proficiency until May with at least one night flight a month. The summer comes, the light lasts forever ,the storms come and my currency expires. I decided it was time to knock the rust off and started looking for a good evening. Thursday the rains came late and while technically I could have gone out, there were lingering showers and I decided to try Friday.
Friday was looking good with early storms. This usually means that by sunset things have calmed down. Everything was looking good and while I was seeing a line of storms form in Georgia, they were far away. After sunset I headed for the airport. Remember you need to wait an hour after sunset for it to count. Sorta like no swimming until 20 minutes after you eat.
It was getting dark and as I drove I was seeing lots of lightning to the North. This concerned me a bit as the line seemed to have picked up speed. Arriving at the airport The skies looked tranquil some directions but still lots of lightning North. The storms were still 60 miles out so it looked good but now I was seeing a new cell by Saint Augustine where I planned to do my Stop and Goes.
The runway at home is too short for this but at SGJ I can land in 3,000' and have 5,000' left for departure. SGJ can be a challenging airport at night especially 13 as you depart over the swamp with just a bit of land until the ocean and with the nose up, it can be a black hole. You have some visual references to the side but I prefer to incorporate a strong scan of my instruments as well as outside. It is too easy to let the nose drop when turning crosswind to fully rely on the outside clues.
While the sky was putting on an impressive show, I fired up, taxied out and headed off to practice. I had decided that I would head back and give up if the strong storms got to the outer ring of the JAX airspace. This is 25 miles buffer and I would be no further than 10 minutes from home. I also left one map looking at the big picture so that it could not creep up on me.
Arriving at SGJ the cell I was watching had moved South and had not intensified with the convection further South. After completing my currency landings I headed back home. The weather had moved closer but stayed a respectful distance. I fired up the radar and was able to easily see the weather. I was using a +6.25 degree tilt which would have shot over smaller storms. I needed the tilt to avoid seeing downtown Jacksonville. What it told me was that these storms were serious. The radar did confirmed that I wold have at least 30 miles between me and the storms when I landed.
In the end the storms sort of morphed and did brush the airport but we did not get a drop from them at the house. They also slowed down just after I landed and took their sweet time arriving.
