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Training for night rating at different outfits

Hey all,

As the dark season is approaching, I think it’s appropriate to raise questions with respect to the night rating for VFR flight at night.

I’m planning on adding this to my license this winter. Too often have I been close to the end of civil evening twilight and I want these trips to be more relaxed.

As I’m commuting quite a lot between different locations due to work reasons, I’m thinking if I can split the training for the night rating across different outfits, namely my club at home in Paderborn and a school in Lübeck.

From my understanding, in order to get the night rating, I only need to proof to the CAA (via log book entries) that I have done the 5 hours minimum training. It should not matter if that has been done by the same instructor (and I’d rather see it as an added benefit to get insights from two instructors that might have different approaches) and it should not matter that I do this in Germany with any German instructor to get the rating entered into my UK-issued EASA license.

One of my motivations is to get checked out at the school in Lübeck to be able to charter there any time in the future and why not combine the check flight with a night lesson.

How is the content of a night rating course usually structured? How could it be “cut”? I reckon you don’t usually do 5 sessions á 1 hour but rather longer sessions. I could imagine doing one session at my club (maybe starting out with circuits? Is that what’s being done?) and doing a second, long session at the other place. Does that make sense?

Thanks.

Hungriger Wolf (EDHF), Germany

I did my practical night flying in 1 (one) night.
Took off near Munich after sunset, crossed all of Germany, flew traffic patterns at some remote former east german air base in a moonless pitch black night, did a low approach at Berlin-Tegel and some radar vectored sightseeing over Berlin … then slept in the clubhouse of some small airport in the east i have forgotten about now, and flew back the next day, not without an ILS at Dresden and a missed approach …

Patrick wrote:

How is the content of a night rating course usually structured? How could it be “cut”?

The requirements are: 5 hours total, of which at least 3 with an instructor, 2 can be flown solo. The solo part must include 5 landings. One hour must be cross-country navigation training.

This leaves an infinity of ways to split the training in different sessions: From “everything in one night” (I’ve done that with students in the past!) to five individual flights on five different days. It depends very much on weather and closing time of airfields. If you can fly the patterns at your home airfield (we can’t for example, as our international airport is too busy for repeated C152 night landings) then one idea would be to do an hour of dual night patterns on day one with some extended traffic circuits. Next day, you repeat the same solo. On day three, you split the remainder of the five hours into two legs for cross-country navigation and maybe a couple of patterns at a different airfield.

Flying with different instructors is certainly no problem at all. Just listen to their different advice and pick what works best for you. Please don’t start useless discussions like “but your colleague yesterday told me to do it this or that way…”. That’s one of the pet hates of every instructor and a reason why some refuse to instruct other instructor’s students… There are different techniques for night landings and different instructors have set very different safety margins for themselves, especially for potentially lethal stuff like VFR naviagtion over invisible terrain and obstacles.

Splitting the training between different FTOs might be more difficult to achieve because it always means extra paperwork for them. The profit in selling a fife-hour night rating is close to zero and doing extra desk time for next to nothing is not something they really enjoy. “My” FTO would most probably refuse to share one night student with another flying school.

EDDS - Stuttgart

I recall doing the much more stringent FAA PPL night stuff, by staying at hotels in Southend and Cardiff – the only airports in the south of the UK which open late; back then they were actually H24 – and flying at night in heavy rain between the two. Then there was a flight with to Norwich and another hotel…

But the FAA stuff can be done with freelance instructors (where an FAA CFI is required) which makes it far easier to arrange.

The JAA NQ was done out of Shoreham, in the winter, and we got lost. The FI was a 20,000hr ex ATP who used it to demonstrate that at night you can’t tell the difference between one village and another – something which becomes obvious after the first few seconds

Administrator
Shoreham EGKA, United Kingdom

what_next wrote:

Splitting the training between different FTOs might be more difficult to achieve because it always means extra paperwork for them. The profit in selling a fife-hour night rating is close to zero and doing extra desk time for next to nothing is not something they really enjoy. “My” FTO would most probably refuse to share one night student with another flying school.

Another point to consider here. I saw one school quote a fee for the paperwork. Naturally, that assumes dealing with the LBA, which I have no business with. So like with my PPL skill test (done in Germany), I’d rather do the paperwork myself (i.e. fiddling with the forms) and in that sense I wouldn’t book a fixed “course” with them, but rather individual hours – so I’m hoping the paperwork and the split shouldn’t be a problem. I do realize this is a question I’d rather put directly to the ATO in question.

Hungriger Wolf (EDHF), Germany

Peter wrote:

The JAA NQ was done out of Shoreham, in the winter, and we got lost.

I never got lost on a VFR night flight, but this reminds me of my most hair-raising night training: One of our students was doing the CPL only (no IFR) to become a flying missionary in Africa. His church had paid for his training and all he needed was a night rating. For some reason, the last 2:20 were left for the very last moment, the next day his flight to Africa would leave. So I went night flying with him in the worst possible November weather (certainly not the kind of spring weather we are enjoying right now) with pouring rain, gusty wind and overcast of 1000ft and less. No way would we navigate “cross” county, but follow motorways instead, 500ft above the cars. Where there are motorways (in our part of the worls), there are no mountains and high voltage cables are below 500ft. So we fly along the A8 from Stuttgart to Karlsruhe then north along the A5 towards Frankfurt. We reached the boundary of Frankfurt airspace at about the same place where the clouds were too low to continue. So back we turn, A5 to Karlsruhe, A8 to Stuttgart. The rain was even stronger now and flying over the motorway at 500ft we started to fly into and out of some clouds already. So upon reaching the (then) “W1” reporting point with some relief I let him ask for joining instructions. On downwind, we looked at the watch: 2:05 minutes. This would mean that we were short of 10 minutes. Flying downwind at an international airport at 500ft AGL in and out of clouds, another 10 minutes were required. So I told my student: Why not call this a day and just enter those 10 minutes in the logbook. Nobody will notice. He answered: “God will! I am going to be a missionary and I am not allowed to lie.” So with permission of a somewhat bewildered tower controller we extended our downwind leg for another ten minutes to land with 2:20 on the clock. Thereafter I swore to myself that I will never fly again with a religious fundamentalist…

EDDS - Stuttgart

From all ratings, the Night Rating must be the one which is the easiest to get.
Just 5 hours training which is a fun thing to do! I think it will save you some hassle if you complete the training with just a single school.

My night rating was done on two winter nights. We went IFR to Niederrhein EDLV and did circuit training there. The solo hours were done with the instructor sitting next to me: “Now you’re the PIC” ;-)

Night flying is essentially instrument flight. There are some schools in The Netherlands that offer the night training only to students who are doing IR training as well.

There is extra risk involved in night flying. The key is not to stack up risks. I do night flights because it’s a cool thing to do, but only if the weather is fair. I plan my night flights on the days that it’s full moon.

lenthamen wrote:

There is extra risk involved in night flying. The key is not to stack up risks. I do night flights because it’s a cool thing to do, but only if the weather is fair. I plan my night flights on the days that it’s full moon.

True. As I believe we’ve discussed over a beer recently , there’s many factors involved. My main motivation is to be able to extend VFR day trips and and not be limited by the onset of sunset – so the weather needs to be fair to begin with. When I return, that will mostly be airports with sufficient lighting (rather than just the runway outline, as on some smaller airfields.

Hungriger Wolf (EDHF), Germany

I did my night rating in one night – flew the Archer into Münster International before dark, spent an hour discussing the theory of night flying including human factors with my instructor, went out and did 5 circuits with him, then did 5 solo circuits, then flew to Leipzig, landed, paid the fee and returned back to Münster around 1am, book signed, application sent off and had the the new rating a few days later…..

One thing you should however be aware of – flying at night means you must submit a flight plan using IFR waypoints before departing – in Germany, if you take off and discover that, due to unexpectedly strong headwinds, you will be landing after SS+30 (or, under SERA, after the sun has set by more than 6 degrees under the horizon) you cannot simply continue onwards and ask FIS to open a Night VFR plan, you will have legal action taken against you. You would need to land at an airfield en route, submit the plan, then depart to your destination….

Last Edited by Steve6443 at 10 Nov 12:14
EDL*, Germany

Steve6443 wrote:

One thing you should however be aware of – flying at night means you must submit a flight plan using IFR waypoints before departing – in Germany,[…] you will have legal action taken against you.

That was supposedly the situation before SERA (although I don’t know anybody that got actually fined) but now with SERA you have the right to file a flight plan in the air.

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