Night flying

On Friday I had my first night flight - five days later than originally planned, but worth the wait. Unfortunately there were also a lot of other people having night flights, and the pattern was full of Oxford and Lufthansa students. There were about five aircraft all lined up at runway 21, waiting for clearance to take off - when a certain Nilay Patel decided to charge down the outside of everyone and cut in at the front... nice manoeuvre, but our instructor was less impressed...
While I was holding short at Alpha 1, Gilbert and I noticed that ATC were landing everyone instead of doing touch-and-go's - but unfortunately for Nilay he didn't pick up on this fact when ATC told him 'cleared to land' - and he went and did a touch and go. Big trouble... but no one was killed or maimed, so no harm done, lesson learned.
I asked Gilbert if there was anywhere else we could go, as the way things were going we would manage about 2 circuits in the hour fifteen we were allocated. So after take-off we turned off to the left and headed up to Glendale Airport - a nice 5 minute flight to the north. ATC was closed up there, so we had to just give position reports on the frequency and listen out for other traffic, but there was no-one else there. We turned the runway lights on remotely from the air (click the radio 7 times) - and settled in for some nice quiet pattern work. It was awesome - the view at night is fantastic, it's such a shame we don't get more night flying time.
Last night I had my first solo night flight, and as it was Saturday the pattern was very quiet - in fact only Nilay and myself were flying (he was doing his solo lesson again...)
I managed to get some videos of my circuit work, here's one of a standard approach and landing to runway 21:


Yesterday I also had my first solo navigation flight, which was pretty good. It was really hot, and the ride was pretty bumpy, but my headings were accurate enough so I didn't get lost. I'll be having a LOT more solo navigation flights now, and they'll be quite long too, so I'll get out and about and see more of the area. Just wish the planes weren't so damn slow...
I have no flight today except for a night navigation flight tonight. Mine is due at 21:30, and my flying buddy Mal has a flight at 23:00 - so we're going to head over to Phoenix Sky Harbor area. I'll fly us out there, we'll do a full stop landing somewhere and Mal can fly us back. Looking forward to that!
As for the rest of the day - nothing much planned. I'm sat on the couch playing games with Georgia as I write this (Dora the Explorer on her Leappad). I need to go out and buy some new shoes as my Loakes have worn right through the leather soles - gutted. Other than that - I think it'll be more time in the pool. It's a hard life.

Congratulations to Jeroen, Steve, Sander and Koen - who have all passed their resits and will be coming out to Phoenix next week. Be good to see you chumps again :-P

Ciao for now

Simon