Episode 408: "What are the Night Flying Requirements?"

So, Lindsay, let me know when somebody asks a question. Bell 429 wants to know what are the fly. Night flying requirements? Night flying requirements. Ooh, you know what? That's a freaking great one. Night flying requirements. All right. If you want to take up passengers at night, you have to have three takeoffs and landings, the make and model of aircraft in the preceding 90 days. So the. The part of that question that always gets asked, like on truck rides, you could do those during the daytime. Those are qualified only for you to only take up passengers in the day. If you want to take passengers at night, you have to do those takeoffs and landings at night. However, if you do night, that does qualify you for day. So that'd be one of them. Another one is aircraft lights. When should your aircraft lights be on? They should be on sunset to sunrise. What is the definition of night? Definition of night is one hour after the end of evening civil twilight to one hour before the morning civil twilight as published in the People are going to say Farmer's Almanac in the Air Almanac. Damn it. I need the written test book in front of me. I should find that because this is. I always say that the night stuff is super, super tough. And where's the study guide? Real quick, can I find a study guide? I know it's in the beginning because this one trips everybody up. And I don't want to tell you wrong. This is our private pilot study guide. We haven't mentioned this in a while. We need to go and update it and change the verbiage because it says there still says pts in there. So that needs to be updated to acs. But Brian Rutledge put this thing together. This has over 400 questions that you could be asked on a checkride. And in the first section, of course, night comes up. Aha. Memory aid. Right. We're taught in CFI training. If you don't know or you're not sure, you look it up. And these are hard to spout off. And this definitely will get you on a checkride. So let's go back to the definition tonight. I was close. The time between the end of evening civil twilight and the beginning of morning civil twilight, as published in the Air Almanac, converted to local time, we covered when must the aircraft position lights beyond during the period of sunset to sunrise. When can you log nighttime flight? The time between the end of evening civil twilight and the beginning of morning civil twilight, as published in the Air Almanac, converted to local time. When can you count your takeoff and landings as nighttime this answer is beginning one hour after sunset and ending one hour before sunrise. That is the nutshell of the questions that you might be asked on a checkride. And I will tell you that they always ask private commercial, cfi, doesn't matter. You're always going to get asked that night stuff because you can see, you ask me on the fly and I start stroking, I struggle to kind of try to spit it out. So what I do, I grabbed a quick reforce, a reforce resource that I knew could help me out because those, those are kind of tricky. And why do they word those the way they do? I don't know. It's kind of weird. And some, sometimes somebody might want to argue why they. Why does that say that way? Why does it say that way? I don't know. That's how the FAA wants you to respond. And then I guess the other thing I can think of at night, this comes up a lot, right? Like I was doing a zoom yesterday with one of our the have two FAC members coming, one for a CFI add on and a initial commercial coming the end of January. So I did a zoom with one of them yesterday and we covered what do you have to have Day vfr, any helicopter. Then what do you have to have? Day VFR in a Robinson R22 specifically because that's what his check ride is going to be. And then I said what do you have to have at night? And this comes up every time I'm prepping somebody, right? And what we've been telling people lately is since we do our all of our training and our Trek rides here at the Hogs hangar, we have the R22 or R44, either one right with us as we're doing the ground school. And over there by the Hogs Wall of Fame we have two couches and a table. And that's where we sit and do our ground people struggle with night. When you say what do you have to have on the aircraft at night? And if you just sit there and try to think through it, it's a little tougher to repeat. But I tell them just think about it. Think about the aircraft sitting there. Start at the very nose and then just work your way down the aircraft, I think is probably one of the best ways to memorize what do you have to have. So if you just think about the aircraft, I have the luxury of it sitting here. So starting the very nose, you got to have your landing lights working, of course. So you got landing lights. Then you go into the cockpit of the cockpit of the aircraft. You want to have your instrument panel lights working. Whether you're eliminated through the dash itself or you have a light that shines down. You want to make sure your instrument gauges and lights are lit up, are illuminated for nighttime. You should have a flashlight in there with you because night flying is very, very challenging. So a flashlight with you in the cockpit super, super handy on the side, you got your anti collision left and right. And then for Robinson flyers, remember underneath the panel right there where you've checked your illumination of your lights, your warning test, your test lights, there are spare fuses in there. So spare fuses is another thing that needs to be in there. So spare fuses. And then before we move further back, alternate source of power, which easiest explains is you must have an operating battery and an operating alternator. Sometimes people go, well, that's kind of dumb, right? Those always have to be on, right? And working well for day flight. There are aircraft out there that don't have electrical systems or maybe have just a battery for running things or maybe just an alternator. They don't have both. So if you want to fly at night in a helicopter, you must have a functioning alternator and battery also. Meaning if you know the battery is bad, you can't just jump start it and go fly and run off your alternator. Because if you lose your alternator, then you got no reserve battery power. So the alternate source of power, you must have an operating alternator, a good battery. And then if you move back a little bit further back on the rabbit, so we have an anti collision light on the tail that's got to be working. And then you got your navigation light on the back. So I think that's kind of the easiest way to just think through night stuff. When what do you have to have on you at night? And then the other thing that pops to my mind would be my favorite question on check our prepping people is how do you fly your approaches at night in a helicopter versus the way you fly your approaches night and day? What's the difference? My answer is you fly them the same. However, you need to be afraid, not afraid. You need to be aware. Don't be afraid. Be aware of your night illusions. You can approach the ground faster than it appears, right? You could be closer to the ground than what you think and essentially hit the ground because your sense of how far away is off. So be careful of that going at night. And our clone is located@askhogs.com you can go below and click on the link to go check it out. 24 hours a day, seven days a week, you can ask training related questions. Flight and ground. 14 years of my contents loaded in this thing. Blogs, podcasts, videos, paid content, free content. There's over 6 million words piped into my clone. It's amazing. Go down below. Ask Hogs.com the clone is free to everyone. And the clone is also inside of our HOG site on every video, every page. So you can be in viewing videos. And you can always ask the clone a question while you're at it so you can get an immediate answer first. Right here is free free PDF private pilot 101 helicopter training blueprint. That's why we created this. And let me cover what's in the first chapter. Since you ask and you're at the beginning. That's why we created this. The first chapter are questions that we've, we took like the top 10 questions that we get all the time. Like is learning how to fly a helicopter difficult? How long will it take to become a private pilot? How much will it cost to become a private pilot? What is the best approach to selecting a flight school? What. What are the key differences between helicopters and fixed wing aircraft? How many tests will I have to take? How many hours for solo on the license? Kenny's recommended training supplies so this is absolutely 100% free. You can go down below, there's a link down below. Or you can type in your browser privateblueprint.com and you can download immediately after you sign up. You'll sign up, enter your name and email and the next page will show you download your book here. That's where you should start because again it's free. Or subscribe to the YouTube channel. Subscribe the channel. You'll get notification when the new video comes out for either the live or the premiere, whichever way we do it. And then we want to also bring up. We are updating, starting to update our R22 specific course behind us. Course behind us. Course using the helicopter behind us. Lindsey's in charge of getting in there and updating some images. In the R22 site section of Hogs we have R22 specific section and an R44 specific section that come with any of our memberships, so you don't have to buy that Specifically we use private pilot, for example, monthly membership. It has both the R22 and R44 sections in there. And since we have an R22 available to us and an R44 available to us, we thought why not get the content updated in those Courses with some fresh videos, brushed images and also want to mention hogspaysme.com this is passive income. You want to earn some money, particularly if you're a flight instructor. Anybody can use the HOGS affiliate link. You go to hogspayme.com that link is down below. You'll sign up for it. It'll give you access to a dashboard. Inside that you'll see your link and a link to share with others. So when they sign up, you receive 50% off our online memberships. Private pilot, commercial pilot, instrument pilot, certified flight instructor and or private or professional pilot. That's 2,800 bucks. If you share your link with one of your students and they buy ProPilot, it's lifetime membership for all courses. You will get fourteen hundred dollars shipped to your PayPal account. After the thirty days we got two aircraft and a lot of people going, well, I want to. Well I'm gonna. Well, that's when everybody's gonna start wanting those times. So to speed the process along, we need to get some workbook for these helicopters. Both of them are sitting, currently not flying, and they're both ready to go. So reach out to Hogsmember support 574-767-1797 is if you'd like to get on the schedule for some training. We specialize in checkrides, finishing people up. But we can also do, you know, SFAR checkouts. Again, you can come in for one day, two days, whatever you need or you need a block of time. We'd even be willing to work your little deal this time of the year to get some time on these aircraft. So again, reach out to Hogsmember support 574-767-1797 when you feel the pressure to fly, but know the right decision is to stay on the ground, hit the Hogs no go and live to fly another day. Helicopterground.com.