Who switched off [most of] the light?

Yesterday evening was unexpectedly fun!

It started with some txts then a phone call asking if I wanted to do some more night flying training, with a view to finishing off my night rating. It was somewhat unexpected as the weather forecast was for slightly stronger winds, but hey, I'm hardly going to pass up a chance like this!

ECT [Evening Civil Twilight] was about 8:30pm last night, and so after my instructor Richard did a couple of circuits, we went up for 30 minutes of dual circuits followed by 1 hour of solo circuits in WAC's Cessna 172N, ZK-FLT. 

The weather was not as nice as the last night, with a surface wind of around 010 deg magnetic [30 deg right of runway 34] at 9-10 knots. Not a strong wind, but it was still a wee bit lumpy from the surface to about 800' with all of the terrain around the place. Still, it kept me on my toes, was a great experience to have and my crosswind landings are somewhat better now...

On the plus side, there was no cloud and with a tiny of of the moon reflecting sunlight back, it was easy enough to see the terrain and the surface.

Anyway, that's my night flying requirements done [for flight within 25 nm of a lit aerodrome]. After several years of trying [and only managing one flight a year... not ideal] I've managed to get this completed in a couple of weeks. I pick up the logbook sticker on the weekend.

Many thanks to my instructors, James and Richard who enabled this to happen!

Now for some practice... :-)