The Power of Thought: Finding Calm During my Night Rating.

It's dark. It's really freaking dark.

It's funny how an activity which becomes mind-numbingly boring during private training can feel 100% different when the sun is on the other side of the planet!Flying the circuit at night felt very different, especially in my first several hours of training. The night rating is defined by Transport Canada as one which "allows a pilot to fly in VMC and navigate in visual reference to the ground, at night. This is different from instrument meteorological conditions (IMC) where the pilot flies and maintains situational awareness strictly by using instruments and avionics." The rating consists of 5 hours night, including 2 hours night cross-country, 10 hours instrument flight time, and 5 hours solo night, including at least 10 takeoffs, circuits and landings. At the flying club where i train, the solo time is administered in the form of circuits, as the area around the airport is very mountainous.

I have been working on my night rating for what feels like a zillion years. It's funny, for a rating which is normally pretty straightforward, getting night certified has been surprisingly challenging. The mental side of flying at night has been hard for me to wrap my head around...especially the most important part...landing.

I first started my night rating in October, two months after the accident. The training started with some simple VOR work over the city in straight and level. However i was still constantly running my mind over everything that could go wrong, and could not get over the feeling of disorientation and a stange sense of instability. In the same airspace in which i first took the controls just over a year before, i felt like a novice again. When my instructor and i moved on to circuit training, the sensation got even worse. Every time we were on takeoff roll, i broke into sweat and my heart was in my throat. As we levelled off from the climb and made our crosswind turn, the pounding of blood in my ears was louder than the chatter on the radio and the thrumming of the engine combined. I did my best to attempt to comouflage that every time i made a downwind radio call, i began trembling. When it came to landing, i was also a wreck. There would be nothing wrong weith my approach, I would be on short final, and low and behold, the runway would suddenly become my enemy! The approach lights glared at me in menace as if to say "you're not going to come in line with the centre line of the runway!" the ground looked about a billion times harder that more definite than it did during the daytime, and once i was in ground effect, i had an overwhelming desire to be on the ground as soon as possible, which would lead to me slamming it down without bothering to be patient and flare until my main gear touched down gently with a whisper. My instructor informed me (later, over beers after a circuit practice full of terrible landings) that he was convinced i was actually out to kill him.

Not knowing what else to do about this intense and irrational feeling of fear, i turned to my hippy side, which has yet to fail me. I asked myself, "what will it take to make me a good pilot at night?" Two answers came to me: Confidence, and Peace. Both undeniably intertwined. Where was it in the world that i felt most at peace? As soon as i was on the ground, i was on my iphone, looking up the hours of my local yoga studio. I arrived at the mat the next day with an intention. Take the sense of unity, calm, and space that i discovered each time in my practice, and hold on to it, only to release it again in the cockpit. Many downward dogs and shavasana's later... I made my very first fear free takeoff at night. It was unreal. If i truly approached my circuits with thesense of peace that i cultivated on the mat, i was suddenly able to fly confidently, with deliberate and exact motions. My instructor didn't know what to make of my sudden transition. "Your landings are looking great!" he exclaimed one night. "What happened?" I smiled to myself, thinking how silly "Yoga!" would sound as a response to a fellow pilot, a breed who are constantly on the hunt to validate thier progress and decision-makng with hard facts, numbers, evidence and empircal knowledge. I smiled to myself again, "Practice, I guess!" Was my response.

That night he called a full stop and let me go for my first round of solo circuits, which i handled at first with jitters and a very heightened sense of awareness, slowly relaxing into process and calm focus. Since that first day of circuits i have had my fair share of taxing experienceat night. There was one runway change that left me totally disoriented, and left the tower guys chuckling on the radio and teasing me later. ("Zulu Mike Kilo is....um....sorry...I'm kind of confused!"- not a shining moment in my radio ettiquette!) and one night where i simultaniously entered a chunk of cloud, and lost the post light to my VSI and Tachometer at the same time! However, each time i encountered something more challenging at night, i was able to handle it with a tiny bit more of confidence, grace, and calm. It was, in many ways a small step towards the full renaissance of my "flying lady-balls!" (I can feel it coming!!!)

Last week we took a cross country trip to Abbotsford, Pitt Meadows, over downtown Vancouver Harbour, Nanaimo, and back home. It was beautiful and a complete reward for all the hours of training, both mentally and physically. The entire cityscape was alight and twinkling and humming with life down below, as we darted like a firefly high above the vast expanse of humanity. It was like looking at a galaxy on the ground, patterns and patchworks of sparkling beautiful lights dancing underneath us. Though this rating has been for me a challenging exercise, it has been a beautiful discovery of the power of thought in influencing attitude and performance. That in itself is worth searching the dark skies for...