Night landings

I did some night landings at Virginia last night in our Sling aircraft ZDL. There are many illusions at night making flying and landing tricky. The "black hole", or darkness below creates the illusion that the land is further from you. Many a pilot has come in to land and landed short of the runway for this reason or you bump down harder as you are not expecting to touch down as soon as you do.

You learn to anticipate this during your night training, although it is easy to forget and my first landing is usually a bit harder than I intend. Last night I changed my flap setting to minimal flaps on landing and this helps give the plane a longer float and a softer landing. You can check out my landing in the short YouTube video clip at the link here.

The view from over the sea of the Durban hotels and piers in the night light

Onboard computer EFIS with night view in the cockpit of our Sling aircraft ZDL

Durban stadium and beachfront during our night flight last night