My Flight Journal

Monday, December 29, 2003 8:56pm

W00t! Got my night dual cross country out of the way. With very minimal planning, we took off to Melbourne (MLB) and back. I basically jotted down all the appropriate freqs, the heading on course (which was easy because there's a victor airway between the two airports) and off we went.

We almost had some excitement. As we were closing in on MLB I spotted the beacon, and turned towards it. I had been attempting to track the VOR into MLB but not doing a terribly good job at it. As I'm looking at the airport, my instructor asks, "are you sure you're looking at the right airport?". Hmmm. I look at the chart and the only other airport it could be was Patrick AFB - which would be very, very bad if we tried to land there unannounced. So I look at the VOR and decide that we aren't pointing at MLB and yea, that must be Patrick. My instructor then tells me, "Nope, that's Melbourne. Look at your chart. See Patrick is way out near the coast on an island, and Melbourne is farther inland?" Sure enough, the airport I was looking at was quite a ways from the coast and surrounded by lots of city lights. So I press on. We call MLB to report 15 miles out (reading from the DME). The controller clears us to enter left base by following I-95. I line up over the interstate and turn final. I'm thinking that runway doesn't look 9-27 to me. And then the MLB controller says he still doesn't have us in sight. A quick check of the DME and it's still reading 15 miles and we're not more than a few miles from this airport. Oh sh$t! It's Patrick! I quickly break off final and start climbing south again. We tell the Melbourne controller we were looking at the wrong airport and he says he'll call Patrick and let them know. Whew. As much as I like watching F-16's I really didn't want to see one tonight.

A quick touch and go at MLB (beeeeyootifully I might add) and we headed back to SFB. We got flight following so we were able to fly through the Class B at 4500. The view is much nicer up there. Coming back into SFB it was pretty dead. And the winds were pretty dead too. The controller said, "tell you what, just land on 36". W00t! In all the time I've been there, I've only seen 1 airplane land on 18-36. And my instructor said this was only the 2nd time he's ever done it. Heheheh. It's the little things. Now I've landed on all 4 runways out there. Well, if you want to get technical I've landed on 6 of the 8 runways.

So that was another 1.4 at night, 2 night landings, and my night xctry out of the way.