You Are Here!
Getting lost and unlost
THE NIGHT HAD FINALLY arrived for me to live out my fantasy of
being an air mail pilot—navigating the night with the most basic
of navigation aids, hopping from one beacon to the next. Or in my
case, one VOR to the next, which any air mail pilot would have
given a left aileron to have back then. Even the weather was playing its role. I had hoped for a moonlit, star-filled sky for my first
night cross-country flight, but instead was dealt haze and a deteriorating forecast.
Dense fog was forecasted to arrive
promptly at 11 p.m., but according to my pre-flight math I’d be home long before then
(long being defined as 15 minutes, plus or
minus 10 minutes, of course).
My objective for the night: learn the
tricks of aviating after hours—something
I had never been able to do as a sport pilot.
