Night flying

The rate of posting on this here weblog continues to be slow. I guess that's what happens when nothing's really happening. I've been flying, but my flights have all been uneventful, in that nothing unexpected happened. The engine continues to start quickly and run well.

The replacement sump valve in the port fuel tank no longer has that sealant coming out of it. Fuel doesn't flow out of it much faster than it did the old valve, though it is a bit faster. At least it's clean.

I received the invoice for my oil change. I had assumed they had cut open the oil filter and looked for metal, and also assumed that they didn't find anything that was concerning or else they would have told me. The invoice had the description of the work and notes which said they found no metal at all in the oil filter. This is, of course, very good news. I actually expected some metal from break in so it exceeded those expectations.

One thing I did do that was noteworthy was my most recent flight, which was Sunday before last. I went up in the afternoon and, since I had nearly full tanks, decided to stay up until after sunset, and do some night landings. I had originally considered doing this with an instructor first, since I've never flown my plane at night, but I was confident that me and my plane could handle it. And indeed, we could. I made three takeoffs and landings at night so now I'm night-current. For those who are unfamiliar with what this means, I can now take passengers with me while flying at night. As long as I've made three takeoffs and landings to a full stop at night within the preceding 90 days, I'm night-current.

There were some things about how my plane handles flying at night that I could only really learn by, well, flying it at night. Here are a few things I learned:

• My instrument lights are not very bright. The seller informed me of this when I bought it so I was expecting it. I still had enough light to see them by, though I do wish they were a bit brighter.
• A couple instruments don't have lights that I wish did, particularly the turn and bank indicator. My fuel computer also wasn't lit, though it's possible it has a light that just needs to be enabled. I need to review the user manual. The digital clock made by the same company was lit so I wouldn't be surprised if this is the case.
• My plane has a red light in the ceiling. There are two bulbs behind a piece of red plastic. There were a couple of times I saw a flash of red that appeared like it was coming from my fuel computer's red LED that is in the middle of the panel but I eventually realized it was the red-colored light from one of the bulbs reflected on my yoke-mounted iPad.
• My landing light appears to be at least relatively well aligned. I would like it to be brighter, but I'm not sure how much brighter it could be. It's the new LED bulb I had installed almost two years ago and my plane has a 14v electrical system. Other variants of the Musketeer have 24v systems so it's possible they could drive a brighter light. Still, I had no real difficulty seeing the runway surface and judging my altitude above it.
• After landing, switching my landing light off and my taxi lights on makes it easier to see the taxiway to exit the runway.
• I still want to replace my old incandescent navigation lights with new LED lights that include strobes. They're pricey, though, particularly the ones that include strobes.

I didn't take many pictures as I was focused on flying the plane, but I did take one I thought turned out pretty well.