Columbus at Night

Tonight, we had a full moon and some extremely clear skies, so I stayed inside and watched TV all night. WRONG! I went flying with my Dad, and we headed for Columbus, OH. I've been wanting to fly into CMH for a while, and even though Dad was a little trepadacious, he agreed to fly into a big busy Class C airport.

We were cruising along at about 4500ft just sipping fuel in the DA40, and listened in to 120.2 to monitor approach on our way in, which was remarkably quiet. We even wondered if we had the frequency on right. So, we called in and picked up a transponder code from CMH approach. Minutes later, we got the call "Uhh....Delta-Sierra....can you increase to maximum airspeed? You are the first of eight aircraft coming in for landing." The skies were really clear, and we could see probably 50-60miles very easily, and the landing lights just started popping on all over. It was real exciting, but we managed to fly a straight-in approach to 28L at CMH and stayed ahead of the plethora of lawn darts that were coming in behind us. We told CMH ground that we were headed to KOSU, just a hop, skip, and jump across town.

The G1000 and DA40 dashboard is GREAT at night. The panel is extremely well lit and has lots of adjustment with dimmers and you can really fit it to whatever brightness level that you need. Totally much nicer than the C172. However, the big detractor to flying the DA40 at night is that the landing lights are weak and pathetic. I think that most lawn tractors have better headlights than a DA40. Diamond.....you need to put some Hella hi-intensity lights in these aircraft so that you can actually SEE the centerline of the runway you are trying to land on!


Obviously, I tried taking photos during this flight, but the camera I used didn't have super-great low-light capabilities, even though we had a full moon. The best photos I took were over Columbus, with the city lights all blurred as we flew over. Pretty neat effect...but not what I was hoping for.

On our way back from OSU, we stopped at Mt Vernon, Newark, and Zanesville airports, before heading for the barn at I40 and putting the DA40 away for the night. We flew 2.9hrs and logged 7 landings, two of which were at a towered airport! Not too shabby for my first flight of 2007!