So last night I made plans to be at the airport right at sunset. Pulled the 340 out and preflighted it, (took my time about it and all but still) fired up the engines and taxiied to the runway timed such that it was exactly 35 minutes after legal sunset…therefore 5 minutes past “night” as defined by the FAA. Did the runup and waited for traffic on the other runway to land, then departed, staying in the pattern.

Turned crosswind, then downwind, then a base. Final was just a bit high, but a little power pulled back made for a quick correction. Proper airspeed and I crossed the numbers at 84 knots and touched down exactly at the leading edge of the thousand foot marks.  Rolled out to the end and taxiied back for another one. This time another plane was calling “downwind” but I could not see him, and it looked on the ADSB traffic that he was actually on the upwind. (I called and asked him where he was. He again claimed he was downwind. I told him I would hold position until he landed (as I was pretty sure he was confused) and didn’t want to be surprised by whatever he did…safer on the ground)…..Finally the plane waiting behind me said “Look at your compass”…he then admitted that he was indeed upwind and told me to go ahead and take off as he was gonna go a lap around the pattern…..

Second takeoff was much like the first, rotated at 90, lower the noze to pitch for blue line, gear up at positive rate of climb, then up to about 600 feet, then a crosswind turn and then a downwind turn at pattern altitude (and a radio call for each segment). Pull the power back at pattern altitude and before you know it you are midfield. Pull the power back even more and then first notch of flaps to begin a descent., then altitude for the base turn, call the base,  then gear and a turn to final. Call the final…GUMPS, second notch of flaps, another GUMPS check, then set the speed for the short final. Pitch and power . Fine tune your descent rate and altitude…check the PAPI lights one last time, Cross the numbers at 80 knots and then raise the nose slightly and ease the power out. Stall horn and touch down simultaneously.. one, two, three and roll out to the end. Again right at the thousand footers.

Taxi back and do it one more time.  Then again.

I am lucky, in that I don’t seem to suffer from the issues that many pilots do at night. I do have issues adjusting from dark to too much light and back again, but that is generally not an issue in the landing environment at night. (I find it harder to drive at night than to fly and land). No “Black Hole” issues, no “False Horizon” none of the issues some pilots encounter. None of the sensory issues either…at least so far.

So I did a total of 4 night landings, and they were all decent. I am legal to carry passengers at night now, and more importantly, comfortable and competent  and current to land at night.

So that’s 4 landings and 0.6 time (and about 22 gallons of LL)

It was a good evening. Went home ate, had a cocktail and went to bed.

“Never trust a politician who eats his fried chicken with a knife and fork.

No matter what he tells you, he ain’t “common folk” if he doesn’t eat it with his hands like a normal person”.

News this morning:

Wet weather in California “caused by climate Change” is responsible for an rise in a fungal disease called “Valley Fever”… Of course, what they are referring to is normal seasonal variation called “Spring Rain” …..that is what refills the reservoirs  and snowpack that California and other southwestern states need to survive over the next year….

This is repeated in several online articles that have sprouted at the same time…..

Except that farther down into the article it states that  it is (maybe) becoming more prevalent “as drought pushes more agriculture into fallow ground, subdivisions sprout in the desert, and the West dries out”

None of THOSE could be the reason….Could it? Must be Climate Change. Has to be.

Funny how the news keeps pushing it, innit?

Now much of a whitewash there has been regarding the malfeasance of Michael Mann and the others at the Climate Data Center.

I went to pull some articles in an attempt to show them to a person who is a True Believer….

And found that many of those articles hav3 been scrubbed….and I used other search engines than Google as well just to make sure that it wasn’t Google hiding them..

I then went back into my history and dug up some emails that had links to papers ….and found that the papers had also been scrubbed. Not just the websites, but the links to the papers and apparently the papers themselves.

Someone has totally rewritten history as regards the Global warming debacle. “Hide the decline” is now explained away as a simple misunderstanding, …There is no longer any loss of raw temperature data, etc.

Now only the Official Narrative exists.

Orwellian, really.

.

“Misappropriation of funds”?

Blue States, Cities Using COVID Funds to Support Illegal Immigrants

Those funds, likely Federal in origin, were set aside for Pandemic Relief. Not for illegal alien relief payments.

At what point is the misuse of these funds illegal and punishable?

Who goes to jail for this?

Of course, being stupid helps make it happen, but still….

Woman falls from CTA train, onto tracks, then 20 feet onto a pickup truck. 

She has a broken leg, but that’s all. No word as to her sobriety at the time.

She was apparently trying to exit the train because she failed to get off at her stop…

State officials can tell you how to raise you children now.

At least in Indiana they can.

Catholic couple say Indiana state government took their trans son away from them because they refused to use his preferred pronouns

To be honest, I might have expected this out of Oregon or Washington or California…but not Indiana.

15 year old confuzed kid taken away from his family because they wouldn’t go along with his issues. Parental rights mean nothing? Or only for Catholics….

I feel that there are several State officials that really need an as whoopin’; (not suggesting anything, mind you…but if it happened I would approve).

To everyone, but the news that Beyonce’s “Texas Hold ‘Em” debuted at Number One on the Billboard country charts is a bit suspect…no matter how much the labels and the genere push it.

Obscurity to number one in 4 days?

Pull the other one, it’s got bells on.

Wow. This goes beyond credibility.

As proof, it is kinda sketchy. I admit Not really proof, but still….

But if you really believe that the photos found on Hunter Biden’s hard drive and iPhone were of carefully lined up “sawdust” along with photos of his paraphernalia, then you must really believe that Keebler Elves are the result of the Easter Bunny mating with Santa Claus

Hunter Biden‘s legal team have accused the Justice Department of an astonishing blunder in which investigators mistook sawdust for lines of cocaine during their investigation into the president’s son.    Attorney’s for Hunter claimed Special Counsel David Weiss made a mistake ‘straight out of a 1980s’ Police Academy film’  .It came after Weiss published photos from Hunter’s Iphone  and hard drive that the prosecutor said were proof he was using cocaine when he bought a gun.

. ‘Cause who doesn’t have photos of lines of sawdust on a mirror in their phone? AmIRite?

In the latest bit, we find that:

Indicted ex-FBI informant told investigators he got Hunter Biden dirt from Russian intelligence officials

Of course he did. Where else would we get further evidence of Russian Collusion?

And there’s this question: Don’t they ever verify their sources and data?

One other question…..I have never yet heard anyone say that, despite the story coming from “Russia” , that the bribes didn’t exist.