The title doesn’t quite describe how the conversation went but I need 6 more night landings and the plan is to do 4 in the pattern and then 2 more during my night cross country.  You know the old saying…. “The Calm before the Snow Storm”.  That is how the conditions played out.  Perfect weather with very light winds, clear skies and bright moon.

I performed the pre-flight, then we got strapped in and performed the run up and taxi to runway 3.  First trip around the pattern, I blew the pattern altitude by about 800 feet.  The air was dense so it doesn’t take much power to climb.  On the second time around I adjusted and nailed 1200 ft, pattern altitude.  As I was getting ready to descend, my instructor pulled the throttle and said “Engine failed, what do you do?”.  I went through the ABCDE checklist and prepared the aircraft for a full flap, engine out landing on the runway.  Pretty uneventful but my first night time engine out so that was cool.  As we taxi’d back to Runway 3 for our 3rd takeoff, it was now late enough to start logging night landings.

Four more very pleasant trips around the pattern, culminating in one of my worst approaches and landings so as they say…”Good to end on a bad one”  No… that isn’t what they say but… hey at least I was flying.

Now that the blizzard is upon us… no flying for the next few days.  Still looking to schedule my first solo practice.