Night Cross Country

Last night I flew to French Lick Indiana, which is TINY.  The runway is actually pretty large (5500'x100') but there isn't anything else around.

We took off from Eagle Creek around 9:15 pm.  My parents were there to watch which was pretty cool.  We headed WSW toward Gordan Graham Field.  There wasn't anyone else around, so we played with the lights a little to be sure.  After we cleared the airspace around Indianapolis, we headed south toward Bloomington.  I dialed in the Bloomington VOR and this leg was largely uneventful.  In fact the flight was pretty uneventful until we got closer to French Lick.  Here is the issue with that area that French Lick resided:

Most airports you can fly in to at night have pilot controlled lighting, which means you can use the common frequency for the field and click the mike button to turn the lights on, or change thier brightness.  This is usually a great way to identify fields.  This isn't a great way if every field in the area has the same common frequency.  This was the case yesterday.

We were flying south, and then I thought I had spotted the field.  When we got closer to it, we realized it was Huntingburg, an airport that is 23 miles to the southwest of French Lick.  We then saw another airport to the northwest and headed toward it, thinking it was French Lick.  It wasn't either, even though the pilot contolled light reacted to our inputs.  We checked our sectional charts and realized that the airport was more to the east and we found the rotating beacon and got the plane on the ground.  It was EXTREMELY quiet on the ground.  I couldn't even hear the bugs.  It was cool. There was a slight breeze, and only a few lights.  We hung out on the ground for a few minutes and then hopped back in the plane and took off.  The way back was good, we didn't get lost at all.

When we approached Indianapolis International we got flight following.  This allowed us to enter the airspace and see planes landing at night at IND.  This was pretty fantastic.  It was almost frightening to see these planes come in from out of the sky and land right before our eyes, from 3500 ft.

My landing at Eagle Creek was really good, so overall the day went great.

I logged 2.7 hours of cross country, night, dual and total time.  I've completed my night time requirement, but I need 2 more landings to a full stop to be done with night completely.