Not the landings. The approaches.
A little background. I'm high time guy, with bags of night time. My problem occurs when I'm on approach to a "black hole" strip with no other visual refs. Good VFR, overcast. We are talking dark. Crows screwing at night dark!
I seem to get visual sensation of moving the runway, and not the aircraft, with each control input. It's like, I'm controling the ground not the plane. It's NOT the eyes. It's more cerebral.
It's strange. Never happens with any other visual refs present. Anybody else had this happen?
Never had that happen but I can imagine what your talking about and I'm sure I'm gonna have it stuck in my head the next time it has the chance to happen
From what I know and have experienced, it is pretty common. Had the same thing happen to me a few nights ago. We're up in the arctic, dark approach to nothing but blackness and a row of lights...but there is some sort of construction vehicle on a hill with its beacon flashing (white). I flew the entire approach wondering if it was an airplane, and why it was moving so quickly in my windscreen, although it was confirmed stationary. So, yes things get that synthetic movement from time to time!
When ever I'm faced with a long night approach, I judge the time I think it will take to arrive at the runway, eg. 5 minutes till touch down. Then I trim things up really good and close my eyes for 4 minutes... vola no illusions, just open 'er up and land the biatch.
Please realize I'm joking!!!
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Are you using a GPS? How far back are you talking about; 3-4 miles or the last couple hundred feet? Where are you doing these approaches; mountains, flatlands?
The reason I ask all these questions is because I treat most night landings like a pseudo-ifr approach. Either I'm familiar with the airport and I know the altitudes for the FAF and 25 mile safe altitude. In that case I'll OBS the runway and fly a 3:1 descent from the FAF, glancing outside now and then to make sure the runway's still in front of me. Its really only the last 300' or so that I'm looking outside flying real VFR.
If I'm not familiar, I'll do the same thing but stick to all the altitudes in the CAP, or actually fly the approach.
If you're strictly VFR with no charts, line yourself up visually with the runway five miles back at 1000' or whatever you're safe at and fly a 3:1 descent, looking up every now and then but sticking mostly on the instruments.
If you're on a long final in the dark and you only have a couple points of light to guide you, you're eyes and your brain will start to do funny things sometimes. Keep your eyes inside the plane and glance outside to verify your position. Practice it during the day if you need to get comfortable doing it.
Autokenesis, the lights jump around, it's not cerebral, but you were within an inch of being correct. It's the eyeballs, rods and cones for processing light.
Lemme guess, you're in NWO, and flying into a variety of places named Lake, or Fort, or Minnisomething. And your Mark one eyeballs are unassisted for distance, but your thinking about reading glasses. So the eyeball muscles are slow to pull back in focus for runway/ instrument panel at night (instead of the empty space focus range of about 6 feet), plus the eyeballs get their light info via a different method at night. So it's disorienting, which would be really annoying if a goodly chunk of your 20000 hours were spent going into these tropical hot spots, which you know like the back of your hand.
Except that I'm going into places named Ik, Ak, or Uk, same here.
PMA approaches, baby. RNAV GNSS overlay to the ten mile fix, coach the FO on track guidance, looking mainly on the panel but the occasional glance out the window to see that the dancing lights are in the front windshield, not the side. MDA, you look out the window, where the VASIS and runway end lights are now big and bright enough for the eye rods to process at higher speeds (thus losing the dancing lights) and you say in your best gravelly airline voice, "I have control", and make the now effortless landing. F/O does all the work, passengers congratulate you on a magnificent landing, and you get one more day in until you take up sailing and riding the bike as a full time pursuit.
Visual illusions were what took out those Frontier guys in Moosonee, and the Herc crew in Alert. You have skill sets honed over decades of practice. In particular you can glance at the panel and extract a lot of info in a brief period. Use that while your FO uses their low-mileage eyeballs with better muscle tone, to look at those low-wattage half burnt-out runway lights. If your F/O is really fried from flying YQT to Ft Severn, and you gotta drive, use the auto down to 1000 on the radallt, which will have the aircraft stabilized. You'll still have a minute or so of dancing lights, but the FO should be able to coach you for the 20 seconds it'll take the eyeballs to adapt.
At our age, night time is for having a good hot cocoa and going to bed.Let the youngsters have it for their ATPLs. But you aren't going mental, if that's what you were thinking.
Totally normal in fact if you can do an experiment at home put a single light source in a completely black environment. Stare at it soon it will begin to move. eye balls and occipital lobe if memory serves. It's worse when you are tired! CDA constant decent approach or SCDA stable constant decent approach or what ever you like to call it make for safer night ops esp when VASI are not available in North of no-where approaches.
Had it happen to me before. Almost always when tired. Watch it though, I've caught myself falling asleep at the wheel this way. My first clue was that the lights were moving, only to realise it was my head on it's way towards my chest.
Like they all said, plan the descent, do the math over and over again, stay on the dials as long as you can, PMA's would be great if your company has a training program for them. SCDA's as well.
Night approaches and departures can be hazardous. I fly mostly IFR, and I'm prone to various visual and seat of the pants illusions. I find it necessary to include an instrument crosscheck when I'm on a visual approach at night. On night departures I'm on the dials right after "positive rate."
Cat Driver wrote:Pilot monitored approaches goes a long way towards lessening the problems of visual illusions at night or in IMC.
Not to mention PMA's are more stable and safer.
So it's be quite proven that these along with SCDA are much, much safer than your average VFR/IFR Approach. Why can't transport make this a requirement for any every air operator.
I'm the last person that would encourage more regulation, however if there are PROVEN safer ways of flying, then why are we still doing it, or allowed to do it, the riskier way?
PMA's have been used for as long as I can remember. I was first taught them in the early sixties.
Properly briefed and properly flown they are about as safe as you can fly an approach in conditions where outside visual reference is iffy or non existent.
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PMA's are a requirement for us when using the ops spec for 50% of advisory visibility (approach ban). So Yes it is a requirement...
SCDA's are different... some cie believe in them and others don't... personnaly I prefer going down early, stabilise, and 90% of the time you'll see the runway earlier cause the visibility is better lower and you'll have more time to realign (in the case of an offset approach or just your FO is doing a bad job!) The important thing when you see it is not to leave min until you're on the slope (3:1). again that is just an opinion and some guys prefer the SCDA... I guess it also depends on the kind of approach your doing too...
I thought it was just a fact of life -- the floating runway happened whenever it was dark and everywhere there were no glide path aids -- it's like anything else -- you just got use to it - it was actually pretty entertaining with a virgin in the right seat -- I could use my favourite phrase -- "your approach is just like a dog fucking a football" -- Lmfaooooooo
Brown Bear wrote:Not the landings. The approaches.
A little background. I'm high time guy, with bags of night time. My problem occurs when I'm on approach to a "black hole" strip with no other visual refs. Good VFR, overcast. We are talking dark. Crows screwing at night dark!
I seem to get visual sensation of moving the runway, and not the aircraft, with each control input. It's like, I'm controling the ground not the plane. It's NOT the eyes. It's more cerebral.
It's strange. Never happens with any other visual refs present. Anybody else had this happen?
Yeah I see what you're getting at. At night, when you become somewhat fixated on an object outside of your airplane at night, the object appears to move. So it looks more like the object is moving rather than your airplane. It's whack but its also interesting to note, once you consider that, the illusion almost disappears (for me it does).
