Pilot Life: Night Cross Country to Hillsboro

After a good daytime flight earlier this afternoon, I took advantage of the still-nice weather we had today to get a second flight at night; and to make it worthwhile, I made it a night cross-country flight! I still need to get some night hours as part of the requirements I need to fulfill for my commercial pilot checkride and license. The plan was to keep things simple, so I chose Hillsboro as my destination.

Two flights in a single day with N5174E!

Once more, after doing the pre-flight and before-takeoff checks, I got airborne off Runway 34 and headed straight out to the north. I then tuned to the frequency for Seattle Center and the radio chatter was nonstop, meaning they were busy. I tried to get VFR Flight Following but I couldn't get the accommodation, so I proceeded on my own eyes outside the cockpit looking out for other aircraft; I even made use of ADS-B on my iPad through ForeFlight!

Aside from not being able to get Flight Following from ATC, it was an uneventful flight. Once I was about 30 miles away from Hillsboro, I picked up the weather from the ATIS frequency and called up the tower just before entering their Class Delta airspace. They instructed me to make a straight-in approach for Runway 31R, the new, parallel runway to the main one that opened back in 2015; I've now used all three runways at Hillsboro! After my touch-and-go I departed on the downwind to the south. I flew up via the I-5 corridor and the middle of the Willamette Valley. On the return-leg, I flew home via the more rural, western part of the valley, with McMinnville and Independence as my visual waypoints; that way, I could avoid much of the congested airspace corridors that ran up and down along the valley. Plus, there was just something about the darkness of the western half of the Willamette Valley on a clear night!

Other than that, the return leg back to Albany was uneventful; it was a beautiful, albeit cold night for flying. I made standard position calls for both the McMinnville and Independence airports as I passed through to let any traffic know I was in the area. And I still had some time to play with while the clear night skies lasted, so I decided to do some stop-and-go landings in Albany when I returned, just so I can stretch out my flight time and to top off and reset my night currency clock (even though, I was still good as of last month with only 30 days out of the 90 lapsing). Plus, it was good practice to do night landings at my current home airport just so I could continue to get used to the visual sight picture. I did three full-stop landings on Runway 34, exiting off at the intersection taxiway each time followed by a taxi-back in order to make use of the full-length of runway before going another lap in the traffic pattern.

After my third full-stop landing, my night currency was good for 90 days as of today and my night flight ended at nearly two hours, which means I flew for nearly four hours total today! I decided to taxi to the fuel pumps once more to top off the tanks just so I have full tanks for the next flight. After a chilly, yet quick stint at the self-serve fuel pumps, I taxied the plane back to the hangar, where I put it away after engine shutdown and calling it a very good day of flying!