An interesting view

I've been flying at night with one of my instrument students, which is great because night is great for instrument training. It's harder for students to cheat, even unknowingly, for starters so it's more realistic. And the view is wonderful, so I get a tiny benefit as well.

Last night we were working on basic instrument maneuvers out to the west of Crystal at 3,500 feet when I spotted two big landing lights headed my way. The tough part about flying on clear, dark nights is judging distances. The lights could have been a mile away or 20 miles and I would have had a hard time telling the difference.

Anyhow, I kept my eye on them and had my student do a few maneuvers. Eventually, it became obvious that the lights were pretty close so I kept my eyes glued to them while I tried to determine his altitude.

Since the floor of the Class B is at 4,000 feet in that area and we were at 3,500 I was pretty certain they belonged to a Mesaba Airlines Saab 340 turboprop that feeds passengers to and from St. Cloud, just up the road, to MSP International.

Sure enough, the lights passed directly overhead and I could make out the twin turboprops and silvery belly of a Saab.

My instrument student never saw it, I hope the other pilots saw us and I wonder what the passengers would think if they knew they'd just passed 500 feet over a little Cessna in the middle of a training flight.

I'd never seen the bottom of an airplane (at least airborne) that close before and 500 feet isn't much but there was never a chance for an incident so it wasn't a big deal. Just one of the weird things you see when you spend most of your time flying.

One of the benefits of flying at night is that traffic is generally much easier to spot. As it turns out, we were dodging traffic all night. There were airplanes everywhere and while my instrument student focused on flying by the gauges I'd keep asking for heading adjustments to avoid a potential collision. We never came close of course, in no small part that it was so easy to spot traffic a long way out and make a heading change to keep us separated.

So far, it's been a good month. My new private student and I are headed out for his second lesson tomorrow, I'm flying with three instrument students at least twice a week each and my other private student is ready to start working in navigation and cross-countries so there's a lot of variety right now, which is great. In a few months I'll have a couple of students ready for their check rides if all goes well which will be a great accomplishment on their part.

I've flown 20 hours in 16 days so it's been busy but not crazy. I could stand to double that and I'd be happy. More than that and I'd be saturated though. Here's hoping I pick up a few more students because teaching is a bunch of fun.