G1000 night flight

Tonight was my first solo with the G1000 avionics. It was also the perfect time to get night current again with the sun setting so early and the weather so nice (though a bit chilly).

I went out to the airplane after dark, so preflight involved using a flashlight. Of note, my main flashlight's (a Surefire) batteries, which I had checked at home before leaving for the airport, went dead the instant I tried to use them at the airport. Thankfully I had a backup flashlight and another set of batteries.

I wrestled with the brightness setting on the G1000 a bit - the auto mode was simply way too dark. It would have been fine up at altitude away from the airport lights, but down on the ground the screen was nearly unreadable until I manually set a higher brightness. I have the opposite problem with the Garmin 430 radio/gps units in the Cirrus - the auto-brightness on those seems to do absolutely nothing leaving the screen way too bright at night.

For this flight I made 2 trips around the pattern, then took off again to tour the city for a bit. I ended the flight by shooting the ILS 2 back into KUZA. I set up my video camera with a tripod in the back seat - here are the dark results:

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