Met Chad at Skagit for dinner.
Today the plan was to kick off the night flying season. This weekend will be the end of daylight savings time and if I want to go flying after work, it's going to be dark.
I took off about 10 minutes before the sun went down and headed North. It was a little darker than the pictures look and it was cool to see all the lights getting brighter and brighter.
By the time I landed at Skagit, it was getting pretty dark. Chad flew IFR from Paine field and ended up landing just a couple of minutes after I did.
We ate at the new "Flyer's Restaurant" on the airport. It used to be the "Kitty Hawk Cafe". Pretty nice place and just a little more expensive than your typical airport greasy spoon diner. My Club sandwich was $15 so not too bad.
For the way home I went ahead and filed an IFR flight plan. Getting my clearance on the ground at Skagit was kind of a pain in the ass. I had to call Whidbey approach on the cellphone and they put me on hold for a good 5 minutes.
After takeoff they ended up clearing me to Thun via radar vectors. They then cleared me for the GPS RWY 35 approach into Thun.
It was fun flying IFR at night, the controllers are always seem a lot more mellow after dark.
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