November 2025

This post is ten years in the making.

Part I. “Naiveté is the mother of adventure.”

Back in Alpine, Wyoming, a decade ago, I ran into a pernicious issue: without airframe lights, the PA-11 had to be on the ground by sunset, end of story. Anything else was illegal. That meant no return after dark, no sunset at Grand Teton, no room for error. I fantasized at the time about a full moon flight in the Cub, to which I got a wide variety of replies from pilots, varying from “won’t it be dark when you take photos?” to my grandfather merely relaying that, back around 1950, “we used to take the Cub up without lights on a full moon night.” No airframe lights, no landing light, no cockpit lights, no runway lights…it was just an 1100-foot-long patch of grass in the dark. Father, Son, Holy Ghost, amen.

The move to Germany came before any airframe lights could materialize, and I picked up the story years later, only when 1) I could stare at the Alps illuminated by snow on a full moon night and 2) there were airports arguably open, by some thin illusion of logic, within a reasonable radius. It became something of an itch, made worse by a propensity to hike on full moon nights in the mountains, which further proved just how docile the weather is on clear nights in the Alps.

Over the years, nav lights got added to the PA-11. The immediate benefit was the ability to land at “HRH,” which is Swiss shorthand for “evening civil twilight,” which is generally sunset plus 30 minutes in winter (but not in summer, owing to closing times). That meant I could be up on the hill at sunset, and then race back to the field, allowing for colorful sunset frolicking, though usually within only 20 minutes of the airport.

Nav lights were one thing, power was another. I added a “gizmo” as a pilot friend called it, an STC’d wind-driven alternator to provide some modest amperage in flight. While it seemed to be enough under my load calculations, the prospect of sufficient power for night flight was dubious. Then flying in the winter at 16,000 feet in the PA-11 was a regular exercise in near fatal self-induced hypothermia, so I added electric-heated motorcycle gear to at least slow the onset of in-flight rigor mortis. This concept was to answer the fact that daytime flight was too cold in the flight levels in the winter, much less at night.

The motorcycle gear drew too much power, so I bought a nefarious camping battery, made of the same compounds used in Tesla car batteries, which hold up much better in deadly cold temperatures. I got the brilliant idea to plug that unit into one of the 12v ground charging ports to the aircraft electrical system, turning the backseat of the PA-11 into a something that resembled a terrorist improvised explosive device. After a few flights, while it seemed to work, the idea of relying on such a ghetto setup at night, over the Alps, seemed imprudent.

Part II. “When the weight of the paper equals the weight of the airplane, only then can you go flying.”

Eventually I developed enough comfort that the aircraft would not start on fire in flight and decided to wait for the right night to go up. I had to do three takeoffs and landings under my FAA license, log it, and use that to get “current” at night so that I could send in paperwork to get the “Night Rating” stamped onto my EASA license. It should have been done at conversion time years before, but the CAA didn’t do it right, didn’t care, and told me to go to flight school if I didn’t like it. The FAA TIP-L agreement came into force since that time, allowing a back door to fix the problem.

It was a perfect, quiet VFR night with a 98% disk full moon, directly overhead, no wind, no clouds, no fog, and snow on the Alps. I prepped the plane, called Sion to confirm “VFR night” was on for that evening (it is every week or two on Wednesdays in winter). “Non. There are not enough airplanes registered. We do not keep the airport open just for you.” Later in the winter, I found a night where Bern rarely had no fog. It is open more often but is fogged in for most of the winter. I called, just to confirm I hadn’t missed any details in the AIP. “Sorry. No training landings allowed on Sundays.” Damnation!

The winter ended and then the regulation changed. I could no longer fly solely on my FAA license in EASA territory as I was a European resident. The PA-11 was out for night flying. At this point, I had the Super Cub, which ironically met the much more stringent Norwegian night flight equipment requirements, however I couldn’t fly it owing to not having the EASA Night Rating. The CAA told me that I could not use the Norwegian registered airplane to get current on the FAA license; it had to be an N registered plane. And no, you can’t take an instructor either. “We suggest attending an EASA-approved night rating curriculum.”

I had some “suggestions” for them, though I won’t publish them here.

I tried to get the divinely inspired Night Rating in Norway in 2023…2 hours of lessons and either not dark enough or too much IFR weather then it was time to leave. I tried to add the Super Cub to a flight school (hiring a freelance instructor is not possible generally). It was quite expensive, but the real issue was finding a sufficient network of airports actually open at night that are not in foggy valleys that allowed training flights. Switzerland clearly does not intend their students to get Night Ratings inside of Switzerland, when one factors weather + airport schedules + the 6 month EASA training limit.

Eventually I got the Super Cub on the N register and found a glorious loophole. There is a small corner of Europe, in narrow band of a few days per year, where EASA daytime flying definitions overlap with FAA night currency definitions for up to 72 minutes per evening. That meant I could fly legally under both licenses, without a Night Rating, but get current under FAA regulations….in an N registered aircraft, without an instructor. This duality likely exists as the total territory in the United States where this same idea would be possible is miniscule and uninhabited.

After writing this missive, it occurred to me just how silly this problem was. The folks at the European Aviation “Safety” Agency had decided that my two FAA night ratings were inadequate (in spite of a CAA screwup) and, in the interests of God knows what, they would only transfer under the TIP-L if I was “current at night.” Because of being a resident of EASA territory, it was….unsafe?….to fly on the FAA license alone, so here were my options, including a new one I realized in retrospect:

Get a Night Rating by taking the class. The problem here is that experience “expires” after 6 months, so the 2 hours of instruction went down the drain, and my commercial training and experience didn’t count.
Travel to the US, rent a plane, do three takeoffs and landings, and convert the rating.
The EASA/FAA day/night duality as mentioned.
A new idea I just had (in 2025): take the Super Cub out of EASA territory by day and do three takeoffs and landings at night. The UK is now the obvious choice (a side effect of Brexit). Morocco, Bosnia, Montenegro, Serbia, Albania, or North Macedonia would have worked but would have required changes to my insurance.

I believe it is worth stepping back for a second and asking what the hell flying to the UK (or Morocco or the US) would have accomplished to make me safer flying at night. Nothing. The whole charade is a monument to bullshit.

Anyhow, the three takeoffs and landings happened in a desolate forgotten corner of Europe under the cover of a duality of simultaneously being daylight and darkness, perfectly legal, to a “full stop” as per the FAA requirement, logged, and sent in. The CAA overnighted my Night Rating, as though it was never a problem. Hug your local bureaucrat.

That is all well and good…this long essay, six years of paperwork, and nine years of fantasies. The problem is that we’ve doing a lot of talking about flying at night but not actually doing any of it.

Part III. “If the engine quits at night, turn on your landing light. If you don’t like what you see, turn it off.”

Consistent with Switzerland being “a sea of passive aggression,” they buried the VFR Night schedule in an appendix in French and German only for Sion. I found it, cross referenced the dates with the angle, moonrise, and percentage of illumination of the moon and chose my dates. There were four nights in the whole of the winter that this could work. Four nights that I’d need my schedule, the aircraft’s state of maintenance, and the weather to cooperate as well as have Sion have enough aircraft registered to bother. Why did I try this again?

I called two days in advance to discuss the situation with the operations office in Sion. I knew that they make the decision at 3PM on Wednesday, the day of. That means I need to be airborne in 2 hours and 15 minutes before Gstaad Airport closes, then I am committed to landing in Sion in the dark. The clerk told me that “it looks good for VFR Night” so I discussed with the Gstaad camera shop renting a lens highly specialized for night photography and low light. Everything was arranged. I went to the airport at noon, fueled, preflighted, had the camera shop on standby, had the flight briefing done at 2:30PM, and was sitting in the truck with it idling at 3:00PM when I called Sion. It’s a go! I put the vehicle in drive, raced to the camera shop, rented the lens, and went to the airport.

I filed a flight plan for 4 hours as required and took off. My plan was to see sunset at the Matterhorn and then wander to Mont Blanc. Oxygen was turned on from 8,000 feet just to be safe, as night vision is affected by high altitude and this is the night I would lose my virginity flying in the mountains in the dark…best to use protection.

Sunset was pretty, though the twilight was prettier. I climbed all the way to FL160 progressively, circling the Matterhorn and Dufourspitze in the early twilight, as the lights of Milan came on in the distance. The way that the Matterhorn stands out in the twilight, against the shadows in the valley below whilst the mountain village lights come on….I will never forget it.

Twilight over halfway to the elevation of Mt. Everest is an exercise in slow motion. A perpetual rainbow of color ever so slowly slides to the horizon for over 90 minutes as the sun goes down. The darkness of the night creeps up from east, with the moon following, exchanging the latent sunset light for darkness and then moonlight. The flight was as smooth as silk as I flew over the peaks of the Valais to Mont Blanc.

By this point, fog had settled in over Chamonix and parts of the Rhône Valley near Lake Geneva, as forecast, while the moonlight strengthened. Village lights became more pronounced, and any concerns I had about whether I could see the peaks of the Alps in the dark were abated by the moon. I flew around the summit of Mt Blanc a few times, something I never thought I’d do, and then enjoyed the ridgelines of the Massif du Mont Blanc, before plotting a course along the Dents du Midi and Bernese Alps at lower altitude. As the moon continued to strengthen, I noticed that composition changes under moonlight. The eye notices different things.

It was eventually time for landing after three and a half hours and it was uneventful. Sion is quite pretty on approach, if not a bit disconcerting with so many lights. After tie down, it was a taxi to the train, then a 2.5 hour train ride, getting back quite late. The next day, it was the exercise in reverse, then fetching the airplane to make the 20-minute hop over the hill and land. That part is not fun.

Recall that Bern is open most nights, however for much of the winter it is reliably fogged in. A VFR pilot generally would not want to rely on Bern remaining clear however a few days later, the weather was quite unique. It was forecast to be quite dry with zero fog whatsoever for the entire night. Why not? The moon was only 84% illumination on the prior flight. On this one it would be 99% but rise right at sunset, so the angles would still be sharp before I had to land. Why not give it a try, despite 20kt winds?

I decided to head to the Jungfrau this time, as it was in visual range of Bern, in case fog decided to develop, I could dive to the airport in about 10 minutes. I borrowed the lens again and made sure I was over the Aletschgletscher to watch a red moon rise in the east while a brilliant twilight sky colored the west. In short order, the moon cast a yellow moonrise light on the eastern slopes of the Alps while the sunset lingered in the west, another scene I will never forget.

I was able to improve my photography this time, aided by a stronger moon and closer proximity to peaks in sharp relief and brilliant white from glaciers and snow. Wind was an issue at times with some downdrafts though it was manageable. I made my descent on the north side of the Eiger over Grindelwald and Interlaken, and then it was straight into Bern. Cover the plane for frost, Uber to Thun train station, train back to the truck, rinse and repeat the next day.

Part IV. “When the gods wish to punish us, they answer our prayers.”

What happens next, I did not expect. Every night the moon was full for 10 years, from Colorado to Wyoming to the Spanish Pyrenees to the Swiss Alps, I would take hikes and walks or look out the window on a snowy night and fantasize about flying in the mountains. After doing it twice, what happened? It killed it. I look out the window now, on winter nights, at the illustrious full moon of the Alps, and I think “what idiot would want to be in a taildragger out there right now?” I didn’t see that coming, but maybe the bureaucrats won in the end.

Sunset at Weisshorn