Learning To Fly - Night Flight To Santa Barbara

There's a beauty to watching what's going on at Van Nuys Airport at night. You see things you don't see during the day, but being this is a small airport, it's also DARK at night and trying to figure out anything, is difficult at best. I am positive this is the very thing my son was learning last night when he and his instructor took to the skies and flew over to Santa Barbara. Finding an airport is not easy at the best of times, but lose your visual cues and it gets tougher. It was a beautiful evening, the crescent moon hung over the airport tower (Ramadan just began yesterday and the moon reminded my husband and myself of that fact). Not much in the way of traffic and so when the plane did its run up to the top of the taxiway, it was basically all alone. They waited for a plane to land and then off they went. The trip took 3 hours and so my husband and I waited at Denny's and had a bite to eat. We parked back at the airport about 15 minutes before they were due to return and they didn't show until almost 30 minutes later. The flight went well, Santa Barbara Airport was found and they did a full stop landing and then took off again. My son told me later that they then flew to the much smaller Santa Ynez airport and also did stop and go landings there. He said that the runway is so small that they had to land, taxi and then take off again each time. The teacher wants to work on my son's logging skills, next time we get together. He fills out an entire form pre-flight that mentions times miles and visual cues and the teacher wants to make sure everything is up to speed and right, since the next Cross Country by my son will be SOLO. Ack!