Reviews for Sunset to Sunrise: Night Flight Techniques

The average rating for Sunset to Sunrise: Night Flight Techniques based on 2 reviews is 3 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2018-08-15 00:00:00 Graham Astor Sunset to Sunrise is a book that covers many aspects of flight, and specifically goes into details regarding night flight. A few things that you should know about this book before you read it: the author is Australian so this book has an Australia-centered focus (which is not specifically mentioned in the introduction), and the book was published 14 years ago. As I was reading the book, I wondered why an emphasis was on IFR flight, including information on flying in clouds. In the US, private pilot students must undertake 3 hours of night flight, which has to be under VFR conditions. Therefore, a primer on night flight for a US-based flight student would be better suited if it left out the explicit IFR stuff. So, if you're a US student, keep in mind that this book might have some irrelevancies. However, the book quotes at length from the FAR/AIM, which is decidedly US-centric (unless Australia has similar legal requirements for night flight, which I don't know, because memorizing one country's regulations is more than enough for me). I wasn't a huge fan of all of the FAR/AIM regurgitation in this book; just reference the relevant sections and let me read about the things I really need to know that are relevant to night flying. There were also several sections on flight in general, which I think is better left to other textbooks. Only about half of this book is actually specifically about night flying. The author also never mentions what type of aircraft he flies, but mentions and recommends usage of autopilot (again, not something most training airplanes have), retractable landing gear (which a PPL student probably won't fly unless they're also working on their complex endorsement), etc. I think this assumes a higher-level pilot than your typical student. Finally, the age of this book is shown in the limited mention of GPS and complete absence of discussion on electronic flight displays and EFB programs such as ForeFlight. If a second edition is ever published, I'm sure that it would be much more relevant to most of today's aviators. In all, I don't really recommend this as a good reference book to US-based flight students. The FAA-published Airplane Flying Handbook has a chapter on Night Operations, which is probably all of the information that a student needs for their night flights.

Review # 2 was written on 2013-08-29 00:00:00 Joseph Scott I attended an event for the International Forest of Friendship in Atchison, KS where I first learned about the Ninety-Nines and met several. I was unaware of the Powder Puff Derby and it's role in history. This book was a good look into the history.