Flying My Family IFR to Tacoma Narrows and the Full-Moon Night ILS

The Flight North: Skimming the Cloud Tops

• I loaded our Cessna 172 at Hillsboro Airport with my mother, Retha Schwartz, and my brother, Russ Schwartz.
• The weather out of Hillsboro was overcast, with cloud bases around 1,500 feet and tops reaching roughly 4,500 feet.
• I filed an Instrument Flight Rules (IFR) flight plan for the trip to Tacoma Narrows Airport (TIW).
• Climbing out through the soup, we broke out right at the top of the puffy cloud layer in brilliant sunshine.
• Cruising north, we skimmed in and out of the puffy white tops—a gorgeous sight for my passengers while I remained heads-down on the instruments, ensuring our course kept us far clear of Cumulo-Granite (pilot slang for mountains hidden inside clouds).
• We touched down smoothly at Tacoma Narrows and spent several delightful hours celebrating Ron's reception.

The Night Flight South: Moonlit Stratus and Lightning

• By the time we preflighted for the return trip to Hillsboro, darkness had fallen, and the overcast layer had thickened into a solid stratus deck from 1,500 feet up to about 6,000 feet.
• This marked my first genuine "wet time" instrument flight at night.
• After takeoff, air traffic control initially assigned us 4,000 feet—putting us square in the middle of pitch-black, soupy clouds with zero visual cues outside the cockpit, relying entirely on the humming engine and the instrument needles.
• I requested a higher cruise altitude and was cleared to 6,000 feet.
• Popping out just above the stratus layer was breathtaking:
  • A brilliant full moon and a sky filled with dazzling stars illuminated the endless sea of white clouds below us.
  • Off to the left, approximately 100 miles in the distance near Mount Rainier, an active lightning storm lit up the night sky with dramatic flashes striking the ground.

The Textbook Night ILS Approach

• As we approached Hillsboro, controllers vectored us for the Instrument Landing System (ILS) approach.
• Descending back into the ink-black cloud deck around 5,000–6,000 feet, I locked my eyes onto the ILS crosshairs indicator.
• Keeping the localizer and glide slope needles pinned dead center, we descended through the overcast.
• Right around 1,500 feet AGL, the aircraft punched out beneath the cloud ceiling.
• Directly ahead through the windshield, the Hillsboro runway blazed into view: the flashing strobe "rabbit" racing toward the threshold, green threshold lights, and runway centerline lights perfectly framed right in front of us.
• "It worked just like the textbook said it would work."
• We touched down, taxied to parking, and shut down after an unforgettable day of family flight.